Future’s too bleak for us to have kids
AUSTRALIA’S ageing population problem is set to worsen as Millennials and Generation Z reject parenting amid fears for the planet, cost of living and world conflict.
Typical of the shift are Madeline Scott and Tom McNamara, from Greater Brisbane’s Bray Park. The couple, both 31, are in love, engaged and planning a long life together. But kids are not part of their future.
“I never imagined myself having children,” Ms Scott, said. “Tom is the same – he doesn’t have the paternal feeling and doesn’t want to have children if it’s not 100 per cent his goal.”
A survey by data company Dynata shows 31 per cent of non-parent Millennials (aged
27 to 41) do not plan to have children and 23 per cent are unsure. Among Generation Z (aged 18 to 26) this is true for 13 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively.
While the most common reason to remain child free, among the 1000 people surveyed, was “personal circumstances” (about two in three respondents), many were also hesitant because “our planet can’t handle the people it already has” (44 per cent of Millennials, 49 per cent of Gen Z) and because “the world is an unsafe place” (41 per cent of Millennials, 54 per cent of Gen Z).
Social researcher and Gen Z expert Claire Madden said some young people who decided not to have children chose pets, lifestyle or careers instead, while others were
discouraged by today’s “increased social complexity”.
“Our grandparents had a lot more complexity just in managing everyday survival,” Ms Madden said.
“Now there are so many more lifestyle conveniences yet greatly increased social complexity, with social media that is feeding this rhetoric that it’s an expensive and unsafe place to raise kids and that the globe is not coping with populations.
“These messages are getting to our young people a lot more and at a younger age and clearly having an influence.”
The Dynata insights come as the number of child-free couples in Australia continues to rise.
They made up 38.8 per cent of families in 2021, up
from 35.7 per cent 20 years earlier.
Child-free couples were particularly common in Australia’s entertainment precincts, such as Potts Point (75 per cent) and Darlinghurst (74 per cent) in Sydney, Fortitude Valley in Brisbane (72 per cent) and East Melbourne (72 per cent).
Australians as a whole are having fewer children.
In 2021, the total fertility rate was 1.7 babies per woman, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
That is down from 1.92 a decade earlier, and well below replacement level (2.1), which hasn’t been met since 1976.
The result is a population that continues to get older, with fewer working-age Australians to support retirement-age Australians.
At the 2021 Census, there were four people aged 15 to 64 for every one person aged 65 or older – down from a ratio of 5:1 just a decade earlier.
ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods demographer Dr Liz Allen said falling rates were not a concern in their own right as they indicated increased autonomy and control over family planning for women who did not wish to have children.
However, for women who wished to have children but felt discouraged, it was “a human catastrophe”.
“The prospects of the future and the uncertainties of the world are being burdened on young people to make decisions that governments have failed to act on, like climate change, cost of living and so on,” Dr Allen said.