Americans' Desire for Large Families Hits 50-Year High

submitted by MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee from ifstudies.org

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[–]sdl5 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Interestingly, what this reflects are a two pronged shift:

White middle America younger adults, many from rural to small town to very small cities and suburbia, greatly desire to settle down and make an old school childrearing marriage structure with nearby family work. This removes the daycare cheaper than wife's pay math from the equation, something dead in the general public's mind since the 70s.

Immigrant cultures are almost all powerfully geared towards large trad families- most for up to 3 generations Stateside- and our burgeoning Latino citizens have always strongly tilted trad and lots of kids. No matter what the media and uni propaganda push as their "new" views, Latinx ain't real.

[–]Super_Soviet_Gundam 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If you got the jab, good luck with that.

[–]Maniak🥃😾 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

The desire for larger families is back in vogue in America. But will that wish be fulfilled?

No, because all the money needed for this has been stolen by the owner class.

Just 2% of Americans favor having no children.

Hey, at least the percentage of rational people isn't zero \o/ :)

On average, Americans' ideal number of children is 2.7

Where do you volunteer for cutting up one tenth of three kids to get to that number? Sounds lke fun.

There’s a clear mismatch between Americans' desire for children and the number of children a woman has before the end of her fertile years. While the desire for larger families is increasing, birth rates are on a downward trend.

Of course they are. See first and main point above.

Today, we have a similar trend with the rise of anti-natalism where its nihilistic supporters believe the world is too sad a place to bring children into, along with climate change “doomerism.”

Ah, some bias peering through here. If you're not a fan of kids, you're a nihilist and seeing disaster everywhere? What about just not wanting kids? Is that allowed?

“The decline in fertility is mostly due to declining marriage,” Lyman Stone wrote in this space back in 2018 when Gallup released a similar study. “Women who get married are overwhelmingly more likely to achieve their childbearing ideals and expectations…as I have shown before,” Stone explained. “Thus, any debate about fertility has to begin with the question of why marriage is being delayed.”

For this, I leave you with IFS’s own Brad Wilcox and his upcoming book: Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization. While finding love and marriage may not be easy, the growing number of Americans hoping for a larger brood should make it their priority.

And back to the usual crap about marriage being somehow a goal to reach for, inherently good, not to mention the whole "save civilization" shit. Yeah, sure...

Fuck marriage, and babies are shit (quite literally).

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Skipping all the usual edge:

And back to the usual crap about marriage being somehow a goal to reach for, inherently good

The article said nothing at all about the inherent goodness of marriage. It cited data about women's observed behavior.

No, because all the money needed for this has been stolen by the owner class.

Correct, but Hungary has demonstrated that this can be reversed.

[–]Maniak🥃😾 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The article said nothing at all about the inherent goodness of marriage. It cited data about women's observed behavior.

 

ideally a marriage

[...]

The decline in fertility is mostly due to declining marriage

[...]

any debate about fertility has to begin with the question of why marriage is being delayed

[...]

I leave you with IFS’s own Brad Wilcox and his upcoming book: Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization.

While finding love and marriage may not be easy, the growing number of Americans hoping for a larger brood should make it their priority

I don't know, maybe we're not reading the same words? :)

Up to the last part of the article, it's all about data. Then after taking a paragraph to shit on those who dare not to give a fuck about kids (also the only part of the article with any mention of the economy), it becomes a repeating mantra of 'marriage marriage marriage'.

If the article stopped with the "So, what’s going on here?" paragraph, you'd have a point. But it doesn't, and everything that follows is complete shit. Should have stuck with the data.

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

ideally a marriage

Well, the full sentence is:

Women are more likely to want to be in a committed relationship, ideally a marriage, before having children.

We're reading the same words, but apparently we're interpreting them differently. I didn't read this as a statement about a moral ideal. I read it as "women prefer X and they prefer X in form Y before Z." That's backed up the article linked in the second to last paragraph.

The decline in fertility is mostly due to declining marriage

any debate about fertility has to begin with the question of why marriage is being delayed

These are once again points about the data. Fertility and marriage are demonstrably linked.

the growing number of Americans hoping for a larger brood should make it their priority

If you want a "larger brood," then you should make marriage a priority. Yet again, not a statement about morality, but observed behavior. As for "save civilization," if everyone adopted your idea of rationality civilization would cease to exist, along with the species, so I don't see that as a normative statement either. Just fact.

[–]Maniak🥃😾 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We're reading the same words, but apparently we're interpreting them differently.

That seems to be the main thing yes :)

As far as the data itself goes, I have nothing to add that /u/3andfro hasn't already covered.

However this:

Fertility and marriage are demonstrably linked.

and this:

If you want a "larger brood," then you should make marriage a priority.

Are not statements I'd buy into, without being already biased towards marriage.

Marriage is a social construct, fertility is biological (and if there's a focus on fertility, maybe there should be some mention of the still unknown effects of the experiment that's just been done on millions upon millions of women of childbearing age), wanting kids (and how many) is a mix of biology and culture, being able to have kids is a mix of biology and economy.

There may be data correlation between marriage and the rest, but there's no logical reasoning linking one to any of the other, without the intervention of some other social/cultural pressure.

You don't need marriage to have relationship, or to have kids, or to want kids. It's entirely irrelevant to the supposed point of the article (wanting large families) and isn't mentioned even once anywhere in the "data-based" part of the article.

Then suddenly, it's everywhere.

To me, this looks very similar to the hordes of 'analysis' articles that have been pumped out during the pandemic, starting from a desired conclusion and working backwards to present the data then switch into the predetermined framing, as if the data part was evidence of the conclusion.

And that is sending my bullshit-o-meter flying.

The entire last sentence summarizes everything that's wrong with this conclusion:

While finding love and marriage may not be easy, the growing number of Americans hoping for a larger brood should make it their priority.

  • you don't need love to procreate

  • marriage has nothing to do with either procreation or love (if anything there's an unlimited amount of examples of marriage being a great way to destroy the whole love thing)

  • those data points are a long way away from being enough to say that if you want a 'larger brood' then you should prioritize this. This is taking the 'observed behavior' you're mentioning and stick a big personal bias on top of it as if one was tied to the other.

As for "save civilization," if everyone adopted your idea of rationality civilization would cease to exist, along with the species, so I don't see that as a normative statement either. Just fact.

And the issue with this would be...? :)

Besides, I'm not saying "nobody should ever have kids, ever". Survival of the species is one thing. One thing that has is purely biological and has no ties whatsoever to any kind of social construct or chemical reaction, though those can be used to facilitate things.

I'm saying that the jump from "survival of the species through procreation" and "love and marriage" is a jump that you cannot make without a preexisting bias towards that conclusion, which this author obviously has.

As /u/3andfro already mentioned, you just have to look around to see how frail this supposed link is.

[–]3andfro 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Consider the source. About the publisher of the article:

The mission of the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) is to strengthen marriage and family life, and advance the well-being of children through research and public education. Known for its objective and impeccably researched studies that attract attention and respect from all across the ideological spectrum,

From this article:

“The decline in fertility is mostly due to declining marriage,” Lyman Stone wrote in this space back in 2018 when Gallup released a similar study. “Women who get married are overwhelmingly more likely to achieve their childbearing ideals and expectations…as I have shown before,” Stone explained. “Thus, any debate about fertility has to begin with the question of why marriage is being delayed.”

For this, I leave you with IFS’s own Brad Wilcox and his upcoming book: Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization. While finding love and marriage may not be easy, the growing number of Americans hoping for a larger brood should make it their priority.

I could find no info about the survey size or methodology.

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Consider the source.

Gallup?

I could find no info about the survey size or methodology.

It's at the bottom of the page linked in the article, as is a pdf of all questions and responses.

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 1-22 and July 3-27, 2023, with a random sample of 2,028 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

[–]3andfro 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I meant the source of the article about the survey.

Thanks, I missed the link to survey details. Small sample size generalized to the US population. I still question the CI.

[–]sdl5 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Megan is even understating how big a poll number that really is- it is extremely common for sub 500 respondents to be used, and statisticians will consider that valid to reach solid population-wide conclusions.

So 4x times that is a BIG poll pool...

[–]3andfro 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

true

My raised eyebrows are not at Gallup, which maintains a solid rep, but at the confidence interval only because of the discordance of the findings with what I hear from far-flung friends on behalf of their children and grands. All told, those voices represent a fairly wide swath of the target age range.

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Small sample size

2028 is unexceptionable. Anything over 1400 is, really, as long as the sampling isn't biased; diminishing returns set in pretty fast after that point.

[–]3andfro 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yup, I recall that from bygone days developing survey questions. Those findings don't match what I hear from friends with grandkids and my offspring's friends, representing several socioeconomic and demographic groups.

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Not since the sweeping social changes of the late 1960s have more Americans considered a larger family of three or more children ideal, Gallup revealed today in its latest Social Series survey on the ideal number of children. While the preference for larger families has seen a slow and steady increase over the last several years, new Gallup poll numbers show the highest percentage point in 50 years...

There’s a clear mismatch between Americans' desire for children and the number of children a woman has before the end of her fertile years. While the desire for larger families is increasing, birth rates are on a downward trend.

[–]CaelianPost No Toasties 2 insightful - 4 fun2 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

... a larger family of three or more children ideal...

That's not a large family. This is a large family: Monty Python's Every Sperm Is Sacred