Are we experiencing the rise of the childless cat lady? Apparently yes. A new report from Pew Research Center says more US adults are choosing not to have children, per Axios, and the reason is plain: they simply don't want them. The research saw a 10-point increase in adults under 50 saying they will not have kids between 2018 (37%) and 2023 (47%). Some insights from the survey, which was broken up into two groups—adults over 50 without children, and adults under 50 who don't plan on having them:
- 57% of the respondents under 50 said they never wanted to raise kids (compared to 37% of the respondents over 50). The older group's main reason for not becoming parents was it just didn't work out that way (39%).
- Women in the younger group greatly outnumbered the men who didn't want kids (64% vs 50%).
- Both groups said not having kids made certain aspects of their lives easier, including how they spent their free time, having savings, and focusing on their careers. On the flip side, they noted that some aspects of aging could be more difficult without adult children.
The
Wall Street Journal takes a longer look into the why, citing financial costs, wariness of the planet's future, and changing social expectations as reasons more adults are choosing to forgo parenting. "If it were socially acceptable for people in the past to remain childless, I wonder how many of them would have made the same decision," economist Melissa Kearney tells the newspaper. (About half of US parents
still paying for adult kids.)
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