The main goal of college is determining what the future holds. What’s the ideal career? Where to move post-grad? Marriage? Kids? All of these questions and plenty more are on the minds of most people on a college campus -- including researchers.
In a study published on MSUToday, Michigan State University researchers utilized the National Survey of Family Growth to investigate parenthood trends in the United States. One of the researchers working on the project was MSU professor of psychology Jennifer Watling Neal.
“We were really interested in understanding different types of non-parents,” Neal said. “In particular, being able to pull apart people who don’t want children and who don’t have kids.”
They separated the different kinds of potential candidates into three groups: childfree, people who don’t have kids and don’t want them; childless, people who want kids but couldn’t have them due to biological or social reasons; and not yet parents, people who don’t have kids but plan to in the future.
Before looking at the national survey, they took a look at Michigan individually. They found that in Michigan one in five people said they don’t ever want to have children, making them fall into the childfree category. This was found to be the case throughout the United States.
“What we did find confirmed that this is a more general trend in the United States and it’s sort of long-lasting,” Neal said. “The percentage of non-parents who don’t want children, or who are childfree, rose from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023.”
Neal detailed how this statistic is representative of a long-term trend of increasing non-parenthood in the U.S. Neal also acknowledged that there has traditionally been a stigma around people who choose not to become parents. As non-parenthood becomes less stigmatized people may be more comfortable revealing that they don’t want kids.
“We live a pretty pro-natalist society here in the U.S., where having children is valued,” Neal said. “I think a lot of people who don’t want children may feel a bit alone.”
As the stigma breaks down, Neals hopes those who don’t want kids are able to see that this is a popular sentiment in the U.S. This research is just one way to show them. What this study doesn’t account for is the qualitative results of why people may hold the non-parent sentiment.
Finance and Arabic senior Ella Stone offered her perspective. As a soon-to-be graduate heading into the workforce, Stone has no current desire to have kids and sees a lot of contributing factors for this within society, combined with her own personal preferences.
“Jobs are harder to find and people are struggling to keep up with the pace,” Stone said. “I think the pressure to have kids is a lot less than it was before. I personally would rather have life accomplishments through work before I have a family."
One of the major barriers Stone talked about was finances. More and more people aren’t able to afford all the costs of having children. So, for them, it is better to not have kids at all.
Business preference freshman Thomas Dauphin reinforced that sentiment. Dauphin has seen people in his life opt to not have kids for both financial reasons and medical ones. However, having seen this, Dauphin still wants a family of his own.
“I think just from what I’ve experienced I definitely lean towards having a family in the future,” Dauphin said.
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