SURVEY: 44% of Americans don’t want children, say the future is too ‘bleak’

In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of non-parents between the ages of 18 to 50 said they do not want children, some saying so because the future seems to bleak. The number represents a seven percent increase from last year.

The survey questioned nearly 4,000 adults, and almost half responded that they simply do not want to have children. Despite previously being thought to be a natural progression of life, to have kids, many are citing a plethora of reasons as to why they are choosing to skip parenthood.

Fifty percent of those said they “just don’t want to have children” as their reason, and 43 percent said other reasons, like medical and finances being the highest at 19 and 17 percent. Nine percent said the “state of the world” was too bleak for them to want children, and 2 percent responded that their partners did not want any.

Seventy-four percent of people in the same age group who are already parents also said they were not planning on having any more children, but this number has not changed drastically since 2018.

The biggest reason parents said they would not be having more kids was simply because they do not want any more, and 23 and 14 percent cited medical and financial reasons, respectively. Four percent said the world was too bleak.

As of 2020, the average US household size is 2.53 people, which reflects a decrease by almost 1 person compared to 1960 at 3.22 people per household. Many also speculate that US fertility rates are dropping due to the public health end economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Around 3.6 million babies were born in 2020, which is a four percent decrease. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the decline is the largest since 1973.