Posted on 10/25/2003 5:17:57 PM PDT by NYer
WASHINGTON -- Anne Hare and her husband made a momentous decision three years ago: They would not have children. It's not that they don't like kids, she says. They simply don't want to alter the lifestyle they enjoy.
"With kids, especially young kids, infants and toddlers, you really can't do the active stuff we like to do," said Hare, 43, a fitness program coordinator from Gainesville, Ga.
Hare is among 26.7 million women aged 15 to 44 who are childless, a record number, according to new Census Bureau data from a June 2002 survey. They represent nearly 44 percent of women in that age group.
The number of women 15 to 44 forgoing or putting off motherhood has grown nearly 10 percent since 1990, when roughly 24.3 million were in that class.
Direct comparisons before 1990 are not possible because the bureau didn't track women younger than 18 until then.
The latest numbers reflect the well-established trend of more women going to college and entering the work force, then delaying motherhood or deciding not to have children. More also are choosing adoption, said Martha Farnsworth Riche, a demographer and former head of the Census Bureau. %%endsource%%
'WE DON'T HATE KIDS'
Hare said she and other childless friends often are incorrectly tagged as "kid-haters."
"It's just difficult to explain to people that we don't hate kids, it's just that we don't want our own," she said.
The percentage of women 40 to 44 -- those at the end of their childbearing years -- who have not given birth has hovered around 18 percent since 1994, but that's up from 10 percent in 1976.
Non-high school graduates and those with bachelor's degrees were most likely to be childless. Also women with higher incomes had the highest childless rates, in part a reflection of the increased professional options available to them, said David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project, a research group at Rutgers University.
Amy Caizza, study director for the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a Washington think tank, said society's attitudes about childless women also have changed.
"Economic reasons are part of it, but it's also the effect of the women's movement, that you don't have to be a mother to be a complete woman," she said.
ETHNIC BREAKDOWN
Just over half of Asian women were childless, the highest rate among race and ethnic groups. It was 46 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 39 percent for blacks and 36 percent for Hispanics.
Last year about 33 percent of all births were to unmarried women, roughly the same rate since 1998, said Census Bureau demographer Barbara Downs. Blacks were more likely than Hispanics or whites to have out-of-wedlock births.
Roughly 23 percent of the 25.8 million never-married women 15 to 44 were mothers in 2002, about the same rate from 1998 but up from 18 percent of the 20.7 million never-married women in 1990. There was a pronounced increase among never-married women in managerial or professional jobs who were mothers -- the percentage has nearly doubled from 9 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2002.
Many women in these occupations can earn salaries that enable them to raise a child on their own if they choose, Riche said.
"In earlier days, you had stigma and economic reasons" for these unmarried, professional women not to have kids, she said. "It's much less so now."
Also, about 8 percent of births were to women in unmarried partnerships, the first time the bureau had tracked such a category in the survey.
The report also showed a birth rate of 61 births per 1,000 women 15 to 44 in 2002, down from 67 per 1,000 in 1990. During the same period, it also found the birth rate for women 15 to 19 rose from 40 per 1,000 to 56 per 1,000.
That's far different from National Center for Health Statistics data, which in 2001 showed the birth rate for 15- to 19-year-olds at 45 per 1,000, declining steadily since 1990 from 60 per 1,000.
Government researchers, academics and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, an advocacy group, said they considered NCHS birth data more accurate because it is based on official vital records from hospitals.
The census report was based on a survey of 50,000 homes.
As judgmental as it may be, I automatically think such women are not ones I'd have much in common with or want to, for that matter.
And then there is always the mystery of childless women who long deeply for a child, but are unable to conceive.
I know God has reasons for everything and I don't challenge that, but it's a puzzle that always bothers me.
Many of these fools will have decades of bitter solitude in which to rue their selfishness.
-ccm
Just do it!
.... before your son becomes a teenager and you change your mind (just kidding). Between abortion and the selfish attitudes of folks like these, civilization is on the decline. In Italy, for example, the Muslim immigrant population is now approaching that of the Italians. Ditto for France and Germany. It won't be long before we're all speaking Arabic and worshiping in the local Mosque.
Give your son the gift of sibblings. They'll be there for you when you grow old. Who will be watching out for these folks?
I recently read an astute comment. The generation that we aborted will soon be the one voting to euthanize us. Think about that!
Very astute observations. However, for these women, there is a viable option. It's called adoption! I am both an adoptee and an adoptive parent. Love does not spring from the womb, it comes from the heart.
Do! Have five or six more - it starts getting easier after three, and it's all downhill after five (she says, not having a teenager yet ...).
But re. the article, if they decide not to have children, I say get them off the Social Security rolls. 100% private savings for them. My children should not have to support these selfish people in their old age, when they could be supporting the Net-knight and me and 30 or 40 grandchildren!
It's nature's self-correction in action. The religious are the ones having the bigger families, and the self-centered ones are not reproducing their DNA.
How blessed you were to be so loved and to then do the same for your child/children.
Bears repeating!!! They're too caught up in themselves right now to realize that. Once reality hits home, it will be too late!
I know a couple who raised 4 beautiful children. In their mid fourties, the big house now an empty nest, they considered selling it for something more suitable to retirement.
That though lasted no more than one day. They loved children, felt they still had many gifts to share and proceeded to adopt a sibling group of 5! They filled their home with love, laughter, tears and the joy of a 2nd family to share with their own offspring.
They were members of the LI chapter of Adoptive Parents Committee. Once each year, the chapter holds a ceremony called 'Candlelighting'. At that time, each family that has adopted, is given a white candle with two ribbons - green for new life and either blue or pink for the gender of the adopted child. This couple was handed a candlelabra! There wasn't a dry eye in the house that night. God bless them and all who open their homes to 'unwanted'.
Why?
They paid into it. Ohh yeah... the whole shebamg is one big pyramid scheme.
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