Posted on 06/13/2025 10:14:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A new survey by the UN Population Fund shows that the most common reasons people name for not having more children are financial in nature.
As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, among 14 countries surveyed, respondents named financial limitations or job instability as the most common reasons to have fewer children than they desired in all.
Commonly, financial reasons, also including housing and childcare costs, made up the top 2 or even top 3 of the issues most often cited for lower fertility, for example in India, Indonesia, South Korea, South Africa, Brazil, Morocco, Hungary and Germany.
You will find more infographics at Statista
In South Korea, the country with the lowest fertility rate in the world, many respondents agreed that the cost of childrearing was prohibitive.
In developing countries, common and mostly financial reasons for limiting family size were shared among a large number of respondents, while in developed countries, these barriers were perceived as somewhat lower but still affecting many.
In Sweden, only 19 percent named financial limitations - still the most common answer. This was followed by lack of a suitable partners and infertility/problems conceiving.
Lack of a partners or the partner wanting fewer children was more commonly found among the top 3 reasons to have fewer children in the Western world, even though it was also the third-most cited issue in South Africa. Brazil's top 3 reasons was concern about the social and political situation in the future, while in Morocco, this rank was occupied by chronic health conditions or poor health in general.
Career goals is another good reason.
Socialism made women hate being women.
Financial issues don’t stop the invaders from breeding out of control.
Have any of you who have had abortions EVER wonder if the children you destroyed and eliminated COULD have been the one who would have cured cancer or done something GREAT for humanity and you selfishly KILLED what gift could have helped the world.
Sure, we’re paying for all that thanks to the corrupt in government. And why people have serious tax fatigue.
Never even been pregnant, but never wanted a child who would do great things. I always wanted to be the one to do great things. Why would I want someone else to do it when I could? No regrets at not having children. Really grateful for the life I’ve led and the things I’ve accomplished. Life is good.
Dislike abortion because it seems that both lives have rights that conflict and don’t believe the mother should win all the time. Also believe the father should have rights in abortion or life decisions. Would hope that every child has someone who wants to love it and see it live a full and happy life. Wish there was a way to make better use of empty nest grandparents to guide little ones with their years of hard-won wisdom.
>> The Most Common Reasons Not To Have Kids Are Financial
not the same as “fewer than desired”
Saying that in an informational vacuum makes the statement (and all following statements) nigh impossible to evaluate.
Were you even fertile? In a stable, loving relationship? Was your lawfully-wedded husband fertile? Did he share your negative attitude on procreation?
Otherwise, this is like my saying, "I never wanted to walk on the Moon," without adding that I washed out of astronaut school, never even completed my high school education, or was born blind.
I believe that the basic emotional wish to have children is based upon the desire to have someone whom one can love (in addition to loving one's spouse), but also nurture and raise.
I also cannot conceive of being surrounded by others who marry and raise families and think, "Nah, let them ensure the continued survival of the Human Race - I got other things (my career as a used car salesman, etc.) on my plate!", then proudly adding, "Nope, the 500-million-year evolutionary struggle for existence of my entire line of ancestors ends here!"
I applaud your position on abortion, but wonder if you were aware of the long-term emotional effects of hormonal contraception upon the female psyche.
Regards,
How sad they must be.
Dragging and pasting is a bad look.
Also: Citing the unwillingness of one's spouse to have children is a circular statement. Imagine, if you will, if the figure had been not 19%, but 99%. What would it mean if 99% of all polled persons had said, "Yeah, I want to have children, but my spouse doesn't!" 19% is not as extreme, but still entails the same logical dilemma.
Personally, I think that these statistics suffer from the "self-reporting" bias. It's like asking people why they don't want to wake up and get out of bed, and the people responding, "Just five more minutes!" Again and again and again.
Regards,
Yep, the entire survey is inherently flawed - on an epistemological level. Specifically, even if we exclude other possible flaws (survey has already established that the respondent can physically have children, respondent is able to filter out social desirability bias, respondent is not subject to cultural biases, etc.), the survey question is still fundamentally flawed due to causal ambiguity. The survey merely gathers perceived explanations rather than true causal knowledge.
There is a basic human tendency to discount or understate long-term consequences of our actions. The state of the world in 20 years, the cost of college tuition for our (yet-to-be-born) children, etc. are vague. Normally, the human mind would underweight such distant possibilities. But here, in the case at hand, the respondents actually over-emphasize the long-range difficulties.
Why?
Regards,
Huh?!
Are you saying that my citing, verbatim, another person, so that she knows exactly to which of her several statements I am taking a position, is a "bad look?"
On the contrary, carefully dissecting someone's argument and addressing individual sub-points furthers a high-traction discussion.
Regards,
I’ve been married twice. Loved both husbands and loved by them. Never even discussed kids. All career focused. High energy physics - computer research. They had PhDs and I had all the PhD classes with two masters degrees, but never took the final PhD exam. We were all researchers.
If I had ever gotten pregnant, I would never have had an abortion. Ever. My first masters was in grade school education in case I ever had a child and I’d home school because I would trust no one outside myself to educate a child. But it didn’t happen and it wasn’t important. I used my educational training in teaching adults in computers. Perfectly satisfying.
I have friends who have kids and adore them. I prefer small and furry kids with four legs and a tail. If my friend and I passed a mother with carriage and dog, she went for the baby and I went for the dog. All the charities I donate to are no kill shelters.
I have a friend who got sterilized in their 20’s to avoid any potential problems. Her husband also had no interest in children so no problem. One of the great marriages. They had cats.
I also used to have a lot of gay friends with no children. Haven’t seen them for decades since I got out of my professional field. But good and decent and monogamous. Also brilliantly smart.
I have only respect for people who choose to devote their lives to another generation and keep the species going. Not my interest and I find the topic of kids is incredibly boring, so I’m grateful there are people to whom it’s NOT boring.
Society needs people of many views in order to progress and create a safe and viable environment for everyone. It needs people who are nurturers and it needs people who want to create progress. Society would be lessened to lose either group.
Fertility, as well as bad parenting and mate selection, can be solved by passing only ONE law: restore the return on investment for raising children that was hijacked by government socialist security systems. Until death or divorce, give parents the option of 15% of their children’s paychecks in lieu of socialist security payments, and exempt these children from socialist security taxes. That is how the Amish do it, and their fertility is normal by historical measures. This law isn’t likely to be implemented at the federal level, but state workers are exempt from the federal ponzi scheme, so a state could experiment with the time proven traditional way of propagating families.
I find that hard to believe. And irresponsible: If you were having sex, then the possible (or even: likely) consequences have to be taken into consideration. Methods of avoidance have to be discussed.
Regards,
The other issue with the article is... it doesn’t pass the smell test, since the top reasons don’t seem to stop those who have the most children everywhere in the world from having them
money
housing
health care
and yet everywhere in the world the people with the least of those consistently have the most kids.
“Never even been pregnant, but never wanted a child who would do great things. I always wanted to be the one to do great things. Why would I want someone else to do it when I could? No regrets at not having children. Really grateful for the life I’ve led and the things I’ve accomplished. Life is good.”
Me: I’ve also never even been pregnant. I never wanted a child. It had NOTHING to do with finances. My childhood sucked and I just didn’t have warm fuzzies about that whole “family unit” dynamic. And I was afraid I might not be able to break that cycle of bad parenting. (My siblings had kids and were/are good parents. Their children are successful, and have raised good kids themselves.)
Hubby’s childhood also was terrible and we were on the same page re kids from the get-go.
I am grateful for the adult life I’ve led and the things I’ve done — some are accomplishments, and some are just things. Some bumps in the road along the way, but life is good.
That’s exactly why Marxism should be hated.
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