According to a study, published on March 16 in the Journal of Marriage and Family by Michigan State University (MSU) researchers, fewer and fewer Americans are choosing parenthood, a trend that appears to be accelerating.
The researchers found that nearly 30 percent of U.S. adults don’t currently have children and never plan to, highlighting a significant cultural shift that is not only happening in the United States, but in countries across the globe.
“We kind of have in society, expect people to want to have children, but I think that’s changing,” Jennifer Watling Neal, the co-author of the study, told WNEM.
She said the study focused on the different types of parents living in the United States.
“In most cases, when people have done research on different types of nonparents, they really haven’t done it on different types of nonparents. They sort of lumped all the people who don’t have kids into a single group of nonparents,” Neal explained.
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The study looked at data collected from 80,000 adults in the U.S. under the age of 45 from 2002 to 2023 and found multiple types of nonparents.
“You’ve got people who are planning to have children in the future. We kind of refer to those folks as ‘not yet parents.’ They’re probably going to become parents at some point in their life. We’ve got childless people who wanted to have children but couldn’t have them either due to biological or social circumstances. And we have child-free people. So, these are people who don’t have children, and they don’t ever want to have children,” Neal said.
Neal said the least common parent are childless ones, at about three to four percent of the population while the most common type of parent are the “not yet parents,” a group that she says is growing.
While the study did not involve determining why so many Americans are choosing to remain childless, Neal said Pew Research Center surveys indicate that medical reasons, high cost of having children, and restrictions on career growth are the main reasons why adults opt out of parenthood.
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US Birth rate increases
Despite this study’s findings, according to a new CDC report, the birth rate in the U.S. actually grew by one percent in 2024, mostly driven by mothers in their early 40s and late 30s.
The report indicates that births declined the most among teens and people in their early 20s.
Brady Hamilton, the lead author of the report, told Business Insider that the findings are consistent with trends observed over the past several decades.
Young adults are putting off parenthood until their later years, and teen pregnancies are plummeting.
The report also says that while millennials are having fewer children compared to their parents and grandparents, they are still having more children than Gen Zers.
Sarah Hayford, a professor of sociology and the director of the Institute for Population Research at The Ohio State University, told Business Insider, “People are just taking longer to get to the place in their life when they think they want to have children…. What we see is people postponing births early on and then sort of catching up later on.”
She said that in comparison to previous generations, millennial and Gen Z parents require more time to feel financially ready to start families.
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Trump incentives
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has taken notice and is considering a number of proposals to boost the birth rate in the U.S. including funding “menstrual cycle classes” and shelling out $5,000 in cash to parents following delivery.
The U.S. government joins a long list of other countries around the globe that are beginning to offer incentives to their population in an attempt to increase birth rates.
For example, Japan and South Korea have both introduced policies intended to increase birth rates, including four-day workweeks and bonuses for men who reverse vasectomies.
However, “None of them have been super successful,” Hayford said, adding that although baby bonuses have some impact, “they have to be really big.”
Hayford added that these types of bonuses have a modest influence on birth rates. The one proposed by the Trump administration may actually be too small considering the cost to have a baby in the U.S. is around $13,000 before insurance is considered.
Hayford said other incentives such as lowering childcare costs or lengthening paid parental leave can have an impact, however do not move the needle much.
A number of Scandinavian countries have implemented these measures and are still experiencing a decline in their birth rates, she said.
