What specific cultural factors have the largest impact on fertility rates and family size?
A recent study from the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute sought to answer that question with more granularity than prior research has undertaken.
The question isn’t just academic. The United States (and much of the world) faces a population collapse of unprecedented scale, with profoundly destabilizing implications, due largely to our failure to reproduce. What’s driving us to have fewer children overall? And in the pockets where we do see larger family sizes, what explains the anomaly?
Economic and material factors certainly influence family sizes, but the catalysts exist at a deeper layer than economics alone. “[T]here is good reason to believe that there is much more to the story [than financial considerations alone]. Clearly, culture matters,” the study’s authors write. “The differences in birth rates between various groups of people are not simply a function of differences in child care affordability or household incomes and parental opportunity costs; they are at least partly a function of differences in cultural norms and values—and those norms and values may be changing.”
Understanding the intangible factors and dynamics affecting family sizes may help us address the U.S. fertility crisis. Maybe it’s not too late to steer the train of American society away from the population cliff – or at least soften the crash landing.
The study, which was based on survey data from 10,000 people in the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries, arrived at a number of notable findings. One of the central truths revealed is that support (or lack thereof) from parents, peers, and popular figures has a significant impact on how many children a couple chooses to have.
Those living in pro-child circles were significantly more likely to want and have more kids. In the survey data, belief that one’s friends would welcome the news of a new baby was correlated with a 10% increase in hoped-for family size, and a 20% boost to the likelihood of wanting to have another child. (Overall, religious people reported having more supportive friends when it came to growing family sizes.) Similarly, parental enthusiasm for more children was associated with 11% increase in desired number of children and a 30% increase in likelihood of planning to have another child.
But even outside a couple’s immediate social circle, the opinions and beliefs of others can affect fertility rates. Admiring a celebrity with a family larger than one’s own was correlated with a 14% jump in the likelihood of wanting another child. Historically, the fertility rates of cultural elites tend to shape the overall fertility rate of a population. Thus, when public figures with small families become popular, so do smaller family sizes among the population at large.
Interestingly, this particular study did not see a strong impact on fertility from how often religious leaders emphasize family. However, frequent religious participation remained a strong predictor of larger family size. “The most diligent religious attenders not only desire more children but actually have more children—and have a higher likelihood of intending to have more children,” the study notes.
In addition to religious attitudes, one’s overall disposition toward life and the future seem to have an impact on family size. Optimism about the future, along with a healthy dose of risk-taking, were associated with a study respondent having higher numbers of children and an intention to have children. Conversely, anxiety, pessimism, and “safety-ism” may be connected to lower birth rates.
Unsurprisingly, the belief that children are the greatest joy and that they constitute the future of society is positively correlated with intent to have a child – though the belief that people have a moral obligation to reproduce is not.
One important factor that the study determined does not impact fertility rates is division of household labor. Some have theorized that an unequal distribution of household labor may contribute to lower birth rates, but this study found that neither the actual division of labor nor perceptions about the fairness of this division had a significant impact on fertility beliefs or goals.
If we wish to raise our nation’s birth rates – and we must – tax breaks and daycares aren’t enough. We must transform social norms and expectations at the family and communal level, as well as on the national celebrity stage. People need to feel supported. Communities, friends, and parents must actively encourage couples to have children and provide tangible support when they do. And pro-family public figures must be vocal about the gift of family.
This, of course, is all easier said than done. But this study provides valuable insight for formulating strategies to promote family life in America. It’s clear from the data that social environment is as important – if not more so – as economic conditions.
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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News.
Image credit: Instagram/milliebobbybrown
