Study: A quarter of adults don’t want children – and they’re still happy | Hacker News Reader

Study: A quarter of adults don’t want children – and they’re still happy

msutoday.msu.edu

33 pointsrustoo94 comments

Not wanting children is fine. It’s a very personal and individualized choice.

The best advice I can give on the topic is that it’s critically important to make a fully informed decision on the matter. Getting information from heavily biased sources toward having children (e.g. your grandparents who desperately want great-grandchildren) or being childfree (e.g. /r/childfree, the subreddit so miserable that even most childless parents can’t stand it) is not a recipe for making informed decisions. Likewise, evaluating child raising by only observing vocally unhappy parents in your social circle while ignoring the quietly happy parents is an easy mistake. If your only impression of child raising is changing diapers and listening to crying babies, you’re not getting the full picture.

Nearly half of my parent friends thought they would never want children when they were younger. They’re all happy (and deliberate) parents now after revisiting their decisions as they grew older. And that’s fine.

I also have some friends who have decided to never have children and stayed that way. And that’s fine too.

Generally, ignore anyone who is militant that there is only one correct decision (having kids or being childfree). Ignore anyone who harbors hatred or loathing for children in general (kids are people too). And try to ignore the parents who try to make themselves out to be martyrs by talking endlessly about how challenging their kids are. You might have to seek out the happy parents in your social circles to ask what child raising is really like, because in my experience many of the happiest and most successful parents aren’t constantly talking about how happy they are with their decision in the same way that the /r/childfree zealots are actively spreading their message. You have to look a bit deeper to find the reality.

I can't tell you how many times I've been immediately labeled as child hating because I don't want kids.

We are always more than willing to have our friends bring their kids over - they keep the dog distracted :) - or bring them on hikes, etc. with us. I have also been volunteering at the local ice arenas teaching youth hockey and learn to skate programs and it's something I look forward to doing for a long time as it brings me happiness. The idea that I embody r/childfree because I don't want kids of my own is wild to me.

There is, for sure, a cult-like approach from both extremes.

Fortunately, the /r/childfree hatred seems to be mostly an online phenomenon.

All of my childless friends actually enjoy kids. I’ve only met a few people who loathe kids and don’t want to be around them, and most of them were simply young and inexperienced with the world.

> Generally, ignore anyone who is militant that there is only one correct decision (having kids or being childfree).

This is good advice for any mindset or ideology. Unfortunately most people seem to gravitate towards this kind of black and white thinking. But to be reasonable it's always important to consider that there's not always one solution.

> Ignore anyone who harbors hatred or loathing for children in general (kids are people too).

I would say take the most extreme ends of any ideological spectrum lightly. They may make a few good or useful points among their otherwise un-relatable views. Not sure why you say "kids are people", there's nothing wrong with hating children just like there's nothing wrong with hating dogs. People don't choose their preferences and some people's preference just don't overlap with kids, dogs, cities, hiking, music, etc.

> And try to ignore the parents who try to make themselves out to be martyrs by talking endlessly about how challenging their kids are. You might have to seek out the happy parents in your social circles to ask what child raising is really like, because in my experience many of the happiest and most successful parents aren’t constantly talking about how happy they are with their decision in the same way that the /r/childfree zealots are actively spreading their message. You have to look a bit deeper to find the reality.

This is true of all points on the spectrum. Some of the happiest people I've met were coworkers who I found out chose not to have kids way after first meeting them, because they never talk about it. We don't shame people who choose to have kids so there's no need to shame people for encouraging a child-free life. It's only an issue if people become militant, which is much more common on the child-having side.

Personal internal desire for kids aside, there are good societal reasons not to have them. One, they are ridiculously expensive. If you're not middle class and above (what's left of it) they will cause a drastic plunge in quality of life as additional expenses, planned and unplanned, accumulate.

Two, with climate change and geopolitical instability, it's both unfair to the kid to bring them into what is essentially a dying world, and also unfair to the world when their lives as an American (especially) will consume a disproportionate level of resources. Every new American adds to climate pollution and American imperialist bullying in the middle east and beyond. We're just adding more casualties in the wars to come.

Three, with increasing automation and wealth concentration, social mobility is likely going to decrease even further. They will likely end up poorer and prospect-less than their parents. The USA is becoming a more feudal society where only corporate elites have worth and the growing underclass is just for exploitation. It's already bad enough for my generation, why would I want to make it worse for the next?

Climate change and pollution is not going to really effect children born now. The AQI of most large and small American cities is still quite low.

College may become incredibly expensive. I think if it happens parents could invest in an ETF instead and provide their children with investment income while they pursue other opportunities.

> Climate change and pollution is not going to really effect children born now. The AQI of most large and small American cities is still quite low.

I'm not sure what AQI means in this context. Air Quality Index? I don't think anyone's arguing that to be the primary societal impact from climate change (not the same way that smog would be). It's more the cascading effects from extreme weather, drought, food & water shortages, sea level rise, wildfires, and the resulting refugeeism and geopolitical instability from all of that... to say nothing of the widespread impacts of the rest of the ecosystem (mostly harmful to existing biota, but can help a few species). If you think immigration is an issue now, wait until more of the Global South becomes even more impoverished and living on even more marginal land.

> College may become incredibly expensive. I think if it happens parents could invest in an ETF instead and provide their children with investment income while they pursue other opportunities.

But what other opportunities? Already college is barely a positive financial return in most majors. Right now the American economy is mostly services already, a large swatch of that in tech or finance. Either you're in that field or there is not really a pathway to social mobility anymore. That's only going to worsen with increased automation and competition from China, India, a resurgent Russia, what have you. And layer on top of that the waning of American power both as a sovereign, domestically, and as a hegemon globally, our kids -- with or without college -- will have far fewer opportunities than our parents or us, ourselves. Especially when you couple that with the looming myriad crises that come when you combine that perfect storm of climate change, economic polarization, and a general increase towards authoritarianism. There will be more "have-nots" than ever, sharing ever-smaller crumbs.

The people you can convince rationally to not have kids are also exactly the people who should be having kids - there's kind of a catch-22 there.

If all the rational, reasonable people choose to not have kids for the reasons you outline above - think about what the next generation(s) are going to look like. We know that kids social values frequently correlate to their parents, so the less [environmentally conscious, ethically conscious] parents who choose to have children - the worse off we will all be in the long run.

I don't think it's up to the "better" people to solve this problem. Our genetics and culture both evolve much less slowly than technology, and power accumulates via capital concentration much faster than via common-good consensus-building. Also, the kind of rational people we're talking about here often arise as a product of industrialized society and educational systems & cultures of knowledge. Those are the same societies that often have an outsized impact on global inequalities and climate change. If sustainability is the goal, human intellect is what got us away from it and into trouble to begin with -- not that sustainability without what we call intelligent life would be considered worthwhile, by our standards.

Anyhow. You take a paleolithic ape and give it godlike powers with medieval morality, then increase their population eightfold in <200 years... it's gonna be a shitshow. All the resource-consuming things (breeding, extraction, production, warfare) scale up much better than the forces of restraint (academia, law, treaties, philosophy, self-reflection, etc.). It would happen to any species given such a sudden surge in power without planning, and we are not altogether different enough from our ancestors to prevent this.

I think the "rational" people would do what little they can, if only to fill the time and provide some inkling of hope, but doing so under the assumption that the future is already lost. It's too late for a reversal that doesn't involve billions of people and animals perishing.

This headline makes it sound like that ("not wanting children") should be considered surprising or something. WTH? Not sure why not wanting children should have anything in particular to do with being "happy" (whatever that means).

We have zero interest in children and this is the first time I"m seeing that I am expected to be unhappy.

Guess I'm screwed.

Not sure if this is sarcasm but there are plenty of organizations where you can volunteer and have a meaningful impact on a kids life.

Yes, it was sarcasm - sorry. I am perfectly happy and don't plan on ever having kids.

>there are plenty of organizations where you can volunteer and have a meaningful impact on a kids life.

Absolutely. I've been teaching for learn to skate programs at ice arenas in the area for years and it's been absolutely amazing.

I've found that a lot of people link not wanting to have kids with disliking children all-together and that couldn't be further from the truth with us.

This assumes that interacting with or impacting children is necessary for happiness; there's no need for that to be universally true.

I'd say it's definitely "conventional wisdom" that having children is a big part of overall life happiness.

Not saying whether that's good or bad or right or wrong, but it is definitely a common assumption. So that's the context in which this can be "considered surprising."

Interesting. I've always looked at it as, the "conventional wisdom" is that people are sort of expected to have children. But I never saw that as necessarily suggesting that people who have children are happier than people who choose not to do so. But now that you put it that way, I guess I can see how those two things get linked together.

Maybe it's not true of your upbringing or culture, but in most cultures, you are simply expected to have children, no ifs or buts. It's considered to be a prerequisite for you to be considered a proper adult. Anything less is 'selfish', while child-rearing is are spoken of as the 'greatest joy anyone can experience'. The propaganda begins almost at birth: making kids = joy.

I'm from, and live in, North Carolina, USA. There's no question that most people here do choose to have children, and that "having children" seems to be a sort of default expectation. But I've never found that "no wanting to have children" is particularly controversial. And more to the point, even if it is controversial, I see no reason that my decision to have children (or not) should have much connection to my own personal / subjective sense of happiness.

But, to be fair, I've always been something of an iconoclast / rebel / black sheep / S.M.F., and I really just don't give a shit about society and "default expectations." I march to the beat of my own drummer, keep my own counsel, and I'm quite happy with things that way. :-)

Its tough. Parenthood also have a pretty varied time horizon for reward depending on what someone finds rewarding. imo, this whole study is kind of misframed and isnt much different than "25% of people find work to be bad."

75% of adults want children - and they're somehow happy

This is probably an overestimate right, since they did not randomly sample but instead had voluntary responses.

they indicate in the analysis that the child free group were more left leaning, and I'd Imagine that group might also be more likely to answer surveys

I didn't know that lefties were more likely to answer surveys. Cite, or just a rationale please?

They tend to score higher on agreeableness.

Are you saying that people only take surveys they find agreeable? Wouldn't some portion of folks want to share their dissenting opinion? The Right certainly has no shortage of talking heads and loudmouths...

I'm referring to the Big Five personality trait. I thought it was common knowledge on HN.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness

It doesn't seem controversial to say that if a survey is presented relatively apolitically, someone who scores higher on agreeableness is more likely to be willing to participate in it.

> It doesn't seem controversial to say that if a survey is presented relatively apolitically, someone who scores higher on agreeableness is more likely to be willing to participate in it.

This is the part that seems dubious to me. One, nothing is apolitical anymore. Two, why is it given that people who score higher on agreeableness more likely to answer surveys? If the internet has taught us anything, it's that it's far easier to rile up responses from people who disagree with you.

I deliberately wrote 'relatively' because I knew you would say nothing is apolitical.

This survey wasn't brigaded because people were selected at random across various demographics. There was no direct visual feedback of what others thought. It was done online, so you couldn't even get feedback from the person conducting the survey.

You have to wonder if this is new, or if society has been pressuring 25% of people in to having kids they didn't really want until recently.

One of those thoughts which haunts me at night is the possibility that the "natural" rate of wanting children is too low to sustain a population, and so manipulation/coercion is required in order to survive as a species. What then?

Open up the borders to developing nations who haven't figured that out yet

Realistically the government will just increase immigration to sustain growth. In a long view of time, the fecund segment of the population will outgrow the segment that has very few children and things will return to normal.

like, this will sound very emo of me, but why does our species need to survive?

What if our species got smaller in the next 100 years? Is that bad?

There's a difference between our species surviving and our species having a sustainable population. I personally think it's critical for the global population to contract but the only ethical way to do so is to try for lower birthrates across the world.

Until recently societies could only allow a small number of people to voluntarily not have children because death was so common. A society that could not produce enough children would eventually find itself lacking an adequate labor force to produce food or enough soldiers to defend against invasions. Individual happiness was less than a tertiary concern for most of human history; society needed people to reproduce and cultural expectations developed around that need. Our high-tech, modern world is very different from the historical norm.

Why is wanting children the default state?

You should have good reasons for wanting something that costs 18 years and a million dollars. Not good reasons for not wanting it.

Because, given evolution, and that we have survived as a species up til now, reproduction is a thing that normally happens.

It’s the default state because humans are living animals with a biological imperative to reproduce.

That doesn’t mean you have to, but it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s widely considered normal.

If you don’t want children then you might not have any offspring, who could potentially share your view on not having children

You are probably joking, but in fact this was exactly the situation with some of the early Christian sects -- they practiced strict celibacy, and as a result they did not survive long.

That's pretty much the premise for the movie Idiocracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk

Given all of one's ancestors up to the lowly amoeba decided to reproduce, one might think living things are somehow predisposed for it.

For one, it keeps a couple invested in something that isn't themselves or work. It's natural that a couple should want to strive for something together, like raising their children into adulthood, and having children is the primary thing that is biologically codified for this.

I thought I didn't want kids, then I realized I don't find work especially gratifying, and I heard lots of really interesting things from people who do have kids about how important and meaningful having them is to them; I'll find out soon enough. In hindsight, I was disturbed by how having kids worked out for many people around me, and I was afraid that I would make the same mistakes. I know that this doesn't have to be the case.

Maybe some people feel the same way about work, and maybe some couples work together. Maybe striving towards financial goals or living situations does the trick for other couples.

I think I understand your premise but you can be invested in things well beyond work or yourself that doesn't involve having kids.

You can also be invested in children without being a parent -- teachers, summer camp staff, coaches, religious leaders, etc. are all part of raising the next generation.

Absolutely and it's something I personally make an effort in doing. It's also something I very much enjoy.

Well wouldn't natural selection favor a predisposition to have kids over a predisposition to not have kids? :)

Not necessarily; natural selection favors a species that reproduces, but that does not mean every member of the species must reproduce. For example, it could be favorable to have a small number of individuals who have more offspring than they can care for on their own, but whose siblings/extended family assist with raising those children (this is more or less how a wolf pack is organized). In the end what evolution is about are genetic traits, and someone who helps raise nieces/nephews/cousins is helping to propagate their own genetic material.

You're at the end of a chain billions link strong, going back to the very first organism that appeared on earth, where each of your ascendant had to reproduce one way or another : through famine and drought, through war and sickness, through times of abundance.

Wanting to reproduce is the default in your lineage, as for all of us.

It's literally the meaning of life.

Actually, I like to think of humans as a three layered system:

dna -> animal -> self-conscious virtual machine

  1. our dna's meaning in life is reproduction. 
  2. our animal's meaning in life is survival+reproduction
  3. our self-conscious virtual machines meaning in life is somewhat unbounded, but at a high level probably boils down to negotiating the exploration/exploitation trade-off

"Why is wanting children the default state?"

For most of human history it was the only way to ensure that a tribe/culture/country would survive. People used to die all the time, diseases would periodically wipe out large swaths of the population, and if people did not have enough children a country would be left in a weakened state, lacking enough workers for farms, and would likely be conquered by some neighboring country. Every culture that exists today formed under conditions that only allowed a small minority of people to choose not to reproduce, and cultural institutions and norms formed to encourage procreation.

Today we live in a very different world and we can (and should) rethink our attitude.

> You should have good reasons for wanting something that costs 18 years and a million dollars.

Raising kids doesn’t cost a million dollars. That’s $55K per year per child. Maybe if you live in a high cost of living city, use expensive private schools, and pay full sticker price for their education. That’s hardly common though.

A more accurate number is about $240,000, with almost 1/3 of that being the cost of additional housing which varies greatly depending on where and how you live. The USDA has studies on this: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-chil...

What in Babylon? To each his or her own. Love my two children, would literally die for them. At the same time i never thought that having children is essential for everybody to be more happy.

Also i think there are so many people who would have been better off without them.

I have children and I love them. We lived is a wealthy,safe,easy place and country, they will be well educated.

There are times when I think what my life would have neen without them.

Very, very different. With pluses and minuses vs. what I have today but I can easily imagine a world without them.

This is to say that one can have all kind of philosophical theories on how it is with/without children and both are great, but once you chose a path it is over so it does not help to reimagine your life in the other case, except for some fun.

I'd love to see a study that keeps track of these people at every decade, 30, 40, 50, etc. From talking to people, the relationship between children and happiness is very much parabolic, in that in the beginning it's great, then it's not so great, then kind of terrible, then not so bad again, then eventually amazing.

I would imagine the relationship between happiness for those to be childfree to be more linear in that you're happy but it sort of just fades slowly away.

I am surprised the effect of Pets isn't studied or mentioned more. Anecdotally, I have seen how Pets can work as a substitute for the biological drive to nurture and care for something.

Pets can be "Kids-lite" for many.

There's no mention of the ages of the people responding to the survey.

I know several people who said they planned to never have children when they were younger, and then changed their minds when they were older.

Don't discount how many people regret not having children later in life. I'm not saying people have to have children to feel happy, but there is a non-negligible number of men and women who get to middle age and feel regret that they were not able to start a family. But by then it is almost always too late.

Edit: It's easy to look over at parents struggling with raising toddlers and think "I'm glad I don't have to do that", but once those children grow up and have lives of their own the level of fulfillment and joy those parents feel is impossible to describe to a non-parent.

The grass will always be greener where you are not standing. But don't discount how many people regret having children later in life. There are a great many disappointments, heartaches, and estranged relationships in the world. Parents are heavily incentivized, both socially and psychologically to lie about this as well.

I am willing to believe most parents love their children more than anything. However, I know a few parents who wish they'd never had children, and believe it ruined their lives.

Of course, they would never say anything publicly, as it would crush their children. Most parents would never say "I wish I didn't have you" to their children, even if they believe it.

That's true, there's no denying that. There's no universal should/shouldn't advice when it comes to having children.

Also worth mentioning the other side -- people who regret not having children when they had the chance. Some older relatives told me they regretted their decision shortly after my son was born. I know another couple who waited until they were in their 40s to start trying to have kids (only to have a disappointing series of miscarriages).

It is a hard decision. You have limited information, especially before your first child, and you are trying to make a decision that will impact your life for at least 20 years.

I can't say I've heard from one child-free couple/individual who regrets being child free. It implies that they have no chance to still do so.

With adoption and fostering, there's no reason someone can't raise a child "later in life" should they truly desire to.

> People who aren’t child-free felt substantially less warm toward child-free individuals.

From reading some of the comments here, this line seems particularly true.

This is kinda weird of a topic...i don't think any parent would not want their children happy

This is about the happiness of child-free adults

I don't think anti-natalists will exist much longer post-birth control.

It's very questionable that happiness can be measured or even desirable. The focus on positive emotions is easy and attractive, and yet human beings need a range of emotions to have a fulfilling life.

I agree. I find the obsession with happiness, and with the idea that happiness is the ultimate goal in life, to be problematic.

Like you said, happiness is a part of a fulfilling life, but it is not everything.

Happiness has more than one definition. The common definition refers to people's immediate emotional state: feeling happy.

Happiness is also used in many other contexts and can include times of pain, crying, etc. Life satisfaction, flourishing, overall well-being.

One example I frequently mention is running. Running can be extremely painful, physically exhausting, and mentally draining. Yet runners will frequently describe their runs using word happiness. Why is that? Because there is more to happiness than just feeling good.

Not to mention that happiness is a flow, not a stock.

My parents were delighted with me ages 0-10. If you polled them again 10 years later, they'd have a very different response.

But here’s the thing: if you haven’t had kids yet you don’t know what you’re missing out on. Yes sometimes having kids is hard. But it also enables you to experience happiness and joy in ways that you previously haven’t been able to.

And if you have kids and don't like it, too bad, you're honor bound to raise them for 20+ years.

Committing to something for that long based on fear of missing out or peer pressure or lots of people do it and seem happy(ier?) is terrible judgement. Perhaps it's hard to describe the joys and hardships of parenthood, but it's possible to get most of the information even if you can't necessarily feel all the feels before you commit.

That’s tautologically true and, IMO, one of the least-convincing arguments to persuade someone who is on the fence about becoming a parent to make a child.

Comments like this, whether pro-children or anti-children or any other blanket statement, are disingenuous imo. It should be written:

> if I hadn’t had kids yet I wouldn't have known what I'd be missing out on. Yes sometimes having kids is hard. But it also enables me to experience happiness and joy in ways that I previously haven’t been able to.

What's true for you is not true for everyone. Seems like having children was the right choice for you, but there are plenty of people who are miserable because of and outright dislike or hate their children. Yet that doesn't mean having children was wrong for you or that yours make your life miserable.

This is a fun game:

  - A quarter of adults don't want to learn math - and they're still happy
  - A quarter of adults don't want to exercise - and they're still happy
  - A quarter of adults don't want to explore the world - and they're still happy

Sometimes you don't appreciate what you have until you have it.

A quarter of adults don't want children, but they will still expect the children of the other 75% to produce sufficient surplus for them to consume in retirement.

They may very well find that doesn't happen. Social contracts work both ways.

If you don't want children, make sure you are the best aunt/uncle in the world.

That seems quite a peculiar view, that you pay for retirement by raising children.

Many have retirement savings, and so on, that are merely investments on time they've worked. That work has also created the opportunities for the next generation to occupy.

The idea that there is some obligation to reproduce is a little antique, and very much out of keeping with the environmental impact (an environmental social contract) of increasing population sizes.

> Many have retirement savings, and so on, that are merely investments on time they've worked. That work has also created the opportunities for the next generation to occupy.

You can’t eat “investment”. When you finally start using these retirement savings, it will be to buy goods and services that will ultimately be rendered to you by someone else’s children. You’d better hope that by the time your generation is retired, next generation is large and willing enough to support you to the level you expect. Savings are just claim on a share of future production, and if future production is to be reduced in aggregate (and with population falling quicker than economy is growing, it very well might be), your claim will be worth less than you expect.

In the end, our generation will be cared for in retirement by our children and grandchildren either way, and everything else is just accounting.

I think it's a fair trade, considering the ungodly amount of property and personal income taxes going to schools and subsidized child care programs that I am never going to use. /s

You have evidence that the taxes of the 75% doesn't cover what is spent on schools and childcare?

Yes, because they're taxpayer-funded services, and you cannot opt out of paying.

And chronically under funded as is. At least in the US, teachers are criminally under paid for the work they do.

But there will be 75% of them. So in effect you are getting a tax cut

> A quarter of adults don't want children, but they will still expect the children of the other 75% to produce sufficient surplus for them to consume in retirement.

Well, that's an assumption you make. Me and my wife don't want children but we are also working to build sustainable future for ourselves so we are not much dependent on future generations. Pension funds, sustainable business for the future, low footprint. And yes, we are paying into the system which is ripping us off today anyway. So you, know, we finance your parents, your children can pay something back.

This obviously depends on the country you live in. In Germany, there are talks to increase pension contributions for people who don't have children.

This is a very backwards and dangerous view of the situation.

You are making a speculation that your children will become a high-functioning adults that will be capable to produce more than they consume.

Overpopulation (as a real danger to our planet) aside, people who are opting out from having children are statistically highly educated and more successful (produce order of magnitude more than they consume) meaning that goal and career oriented individuals are feeding your children at this very moment altruistically (without any guarantees of payback from your children when they reach adulthood).

Are you saying one highly-educated, successful life will produce more than me, my children, their children, their children's children...?

That's crazy talk.

That is exactly what I'm saying. How many individuals are currently on welfare? Majority is living on and consuming the goods that were produced by highly-educated and successful people without children.

The further we, as a society, distance ourselves from basic, primitive instincts (like reproduction) the more advanced we become (which is not simple or easy at all, it requires significant cognitive effort (goals, deliberate education, atheism)

Most of the pleasures that you enjoy in modernity were delivered to you by high-functioning, educated adults without children, while your children have a very high chance of becoming consuming individuals who habitually take advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return.

I can't say I personally approve of the thought of having children solely so they can provide for your retirement. It strikes me as selfish, frankly.

This is what I've always thought. It's basically just creating a person in a role where they will face lifelong, intense societal pressure to respect and support you, rather than just wanting to give them a good life. It's very similar to the people who want to "leave a legacy" and really just want to live vicariously through their children.

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