• There were 487 respondents who learned of the survey on SurveyMonkey through various channels on the internet
• 80% were female, and 80% were between the ages of 21-39
• 73% were from the United States
• 75% have parents who adhere to some type of Christian religion
• 70% report not holding any religious beliefs; 29% identify as religious
• 79% report that their religious upbringing did not influence their decision not to have children

In her conclusion, Nicole indicates that the survey numbers indicate that “there is a positive relationship between individuals who are childfree by choice and absence of religious belief, and that atheists within the childfree community significantly outnumber atheists in the general population, at least in Australia and the United States.”

Kudos to Nicole for gathering data on the childfree and religion;  there has been a dire need for research in this area. Previous research has tended to show that those who choose not to have children are not particularly religious, and this survey seems to concur with this thinking.  Nicole takes it further and interestingly finds that most respondents don’t see their religious upbringing as influencing their childfree status.

Two clarifying points occur to me when reading her results:

1. Instead of childfree individuals in general, the survey numbers seem to indicate more specifically that there is a positive relationship between a certain slice of the childfree population–childfree women ages 21-39 in the United States with access to the internet, and absence of religious belief.

2.  The question, “Do you currently hold any religious beliefs?” does not automatically mean respondents would identify themselves as atheists.  Saying those who “do not belong to any religion” would also not automatically mean they would say they are atheists. I would like to have seen Question 4, “Please state your parents religion.” asked of respondents as well, so that they could self-report on this, and that the choice of  “atheist” instead of “no religion” be used instead on both questions.

This survey brought to mind what I learned about this when interviewing couples for Families of Two.  The age ranges of the couples at the time was between mid-twenties and mid-sixties, and most indicated they did not consider themselves particularly religious but a small minority said they considered themselves atheists.  Many of them did not belong to a church, or did not attend church regularly, but did hold Christian beliefs.

Makes me ponder the hypothesis, that the trend of childfree atheists has increased with Gen X and Y, when you compare to the generation before them. Some do believe there is a rise in atheism in general these days, in part due to the destructive effects we see resulting from fundamentalist religious fanaticism. As Richard Dawkins, says in The God Delusion, religion has consistently been a divisive and oppressive force in the world, and that sure is the case today.

What do you think–are the childfree more likely to be atheist? Or do more march to their own spiritual drum?

While there I saw in the Wall Street Journal some stats on what people think about us reaching the 7 billion person mark. Check it out:

In its sentiment tracker section, it had a “computational analysis of the conversation on social networks” about hitting 7 billion. Based on the analysis of 1,700 posts on twitter and facebook between October 31 and November 4, it listed 4 response categories: Worry, Optimism, Jokes, and Astonishment.

In what section were the most responses?  Pleased to say the “Worry” category. And one of the highlighted comment areas gave me optimistic pause, “It’s time to stop having kids.”

When it comes to trying to ensure a population that can live with the earth’s finite resources, do we need to curb consumption? Yes.  Work to have better access to birth control and family planning globally? Yes.  Some experts seem to think if we do either of these things, it will solve the problem. To date, I land with World Population Balance–To become sustainable with Earth’s resources, these things are important, but ”large declines in human numbers” will also be necessary.

I also saw a not so unrelated article to what was in the WSJ. In the November 4 edition of USA Today, Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today had a short column titled, “Adoption Month is time to think of kids.”   In a time when we need to reduce the number of births, doing more to promote adoption is a great thing.  Neuharth touts his positive experience with adoption, but still paints it as an option if you can’t have your own biological child.

In Adoption Month I sure would like to see more in the media promoting adoption, not as the last option but as the first option when you are a wanna be parent.  I hear there are problems with the adoption process, but also read that these problems are often myths. I am no expert in this area, but it seems that if there are problems with the adoption process, now is the time to get about fixing them, not just for the kids’, adoptive parents’ sake, but the world’s sake.

In what category would you have put yourself in the Sentiment Tracker analysis-Worry, Optimism, Joke, or Astonishment? What would your comment have been, if yours was one of the 1,700?

What are your thoughts on how to change mindsets on adoption?

Here are some of the higher percentage results for the survey respondents without children:

Almost 50% of those without children said they “would rather get on the property ladder” — that is, be able to buy property e.g., their home.

Almost 50% of those without children think having a child would make them poorer, and over 50% of childless say they couldn’t afford a baby even if they wanted one.

50% of women over 30 without children “look at stay-at-home mothers and think it will be difficult for them (the moms) to get back on the career ladder.”

44% of those without children said they feel sorry for working mums struggling to have it all.

Other numbers related to respondents without children include:

1 in 3 childless women said they don’t ever want to become a mother.

28% would rather have a $100,000 (in British pds) salary than be a mother.

4 in 10 say they aren’t ready to give up their lifestyle.

26% admit they are fearful of the effect motherhood would have on their career.

In the Grazia article, the ages of the respondent childless women aren’t always clear. However when it comes to 20 somethings, Grazia editor-in-chief Jane Bruton says, “It’s clear from our survey ‘having a baby’ has just dropped off the to-do list” for the 20 something generation.

Half of the childless respondents look at moms and think their career will be affected, and about 1 in 5 childless respondents said that they fear motherhood would affect their career. To this, Bruton concludes that, “It’s time we started looking at the support systems out there for women so the new generation don’t feel pushed into making a choice between motherhood and a career.”

While economic, lifestyle and work life factors seem to be at play with the childless respondents to this survey, I am not convinced that making more support systems available to women would make more childless women than not change their minds about not having children.

These and other survey numbers don’t boil down to the only interpretation being women having to make a choice between motherhood and a career. While good in its intent, and smart media when it comes to survey result release, Bruton’s conclusions limitedly fall back on the myth that the biggest reason women don’t have kids is because they are forced to choose, and their career is more important.

As the childfree, know, there are so many more reasons women don’t want kids than this! Write in yours….

Journalist and novelist Po Bronson’s divorce factoid sheet,  which is often quoted. One startling “fact” based on divorce research that is often quoted is, ”the <divorce> rate for “childless” couples was almost double the rate for families with children.”  The problem–the research is from 1950.

The often quoted sources out there also do not point to causation–the research is not saying that having kids ”causes” divorce. Bronson’s  factoid sheet does source reasons people cite, however, but again it’s dated, and comes from studies in the early 80s.  They are still worth a look, as many capture the themes of more recent findings:

Top reasons why American women said they’d gotten divorced:

communication problems (69.7%)

unhappiness (59.9%)

incompatible with spouse (56.4%)

emotional abuse (55%)

financial problems (32.9%)

sexual problems (32.1%)

spouse’s alcohol abuse (30%)

spousal infidelity (25.2%)

physical abuse (21.7%)

Top reasons why American men said they’d gotten divorced

communication problems (59%)

incompatible with spouse (44.7%)

unhappiness (46.9%)

emotional abuse (24.7%)

financial problems (28.7%)

sexual problems (30.2%)

Do you see anything like “We don’t have kids” on these lists? You don’t see it in the list of top reasons on more recent lists either. What is? Try history of parental divorce, communication issues, lack of conflict management skills, and sex & intimacy issues.

We also see a lot from Anneli Rufus, an author and journalist, who has a longer list of 20 factors purportedly based on recent divorce data. Two of the 20 have to do with a “childless” marriage.  One is if the couple does not agree on having kids. Another is, “The absence of children leads to loneliness, and at least 66% of divorced couples in the U.S. are childless.”

Like other sources, this factor (which I have yet to find the research source for–let us know if you do), hugely lacks delineation between childfree and child “less,” and all that the latter can mean. Is the couple “lonely” because they want children and have not been able to have them? Is not being able to have them the big issue in the relationship? Or were they planning to have children but are technically child “less” because they had not had kids yet before they split? Or has one person changed his/her mind about kids? Or had they waited to bring the topic up seriously until they were married and found out they were in fact not on the same page? All of these factors could explain their unhappy child “less” marital state.

The childfree are not in this group, but the stats just lump us all together anyway.  Now, it can be true that if the couple wants the marriage to end, it can be even more complicated when there are children in the equation.  That does not mean it is always easier for those without children; divorce is never easy, kids or not.

My take-the likelihood of split up doesn’t boil down to whether you have kids or not–it’s all too often about how couples with or without children did not deal with their own relationship issues—they let them go too long to where they became unrecoverable. All marriages, with or without kids, are work and need tending, including dealing wth challenging issues.

Even many parents admit that the children can serve as a big distraction from dealing with problems in their marital relationship. With no kids, if you veer from dealing with the tough stuff, you can always find other kinds of distractions to go to e.g., work, serious hobbies, attending to other or aging family.

We see lots of couples with kids who may stay married longer but are not happy–they stay together for the kids, and when they become empty nesters, face that it’s too late to resolve issues that have not been dealt with for too long. With or without kids, it comes down to how long you go knowing there are issues and choose not to deal with them. And every couple, with or without kids, has their point of no return.

What do married childfree tell me? Many say they don’t let stuff fester. Relationship is #1. Others might let distractions allow them to avoid really dealing with things for awhile, but it reaches a point where things just have to be dealt with. For parents it can be harder, because the raising of children can be such a powerful distraction away from their relationship.

But there’s nothing like really good research. I say let’s stop drawing conclusions from old data, and data that is far from looking at the whole picture when it comes to couples who split and have no kids.  Until we see research comparing reasons for divorce with parents, couples who wanted children but ended up without them, couples who disagreed about having children, and those who were aligned about not wanting them, the answer to who is more likely to divorce is - “it’s unclear; more study required.”

What do you think?

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