NEARLY half of the college-educated women in Generation X - those born between 1965 and 1978 - have no children, according to new research.

Research conducted by a New York think tank, the Centre for Work-Life Policy, to be published later this year, found that 43 per cent of such women are child-free, despite three-quarters being in established relationships, The (London) Sunday Times reported.



The study's coordinator, Lauren Leader-Chivee, surveyed 3000 female and male college graduates in the US and also conducted supplementary research in Britain. "We have found very similar trends in both countries," she said.



So why did this generation of women choose to remain childless? Gen X women were born in the wake of the feminist revolution, and many had mothers who pushed them to break into previously male-dominated professions, the research found.



Ninety-one percent of the surveyed women in relationships were part of dual-earning couples, and 19 per cent out-earned their husbands. Similarly, 74 per cent considered themselves ambitious, compared to 65 per cent of women from the baby-boom generation.



"I'm part of the first generation of women where there actually wasn't that much pressure put on us to have children," Kim Crundall, a 44-year-old nutritionist from St. Albans, 32 kilometres north of London, told the newspaper. "My parents were far more interested in me getting a career rather than anything else."



"Having children changes the entire dynamic. Once they arrive, everything starts revolving around somebody else. It's not selfish, it's more a case that I don't feel particularly maternal, so I don't feel I'm missing anything."

Originally published as Gen X women put careers before babies