Due to issues like population growth and climate change, some Australian women are defying convention and opting not to become pregnant, while others just “don’t want to.”
Australia’s birth rate has been declining steadily since the 1960s, but especially in the last 10 years as more professional and independent women choose not to have children.
According to the Australia Bureau of Statistics, Australian women had 1.98 children on average in 2008, but by 2021, that number had dropped to a historic low of only 1.58.
Officials claim that the epidemic and fewer registrations are to blame for that amount, but Australians contend that far more significant factors are at play.
Despite talking about having kids, Rachael Schnurr, 32, and her husband Dan, 35, “lean farther and further away from it every year.”
Initially, having a large biological family was the intention, but circumstances have changed, she told Daily Mail Australia.
It was difficult to think about it any other way once we began to consider how absurd it is to keep reproducing on this overcrowded world.
Rachael Schnurr, 32, said she and her husband Dan, 35, (pictured together) have discussed having children but ‘lean further and further away from it every year’
Other key issues that have an influence on Australian women’s willingness to have children include the growing cost of living, inflation, and housing costs.
An important concern is climate change, which deters individuals from having children by increasing severe weather occurrences and ocean temperatures.
28-year-old Felicity Lochhead expressed worry about how people are affecting the environment and expressed reluctance to bring a kid into the increasingly perilous scenario.
‘I’m at the stage of my life when everyone is asking when we are going to have children,’ she said.
Ms Lochhead and her husband Hayden, 30, live in Illawarra, south of Sydney. The couple said they were trying to balance their desire to start a family with the impacts of global warming.
‘I am constantly learning about and focused on the damage we have done and continue to do. It is depressing,’ she said.
‘I am very, very apprehensive to have children, even though I feel like I could be a great mother… I don’t know what to do.’
Felicity Lochhead, 28, said she was concerned about the effects humans are causing on the planet and was hesitant to bring a child into the increasingly dire situation
Maria, a TikTok star from Sydney, considered everything from possibly not liking her kids to an ‘apocalypse’ and the expense of raising a family in a video highlighting her lack of desire to have kids.
‘Reasons I will not be having children. Number one, and most importantly, I don’t want to,’ she said in the clip.
‘Number two, I don’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want my body to change, my organs are going to move, there’s going to be something stuck in there for nine months.
‘Scary things can happen to women during pregnancy – you can lose your hair, you can lose your teeth. I don’t want to go through that.’
‘Number three, what if I don’t like them? Kids are going to grow up, and have their own thoughts and opinions,’ she said.
‘What if they’re really annoying and I actually hate my child? What if they become an alpha male with a podcast? What do I do then?’
The fourth reason was the possibility of a future ‘apocalypse’ and the stress associated with trying to survive.
‘I always think about the worst things that can happen in the world and I’m already worried I’m going to have to look after myself and my family, I don’t want to add a kid to that list of stress,’ she said.
‘The world is in a bad place. Realistically, we could be left without food in the next 25 years. Do I want to worry about myself and a child? No.’
Maria said she’s satisfied being the ‘fun aunty’ to her sibling’s children rather than having offspring herself.
Sydney TikToker Maria (pictured) revealed the reason why she won’t be having kids. She considered everything from possibly not liking her kids to the ‘apocalypse’
Alicia Young, ab author, told SMH she was more interested in following her career than settling down with kids.
Despite coming from a large Catholic family, where she admitted to having dozens of nieces and nephews, Ms Young knew from an early age ‘motherhood wasn’t for me’.
‘When I think about it, I believe the decision to remain childless comes down to a mix of things. A joyful life meant one in which I could travel extensively and have a journalism career with the flexibility to follow a big news story at a moment’s notice,’ she said.
‘Also, my previous career as a social worker in child protection didn’t help. For seven years I investigated the unbearable cruelty that mothers and fathers – often by people who presented publicly as very loving – had inflicted on their children.
‘You can never guess what’s going on in people’s homes and I knew then that if I did have children, I’d be so over protective that I’d struggle with them having play dates. And you can’t do that to a child!’
The journalist said she and her husband met at an early age and bonded over their shared desire to remain child-less, instead having ambitions to live and travel around the world.
She said becoming a parent is no guarantee you won’t be lonely and that many mother’s had told her they could have had a happy life without motherhood.
Alicia Young, an author, said she was more interested in following her career than settling down with kids
Other women have offered more simple answers, with women’s interest website Refinery 29 asking Aussies why they didn’t want babies – with many saying they simply didn’t want them.
‘I don’t hate kids or anything – I just don’t think they’re for me,’ one woman said.
‘Some people aren’t meant to be parents and that’s OK,’ another woman replied.
Kay, 26, said she thought she could impact the lives of children around her in a different role.
‘I’m happy to be that non-parental adult that kids in my life can come to for advice or to confide in, and we need more of those anyway,’ she told the website.
Another simply said: ‘I’m not willing to give up my identity to be a mother’.
Young American women have also confirmed their plans not to have children, showing that the problem does not just affect Australia.
El Johnson, who is 24 years old, has decided she will not become a parent, but she and her fiancée have not ruled out adoption.
The graduate student who works in legal services in Austin, Texas, has a litany of reasons why she doesn’t want to have children, including the environmental catastrophe and a hereditary illness.
‘I don’t think it’s responsible to bring children into this world,’ Johnson said. ‘There are already kids who need homes. I don’t know what kind of world it’s going to be in 20, 30, 40 years.’
El Johnson (pictured right) said she and her girlfriend don’t want to have children as a result of Roe vs Wade being overturned – but hasn’t ruled out adoption
She’s so sure, in fact, that she’ll soon have her tubes removed. It’s a precautionary decision sealed by the fall of Roe v. Wade and by tight restrictions on abortion services in her state and around the country.
Walter and Kyah King live in suburban Las Vegas. Walter, 29, a sports data scientist, and Kyah, 28, a college career counselor, have been together nearly 10 years, the last four as a married couple. The realization that they didn’t want to have kids came on slowly for both of them.
‘It was in our early 20s when the switch sort of flipped,’ Kyah said. ‘We had moved to California and we were really just starting our adult lives. I think we talked about having three kids at one point. But just with the economy and the state of the world and just thinking about the logistics of bringing children into the world. That’s really when we started to have our doubts.’
Finances are top of mind. Before taxes, the two earn about $235,000AUD combined, with about $120,000 in student loan debt for Kyah and about $7,357 left for Walter. The couple said they wouldn’t be able to buy a house and shoulder the costs of even one child without major sacrifices they’re not willing to make.
But for Kyah, the decision goes well beyond money.
‘I think we would be great parents, but the thought of going into our health system to give birth is really scary. Black women, black mothers, are not valued in the same way that white mothers are,’ said Kyah, who is Black.
When Kyah’s IUD expires, Walter said he’ll consider a vasectomy, a procedure that went on the rise among men under 30 during the pandemic.
Jordan Davidson interviewed more than 300 people for a book out in December titled, ‘So When are You Having Kids?’ The pandemic, she said, led many to delay childbirth among those contemplating children at all.
‘These timelines that people created for themselves of, I want to accomplish X by three years from now, changed. People weren’t necessarily willing to move the goalposts and say, OK, I’m going to forgo these accomplishments and do this differently,’ she said.
‘People still want to travel. They still want to go to graduate school. They still want to meet certain financial benchmarks.’
In New York City, 23-year-old Emily Shapiro, a copywriter for a pharmaceutical ad agency, earns $88,313 a year, lives at home as she saves money and has never wanted children.
‘They’re sticky. I could never imagine picking up a kid that’s covered in ice cream. I’m a bit of a germaphobe. I don’t want to change a diaper. If I did have one, I wouldn’t want them until they’re in, like, sixth grade. I also think the physical Earth isn’t doing so great so it would be unfair,’ she said.
Dannie Lynn Murphy, who helps find software engineers for Google, said she was nearly 17 when she was removed from her home by child protective services due to a pattern of child abuse. Her wife, she said, was similarly raised in a ‘not great’ environment.
‘Both of us at one point would have said yes to kids,’ she said. ‘In my late teenage, early adult years, I saw and understood the appeal and was attracted to the idea of getting to raise someone differently than I was raised. But the practical realities of a child kind of suck.’
Murphy earns about $151,604 a year, with bonuses and equity that can drive that amount up to $441,566. Her wife earns about $88,313 as an attorney. They don’t own their Seattle home.
‘I can’t see myself committing to a mortgage, let alone a child,’ the 28-year-old Murphy said. ‘I think the primary reason is financial. I would prefer to spend that money on traveling versus sinking a half a million dollars into raising a child. Secondarily, there’s now the fear of behaving with our children the way our parents behaved with us.’
Alyssa Persson, 31, was raised in small town South Dakota. Getting married and having children was ingrained in the culture, she said. It wasn’t until after her divorce from her high school sweetheart that she took a step back and asked herself what she actually wanted out of life.
‘Most women where I’m from lose their identities in motherhood,’ said Persson, who now lives in St. Louis and earns about $47,000 a year as a university librarian.
She’s carrying student loan debt of about $80,000. Persson is a former teacher who loves children, but she feels she is now thinking more clearly than ever about the costs, implications and sacrifices of parenting.
‘Having children sounds like a trap to me, to be frank,’ she said. ‘Financially, socially, emotionally, physically. And if there were ever any shadow of a doubt, the fact that I cannot comfortably support myself on my salary is enough to scare me away from the idea entirely.’