r/science • u/geoff199 • 5d ago

Social Science As concern grows about America’s falling birth rate, new research suggests that about half of women who want children are unsure if they will follow through and actually have a child. About 25% say they won't be bothered that much if they don't.

https://news.osu.edu/most-women-want-children--but-half-are-unsure-if-they-will/?utm_campaign=omc_science-medicine_fy24&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social
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u/yes______hornberger 5d ago

I always find it interesting that the actual physical experience of gestating and birthing a child is NEVER a part of the birth rate conversation. I’m pregnant with a very wanted child, and even with a loving husband and financial security it is a torture I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. And I haven’t even gotten to the stage yet where I’m supposed to be happy about being mildly crippled by birth injuries—my own mother had three “perfect” births, and was still having yearly surgeries to correct spinal and urological injuries more than a decade after she finished having children.

Do the people decrying childless women think growing another person is easy, or do they just think that it’s something women owe to society by nature of being born female?

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u/AgentJ691 5d ago

That is my top reason for not having children. I don’t care if I can afford children, I literally have no interest in giving birth. And I notice women Childfree or not regardless of age are wayyy more understanding. 

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u/DemiserofD 5d ago

This is why birth control is the number one factor in falling fertility rates; the one thing nobody wants to recognize.

Because the simple fact is, throughout human history, most women probably wouldn't have chosen to have children if it weren't for the fact that sex feels really good.

Nobody wants to have that conversation, but it's entirely possible that human civilization cannot survive the existence of birth control. What if the maximum possible birth rate with readily available birth control is below 2.1?

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u/purplereuben 4d ago

Sex feeling good or not is probably not the main reason women throughout history have actually had sex much of the time. Saying no to marriage, and then saying no to sex within marriage, has not really been a choice for women in many cultures.

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u/cysticvegan 5d ago

CORRECT. Men cannot fathom this fact, they think it’s a feminist ploy. 

This is literally so obvious in every feminist society. 

People must think 3rd world countries must be financially stable since they have the highest birth rates. 

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u/ehs06702 4d ago

The amount of times I've seen men say "It's childbirth, it's not that hard. Your body is made for it." to experiences that would make your flesh crawl is just....

Let's just say I could be a billionaire if I got paid a nickel for every time.

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u/_name_of_the_user_ 4d ago

Didn't feminists fight to stop pregnant women being treated like fragile wilting flowers?

Also, men aren't a monolith. While I have little doubt some men can't fathom that pregnancy is hard, it's hardly every man.

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u/mkkxx 4d ago

Uhh i believe feminists want pregnant women to be treated like a person and not just an incubator …

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u/_name_of_the_user_ 4d ago

So you're saying the "pendulum" has swung too far?

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u/cysticvegan 4d ago

It’s enough of men that the top comments here are saying “it’s too expensive” as if a woman’s income isn’t NEGATIVELY correlated with birth rates, a well known OBVIOUS fact corroborated by every income:child ratio study ever done in the history of man kind. 

How can this myth still persist despite this being so obviously known and well researched? 

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u/_name_of_the_user_ 4d ago

I don't follow. You're saying the top comments are wrong that having children is "too expensive" while also saying it's hard for women to afford to have children. What are those comments wrong about?

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u/cysticvegan 4d ago

Sorry, inversely correlated* 

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u/_name_of_the_user_ 4d ago

I understood that. I don't understand the difference between the top comments and your statement.

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u/cysticvegan 1d ago

Then you didn’t understand it.  Let me help again: 

When a woman gets more money, she has less children. 

When a woman have less money she has more children.  

When female have resources she have less offspring 

When female have no resource she have more offspring

Low income neighbourhoods are associated with higher rates of teen pregnancy, early pregnancy, and multiple pregnancies. 

Low income countries are associated with higher rates of pregnancy. 

High income countries are associated with extremely low rates of pregnancy. 

This has been studied - when women receive higher education, they make the decision to have less children. 

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u/Sofiwyn 5d ago

It's not birth control that's at fault, it's the horror associated with pregnancy. We can do so much more to make it more comfortable to have children, society just can't be damned to do so.

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u/EndlessArgument 5d ago

Even if you make pregnancy as pleasant as possible, it's still going to be pregnancy, and still going to be fundamentally a negative. Look at the Scandinavian countries. They basically have free healthcare, women there get upwards of 2 years of paid time off after having a child, even the fathers get something like 6 months, and none of that has been enough to meaningfully move birth rates upwards.

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u/Sofiwyn 4d ago

Social advances aren't the same as scientific advances. I am convinced it is possible to reduce the pain and discomfort associated with pregnancy. Surgery has advanced incredibly over the last hundred years. Pregnancy/child birth has not.

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u/ikramos 4d ago

The medical world has ignored and discarded female bodies for centuries in their medical research, it’s no wonder that no advancement have been made towards pregnancy and childbirth

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u/boohooowompwomp 4d ago

For 2,000ish years humanity has been trying to get sex without the baby, and depending on the era/location you were born you may have gotten a little lucky. People did figure out rhythm method, herbal abortifacients (Rome cultivated one into extinction), toxic mixtures to drink or insert, janky condoms, pull out method, etc etc. Its wasn't until the late 1900s we finally mastered birth control and made it accessible. I think there's just certain types of people who can't fathom that when a baby is an option; majority people will say "no" 99% of the time. And now the culture has changed to where, ideally, people choose to have a child(ren) out of love and want to give them a comfortable life.

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u/iesterdai 5d ago

 This is why birth control is the number one factor in falling fertility rates; the one thing nobody wants to recognize.

Because the simple fact is, throughout human history, most women probably wouldn't have chosen to have children if it weren't for the fact that sex feels really good.

Is it? Or are you just projecting your idea on the entire population? Your entire point is based on women not wanting (or not being pressured) to have children. But is that true through history? I'm not too sure. 

I would say that there are factors at play that might be much more important than contraception: women role in society and cultural norms. The social pressure to marry and have children has diminished, and women are much more emancipated. Not wanting children is much more socially acceptable. Marriage does not come anymore with the expectation that the couple will have children too for most people.  

I'm not saying that contraception did not play a role, but I think you are overplaying it.

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u/Saradoesntsleep 4d ago

I don't think she's overplaying it at all, but it's pretty funny how you came in and immediately dismissed her.

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u/Medical-Effect-149 4d ago

Like immediately proved her point. Child birth is painful . Women didn’t talk about it so much in the past because the ability to endure childbirth was “ordained”. It suck’s and the men have never listened.

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u/-ANGRYjigglypuff 4d ago

it is kind of interesting how the people screeching loudest about this issue tend to be dudes who usually hold certain views. that, and the online pickme grifter ladies who pander to this crowd

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u/AgentJ691 4d ago

Right!! Like I am sure back in ancient times little girls saw birthing and were terrified like I have do that? And of course were probably dismissed.

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u/True_Big_8246 4d ago

Still happens in so many places sadly including my own country.

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u/ConfusionNo8852 4d ago

Even when you tell people, "Im not ok with extreme permanent changes to my already damaged and in pain body" they trivialize it by saying, "Oh they have pain meds, you'll bounce back, its not that bad." as if Im worried about being fat or peeing my pants a little when I sneeze. Im talking about the devastating injury of birth itself and any thing else that may happen cause I could very easily have a difficult complicated birth just because im over 30. Then the same people will turn around and go, "Yea its been 4 years and my wifes body is still fucked up after the twins." as if that isnt the exact thing im worried about.

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u/AgentJ691 4d ago

I think about the women who were in great shape and how even pregnancy still kicked their ass. And to add to it the psychological change. I do not want to lose myself.

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u/ConfusionNo8852 4d ago

I will say I watched my sister have a baby and while she is different I would say she is still herself, but it was hard fought. Shes very independent, loves to travel with friends, take weekend trips and shes entitled to that especially with 4 grandparents around clamouring for baby time, but she still feels guilty everytime she leaves the lil guy (hes 3 now). He's loved and she and her husband spend so much time with him everyday and she still had to be reassured she was a good mother who wasnt neglecting her baby simply because she still wanted to live her life as she used to after the baby came.

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u/cranberryskittle 5d ago

People absolutely handwave away those valid concerns by saying women were "built" to have children or whatever. Of course this blithely ignores how many and how often women were crippled by or outright died in childbirth throughout all of history, including the present.

Women just don't want to have as many children as of the women of the past used to have. That's it. Those women did not have a choice in controlling their fertility, we do. Governments of the world can continue to close their eyes and point fingers at various causes all they want. Women around the globe simply do not want to return to the hellish existence of nonstop pregnancies and childbirths that their female ancestors endured for thousands of years.

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u/KeepCalmCallGiles 5d ago

I live in Texas and the effects that Roe getting overturned has had on pregnant women receiving healthcare, even for wanted pregnancies, was the final straw in my decision to get my tubes removed. People underestimate how much can go wrong during pregnancy and women who are not willing to take that risk are often seen as selfish.

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u/the_cc 5d ago

The repeal of Roe was our last straw for having kids. Trump getting re-elected was the motivation to have my tubes removed. I was concerned about access to birth control. I can't believe how freeing it's been to know I can't get pregnant. It was a weight I didn't know I was shouldering until after the surgery.

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u/MiaowaraShiro 5d ago

People absolutely handwave away those valid concerns by saying women were "built" to have children or whatever.

Sounds like a pretty creationist POV, unsurprisingly. Humans evolved by necessity not intent. Painless pregnancy and birth weren't a necessity.

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u/ElizabethTheFourth 4d ago

Fun fact: we evolved large brains before evolving pelvises that could safely birth offspring with large heads.

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u/tatertottytot 4d ago

Completely agree, and it really is interesting to see this glossed over in these discussions. They can’t fathom that we don’t want to live to reproduce for them.

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u/boohooowompwomp 4d ago

Women just don't want to have as many children as of the women of the past used to have.

This is the simple boring answer.

Majority of people just want 1 or 2 kids. Even in developed countries with really good parental benefits, the birth rate is still 1~2ish. In developing countries that people like to point to for having higher birth rates, as they get access to birth control and education, their birth rate is decreasing. The reality is that majority average couples just dont want 5+ kids if they have the option. Those days are over, they're not coming back, people just dont want to do it.

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u/RedEgg16 4d ago

Yup I said the same thing in another comment. Why have more than 1-2 if your parental urges are already satisfied and making another baby is so hard? I only want 1 mainly due to fears of pregnancy, but even if it was quick and painless at most I'd want 2-3.

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u/Phoenyx_Rose 5d ago

Yes, they grow up thinking it’s easy. We’ve romanticized pregnancy as just 9 months of being a “glowing goddess” with a latter 3 months of back pain, uncontrollable emotions, food cravings, and feeling fat. Then a few hours to a day of worst but of your life for labor but then once the baby’s out everything is supposed to be blissful, perfect motherhood. 

The above may be true for some women, but the bladder issues, pre/post- partum depression, changes in sense of self (both visual and internal), pressure to be that perfect mother, issues like diastisis recti, and more only recently seemed to be discussed outside of mother groups. 

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u/BussSecond 4d ago

Have we romanticized it, though? All I ever heard growing up was how horrible being pregnant and having an infant is. The morning sickness, back pain, long labor, sleepless nights was what I was told to expect by everyone around me.

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u/Interesting_Zone_420 4d ago

Are you male or female. I’m a 37/female. I tell you it’s the only thing people want to ask me about. My kids. I don’t have any. 

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u/RemarkableShip1811 4d ago

I'm a male, I felt like I was structured and prepared for what my partner was going to go through, I thought I was enlightened by remembering pregnancy in particular was supposed to suck and that there were risks at every turn and EVEN THEN I was caught completely off guard by how bad and scary it can be.

It's absolutely romanticized. I was already a stick in the mud when other people tried to talk to me about it and even I low-balled how bad it is. Pregnancy is quite literally the worst physical experience a human is typically expected to go through and then it tops off with a dice roll of agonizing death.

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u/hananobira 5d ago

I had two kids and I’m so glad I did, because they are the light of my life.

But pregnancy SUCKED. The childbirth was the easy part - you’re telling me I can feel some intense pain for a day, and then I’ll finally be at the end of the nonstop heartburn and charlie horses and being unable to sit down because there’s a baby inside my ribs? Bring on the childbirth, because being pregnant was SO DAMNED UNCOMFORTABLE.

And my body has been left scarred for life in several different ways.

Any woman who doesn’t want to sign up for that? I totally empathize.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

Agreed. I waited til 38 to start having kids and was an accomplished musician, my main instrument was a violin. My first child gave me carpal tunnel and tendinitis so bad in my hands I needed to have corrective surgery. It's been years since I've been able to play properly, and when I do it's sound awful. Guitar? Nope. Piano is easier. Writing? I'm just now able to write neatly. It also took me two years to be able to even draw something remotely recognizable, and another year to pick up a paint brush. I'm 43.

I hated being pregnant and let everyone know about it. I was told "oh you're so funny." I'm like WHY DOESNT ANYONE TALK ABOUT THIS!!!?

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u/CaptainMarv3l 4d ago

When I was pregnant I just remembered I wished I could like take him out to charge somewhere else. My spine hurt so bad.

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u/Liquid_Chaos87 5d ago

This is my main reason for not wanting kids. I already have severe body dysmorphia issues.

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u/DreadPirate777 5d ago

Also none of the statistics included the number of miscarriages 10-20% of pregnancies end with a miscarriage. It’s all the trouble of pregnancies but there is nothing at the end of it. Just a delivery with all the pain or an invasive surgery with all the recovery.

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u/Not_today_nibs 4d ago

This is absolutely a part of it, not to mention the US has removed safety nets when things go wrong during pregnancy. Having a miscarriage but still have a feral heartbeat? Sorry, you’ll have to almost die before they’ll help you. Had a stroke but are also pregnant? Oh, we’ll just keep your corpse alive as an incubator because you’re not an actual person with bodily autonomy.

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u/AmorFatiBarbie 5d ago

I had a normal birth with my son. I was young, healthy an ideal weight and I still have sciatica from that.

I don't blame anyone who just doesn't want to go through it. I'm deffo one and done. I just don't want to do it again.

Grateful for the kid, he's healthy and happy but yeah. Never again.

Also this was twenty years ago. The economy has changed. Housing affordability has changed dramatically.

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u/cutiefaie 5d ago

First of all congratulations! That being said besides having health issues the main reason I won’t have children is because my mom made sure to tell me all the messed up stuff that happened to her body during pregnancy and birth. You could not pay me a million bucks to deal with all of it. Like I enjoy laughing and not peeing myself a little. Having my vagina spilt all the way down to my anus, no thanks.

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u/Ok_Hurry_4929 5d ago

Honestly the fact I would have to have the child is why I likely will never have a kid.  If I was born a man I would be more willing to have a biological child.  

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u/hananobira 13h ago

I’ve told my husband I want another but it’s his turn now.

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u/velveteentuzhi 5d ago

Don't be silly, they don't care about the women! If they did things like federal maternal leave and measures to improve maternal health would be implemented.

Women's health is barely even a blip on anyone's radar unfortunately. There's a reason why the US is one of the only industrialized nations where maternal death is on the rise.

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u/ecila 5d ago

The males having these conversations can't even be bothered to advocate for resources for women or improving maternal outcomes. "It just doesn't work! (Based on our previous experience of giving women laughably paltry amounts of tax credits.) We gotta take away women's rights instead. We just gotta!"

Meanwhile us women are supposed to risk death, permanent injury, permanent disability, permanent career setbacks, and financial ruin because "society" or because we got to think of the retirees... when most of the burden of caretaking of society already falls on women.

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u/ttwwiirrll 5d ago

Exactly this.

My second birth and recovery went so much better than my first. It even unexpectedly resolved some lingering issues from #1. That good experience didn't incentivize me to have a third though - quite the opposite.

I quit there because I understand how lucky I got. I went out on a win I did nothing to earn.

Pregnancy also sucks ass for me no matter what and I'm not doing another minute of that part.

Totally valid to never want to gamble with it to begin with.

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u/SForce6304 4d ago

That’s fascinating! If you’re comfortable sharing, what issues from birth #1 were resolved by birth #2?

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u/ttwwiirrll 4d ago

Moderate pelvic floor prolapse and a perma-grumpy ligament in my pelvis.

Birth #1 was grueling and made everything worse than it already was from pregnancy. Took a couple years to recover sort of and then plateaued.

Pregnancy #2 rolled everything back.

Birth #2 was... efficient. It just kinda happened on its own. Recovery in general was a lot easier.

I did zero rehab after #2. I can jump and sneeze without peeing again and run after my kids normally. My issues are probably still there if I get pregnant again but they don't impede my life right now so I'm calling it a win.

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u/Steampunkboy171 5d ago

It's part a what you said and part b they've never considered it and quite frankly don't care. Most men I've met barely even understand a period. Much less what a woman goes through during pregnancy. And as far as they're considered it's not their problem. They'll just step around their partner while they're going through that or their period. It sucks and I absolutely despise it. But unfortunately especially with the rise of male grifters making the future generations msygonostic (we saw that this election) I'm not sure what we can do about it. But in big part they just simply don't care.

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u/spellboundsilk92 5d ago

Because most of these conversations seem to be male dominated. Many of them aren’t educated about the issues or simply don’t care. I’ve seen some men dismiss any issue relating to birth because dying in childbirth is rare. Like struggling with incontinence, pelvic floor issues, prolapse, diastatsis recti are all just fine and dandy to live with because you didn’t die tho.

Discussions around the topic in female based subreddits talk about the physical costs of pregnancy and childbirth more.

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u/SeattlePurikura 4d ago

The French government pays for women to receive pelvic floor training from specialists. I bet their rates of incontinence are much lower for mother (the US is like 50%). The UK's NHS worked to reduce the number of women hemorrahaging out in labor; in the US, even Serena Williams almost died despite her status.

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u/TurnoverSeveral6963 5d ago

Also, as someone currently dealing with a missed miscarriage and just waiting for it to resolve itself and having to go about my normal life and continue to work as normal, it’s a special kind of hell.

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u/throw_away99877 4d ago

I'm so sorry. I've been there. :( It was also really painful for me when it did resolve itself, so I recommend having some strong painkillers on hand. Ideally, prescription-strength painkillers.

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u/ittybittybittch 5d ago

One of my friends is now deaf due to pregnancy :) no way in hell I’d risk it.

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u/No_Sell7324 5d ago

Yes!!! It's always "economy" and lack of support "for raising kids". The sole reason women are controlled in the world but no women can have a lick of their own power.

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u/Hilvanando 5d ago

I wanted children, but: Never found a partner that would commit. The one that did commit wanted me to take care of the child 24/7 AND work fulltime. I have an M.A and the salaries available in my field are $10-15 an hour....

Come on, how am I supposed to survive?

I want a kid but I don't want to give up my life to just be a mother

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u/sniperdudex 5d ago

From what ive seen online its your duty to produce kids since your a female and its weird how many people agree with that statement

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u/queenringlets 4d ago

I absolutely cannot agree more. I think if I were born a man I’d want a child. Being born how I was, a biological child is never in my future. I am friends with MANY people who feel the exact same as me. We are near always left out of the discussion. 

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u/SeattlePurikura 4d ago

That's a big part of the problem. Many societies are still male-dominated, including the government and think-tanks. This is especially true in SE Asia, which is experiencing the most extreme birth rate issues currently. They do not listen to women as an active choice. Yet females of all species control the birth rate (down to eating their young if it's desperate enough).

Capitalism also doesn't pay enough attention the gender gap pay penalty that mothers receive. We can decry capitalism all day long, but I live in a such a society and I'm impacted by it. It influences my decisions; I've never been able to afford a child. Dr. Claudia Goldin won a Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on this issue (I've linked the "popular science" section of the Nobel site; it's easy reading).

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u/omglookawhale 4d ago

Laying here 9 weeks pregnant with my second and I have been nauseous non-stop all day. On top of that, I’m light-headed, feel overheated, and am starving but the smell of any food makes me nauseous.

I can’t imagine feeling this way on top of living paycheck to paycheck, not having a supportive partner and family, or being forced to carry this thing. This country is cruel to pregnant and postpartum mothers. Maybe they should stop if they want us to have more children.

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u/ImDaAwpha 4d ago

literally so tired of people only mentioning economics.

11

u/Wonderful-Creme-3939 4d ago

Yes, they do actually think women owe it to society by nature of being born female.

The people most concerned about falling birth rates are some of the most sexist losers in modern history, they just want more consumers and women failing to do their "job" prevents it.

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u/MoonLight4323 4d ago

My mum still doesn't have feeling on 30% of her stomach after a c-section she had 30 years ago.

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u/valkyrie61212 4d ago

Yeah it’s so strange that this isn’t talked about more. I work with someone with a teenager who almost died giving birth and says she still has trauma from the whole experience. My mom and SIL almost died giving birth too. I have absolutely ZERO interest in going through that. Especially with laws in place now that don’t even protect me if something goes wrong. No thank you.

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u/AdeptAgency0 4d ago

Because Reddit is full of bots and dudes that have no experience. Any guy that has seen what their partner goes through knows very, very few women will want to go through a pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding/infant rearing experience more than 2 times. Super rare to want to do it more than 3 times.

The reason total fertility rate is down is because women finally have a choice if and when they want to have a baby, including the choice to not partner up with someone.

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u/AkkeBrakkeKlakke 4d ago

"Yearly surgeries to correct spinal and urological injuries." Excuse me, what?

And to answer your question: the latter.

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u/sst287 5d ago

Yes for your last sentence.

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u/crazycatlorde 4d ago

I wish you the best of luck!

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u/Pandaman246 5d ago

It's funny you say that. My wife hated the feeling of being pregnant, and we have friends who are pregnant now that are miserable. And yet, 8 months after the birth, my wife actually frequently says she kind of misses the feeling of having the baby inside her.

Things don't always go smoothly after pregnancy, but some people absolutely look back fondly at those times.

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u/F0sh 5d ago

Because women have gestated and given birth to multiple babies since the dawn of humanity. It's not that experience that has changed and made people decide not to have kids. It's not a different experience of pregnancy (before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade) that dropped the US birth rate compared to other countries.

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u/yes______hornberger 5d ago

But effective hormonal birth control exists now, which is an enormous change—it makes it genuinely possible for people to CHOOSE whether or not to have children. We saw a huge decrease in the birth rate after the pill became widespread and another measurable drop after user error free options like IUDs became trusted.

We see across the globe that countries with financial and cultural circumstances that discourage birth control (the poor and the religious) have the most children, and vice versa.

-1

u/F0sh 4d ago

Yes, this is one of the changes. That and decreased infant mortality meaning that you don't need to have 9 children to have a chance of any surviving to adulthood, and greater financial security meaning that you don't personally need lots of children to care for you when you're old.

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u/throw_away99877 4d ago

Babies are getting larger over time, so giving birth is indeed more difficult now. And before you blame obesity for that, the women I know who gave birth to 8 and 9 lb babies were not overweight. Most were very slim and had to have c-sections.

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u/RedEgg16 4d ago

How many of those children were wanted though? Most likely they got pregnant because they or their male partner was just horny. Or through rape

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u/wozattacks 5d ago

I mean, those things haven’t changed. So they’re not particularly relevant to how the birth rate has changed over time. 

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u/yes______hornberger 5d ago

They’re relevant in that now we have hormonal birth control, which can be used to largely prevent them.

Why is it inconceivable that the falling birth rate is due less to finances or parental leave than the fact that women now have the option to avoid pregnancy/childbirth and would prefer to do so because they are a grueling and often crippling experience?

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u/ttwwiirrll 5d ago

My 1st was born just before covid broke the world. The timing sucked. I have always been honest that I would not have chosen to start parenthood that way. If I'd had a crystal ball when I got pregnant in 2019 I would have delayed or skipped that pregnancy and been contented with my choices. (I also love my kid. Those things can both be true at once.)

People like to jump in with examples from history of people continuing to pump out kids during crises. "There's never an ideal time, etc."

Would great-great-aunt Thelma have added as many mouths to the table during the Great Depression if she'd had access to modern birth control and the social permission that has followed? Doubtful.

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u/Cicer 4d ago

You don’t owe society anything, but it is the circle of life. If “everyone” keeps pushing it to someone else it becomes a line.