I have some concerns about the validity of these charts. The respondents were asked, "What is the ideal number of children for a family to have?", which to me is different from "How many children do you want?" The former is very ambiguous while the latter is significantly more personal. I guess I just have an issue with them using the title "Most Americans Want Two or Three Children".

I'm not sure I would interpret the numbers in that second chart as saying anything about people wanting to remain childless or have only one child. I, for instance, don't want to have any children, but would probably answer the question "What is the ideal number of children for a family to have?" as "Two" (perhaps because that was the size of the family I grew up in).

Just wanted to point out that the survey isn't about how many children people *want*...

Hmm, this is interesting & gets me thinking about the stigma of being an only child (which I happen to be). Looks like being an only has never been a popular choice, I wonder why?

Wow, I'm having trouble processing the idea that only 3% of Americans want no children. I would have estimated the figure at 20-25%, at least.

Maybe the stats are different in Canada, but I don't perceive myself to be unusual in wanting no children, ever. My only sibling, as well as a number of friends/colleagues, have expressed the same sentiments.

As it was taught to me, the declining number of desired children has to do with our shift from an agrarian society to a post-industrial one, which has changed not only our definitions of success but the function of the american family.

Children are an asset to the poor and the agrarian because they produce labor. They may provide income and even after they are grown they continue to contribute to the family with income and support for relatives and aging parents. Contrast this to the modern american family, whose main function is not subsistence but consumerism. In this context, children are a costly investment. They produce no labor and grow up to leave their families. They have to be constantly bombarded with purchases that are considered necessities, like fashionable clothing, toys, quality medical care, education, and life opportunities like camp and lessons. Children are now so tied up with money that we can't imagine a context in which poor people would consider children an economic advantage, though they remain so for many.

I'd like to look at how this chart coincides with things like rising standards of living and education, in addition to women's liberation and contraception. (Which is also interesting.)

As a parent of an only child, I'd like to comment on why we choose to have a singleton.

1. Job insecurity/career/flexibility
2. Lack of family support (we were living far away from family)
3. Ability to obtain and use birth control (obviously key)

In our group of friends (all early to mid-40s professionals), we are not alone. Fifty per cent of us have chosen to have one child.

The stigma of being or having a singleton is still around. In fact, some people are quite rude about it. I think this reflects the notion above that the ideal family has two children (though sometimes I think it also reflects the person's insecurities about their own choices).

A minor point, but those making the choice prefer the term child-free to childless.

I personally find it puzzling that more people don;t see three as the ideal family. Like most of you, I come from a subculture where people postpose having children or don't have children or at most one or two. However, I work in a field - homebirth midwifery - where most of my clients have many kids. Plenty of those clients are from religious subcultures, but many are not. I was sort of under the impression that "three was the new two", even for professional, educated families.

I have two, was an only child, and after lots of exposure to larger families, it seems obvious to me that three or even four is "more ideal" than two. I would have more if I had more time and energy.

I'm saddened but not surprised that more people don't say that the ideal number of new humans on the planet should be zero. I'm not surprised because people give themselves so many excuses to have children. Most of those excuses are covered in the FAQs on this site.

“I’d love to hear ideas as to why this change happened at that moment in history.”

I like your idea of the contraceptive pill; that seems among the more reasonable explanations. I also suspect that another key factor was simply the change in societal attitudes as a result of the aging “baby boomer” generation, who would have begun appearing as respondents in these surveys beginning in the early 1970s . The researchers suggest there are important differences “by age, education and religiosity” (page 18) in current attitudes towards this question. I suspect this has been the case for some time, and that the demographic changes ushered in with the “baby boomer” generation can also partially account for the dramatic change in the attitudes on the ideal number of children.

Also, the graph is a little misleading since the survey data are not in eight year intervals as the graph might suggest. The data (on page 28 of the report) show that the survey years are placed in irregular intervals. The large jump in the number of respondents indicating two children occurs between the December 1967 survey and the January 1973 survey, a five year interval. Some intervals between surveys are only 1 year, while most seem to be either 2 or 3 years. While that won’t account for the dramatic change in respondent attitudes, it is something to consider when viewing the data.

In the second graph, "Adequate financial resources" seems out of place. It's a good thing to wait for, but not a reason in itself.

I'm sure birth control played big role but this also when women began entering the work force in larger numbers. Most people just don't have the resources to handle more than two and work.

I have twins, a boy and a girl. It's been surprising to me that so many people will say "Oh, good, one of each!" to that information, as if I was trying to collect the whole set or something. Would these not-thinking-too-hard people think that a family of two girls or two boys would be insufficient in some way, or was this meaningless social noise?

Therefore I am wondering if sex parity enters into people's calculations of how many kids are ideal -- that if the first two come up the same sex, the third might be the other? But that's a slippery slope indeed.

(The *most* amusing responses have been "are they identical?" proving that the speaker has forgotten his/her high school biology.)

I think the main factor for "how many babies is it good to have" is infant mortality. When infant mortality falls in a country the birth rate generally falls a generation or two later; the key to persuading people-as-a-large-group that a small number of children is better is to persuade them that there is a good chance that all of the children they do have will grow up to adulthood.

Of course modern family planning has made it much easier to make "I want 2 children" a reality, and that's a good thing. But if your 2 children were likely to both die young many people would be much more likely to say "well, I'll have 10 babies then" regardless of whether they could access family planning that would enable them to have only 2.

Changes in lifestyles, such that large numbers of children helping you run your farm and then caring for you in your old age are no longer a necessity for a reasonable quality of life have likely decreased the "number of grown up children I think would be ideal to have" as well.

Personally I think the ideal fertility rate is less than replacement, because I think there are too many people and a growing population is unsustainable. But I don't conclude from that that the ideal family size is 1 child, I don't really have an opinion on that.

Were there any step changes child mortality near that time, perhaps due to vaccines? If significantly more children were growing to adulthood, that could affect the expected number of children.

It seems strange that anyone would draw any kind of meaning out of the last question, "Why Do Parents Decide to Have Children?" It seems to me that most people selecting "Joy of Children" are attempting to fit their reasons for having children into a box on a survey: the very nature of the question invites a response that lacks nuance. It is a hamfisted attempt to apply academic rigor to a messy situation, the results of which cannot be seriously regarded by academics such as yourselves.