A dramatic cultural shift is underway as more Americans choose to remain ‘childfree,’ contributing to the country’s demographic crisis.
(LifeSiteNews) — A new study shows the number of U.S. adults who do not want to have children has doubled in 20 years.
“We found that the percentage of non-parents who don’t want any children rose from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023,” Jennifer Watling Neal, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Michigan State University (MSU), said.
“During the same period, the percentage of non-parents who plan to have children in the future fell from 79% to 59%,” she added.
The study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. It divided the participants who did not have children into several categories, including those who were “childfree,” i.e., those who said they did not want to have children. The authors used data from the National Survey of Family Growth, which surveyed around 80,000 adults between 2002 and 2003.
Of the more than 42,000 participants who did not have children, 29.4 percent were “childfree.” The number of people who would voluntarily forgo having children far exceeded those who were unable to have children for biological reasons (3.7 percent) or social reasons (4.8 percent).
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“We knew from our prior research that childfree adults were a large and growing group in Michigan,” Zachary Neal, MSU professor of psychology and co-author of the study, said. “These new results confirm this is part of a nationwide trend that has been unfolding for over 20 years.”
The research cited by Neal includes a 2024 study that showed that the number of adults who said they did not want to have children increased by about 5 percent after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
From 2000 to 2022, the fertility rate in the U.S. dropped from 2.06 children per woman to only 1.67, falling well below the replacement level of around 2.1 children. The alarming trend of falling birth rates can also be observed globally, as global birth rates fell from 2.75 in 2000 to only 2.2 in 2025. Major contributing factors to this trend include abortion, contraception, and, as the new study confirms, a change in attitude toward having children.
