Like the Chinese, Americans also want bigger families

Chinese couples will now be able to have the same amount of children as most American families, but women in the U.S. would also like to have more.

On Thursday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported that the Chinese government’s one-child policy will end after 35 years, citing a statement from the Community Party’s Central Committee. The policy was introduced to slow population growth, but with an ageing population the controversial law was overturned “to improve the balanced development of population,” the statement said.

Couples in China will now be able to have two children, which is not far behind the current average family size in the U.S. Women in the U.S. have 2.1 children, according to recent analysis of government data from the U.S. and E.U. by Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. But, like the Chinese, they would also like more: Their ideal rate is 2.4 children. Women in the E.U. have an average of 1.9 children (versus their “ideal” rate of 2.3 children). “For women, fertility is not one choice, but a lifetime of choices,” says Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center.

Even without facing fines or worse — like women in China who had more than one child — many American women wish they had more children. Around 40% of U.S. women nearing the end of their childbearing years say they have fewer children than their ideal, according to the General Social Survey carried out by NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan, independent research organization. Among women in the E.U. aged 40 to 54, one-third reported that the number of children they have given birth to is lower than their personal ideal, according to data analyzed by Pew. That gap between the actual and ideal number of kids varies dramatically across Europe: In Denmark, the gap is 45%, but only 18% in Bulgaria.

The reasons between the actual and ideal family size in the U.S. and China are, obviously, vastly different. “More women are delaying having a family to focus on their career and education and, as time goes on, the window of fertility gets smaller and smaller,” Livingston says. Plus, some women who want to have kids lack a suitable partner, she adds. The birthrate for women aged 15 to 44 years in the U.S. has fallen to 63 births per 1,000 women — a record low — from 71.2 in 1990 and 118 births per 1,000 women in 1960, according to provisional data from the Center for Disease Control. (Foreign-born women in the U.S. have a fertility rate around 13% higher than U.S.-born women.)

Some couples are divided over whether to have another child due to the cost, says Fran Walfish, a psychotherapist in Beverly Hills, Calif. “Many families require two paychecks to make ends meet,” she says, and must postpone buying a house — and starting a family — while they save for a down payment and negotiate with banks’ strict lending requirements post-recession. Middle-income parents will need to spend nearly $300,000 over the first 17 years of their child’s life and $490,000 for high earners, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.

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Childcare is the biggest household expense in most regions, says Lynette Fraga, executive director of Child Care Aware of America, a nonprofit group in Arlington, Va. that works with state and local agencies. The average annual cost of full-time care for an infant in center-based care ranges from $5,496 in Mississippi to $16,549 in Massachusetts, according to the group’s 2014 annual report. “Childcare is a significant consideration on the family budget,” she says. What’s more, the U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations that doesn’t require paid family leave for new parents.

Women in America have the choice to have as many (or as few) children as they like. Millennials — born between 1983 and 1993 — are also getting married later in life, a separate Pew study found. Just one-quarter of that generation is married. When they were in their early 20s, 36% of Generation X, 48% of baby boomers and 65% of the Silent Generation — born between the Great Depression and World War II — were hitched. While there’s less societal pressure to get married, especially given the high divorce rate, 69% of unmarried millennials say they would like to, but many lack what they deem to be a necessary prerequisite, it found, “a solid economic foundation.”

The number of women in their 30s and 40s without children is also rising: 15.3% of American women aged 40 to 44 were childless last year, up from 15.1% in 2012 — and 9.2% in 2008 -- according to data recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau. The percentage of childless women aged 35 to 39 was 18.5% last year, up from 17.2% in 2012 and 9.9% in 2008. The figure was naturally higher for those women aged 30 to 34 (28.9% were childless last year versus 28.2% in 2012 and 26.8% in 2008). “Women aged 40 to 50 in 2014 who were in managerial or professional occupations were more likely to be childless than women of similar age in other occupations,” the study found.

And some Americans do wish they had more children. Michelle Patterson, 44, had two children 17 months apart. “We ended up having kids right away,” she says. “The plan was to wait awhile. That wasn’t in the cards.” At the time of her second pregnancy, she was vice president at a major recruitment firm. She feared that having another child so soon would impact her career and even the company. “I was petrified of telling the president of my company that I was pregnant again,” she says. “I asked myself, ‘How can I be vice president of this company and do this?’”

Patterson agreed on a work plan that meant she was involved in the day-to-day operations during her maternity leave. “I worked throughout the maternity leave and it was very challenging,” she says. “I did not end up jeopardizing my position.” She chose to have two children and feels fortunate that she had the economic freedom to do so. “Raising kids is expensive,” she says, adding that the decision on family size is often related to finances. That said, she and her husband still had fewer than the previous generation in her family Patterson’s own parents had three children and her husband’s parents had four.

(This story was updated.)

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