{"id":10495,"date":"2024-07-31T21:31:21","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T21:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=10495"},"modified":"2024-07-31T22:24:14","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T22:24:14","slug":"why-are-so-many-americans-choosing-to-not-have-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=10495","title":{"rendered":"Why Are So Many Americans Choosing to Not Have Children?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s probably not selfishness, experts say. Even young adults who want children see an increasing number of obstacles.<\/p>\n

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For years, some conservatives have framed the declining fertility rate of the United States as an example of eroding family values, a moral catastrophe in slow motion.<\/p>\n

JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, recently came under fire for saying in 2021 that the nation was run by \u201cchildless cat ladies\u201d<\/a> who \u201chate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Ashley St. Clair, a Fox News commentator, described childless Americans this way: \u201cThey just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyonc\u00e9 concerts. It\u2019s this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers who study trends in reproductive health see a more nuanced picture. The decision to forgo having children is most likely not a sign that Americans are becoming more hedonistic, they say. For one thing, fertility rates are declining throughout the developed world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Rather, it indicates that larger societal factors \u2014 such as rising child care costs, increasingly expensive housing and slipping optimism about the future \u2014 have made it feel more untenable to raise children in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see it as a lack of a commitment to family,\u201d said Mary Brinton, a sociologist who studies low fertility rates at Harvard. \u201cI think the issues are very much on the societal level and the policy level.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s probably not selfishness, experts say. Even young adults who want children see an increasing number of obstacles.For years, some conservatives have framed the declining fertility rate of the United States as an example of eroding family values, a moral catastrophe in slow motion.JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, recently came under fire for saying in 2021 that the nation was run by \u201cchildless cat ladies\u201d who \u201chate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games.\u201dLast year, Ashley St. Clair, a Fox News commentator, described childless Americans this way: \u201cThey just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyonc\u00e9 concerts. It\u2019s this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family.\u201dResearchers who study trends in reproductive health see a more nuanced picture. The decision to forgo having children is most likely not a sign that Americans are becoming more hedonistic, they say. For one thing, fertility rates are declining throughout the developed world.Rather, it indicates that larger societal factors \u2014 such as rising child care costs, increasingly expensive housing and slipping optimism about the future \u2014 have made it feel more untenable to raise children in the United States.\u201cI don\u2019t see it as a lack of a commitment to family,\u201d said Mary Brinton, a sociologist who studies low fertility rates at Harvard. \u201cI think the issues are very much on the societal level and the policy level.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10497,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10495"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10498,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10495\/revisions\/10498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}