“Women who decided in their teens to be childfree are now, on average, nearly 40 and still do not have children.”
EAST LANSING, MICHIGAN — Are families about to find themselves on the endangered species list? Researchers from Michigan State University find that over one in five adults don’t want children. Interestingly, the survey also indicates that Americans are deciding against being a parent quite early in life, most often in their teens or early twenties.
“We found that 21.6% of adults, or about 1.7 million people, in Michigan do not want children and therefore are ‘childfree.’ That’s more than the population of Michigan’s nine largest cities,” says study co-author Zachary Neal, an associate professor in MSU’s psychology department, in a university release.
Study authors used just three questions to separate “childfree” individuals from parents and other varieties of non-parents. The analyzed data comes from a representative sample of 1,500 adults who completed MSU’s State of the State Survey, conducted by the university’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.
According to Prof. Neal, it’s […]
I did not want to have a child with my first wife when I was 22 years old but she did not use the method she had said she had used to prevent pregnancy. She did it on purpose. too. We already had a male child which was not mine and I thought that would be enough for our budget to take care of. I was already working 2 jobs just to pay our bills and keep us afloat moneywise. She did it because she thought it would give her a hold over me and then she could be the “boss” of our family. The boy was not even mine. She had sex with a married man who was a teacher at our local high school. I ended up hating her for the deception, and we ended up getting divorced within a year. She said she left me because I would not spend enough time with the kids, even though I really had no time to do that because I was working 2 jobs and was completely tired every night from working so hard. I did love my daughter, and would have spent time with her if I had the time and was not so tired.
Today, I would not bring a child into this world because of people like Trump and all the inequality provided for us by the GOP.
P.S.: I worked as an electrician for 8+ hours during the day and after eating supper, I worked as an automotive mechanic for 4-6 hours at night. As anyone can tell, I worked very hard.
P.P.S.: I do not want to bore anyone, but just add that I also worked as an automobile mechanic and painter on Saturday and Sunday during this same period of my life, also, as well as working on my own car and house in my “spare” time. That is why I had NO time for playing with the kids. I wore myself out working and needed every spare moment to rest.
To be sure, the financial and time hand overs are steep, but loving a child, my daughter, was something I couldn’t possibly have traded for anything. That said, if I were of child bearing age right now, I would be spending considerable time thinking about the steep difficulties and they would face growing up. Then again, if I gave birth, I believe it would be because that child was meant to be here in these times. That he/she would have purpose they came in with. And I would raise them to seek what is meaningful in life..I would endeavor to show them what love is, to/with an individual. With someone special. What love is and can do when deeply connected to the earth and to the collective consciousness for the greater good.