Childfree Adults Are Just As Satisfied With Their Lives As Parents

By Emily Reynolds Across the world, birth rates are dropping. The global fertility rate has halved since 1950, with indications that this will continue to fall. There are a number of suggestions as to why this is the case: women may stay in education or the workforce rather than have multiple children, for instance, and many people across the world now have much greater access to contraception. But many adults are also explicitly deciding not to have children, instead choosing to be “childfree”. The childfree movement has grown rapidly over the last few years: the ‘r/Childfree’ subreddit has over 1.4 million subscribers, whilst media coverage has proliferated in the UK and US. But are the childfree missing out on the joys that come from parenthood? According to a new study published in PLOS One, that isn’t the case: childfree adults are just as satisfied with their lives as parents. Participants, 1000 adults from Michigan in the United States, were either parents, childless (had no children but wanted them) or childfree (had no children and didn’t want them). They completed several scales, including measures of life satisfaction and of the Big Five personality traits, before rating on a scale from 0 to 100 how cold or warm they felt towards both women and men who do not ever want to have biological or adopted children. Finally, the team also collected demographic data, including information on participants’ race, gender, education, age, ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Babies Social Source Type: blogs