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It's hard to tell if these studies show that people want fewer children, or if people want fewer children as they age (ie their ideal number declines). It would
by maerF0x0 3y ago
It's hard to tell if these studies show that people want fewer children, or if people want fewer children as they age (ie their ideal number declines). It would be also really interesting to see if this is a form of goal post shifting where people who do not have children (for example procrastinate) move the goal post to tell themselves they succeeded at what they _actually_ wanted.
That would take longitudinal studies and to break people into cohorts of how many they wanted at various ages, and how many they infact had. Then see if those who had N children wanted more or less (and was it more or less than their initial predictions, and are they happy with their choices)...
The little bit of googling I've found suggests mostly want as many or more children than they have, meaning having 0 children is a dominated strategy compared to at least having some, if not more than you currently already do -- up to a point.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoUniversity of Michigan did a recent study that shows intentional childfree cohort at at least around 20% in Michigan [1]. Would be super interesting to expand these studies out across wider populations. Somewhat related, about 40-50% annually of both US [2] and global [3] pregnancies are unintended. How many are unintended and unwanted would also be an interesting datapoint. This would provide signal as to folks who perhaps wanted to remain childfree but didn't because of circumstances. [1] https://www.michiganradio.org/health/2022-07-27/1-in-5-adults-choosing-to-be-childfree-msu-study-finds https://www.michiganradio.org/health/2022-07-27/1-in-5-adult... [2] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-united-states https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u... [3] https://www.unfpa.org/press/nearly-half-all-pregnancies-are-unintended-global-crisis-says-new-unfpa-report https://www.unfpa.org/press/nearly-half-all-pregnancies-are-...
- Frannyies 3y agoYou put it like it's not normal to not wanting kids. I'm pretty sure a lot like and love their kids but I'm quite fine with not having to shift my life around kids. We area much fuller planet than before. Everything is full. We also have plenty of other things to occupy our time than kids and we can have sex without kids and stigma.
- maerF0x0 3y agoafaik Its not normal in the statistics sense of the word, most people are falling in a tightly centered distribution. But I'm not going to debate here that it's a moral choice, or that you're somehow wrong by being one or more SDs out of center. (It might be, but this isnt the forum for it). Anyone who does not want to have children of their own are well within their rights. I'd encourage anyone who doesnt have kids to still find someway to contribute their time/interactions to the next generations though, I've found it really changes the mindset of people to invest in someone else with no expectation of return.
- Frannyies 3y agoIm a nihilist and also see value in anti-natialism.