Posted on 10/24/2003 4:00:42 PM PDT by yonif
WASHINGTON - Anne Hare and her husband made a momentous decision three years ago: They would not have children. It's not that they don't like kids, she says. They simply don't want to alter the lifestyle they enjoy.
"With kids, especially young kids, infants and toddlers, you really can't do the active stuff we like to do," said Hare, 43, a fitness program coordinator from Gainesville, Ga.
Hare is among 26.7 million women aged 15 to 44 who are childless, a record number, according to new Census Bureau (news - web sites) data from a June 2002 survey. They represent nearly 44 percent of women in that age group.
The number of women 15 to 44 forgoing or putting off motherhood has grown nearly 10 percent since 1990, when roughly 24.3 million were in that class.
Direct comparisons before 1990 are not possible because the bureau didn't track women younger than 18 until then.
The latest numbers reflect the well-established trend of more women going to college and entering the work force, then delaying motherhood or deciding not to have children. More also are choosing adoption, said Martha Farnsworth Riche, a demographer and former head of the Census Bureau.
Hare said she and other childless friends often are incorrectly tagged as "kid-haters."
"It's just difficult to explain to people that we don't hate kids, it's just that we don't want our own," she said.
The percentage of women 40 to 44 — those at the end of their childbearing years — who have not given birth has hovered around 18 percent since 1994, but that's up from 10 percent in 1976.
Non-high school graduates and those with bachelor's degrees were most likely to be childless. Also women with higher incomes had the highest childless rates, in part a reflection of the increased professional options available to them, said David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project, a research group at Rutgers University.
Amy Caizza, study director for the Institute for Women's Policy Research (news - web sites), a Washington think tank, said society's attitudes about childless women also have changed.
"Economic reasons are part of it, but it's also the effect of the women's movement, that you don't have to be a mother to be a complete woman," she said.
Just over half of Asian women were childless, the highest rate among race and ethnic groups. It was 46 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 39 percent for blacks and 36 percent for Hispanics.
Last year about 33 percent of all births were to unmarried women, roughly the same rate since 1998, said Census Bureau demographer Barbara Downs. Blacks were more likely than Hispanics or whites to have out-of-wedlock births.
Roughly 23 percent of the 25.8 million never-married women 15 to 44 were mothers in 2002, about the same rate from 1998 but up from 18 percent of the 20.7 million never-married women in 1990. There was a pronounced increase among never-married women in managerial or professional jobs who were mothers — the percentage has nearly doubled from 9 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2002.
Many women in these occupations can earn salaries that enable them to raise a child on their own if they choose, Riche said.
"In earlier days, you had stigma and economic reasons" for these unmarried, professional women not to have kids, she said. "It's much less so now."
Also, about 8 percent of births were to women in unmarried partnerships, the first time the bureau had tracked such a category in the survey.
The report also showed a birth rate of 61 births per 1,000 women 15 to 44 in 2002, down from 67 per 1,000 in 1990. During the same period, it also found the birth rate for women 15 to 19 rose from 40 per 1,000 to 56 per 1,000.
That's far different from National Center for Health Statistics data, which in 2001 showed the birth rate for 15- to 19-year-olds at 45 per 1,000, declining steadily since 1990 from 60 per 1,000.
Government researchers, academics and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, an advocacy group, said they considered NCHS birth data more accurate because it is based on official vital records from hospitals.
The census report was based on a survey of 50,000 homes.
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On the Net:
Census Bureau release: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/fertility.html
I'll drink to that. And some mommies aren't that great either. Oh well, we do the best we can with the cards we're dealt.
About that woman in your office... she seems a little flaky.
Oh well! I tell them that if my answers scare them, then they should stop asking scary questions. I think Jules (Samuel L. Jackson's character) in Pulp Fiction said something to that effect. :-)
I'm sure they do, but they pay taxes to foot the bill for other peoples' childrens' educations, so it's a fair trade.
I met with my life insurance agent today, who is much richer than I am. She said "don't you practice BIRTH CONTROL"? I said that we used to but that we discovered that my wife has a hard time to conceive naturally (we don't do anything completely unnatural, just some Chinese herbal medicine hat my wife swears by - it worked for our second child, and it appears to have worked fine with this one). My wife also likes to be off the pill anyway.
In any case, my agent remarked that my $70,000 salary to support the family was "nothing" and that you "can't have a life in the New York area with less than $200,000 a year.' Now, I entered my agent's office that day feeling good about expecting our third child (a girl), and how I had been managing the family finances. I left feeling decidedly taken down a a few pegs.
Let me get to a point - if I have one. As I said my wife is Asian. I have other Asian coworkers aat the office including one woman in particular who bitches all the time about her four-year-old daughter "If I had it to do all over again I wouldn't have had her". She is incredulous that I'm having another kid, like I am some kind of a circus freak.
Truly if I didn't have this other Asian (Chinese) woman in my office and for comments by people like my life insurance agent (maybe she was pissed I was not buying additional policies), I would feel pretty pleased with my lot in life right now. My two existing kids, ages 5 and 3, are very excited for the arrival of the new baby. It's true that I no longer have money to eat out very often or have expensive hobbies like I used to. I recently cancelled my cell phone to free up some more monthly cash. I feel like I have a very loving environment with my wife and kids that I enjoy.
If those childless people are happy, and I'm happy, the world's a fine place. The problem I have is people crossing over the barrier from the childless (or the "want to be childless?") side to make snide comments about my growing family. I suppose it happens in the other direction too. Although I don't really have an answer for hard-core environmentalists who believe every new human baby is destructive, otherwise I will try to raise my kids to be solid contributors to society.
I happen to think 15 year old "women" putting off motherhood is a no-brainer.
Non-high school graduates and those with bachelor's degrees were most likely to be childless.
Doesn't that just about cover everyone?
Well you could be a highschool graduate and not have a BA.
Lesson #1: Never be worth more to anyone dead than you are alive. :)
They end up all partied out and all worked out with nowhere to go. Sad.
Then they become bitter feminazi hags with lots of disposable income. Evil.
My wife and I got to know this little girl about 11 years ago. She was, and is a real beauty. She attracted boys like nothing I have ever seen. She was queen of everything at a large high school. Was popular in College.
So many boys wanted to marry her but she was not even slightly interested. She wanted to do her own thing.
Now she is working as a receptionist, at medium to low pay, has a two room apartment, a cat, and is so miserable she told us she just about can't stand it anymore.
She still has her share of boyfriends but the really good ones are taken. She wants very badly to get married now but the ones she meets are not the ones who want to marry a 29 year old.
The really sad thing is she doesn't blame herself for her decisions. She just thinks there are no good boys left.
I suspect childhood experiences influence the decision.
My cats Little One and Scratch,are two happy cats.
BTW there was one boy who wanted to marry her and she turned him down not too long ago.
She finally swallowed her pride and phoned him. She then learned he is now engaged.
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