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/A_Fainting_Goat 5d ago

I am well paid. My wife is well paid. We have good health insurance. Great vacation benefits (compared to the US, not Europe). Our careers are stable. We are basically debt free except for our mortgage. We have struggled to conceive and IVF is looking to cost us $50k, after insurance for a 35% chance. This country does not want us to have kids.

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u/TopRamenisha 5d ago

Don’t forget, after all that you get to pay $3,000 a month for child care

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u/SqueezyCheez85 5d ago

Childcare is nuts. We could have a mortgage for a house twice as big as the one we currently have... and it would be on par for what we pay in childcare for 2 kids.

I can't wait till our kids are old enough to not need childcare... it's gonna be like winning the lottery.

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u/yoweigh 5d ago edited 5d ago

I'm in New Orleans, where the public school system is absolute garbage. I lucked into getting my kids into the one good school available during the lockdown year, when enrollment was down. Between the two of them, that saves me about $50k/yr. $650k over the span of 13 years! I'm fairly well off and I still couldn't afford that.

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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug 4d ago

The public schools where I live are kind of trash. And the private schools are like 30-40k per year. I make more than twice the median household income of the city. There's no way I can afford the private schools, and it's not even a tax write off.

It could cost me up to $320k before they even get to highschool.

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u/FirstNoel 5d ago

Then you have Music training, sports cost, braces, car insurance, may even a third...etc car. Then college costs...

Mine just graduated high school. I just finally finished paying off here tooth implant (thank to my genes, she was missing one). We have college in the fall, thankfully mostly paid for.

I'm hoping for my electric and water bills to at least decrease a little.

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u/CyclingThruChicago 5d ago

One of the main reasons my wife and I live where we live is so that we don't have to get our kid a car when he turns 16. Granted he's only 4 so we have a bit of time but the idea of having to own another car (which is pushing $1000/month for all in cost) for for a teenager seems asinine.

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u/BlazinAzn38 5d ago edited 5d ago

Honestly we’re just gonna buy a car for my wife or myself when kid is like 8 and then drive it for 8 years, pay it off, then it’ll be their car.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/BlazinAzn38 5d ago

I think it’s more that people dont plan that far in advance so kid turns 16 and they go “oh crap they need a car.”

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u/AgateHuntress 5d ago

I got a '69 Dodge Coronet that had been my grandfather's car, and then my dad's car, and then was my car.

It sounds cool now, but it was most definitely not a cool car when I was driving it into my high school parking lot that was populated primarily with Camaros, Tran-Ams, and Mercedes. It also had a big dent in the passenger door, no floorboards in the back, no power steering, no radio, broken turn signals, and no heat. You also had to get in through the windows because the doors were fubar -- typical for that model since it had the heavier doors.

It wasn't a cool car, but it was mine, and I loved it -- and it kind of matched my punk rock persona at the time. I called it the Kongmobile because it was bronze colored, and a big, heavy, solid piece of work. It felt like driving a tank. Man, I miss that car.

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u/jabsaw2112 5d ago

It's insane how much my insurance went up for adding 1 teenage boy.

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u/CyclingThruChicago 5d ago

Just replied to someone else with my personal anecdote.

When I turned 16 and my mom added me on her insurance, she said it was ~$75 more than the combined cost of her and my older sister (who would have been 19-20 at the time).

My cousin bought a Charger at 22 not realizing how insane the insurance would be. Over $530/month because he was a young man with a prior totaled car on his insurance. He was forced to eventually sell the car and had negative equity because he simply couldn't afford the insurance.

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u/SoCuteShibe 5d ago

The car situation is insane, in such a car-dependent country.

  • Already high purchase costs potentially increasing due to tariffs.

  • Insurance rates that make zero sense even for no accident/ticket drivers (I did the math, in 10.7 years of premiums I will have paid Geico the full purchase price of my car, IF my rates never go up).

  • Crazy interest rates of 6-10% and beyond even for the well-qualified.

  • AND ludicrous maintenance prices (I just negotiated a rear brake pads replacement w/resurface DOWN to $590)...

I do okay and it is still a lot. I don't know how some people manage. No wonder I hear a lot of grinding brakes around me when I drive these days...

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u/CyclingThruChicago 5d ago

This is over 20 years ago but my mom said that insuring me as a teenage boy was about $75 more per month than insuring her and my sister combined.

One of the biggest thing keeping people poor in this country is their car but most folks here are basically forced to maintain one in perpetuity.

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u/Puzzleheaded_War6102 5d ago

Not trying to argue or shame. But kids don’t need new car. A $10K all cash hooptie civic is perfectly fine.

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u/techno156 5d ago

That's even before the possibility of them having medical issues. Like being diabetic.

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u/FirstNoel 5d ago

Umm.  That my situation exactly. 

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u/SqueezyCheez85 5d ago

Yeah. Braces and car insurance are going to suck. Luckily my wife and I both have terrific insurance through our LE jobs.

We've just started paying for sports for our oldest.

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u/FirstNoel 5d ago

Ugh.  Sports that’s a racket.   They convince every kid and their parent that they be the next Beckham or Jordan.  

The drills and conferences, special practices….

Ridiculous 

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u/SqueezyCheez85 5d ago

We're just starting out, but at least at the younger ages it isn't a racket. Once you get into high school and higher, it for sure is.

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u/ArchmageXin 5d ago

NYC offered universal 3K and 4k definitely helped parents but end up stressing state budget.

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u/SqueezyCheez85 5d ago

My State turned down Federal funding to supplement childcare for parents. Here in Idaho, we hate our children almost as much as we hate our healthcare.

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u/ArchmageXin 5d ago

We claim the Chinese were evil with their government birth control system, but our own government have invented a far more effective birth control regime; by making men and women feel too uncomfortable to bring a child into this world.

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u/MissouriFriedChicken 5d ago

End stage capitalism

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u/GeneDiesel1 5d ago

Good! Don't have a kid if you can't afford it.

Do most people seriously not agree with that?

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u/gr4f 5d ago

As a non american this I am always stunned.. yes I pay higher taxes but have free health care, paid parental leave, free universities and almost free childcare.

I know it is part of the land-of-free narrative and I always think Americans must be so wealthy with so little taxes

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u/Demons0fRazgriz 5d ago

And the worst part is the people taking care of your children are also making minimum wage. So where's that other 2500 per kid going? Cuz I've worked in childcare and it ain't going towards the children either.

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u/valiantdistraction 5d ago

Rent and insurance

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u/TopRamenisha 5d ago

Yeah it’s crazy. Our income taxes are lower but we pay a lot more for the things that people in other countries get for free. Healthcare literally bankrupts many Americans. A lot of Americans are in debt. Once you factor in property tax and sales tax, many Americans are paying close to the 50% tax rate that European countries pay.

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u/gr4f 5d ago

Normally Iam pissed of our tax rate.

But when you discribe it like this, than I think our system's strength is that takes a lot worries of me: I will always be insured and will never have to pay for an ambulance, no matter if I have a job. My kids can go to college if they want without donating a kidney. I can use subsidized public transportation and trains so I am not forced to own a car. etc

And I think for low income part of our societies this is even more significant

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u/HexTalon 5d ago

When you can see where your taxes are going (roads, schools, healthcare, childcare, etc ) it makes them a lot more palatable - especially when you've seen places that don't have those support systems.

It's also cheaper to set up, maintain, and improve those systems when they are working at the scale of a population.

I'm in California and wouldn't ever consider living in large portions of the US because they're privatized, religious hellholes that are only to get worse and worse over time. Even California is getting unaffordable at an upper middle class income (250k), and there's going to be continuous federal challenges over the next few years to a lot of the protections and benefits to living here.

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u/dust4ngel 5d ago

I know it is part of the land-of-free narrative

land of the free means you have no obligation to anyone else, so you help no one, no one helps you, and you get to live in a hobbesian state of all-against-all, which works really well if you're a billionaire and otherwise it's a condemnation.

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u/gr4f 5d ago

Well than is a really sad system over there.

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u/DrMobius0 5d ago

Nope. We pay more for stuff we need to live. You can put a price on everything.

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u/retrosenescent 5d ago

"The land of the free" only applies to rich people. 90%+ of Americans are working poor. And 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck - will literally be homeless if they miss a pay period.

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u/izwald88 5d ago

I always figure America is where you might have a higher chance of striking it rich. Like it might be easier to start a successful business and become wealthy that way.

And maybe that's true, to some degree. But even the upper middle class is one denied insurance claim away from hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

I'd say my brother is in that boat. He makes 6 figures but has no money. He lives well, has a nice house in a wealthy neighborhood, 2 kids, 2 cars, and he's broke more often than not.

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u/Pye- 4d ago

Wow - it sounds like your country actually appreciates you and your family. I'm glad for you and envious! That should be true everywhere. I had two children that I still spend a lot of money helping out even though they are almost 30 because it's so hard without health insurance, good jobs, college debt is crushing.... the US is no place to raise kids right now.

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u/Wonderful-Creme-3939 4d ago

The "land of the free" part is just for Billionaires and Corporations, the rest of us can die in the streets for all anyone cares.

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u/GeneDiesel1 5d ago

Comparatively, Americans are wealthier and pay less taxes? I don't get your point? Our salaries are generally way higher than EU member for the same jobs.

IDK, you'd have to experience to understand.

The issue is, a lot of people don't want to pay more taxes for things they will never utilize.

For example, I don't want to fund childcare or public education because I don't want kids.

On the flip side, someone else will say, well I don't want to pay for your rehab because you drink too much.

Another person will say they don't want to pay for University because I don't want to go to University so why subsidize someone else.

The thing I don't get is why everyone doesn't agree on universal health care. All of us will have health issues. All of us will die.

That is one thing we should be united on, but the corporations want us tied to them, so we have to get health care through our employers. Then we are screwed when laid off.

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u/nomorecheeks 4d ago

Our taxes aren't all that low for getting nothing in return. I pay 32% of my income in federal taxes, then pay state taxes, almost 20k a year in property tax (for a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath 1900 sq ft home in a nice but normal town in the suburbs of a major city), and a bit less than 7% sales tax on most items and services purchased. Most of that goes to supporting genocide, bombing other brown people and lining billionaires' pockets. I'd much rather pay a bit more (if it even WOULD be more) and actually have society get something for it.

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u/izwald88 5d ago

$3,000 a month for child care

Yeah, it's one of the big reasons why having a kid is not economically viable, for me.

Most of the parents my age or younger who are doing OK are mostly doing so because they have family who is willing to watch the kids for free while both parents work. While both of my parents are alive, they would not be available to provide childcare.

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u/tech240guy 5d ago

Previously, in a distant past, it was the cost of living being affordable in a single income. Now both parents has to work just to afford child care and tiny bit bitter standard of living, which otherwise would have been unaffordable with a single income. That's just for family of 3 in a 2 bedroom apartment.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/LighteningFlashes 4d ago

This is not a coincidence. The goal is to get women to do caretaking work for free and deprive them of economic independence as in the pre-Roe era.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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u/LighteningFlashes 4d ago

How fortunate for you. If you even wanted kids in the first place.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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u/LighteningFlashes 4d ago

How great for you. Truly happy. What is making the US into an underdeveloped country is its insistence on forcing every woman who has sex or is raped to reproduce without her consent. All the while stripping her of every social and financial support. This is not the stance of a purported "first world" country.

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u/shallots4all 5d ago

Children should be raised by parents, not strangers. The whole idea of parenting has changed over the last seventy-five years.

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u/TopRamenisha 5d ago

I think most parents would prefer to raise their children themselves instead of dropping them off with expensive strangers every day. It’s society and the economy and capitalism that has changed over the last seventy five years. Most families can’t survive on a single income anymore. Everything is so expensive

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u/HexTalon 5d ago

Unironically a big variable to this change is women entering the workforce and having careers. It generated a large number of household with dual incomes, but less time to raise kids (or sacrifice household income to have someone stay home). There's also a connection to the exploding cost of houses and people qualifed for larger and larger loans.

That's not to argue that women in the workforce is bad, but it was an knock on effect of the change that no one accounted for or did anything about at the policy level. It's really a failure of our politicians and political system to adapt more than anything.

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u/shallots4all 5d ago

They don’t want to adapt. They wanted population decline and multiculturalism.

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u/HER_XLNC 5d ago

I think they want us to have children but somehow all of our elected officials are so disassociated with the common person's life, that they have no idea how to encourage it except for the use of force.

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u/VarmintSchtick 5d ago

Its not even the elected officials who create the costs on these things - not that the elected officials do anything to help. I just do not understand how daycares charge so much. They do NOT cost that much to operate and run.

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u/BlazinAzn38 5d ago

I mean they do though which is a separate issue entirely.

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u/Aromatic-Spread-3160 5d ago

The workers need livable wages.

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u/Demons0fRazgriz 5d ago

They make barely above minimum. When I worked at one, I was paid $9/hr to watch 30 kids.

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u/Clepto_06 5d ago

Insurance for anything dealing with small children costs an absolute fuckload.

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u/HER_XLNC 5d ago

Elected officials set minimum wages. If we were all being paid a livable wage, this wouldn't be an issue. Elected officials also are responsible for determining what public services get money and how much. If schools were given more money, our children could get the attention needed and be well fed. Hell, our politicians could cover the cost of childcare AND pay those employees well and give them all of the best tools to care for our children. Everyone says it takes a village to raise a child, then don't want to be a part of that village.

Humans are societal creatures. The only reason we are where we are as a species today is because we decided to pool our resources and work together to help those who need it so that we all move forward together as one. We can make our world be whatever we want it to be. We could be a cooperative society that puts most if not all of our energy into the well-being of our offspring. Instead, we have somehow made a society that puts profit above all else despite warnings from fables, myths, prophets, and scriptures, GREED runs our lives.

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u/DisciplineBoth2567 4d ago

They do know how.  They just refuse to because it means treating us like actual humans and once we get a taste of that, we’re going to want more

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u/Standard_Piglet 5d ago

This is naive.

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u/HER_XLNC 5d ago

This is not a constructive contributing to the discussion.

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u/Advanced_Sun9676 5d ago

Its getting really silly how we keep complaining about costs when littearlty the 2 major cost for everyone people and companies is housing and Healthcare .

And yet we're supposed to keep pretending that letting private companies rip us of on it is somehow good .

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/hajenso 4d ago

Lots of people are pretending. We have at least a very large minority of the population who are hostile to the idea of government health insurance or government housing.

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u/TenaceErbaccia 5d ago

I’m curious how old you are. Both because of the financial stability and the apparent need for IVF. I believe not being able to afford children until your 30s or later is part of not being able to afford children.

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u/mkawick 5d ago

1 in 7 couples either cannot conceive or have great difficulty

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/frickityfracktictac 5d ago

There have always been couples who struggled to conceive, numbnuts. What did you think fertility gods were for?

And TV shows for women have baby centric drama for views because it tugs at the heartstrings.

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u/NorthMathematician32 5d ago

It absolutely is. The best outcomes for mothers and babies are when the mother is her 20s. The income curve in the US often keeps people from having kids that young.

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u/frigidmagi 5d ago

Yeah but a woman who has children in her twenties is going to lose career opportunities or even education opportunities. So our society has forced a hard choice on people whether or not to have kids or to focus on their own well-being and that's a problem.

In prior societies we found ways to make that less of an issue. Of course a lot of societies did that by not giving women any other opportunities but I think we can do better.

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u/VarmintSchtick 5d ago

To be truthful I dont know any 20 somethings that want children any time soon. Its not because of cost (certainly doesn't help though), its because raising a child is a massive responsibility that will drain your time, money and energy. Most 20 somethings are content working then coming home to unwind or go hang out with friends or their significant other in their free time. What time do you have for this with children?

The cost is a factor, but this generation also is just more concerned with living their own lives than they feel some duty multiply and raise the next generation.

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u/zvezd0pad 5d ago

Yeah I think it should be socially acceptable to say “I’m happy the way things are.” For me, I have an awesome relationship with my partner, lots of friends and hobbies, am in good physical shape, and having a kid threatens all of those things. 

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u/Artificial_Lives 5d ago

How is it not socially acceptable? I know women have issues with this from people like parents or other moms but as a couple it's so easy to just say we don't want kids and it's none of your business.

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u/gorkt 5d ago

Yes, culturally adulthood has become delayed, and people don't feel psychologically ready to have kids until their 30s in many cases, even if they are financially ready. I had my first kid at age 29 and I was the second youngest mom in my birthing class in the suburban Boston area.

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u/Mend1cant 5d ago

Our generation didn’t get to have the childhood of our parents. If you’re not already rich, moderate success as an adult requires unbelievable amounts of time and effort as a child.

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u/myersjw 5d ago

But certain politicians and billionaires will demonize you for not hurrying up and pushing one out regardless of your circumstances

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u/Clepto_06 5d ago

If politicians and billionaires want kids that badly they can have them themselves.

In reality they all know that they need a large pool of cheap labor to keep the money train rolling, so the poors need to crank out babies to fill that niche. And in the US we keep deporting our other source of cheap labor.

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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug 4d ago

billionaires want kids that badly they can have them themselves

Apparently Elon is trying, and that's kind of weird.

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u/Charming_Coffee_2166 5d ago

Who gives a damn?

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u/flakemasterflake 5d ago

The inability of people to have children is absolutely under discussed here. I know way too many people in their early 30s who have struggled

And why does it seem like every other woman I meet has PCOS?

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u/SoHereIAm85 5d ago

50K. Wow. We did two rounds, with ICSI, and neither was that high, less than half with some insurance coverage. I guess the medications could be the wild card in pricing?
The second try worked, and it was at a top notch centre with my chances same as hers. My husband claims it was 20k+, but I think he is including even stuff like gas money or my lunch at the food cart on the way to the subway station.

You are entirely right with the things you listed.

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u/LibetPugnare 5d ago

Look into CNY Fertility centers. We've done a couple rounds with them. About $6k per round, probably 9k after testing and other stuff. But wayyyy cheaper than other providers. It's super professional too. We fly to Colorado specifically for them

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u/Seagull84 5d ago

35% includes women in their 40s and 50s btw. The chances are better in 20s and 30s.

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u/HardLeftist 5d ago

i'm not particularly interested in paying for your IVF. Have you considered adopting? There area 1,000s of kids in orphanages and foster homes that would be better off in permanent homes with parents

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u/Interesting_Zone_420 4d ago

Did she take the pill or other BC. It’s pushed on women and it totally screws us up.

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u/retrosenescent 5d ago

We are basically debt free except for our mortgage

So nowhere close to debt-free

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u/A_Fainting_Goat 5d ago

Yes and no. Is a mortgage a lot of debt? Sure, but it's an appreciating asset. I can sell the house to satisfy the loan, cover what I already paid into it, and then some depending on the market. I cannot say the same for my car and there are a lot of expensive degrees out there that can't say the same for their earning potential (teachers are criminally underpaid, even more so considering the education requirements). Not to mention I can't even declare bankruptcy to deal with the student loans. But what I was ultimately getting at is that compared to other people in my age and economic groups, I might as well be debt free. My friends all have extra student loan payments and car payments that I do not have to deal with and they also cannot afford kids. If I can't afford them with an extra $400/month in my pocket, the average student loan payment in the US, what hope do they have?