New study indicates finances are putting some adults off having children

The survey from the Pew Research Center says child care costs and student debt are among the factors dissuading potential parents.

We’ve known for a while now that fewer adults are having kids. The fertility rate hit a historic low last year. And a new survey from the Pew Research Center finds that finances are becoming a bigger factor in people’s decisions about whether to become parents.

Among adults under 50 who say they’re unlikely to have kids, 36% say a major reason is that they can’t afford them. That’s compared to just 12% of adults over 50 who don’t have kids.

People don’t have kids for all sorts of reasons: They don’t want to, they aren’t able to, they don’t meet a partner in time. Increasingly, a lot of younger people are also weighing the cost, according to Juliana Horowitz at Pew Research.

“Younger adults are more likely to have college debt than their parents’ generation. They’re also more likely to live in their parents’ home,” she said. “And so there are some financial circumstances that might be leading them to say that — at least right now — they can’t afford to raise a child.”

It’s not surprising that so many younger people are feeling that way these days, per Elyssa Schmier at the advocacy group MomsRising.

“If you think about just the first six years of a child’s life, that is so expensive,” she said.

The cost of diapers alone was shocking to Schmier when she first had a kid. Then, of course, there’s child care, which can be as much or more than rent or a mortgage.

And there’s just not much support for parents, Schmier added — financial or otherwise.

“If we had policies in this country, investments in things like paid leave, child care, full expansion of the Child Tax Credit, housing that was affordable, I think a lot of the concerns would be subdued,” she said.

And if those concerns were subdued, more people just might choose to have kids.