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Why Americans Aren’t Having Babies
The costs and rising expectations of parenthood are making young people think hard about having any children at all
By Rachel Wolfe / WSJ
Americans aren’t just waiting longer to have kids and having fewer once they start—they’re less likely to have any at all.
The shift means that childlessness may be emerging as the main driver of the country’s record-low birthrate.
Women without children, rather than those having fewer, are responsible for most of the decline in average births among 35- to 44-year-olds during their lifetimes so far, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey data by University of Texas demographer Dean Spears. Childlessness accounted for over two-thirds of the 6.5% drop in average births between 2012 to 2022.
While more people are becoming parents later in life, 80% of the babies born in 2022 were to women under 35, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics data.
“Some may still have children, but whether it’ll be enough to compensate for the delays that are driving down fertility overall seems unlikely,” says Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina. The change is far-reaching. More women in the 35-to-44 age range across all races, income levels, employment statuses, regions and broad education groups aren’t having children.
Birthrates among 35- to 44-year-olds give demographers who study fertility an early look into millennials’ changing approach to parenthood. But these researchers also look closely at women over 40, reasoning that if a woman doesn’t have a child by then, she is more likely to remain childless.
The number of American women over 40 who had no children was declining until 2018, according to Current Population Survey data, when it then began to rise again. Now, some demographers and economists expect the increase in childlessness will be sustained due to shifts in how people think about families.
In New Orleans, 42-year-old Beth Davis epitomizes some millennials’ new views. “I wouldn’t mess up the dynamic in my life right now for anything, especially someone that is 100% dependent on me,” she says.
Throughout history, having children was widely accepted as a central goal of adulthood.
Yet when Pew Research Center surveyed 18- to 34-year-olds last year, a little over half said they would like to become parents one day. In a separate 2021 survey, Pew found 44% of childless adults ages 18 to 49 said they were not too likely, or not at all likely, to have children, up from 37% who said the same thing in 2018.
As more women gained access to birth control and entered the workforce in the 1970s, reshaping family life and expectations around gender, Americans began having fewer kids. By 1980, the average number of children per family was 1.8, down from a high of 3.6 during the post-Depression baby boom, according to Gallup.
Now, researchers say, having children at all has begun to feel optional. “To be a human being, for most people, meant to have children,” says Anastasia Berg, co-author with Rachel Wiseman of the new book, What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice. “You didn’t think about how much it would cost, it was taken for granted,” she says.
But unlike their parents and grandparents, the authors say, younger Americans view kids as one of many elements that can create a meaningful life. Weighed against other personal and professional ambitions, the investments of child-rearing don’t always land in children’s favor.
With less pressure to have kids, economists say, more people feel they need to be in the ideal financial, emotional and social position to begin a family.
Giovanni Perez, 38, has been trying to convince his wife, Mariah Sanchez, 32, that they’re ready to become parents. “People less well-off than us are having kids and I see it every day, and I’m pretty sure we could do better than most of them,” says Perez, an after-school art teacher in the Bronx, N.Y.
Sanchez isn’t sold. With a single mom during her early childhood and a brother 15 years her junior, Sanchez grew up helping with diaper changes and bottle feedings. Before she has kids of her own, she wants to move from the couple’s one-bedroom apartment into a bigger place. She also hopes to climb the ranks at the advertising agency where she works, ideally doubling their combined income of $100,000.
“I know what it’s like for a child whose parent wasn’t prepared for them,” says Sanchez. Still, she admits, the amount she thought she needed to earn before having children was far lower a few years ago. “It feels like a moving target,” she says.
“There was no planning for kids, you just had them,” says Morales, a 53-year-old college adviser in Naples, Fla. While she worries she may never be a grandparent—“which I’d like to experience before I leave this Earth”—she respects the intention with which her children are approaching parenthood. “These kids are a lot smarter in making decisions for themselves,” she says.