Why don’t people want more children? This is the bad question, said a new world report
Why don’t people have more children? According to a new world report, what we should ask is why so many people feel as they cannot.
It is often assumed that the low fertility rates are due to what people simply did not want to have children, or more than one or two, but a report published Tuesday of the United Nations Fund for the Population (UNFPA) says that it is not the whole table.
“A large number of people are unable to create the families they wish,” said Dr. Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of UNFPA, in a press release.
This lack of choice “is the real crisis of fertility,” she said, “and the answer lies in the response to what people say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care and support partners”.
The UNFPA report included the Yougov survey. About one in five of the reproductive adults interviewed in 14 different countries said they could not have had the number of children they would like, most saying that they would probably have less than they wanted, or not at all.
The most common obstacles were economical, with 39% indicating that financial limitations affected or affect their ability to achieve the size of their desired family.
Other important obstacles included a lack of partner support, low -quality sexual and reproductive health care, lack of access to services such as affordable child care and pessimism about the future.
The survey questioned 14,256 adults aged 18 to 88 years from 14 countries, including the United States, South Korea, Italy and India between November 15 and December 5, 2024. It did not mention a margin of error but said that most of the data were representative nationally.
Although Canada has not been questioned, the authors note that the sample of countries represents a third of the world’s population with a mixture of income and fertility rate.
Canadians are also facing barriers
Previous data Canada statistics show a similar trend, with people aged 15 to 49, reporting in 2022 that comparable problems, such as affordability, could influence their fertility intentions.
And 37% of those questioned said they did not think they could afford to have a child in the next three years.
“Many Canadians face structural constraints that prevent them from carrying out their fertility aspirations,” said Rania Tfaily, an associate professor at the University of Carleton who studies social demography.
The subject recently discussed the federal electoral campaign when the conservative chief Pierre Hairy said that too many young people could not afford to buy houses before their “biological clocks” were exhausted.
But as his wording hit a nerve, his supporters said he highlighted real concern. In 2022, 32% of Canadians aged 20 to 29 did not think they would have access to appropriate housing to start a family over the next three years, according to Statistics Canada.
Look | Why don’t Canadians have more children?:
Canada has recorded its lowest fertility rate for the second consecutive year in 2023, according to statistics Canada data at 1.26 children born per woman. He has joined the ranks of “lowest-fertility countries”, notably South Korea, Spain and Japan.
Of course, this is not only a lack of choice to reduce the rate – having fewer children is also considered more desirable today, notes Lisa Strohschein, professor of sociology at the University of Alberta.
Statistics Canada data, for example, has constantly reported between 1990 and 2006 that Canadian women intended to have just over two children, on average, said Strohschein. But the most recent estimates of 2022 now suggest that the desired number of children is 1.5, which is even lower with the youngest questioned.
“At the same time, it is true that women tend to have fewer children than they really want-even if they want fewer children overall,” she said.
The reproduction agency goes both directions
The UNFPA report stresses that reproduction rights go both directions, as is the global fertility crisis.
“It is a crisis in a reproduction agency – in the ability of individuals to make their own free, informed and unhindered choices on everything, from the dissemination of sexual relations to the use of contraception to the creation of a family,” said the report.
One in three respondents in the Yougov survey said that they or their partner had suffered an involuntary pregnancy, for example, and almost one in five said they felt forced to have children when they did not want.
This can have involuntary consequences on the fertility rate, indicates the report, in particular when decision -makers try to control reproductive autonomy. For example, “abortion prohibitions can lead to individuals voluntarily or involuntarily renouncing reproduction,” said the report.
Texas has indeed prohibited abortion after Roe c. Wade was canceled by the United States Supreme Court. Ellen Mauro de CBC went to the state to see how people sail in restrictions and prepare to get worse.
A recent study on American medical allegations revealed that tubar sterilization and vasectomies increased in the United States after participants from 19 to 26 years old after the United States Supreme Court canceled ROE v. Wade.
If we want people to reach the size of the desired family, we must move away from the treatment of fertility as a means of controlling the body of women, said Strohschein.
The incentives do not work, but what is doing?
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump says he wants a baby boom and has thought about the incentives to try to convince more people to have children, including baby bonuses.
This week, he announced his investment account creation plan for babies born in the United States over the next four years, starting them with $ 1,000, the Associated Press reported.
However, as the UNFPA report notes, most incentives like this do not work and can sometimes have the opposite effect. It is because they “do not create the full range of activation conditions that people say they need to have families,” he said.
So what would help people have more children – assuming that is what they want?
“Guaranteed and high -quality children’s custody for everyone,” said Tfaily of Carleton University, as well as economic policies that could reduce the financial stress of people, as well as better benefits and more stable jobs.
Strohschein had similar suggestions, such as facilitating more easily than mothers returning to work after having a baby, as well as guarding services to affordable children.
However, “we have still not succeeded in Canada with one or the other of these two political levers,” she said.
“It will be interesting to see if our national childcare program can change this in the years to come.”
