Growing up in rural Michigan, Nina Jobe connected with her peers and community by following a “traditional trajectory,” which meant “go to college, get married, have 2.5 kids, happy home, white picket fence kind of thing,” she tells CNBC Make It.
But moving to New York gave her a new perspective: “I remember being amazed at the age of 20 to see so many older, happier, single people than I was used to seeing back home.”
Now 36, she says the variety of family environments she encountered “opened my eyes to the possibilities of different lifestyles and non-traditional family structures.”
Now, Jobe is part of a growing number of Americans who are choosing not to have children: The U.S. birth rate is set to fall to a record low of about 1.6 children per woman by 2023, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
To maintain population, a society needs to maintain a birth rate of roughly 2.1 children per woman. In other words, they need to have enough people to sustain the workforce. Fewer births mean fewer workers and taxpayers, which results in a smaller economy.
These demographic changes have raised alarm bells not only among economists but also among some politicians and public figures who see population decline as a sign of moral decadence. Not wanting to have children is “a form of selfishness,” the Pope declared in 2022.
But the reasons why more Americans are saying “no” to parenthood are more complicated than it often seems. Parenthood is expensive, but money isn’t the number one reason people choose not to have children. In many cases, Americans simply realize they have more options and can pursue happiness in other ways.
“I think I was raised in a very traditional environment where people were like, ‘This is what success looks like,'” Jobe said. “I came here and saw that success works in 1,000 different ways, and I realized I could be successful too.”
Raising a child in America is expensive…
Many Americans want to have kids: More than half of childless adults between the ages of 18 and 34 say they’re interested in having kids, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. But the responses aren’t evenly split by gender: 57% of men say they want children, compared to just 45% of women.
Among those who want children but end up postponing or giving up on parenthood, there’s a widespread belief that it’s simply too expensive: Babies may have become a “luxury item,” a 2023 Vogue article explores.
Raising children in the United States is especially expensive, and families can’t expect much help from the government. “The U.S. welfare system is fairly generous to seniors but relatively stingy to children. Comparing the U.S. to about 40 OECD countries, only Turkey spends less per child as a percentage of GDP,” NPR’s Planet Money podcast recently reported.
The US is notable for being the only wealthy country that doesn’t mandate paid parental leave: according to Planet Money, “only about a quarter of American workers, regardless of gender, have access to parental leave.”
And raising children in the US has become more expensive over the past few decades: A KPMG analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that the cost of child care and preschool rose about 263% between 1991 and 2024. The estimated total cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 in 2023 will exceed $330,000, according to an analysis by Northwestern Mutual.
Yet, according to the Pew Research Center survey, only 36% of childless adults under 50 say they couldn’t afford to raise children, and even fewer, just 12%, of childless adults over 50 say finances were a deciding factor.
…But money isn’t the biggest reason Americans aren’t having children
According to a Pew Research Center survey, of people under 50 who say they’re unlikely to have children, 57% say they simply don’t want to have children. Other top reasons people are unlikely to have children include wanting to focus on other things (44%) and being concerned about the state of the world (38%).
This is a stark difference from older adults: According to the Pew Research Center, 31% of childless people over 50 say they have never wanted to have children.
A big factor in the US birth rate’s decline is the decline in unintended pregnancies: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of unintended pregnancies in the US fell by 15% between 2010 and 2019. In other words, advances in contraception and reproductive technology are allowing many people who don’t want to become parents to avoid it.
And a growing share of adults under 50 say they don’t plan to have children, according to a separate Pew Research Center survey, rising from 37% of adults in 2018 to 47% by 2023.
If cost isn’t the overriding issue, why are younger Americans less likely to want children than their parents were? For many, it’s because the demands and requirements of parenthood have changed.
Raising children seems hard: We don’t want to have to watch over our kids 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Callie Freitag, 33, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and works as a public policy researcher, demographer, and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, told CNBC Make It that she and her partner “came to the decision not to have children because neither of us wanted the responsibility of caring for and feeding a small child.”
“We would rather use our time, energy and resources for other things. We love being aunts and uncles, but we don’t want to look after kids 24/7,” she said.
Her goals include continuing to build her career, traveling, and getting involved in the community, and she acknowledges that having kids helps her prioritize these things, but “having kids makes things more complicated.”
We would rather spend our time, energy and resources elsewhere.
Callie Freitag
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Having children is expensive, time-consuming and exhausting, especially in countries where affordable child care and paid family leave are not sufficiently prioritized,” she added.
Parenting culture has changed over the past few decades as millennials and Gen Zers have grown up and formed their opinions of what it means to be a parent, and the mindset of many people within these generations has changed accordingly.
Nobody wants to be a bad parent. There’s a “certain general anxiety”
“The stakes are extremely high and there are real concerns that it could fail,” Paula Fass, a cultural historian and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told CNBC Make It.
“I think there’s an anxiety about raising children and being a parent right now, a kind of general anxiety that’s permeating younger generations. So much is expected of them as parents, and they’re conflicted about whether having kids is worth it,” Fass says.
Having children is expensive, time-consuming and exhausting, especially in a country where affordable child care and paid family leave are not sufficiently prioritized.
Callie Freitag
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Parents today spend more time with their kids than their predecessors: A 2016 study found that mothers in 2012 spent an average of 104 minutes with their kids, nearly double the amount of time mothers spent with their kids in 1965 (54 minutes a day).
Meanwhile, the amount of time fathers spent on childcare increased fourfold, from an average of 16 minutes per day in 1965 to 59 minutes in 2012.
The expectation that parenthood means having to be “always on” can be demotivating or daunting for adults who want to have children but continue to pursue work, hobbies, or other passions. This can lead would-be parents to feel like they have to reprioritize their lives and even reshape their personality if they want to have children.
“There are 10 to 15 different points of view online.”
Not only does raising children require more money and time than ever before, but it’s also harder to get safe, reliable advice.
Previous generations of Americans had a singular expert in Dr. Spock, widely regarded as a trusted source of parenting advice, Fass said, but these days, she said, “there are fears without answers.”
โIf you go online, youโll find 10 to 15 different views on what should be done about a particular issue. [parenting] There are many different ways of looking at things, and a lot of criticism of the way people do things.โ
So much is expected of us as parents, yet we struggle with whether having children is even worth it.
Paula Fuss
Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Parents may feel pressured to do everything they can to give their children an early life that seems to set them on a good path, and the list of “must-haves” can include “gentle parenting,” specialized schooling, elite sports training, cutting-edge technology, and so on.
Brianna, a 29-year-old Connecticut resident whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, said she knew most of her life she didn’t want to be a parent, but chose to be sterilized last year.
“It’s something I’ve wanted ever since I found out it existed,” she says.
Still, Brianna says she had to spend years explaining in writing to her doctors that she was committed to her choice before they gave her the go-ahead to go ahead with the procedure.After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and abortion restrictions went into effect across the country, Brianna’s doctors became more open.
In her case, getting a dog four years ago solidified her decision not to become a mother. “The stress I put on her to make sure she lives her best life and stays healthy is not the amount of stress I want my child to go through,” Briana says.
“I’m very sensitive about her,” she says, “and I think I’d be even more sensitive about a human child.”
Policies have limitations in promoting reproduction
Falling birth rates are not unique to the U.S.: Countries around the world have begun or are continuing to experience a decline in birth rates, as seen in South Korea, which has the lowest birth rate in the world.
Many governments have taken steps to encourage people to have bigger families: South Korea has increased monthly allowances for families with a newborn baby for the first year of life, while Taiwan has introduced cash benefits and tax cuts for parents and expanded paid family leave compensation.
Few of these policy solutions have made a big difference: even in countries known for their strong family-support policies, such as Norway, birth rates are beginning to fall.
To some extent, that’s to be expected, reports Jessica Gross in a New York Times essay titled “Stop Panicing About Fertility Rates.” “As incomes and quality of life rise, societies tend to move from high births and high deaths to low births and rising life expectancy,” Gross writes, citing demographer Jennifer Silva.
“Moreover, the more educated a population is, the later both men and women tend to become parents and the fewer children they have overall,” Gross writes. “It is hard to argue that rising education and longer life expectancies are bad things for the human race.”
Whether this situation warrants any policy-level action is up for debate. “There are several reasons why we don’t need to worry about falling birth rates,” demographer Leslie Root wrote in The Washington Post. After all, “the U.S. population has experienced nearly four decades of below-replacement fertility,” he wrote.
Of course, for individuals, the decision to have children remains highly personal, and Americans who are increasingly reluctant to become parents may still be supportive of family and children in general.
“I love kids,” Jobe said, “and I want to be able to help people who are really struggling with their children.”
“Look at how much work it took. [having kids] “Ever since I was little, I’ve been like, ‘This is too much,’ and I knew at some point I had to make a decision,” she adds. “You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.”
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