Many people living in cities are opting to have no children — to be “child-free” as urban parlance has it — and globally the average number of newborns is dropping.
The trend is especially apparent in developed countries. The Lancet in March published an article headed “Dramatic declines in global fertility rates set to transform global population patterns by 2100”. The global total fertility rate “has more than halved over the past 70 years, from around five children for each female in 1950 to 2.2 children in 2021 — with over half of all countries and territories (110 of 204) below the population replacement level of 2.1 births per female as of 2021”, it says.
According the CIA’s World Fact Book, countries such as Taiwan, with a total fertility rate of 1.09, and South Korea (1.11) recorded the lowest annual birth rates in 2023. SA clocked in at 2.31 and the US at 1.84.
Opting to have fewer children, or not to have any at all, is a worldwide trend that is often put down to women choosing to pursue a career rather than be stay-at-home moms, the demands of modern-day jobs, and the lack of quality and affordable childcare.
Referring to the situation in the US, Amy Blackstone, a sociologist at the University of Maine and author of Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence, says the lack of family-friendly policies is one explanation behind the declining birth rate in recent years. The pandemic may also have made adults realise how taxing parenthood can be, as many had to maintain demanding jobs while helping their children learn remotely.
When I spoke to childless individuals and couples, they cited reasons ranging from ideological to economic, medical, personal and just plain logical and practical. Yet the issue is still a sensitive one and most of the people I interviewed for this feature requested to be quoted anonymously.
Published poet and author Arja Salafranca wasn’t one of those. Content now in her 50s with her life choice to remain child-free, she says that as the only child of a divorced single mother, she thought deeply about whether to have children even as a youngster. Money was scarce, and their small family unit had to depend financially on her maternal grandparents. “I knew as a young child that I didn’t want children. ‘Children tie you down,’ my mother said. As a result I saw having children as having a burden.”
Growing up in Johannesburg, affordable day care was an issue: her mother finished work at 6pm so she was often left alone from 4pm to 6pm from as young as eight. “Or I could spend the afternoon in the shops my mother worked in. I’d spend time reading in the back room of the pharmacy where my mother worked.”
She had no siblings, and her cousins were all overseas.
She adds: “I don’t want children as I want to be free. I feel sorry for people with kids: they’re tied down. But I wish I had nephews or nieces.”
Her mother’s experience left a deep impression: “Definitely my mom’s views and tiredness influenced me. She always said: ‘Don’t rely on a man’. I had a lousy childhood and I wouldn’t knowingly inflict childhood on anyone.”
Salafranca says she is content that she followed her passion to write, and wonders if she could have her chosen lifestyle if she had opted to have children. On the question of parents, and especially women, having to shelve their ambitions to raise children, she says: “I don’t understand sacrificing your life for a child.”
The working world has changed radically over the years to better accommodate women. However, as they are still the ones mainly tasked with child-rearing, the lack of readily available, reliable and quality day care, together with an erosion of familial support systems, has left many working women thinking twice about having children, or at least about the number.
A Johannesburg couple in their 40s, Jake and Susan* thought the issue through and discussed it before their marriage. Jake says: “I remember in my 20s just assuming that I would have kids someday, but not necessarily feeling overwhelmingly drawn to the idea. It just felt like what people did by default. It was only when really examining the idea later that I realised it wasn’t for me.”
When they were in their 30s, it was one of the questions he and his wife-to-be needed to decide. “We were heading towards getting engaged, so the final important thing we had to discuss was whether we wanted to have kids. Fortunately, we were both of the same mind that we didn’t want to be parents,” says Jake.
The teacher and professional musician says: “There’s a large number of reasons for that decision, but probably the primary one is that I didn’t (and still don’t) feel drawn to being a parent. I do like children and I work with children, and I like my friends’ kids, and I like being an uncle, but being a parent doesn’t appeal.”
If their parents thought they may one day change their mind, this was not to be. “My view has not changed, and it’s been nearly a decade since I made that decision. If anything, it’s just been further reinforced. We got married in 2016, and I had a vasectomy in 2017.”
Jake says there are many benefits: “We have a lot more flexibility in terms of lifestyle. We have, for example, been able to travel far more spontaneously than if we had kids. There are also huge financial advantages: kids are so expensive that we would both have to be working far harder than we do to support them.”
The issue is one of those that sparked a play called Your Perfect Life, written by Erika Marais and Faeron Wheeler, and now on at Sandton’s Theatre on the Square. In it, old schoolmates Karlien and Caitlin discuss the different routes they’ve chosen in life, the former becoming a wife and mother, and the latter a single careerwoman with no children.
The play is partly autobiographical and was also motivated by that old standby in life: looking at someone else’s life and thinking it must be better.
Marais says: “Both of us realised that we were yearning for something which the other one had in their life. Despite having studied drama at Tukkies, I never had the opportunity to fully pursue my career due to my focus on raising my family. It was only very recently that I have been able to start exploring avenues to build my career. But it did not come without a sense of guilt. Faeron, on the other hand, was very career orientated, but also yearned for something more, and we wanted to explore these issues further.”
Wheeler says about their exploratory conversations: “It struck me again and again that we were on opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to what women are ‘expected to do’ — and these days you’re ‘expected’ to do both [career and parenting]. I’ve often grappled with this notion that women are essentially groomed to marry and procreate from the time we’re small. I also watched my mother go through an amazing journey of self-discovery when I reached my late teens. She decided it was time to figure out who she was — not somebody’s wife and somebody’s mother.”
Wheeler adds that this was a good time to put the production on because “the conversation around expectations on women — having a career and having a family — seems to be highly charged lately. There are a lot more people opting to get married and not have children. There are also a lot more polarising views around the world on what the ‘right’ thing to do is. In 2019, when we wrote the play, I was in a phase of my life where I was seeing many friends having kids and I wondered if I would follow suit or not. I haven’t yet ... and I may never.”
Depending on your immediate circle, you may come in for some criticism over a choice to not have children. Jake, however, has not had to do too much explaining: “There’s been a little scepticism from some people, but nothing too overwhelming. Mostly accepting, I would say. My wife’s parents have two grandkids from her sister, and my parents don’t seem too concerned about having grandkids, which helps.
“There probably is some stigma around it ... because having kids is thought of as being so normal, it’s assumed to be the default. But we have other friends who are child-free, and some family too. My sister, for example, wanted kids a while back but now seems to have moved on from that idea.”
Marais says the pressure to produce the required 2.5 kids is one women could be complicit in: “I do think that women are under enormous pressure to perform in every area of their life. These pressures are not always from society, but also from ourselves. I do wish that we as women would be kinder to ourselves and take better care of our mental health.”
To have or not have a family used to be a family affair. In many societies this may still be the case, as the family unit may have needed children to contribute to the coffers, and for various generations to take on particular tasks. But increasingly today, individuals have more freedom to choose for themselves. Still, people who had planned to become grandparents may be disappointed.
Delia* had hoped to become a grandmother but her two adult children have so far not come to the party. She says: “I suggested to my son that he freeze sperm but he wasn’t interested. They are both so bright and talented, with lots of compassion and empathy. These are good genes to pass on!”
*Not their real names.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.