*“Every year I say when the economy is getting better then we’ll start having more children,” William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post last year, “and I’m still expecting that to happen.”
The American birthrate is sinking: 3.8 million babies were born last year — the lowest number in three decades and down 2 percent from 2016, according to a new report by the National Center for Health Statistics.
“It’s a decline that is alarming demographers and social scientists — many of them men who chart womb activity like the consumer price index or manufactured-goods sales,” per The Washington Post.
“The United States and Papua New Guinea are the only nations in the world that don’t guarantee paid leave or paid benefits for new parents,” according to International Labor Organization.”
OTHER NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: ABC Considering ‘Roseanne’ Reboot with Sara Gilbert as Focus
Working-women and personal finance considerations are majors factors why more and more women are choosing to live child-free.
“More than $900 billion of the nation’s $1.4 trillion in student loan debt belongs to women, who make up more of the nation’s university students and are more likely to take out loans, according to a study by the American Association of University Women.”
Due to the persistent gender wage gap — women still make about 80 cents for every dollar a man makes in 2018 — those loans are harder to pay back. Maybe women just can’t afford to be mothers.
And then there’s the Trump effect.
One therapist in California who specializes in helping women decide whether they want to become mothers said a potential client canceled her spot in a class right after the election.
“She left a message saying, ‘When Trump was elected, I didn’t need your class to decide,’ ” said Ann Davidman, a “Motherhood Clarity Mentor.” She said she’s heard lots of versions of that.
“I think there is far more permission to choose a child-free life than there ever has been,” Davidman said. “There’s so much out there to help child-free women feel good about themselves, to not feel shamed.”
Because all women are not mothers.
It’s not childless. It’s #ChildFree.
“The child-free movement is very much linked to women having more choices,” said Amy Blackstone, a sociology professor at the University of Maine.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
