Playing With Cats [Among Other Things] Trumps Child Bearing!

NYT

The vast majority of women in the United States still have children. But the most commonly used measure of fertility, the number of births for every 1,000 women of childbearing age, was 60.2 last year, a record low. The total fertility rate — which estimates how many children women will have based on current patterns — is down to 1.8, below the replacement level in developed countries of 2.1.

In the Morning Consult and Times survey, more than half of the 1,858 respondents — a nationally representative sample of men and women ages 20 to 45 — said they planned to have fewer children than their parents. About half were already parents. Of those who weren’t, 42 percent said they wanted children, 24 percent said they did not and 34 percent said they weren’t sure.

One of the biggest factors was personal: having no desire for children and wanting more leisure time, a pattern that has also shown up in social science research. A quarter of poll respondents who didn’t plan to have children said one reason was they didn’t think they’d be good parents.

Jessica Boer, 26, has a long list of things she’d rather spend time doing than raising children: being with her family and her fiancé; traveling; focusing on her job as a nurse; getting a master’s degree; playing with her cats.

“My parents got married right out of high school and had me and they were miserable,” said Ms. Boer, who lives in Portage, Mich. “But now we know we have a choice.”

This generation, unlike the ones that came before it, is as likely as not to earn less than their parents. Among people who did not plan to have children, 23 percent said it was because they were worried about the economy. A third said they couldn’t afford child care, 24 percent said they couldn’t afford a house and 13 percent cited student debt.

Financial concerns also led people to have fewer children than what they considered to be ideal: 64 percent said it was because child care was too expensive, 43 percent said they waited too long because of financial instability and about 40 percent said it was because of a lack of paid family leave.

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One comment: We are all descended from poor people - much more poor than the average American. If they would have decided not to have children for financial reasons - none of us would be alive today. Aren't we happy we are....