My DINKWAD (dual income, no kids, with a dog) days are numbered. My wife and I welcomed our first child into the world last month. I am 41. She is 34. We completed college, established our careers, relocated for work, adopted a dog from Glynn County Animal Services, bought a house, cohabitated for years, and got married before bringing a child into the world. Our story reflects broader shifts in American society as more people delay having children or forego kids altogether.
My own parents were 34 and 32 at the time of my birth, older parents for the eighties. I was an only child. My father was a musician. My mother was an artist. My mother stayed at home with me until I could enroll in kindergarten. Getting by on one income, we spent years without stable housing. When my mother went back to work, we had several years of financial stability. My parents divorced when I was in middle school, resulting in some challenging times for all of us.
We are all shaped by our upbringing. My parents’ creative careers and pursuits inspired me to pursue a Ph.D. My upbringing also shaped my own attitudes toward family. I was cautious about getting married and I delayed starting a family until I was established professionally and financially. I am now a 41-year-old father of a newborn. Where did the years go?
Millennials and Gen Z are often vilified as self-indulgent generations who prioritize travel, leisure, videogaming, their pets, eating out, and career advancement over marriage and children. This is a reductive perspective. There are institutional shifts that have led people to delay having kids or choose a voluntarily childless lifestyle.
Americans are waiting to have children. The mean age at first birth for mothers in the U.S. was 27.5 in 2023, up from 21.4 in 1970. The mean age at birth for all mothers in the U.S. was 29.6 in 2023, according to recent data from the National Vital Statistics System.
Americans delay having children for many reasons, according to a growing body of empirical research on the topic. A steady relationship, financial security, and a stable home are understood to be prerequisites for many prospective parents. More and more Americans are foregoing marriage, choosing to live alone, date, or cohabitate. The cost of housing, education, groceries, and essentials makes financial stability and home ownership elusive for many. Others prioritize personal or professional ambitions over marriage and children.
Many Americans are voluntarily childless. A recent Pew Research Center study examined the perspectives of childless adults. Some of the top reasons why Americans forego children are because they didn’t want kids or their partner didn’t want kids, they wanted to focus on other things, they haven’t found the right partner, they have concerns about the state of the world or environment, they can’t afford to raise a child, they don’t really like children, they had negative experiences with their family growing up, medical reasons, or it just never happened. Other factors lead to voluntary childlessness, including the state of the economy, lack of support from family, declining religiosity, anemic parental leave policies, the cost of childcare, and limited financial support/incentives from the government.
Recent data show that the U.S. birth rate is at an all-time low. In 2024, the fertility rate is 1.6 births per woman. This is down from 2.1 kids per woman in 2006, which is the level that is required to sustain a nation’s population with no immigration and emigration. Half of the world’s nations now have fertility rates below replacement level. Government programs have not been successful at increasing birth rates. Pronatalist policies offer insufficient incentives that do not address the institutional and personal factors that underlie fertility rates.
Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is chair of the Department of Social Sciences and associate professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia. He is an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.
Reg Murphy Center