The Huffington Post’s Laura Stepp did a piece about a Guttmacher Institute survey of 1,800 18-29-year-olds, that showed 53 percent of men and 52 percent of women said that “if circumstances allowed it, they would love to have a baby right now.” Two-thirds of those over 25 gave this answer. The study also showed that…… more than a third of the men and almost half of the women they weren’t using contraception regularly.
One of my questions is — what do “circumstances” mean to them, e.g., they are married, they are emotionally and financially ready, they are ready to trade in the life they have now for a new one?
Having interviewed hundreds of people from their 20 to 70s on the decision to become parents or not, I’ve found that those that don’t end up secretly regretting their decision to have children are those who thought hard and seriously about the choice before they made it…and they used contraception until they know they are ready! The research finding that so many of men and women in the study do not use contraception regularly is disturbing. Talk about rolling the dice and setting it up to let life happen to them–that to me implies a level of maturity that is not ready for parenthood~
20 somethings out there — does this study ring true for you?
