This report from the NYTimes says the latest census indicates that 20% of women ages 40-44 are childless. Unsurprisingly, this number goes up to 27% for women with advanced degrees.
I'm really surprised this number is so high, actually! I mean, fully a fifth of women have no children? That's incredible. It seems like 90% of the women I know want to have children (although most don't yet) even though most of them are pursuing graduate degrees. Further, it still feels like childless women are somewhat scorned, which is really surprising if that many of them are bucking the childbearing trend.
The number of childless women has increased since the 70's, so I wonder if it will continue to increase...like, do we need to worry about the population? Or is this a good thing in terms of population control that we can expect to bounce back at some point?
What do you think?
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In America Alone by Mark Steyn, the author argues that birth rates in western society are actually BELOW replacement rates (and the only reason our population grows is due to immigration) and that birth rates in Islamic countries are very high and the populace there is young and vigorous, while the west is old and tired.
Steyn is a right-winger and he got lots of grief over this book (I think his tone comes off as racist) but yeah, the numbers are a bit shocking - North Americans are really not reproducing that much anymore.
I wonder if it's related to Amalia Miller's study on the earnings of women who have children at different ages. Remember that it's not "I don't want children" but simply that the respondents had none.
It is regularly suggested that serious female tenure-trackers put off having children until after they have gotten tenure. Once a female academic gets through graduate school, a post doc, spend the time on the market and land a tenure track job, and publish and participate enough to get tenure, she's already pretty far along the biological clock. And didn't the last results show that married females in that track have higher divorce rates than the college-educated women in general?
Of course, male candidates are looked at admiringly if they have children. So much for the liberal values of the Ivory Tower.
"Of course, male candidates are looked at admiringly if they have children. So much for the liberal values of the Ivory Tower."
-Don't even get me started on that. Women continue to be expected to both raise children and be punished professionally for raising children. Men are expected to have children but not necessarily care for them, beyond financial provisions. Can we move beyond this antiquated system and figure something out that's fair, please?
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