New Research Confirms: 20% of Adults Do Not Want Children

Last summer, researchers at Michigan State University announced that about 1.7 million adults in Michigan, or one in five adults, choose not to have children and therefore live a childless life. This figure was huge and surprised many, and was confirmed by a subsequent study.

Jennifer Watling Neal, MSU psychology professor and co-author of the study, said: “We found that 20.9% of adults in Michigan do not want children, which closely matches our earlier estimate of 21.6%, and means that over 1.6 million people in Michigan are child-free. Michigan is demographically similar to the United States as a whole, so this could mean 50 million to 60 million Americans are child-free.”

The new study, published in PLOS ONE, attempted to replicate the original study using the same methods, but with a new sample of people. The researchers used data from a representative sample of 1,000 adults who completed MSU’s State of the State Survey, conducted by the University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research. To avoid the risk of cherry-picking results, the researchers pre-registered for the study, recording in advance exactly how the study would be conducted and what they expected to find.

New Research Confirms: 20% of Adults Do Not Want Children

“Many adults are child-free, and there do not seem to be differences by age, education, or income,” said Zachary Neal, associate professor of psychology at MSU and co-author of the study. “However, being child-free is somewhat more common among adults who identify as male, white or who have always been single.”

Some have expressed concern that childless adults may regret their decision not to have children, especially later in life. But Watling Neal says, “We found no evidence that older child-free adults experience any more life regret than older parents. In fact, older parents were slightly more likely to want to change something about their life.”

With so many people childless, more attention needs to be paid to this group, especially as reproductive rights erode, the researchers said. “States’ restrictions on reproductive health care may result in many people being forced to have children despite not wanting them, which is very concerning,” Neal said.

The research team is now examining whether abortion restrictions affect adults’ choices not to have children and is expanding its work beyond Michigan to other states and countries.

Source: “Prevalence, age of decision, and interpersonal warmth judgements of childfree adults: Replication and extensions” by Jennifer Watling Neal and Zachary P. Neal, 5 April 2023, PLOS ONE.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283301