Pew Research Center reports:

The U.S. fertility rate reached a historic low in 2023, with a growing share of women ages 25 to 44 having never given birth.

And the share of U.S. adults younger than 50 without children who say they are unlikely to ever have kids rose 10 percentage points between 2018 and 2023 (from 37% to 47%), according to a Pew Research Center survey.

In this report, we explore the experiences of two groups of U.S. adults:

• Those ages 50 and older who don’t have children
• Those younger than 50 who don’t have children and say they are unlikely to in the future

About four-in-ten of those in the older group (38%) say there was a time when they wanted to have children. A smaller but sizable share (32%) say they never wanted children, and 25% say they weren’t sure one way or the other. Few say they frequently felt pressure to have children from family, friends or society in general.

Reasons for not having children – or being unlikely to ever have them – differ between the older and younger groups. The top response for those ages 50 and older is that it just didn’t happen. Meanwhile, those in the younger group are most likely to say they just don’t want to have kids. Women younger than 50 are especially likely to say they just don’t want to have children (64% vs. 50% of men in this group). [Continue reading…]

CNN reports:

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance has a history of making disparaging remarks toward people without children, a CNN KFile review of his comments shows, including fundraising off his now-infamous “childless cat lady” remarks in a series of emails that called Democratic leaders “childless sociopaths” who “don’t have a direct stake in this country.”

In November 2020, Vance said on a conservative podcast that childless Americans, especially those in the country’s “leadership class,” were “more sociopathic” than those with children and made the country “less mentally stable.” Vance added that the “most deranged” and “most psychotic” commentators on Twitter – now known as X – were typically childless.

In August 2021, one month after launching his candidacy for the Senate, Vance’s campaign sent fundraising emails referring to the “radical childless leaders in this country” following his appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” where he made comments deriding “childless cat ladies” and leaders running the country. The comments sparked a widespread backlash against Vance when they resurfaced on social media following his nomination to the Republican presidential ticket. [Continue reading…]