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Key points
- A higher percentage of people may choose not to have children than was previously thought.
- Childfree individuals do not differ from other people in terms of race, personality, or life satisfaction.
- Still, they are treated with bias and less warmth by parents and people who want children in the future.
How many adults don’t have kids because they don’t want them? Some earlier studies, based on data from more than a decade ago, suggested that the answer was fewer than 10 percent. Previous investigations, though, sometimes included only women and occasionally only married women. Sometimes only women of childbearing age were included. Also, people who could not have kids for biological reasons, such as infertility, were sometimes automatically classified as childless, ignoring the possibility that some did not want children and therefore should have been classified as childfree.
In a study just published at Plos One, “Prevalence and characteristics of childfree adults in Michigan (USA),” Jennifer Watling Neal and Zachary P. Neal of Michigan State University distinguished childfree adults from childless adults, parents, and people planning to be parents. They compared the four groups on their satisfaction with their lives, their political ideology, and their personalities. They also looked at whether the childfree adults differed by marital status, gender, or race. In addition, they asked people in each of the groups how warmly they felt toward childfree women and men.
The participants were a representative sample of 981 Michigan adults, including both men and women. Their average age was 52.
Identifying the Childfree, Childless, Parents, and Adults Planning to Be Parents
The researchers classified the adults into four groups based on their answers to three questions:
1. “Do you have, or have you ever had, any biological or adopted children?
People who answered yes were the parents.
2. “Do you plan to have any biological or adopted children in the future?”
The people who answered yes to this question after answering no to the first were classified as planning to have children.
3. “Do you wish you had or could have biological or adopted children?”
The people who answered yes to this question after answering no to the first two were classified as childless.
The childfree were the people who answered no to all three questions.
How the Childfree Differed—or Did Not Differ—from the Other Adults
More than one-quarter of the adults (27 percent) were childfree. More than half of the adults were parents (54 percent). Another 12 percent planned to have biological or adopted children in the future. The remaining 8 percent were childless—they didn’t have children, but they wish they could.
The percentage of childfree adults was much higher in this study than in earlier studies that were limited in important ways. Pew Research Center data from 2018, though, also suggested a high rate of childfree adults. Among those who did not already have kids, 23 percent said they were not likely to have kids because they did not want kids.
Only people in Michigan participated in this study. Michigan, though, is similar to the overall U.S. population in race, age, income, and education.
More than half of the childfree adults (54 percent) had always been single.
A substantial share of the childfree adults (35 percent) had a romantic partner—they were either married, remarried, or had a partner but were not married. The other 11 percent of the childfree adults were previously married (divorced, separated, or widowed).
Similar percentages of childfree adults were men (51 percent) and women (49 percent).
But the percentage of men among the childfree was greater than it was for the entire sample or for the parents. Across all the people in the study, 42 percent were men, and 58 percent were women. Among just the parents in the study, the proportions were the same: 42 percent were men, and 58 percent were women.
The childfree included the same proportion of people of color as the entire sample of participants.
Across all of the people in the study, 77 percent were white, and 23 percent were people of color. Among just the childfree, the percentages were 78 percent and 22 percent, respectively.
The childfree did not differ in personality from the other groups of adults.
When the childfree were compared to the people in the other groups who were similar to them in age, education, and other potentially relevant ways, they were similar in their extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
The childfree were more politically liberal than the parents.
On average, the childfree were center-left politically. The parents were more conservative.
The childfree were just as satisfied with their lives as everyone else.
When the childfree were compared to the people in the other groups who were similar to them in age, education, and other potentially relevant ways, they were just as satisfied with their lives as the childless, the people planning to have children, and the parents.
Judging the Childfree
All of the other groups felt less warmly toward the childfree than the childfree felt toward one another.
When the childfree adults were asked to report how warmly they felt toward other childfree adults on a 100-point scale on which 100 is the warmest rating, they said they felt warm. Their average warmth rating was 73. When the others rated the childfree, though, they said they felt less warmly. On average, the parents, childless, and those planning to have children rated the childfree—both the childfree women and the childfree men—about 66.
What did the childfree do to warrant that cool reception? They were not complaining about not having kids; it was their choice.
That, though, was the problem. Adults are supposed to want kids. That’s what is expected and what is celebrated. Defy that cultural mandate, and you just may find yourself the target of a particular kind of negative reaction: moral outrage.
The same thing happens to people who stay single because they want to be single. They are evaluated more harshly than single people pining for a partner. Other people are more likely to feel angry at them. We’re all supposed to head down the path of marrying and having kids. We don’t have to, of course, but if we don’t, we will be judged.
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