News & Views

Do we really want to do this? Millennials opting out of having children

W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

March 21, 2023

BY W. GIFFORD- JONES MD & DIANA GIFFORD-JONES

A Moroccan proverb claims, “If a man leaves little children behind him, it is as if he did not die.” A Sanskrit saying translates as, “A house without children is only a cemetery.” Having children may be central to sustained human life, but over the past several years, there has been a crescendo of voices arguing for restraint. Women concerned express the most fervent views about climate change.

We know some couples decide on a childless marriage in exchange for personal freedom. Others worry about the risk of a difficult child or the effect of a child on an unhappy marriage, and there are other reasons people opt out of parenthood. As Napoleon Bonaparte concluded while in exile on the island of St. Helena, “Children are always ungrateful.”

The BirthStrike Movement is an activist group choosing to forgo having children to protect them from worsening: social, economic, and environmental conditions. They may be right that deciding not to have children is possibly one of the most effective ways individuals can cut their own carbon emissions. According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, “Having a child is 7-times worse for the climate in CO2 emissions annually than the next 10 most discussed mitigants that individuals can do.”

There does seem to be a trend among millennials about not having children, but aside from the activists, do young people have a generalized concern about the consequences of climate change, enough to change the urge for children? Or has something else happened?

It is undoubtedly a great injustice to subject innocent children to the hazards of a polluted, poisonous planet. Can you blame would-be parents for opting out when scientists raise alarms that their children will encounter more: floods, droughts, fires, tornadoes, and famine, fight wars over water, land and other resources, and that economic crises will lead to social chaos?

There are other considerations that affect fertility rates. For instance, having a child can send a woman’s career into the abyss. A study from the University of Massachusetts examining data from 1979 to 2006 found that, on average, men earn 6% more when they had children (and lived with them), while women earn 4% less for every child. More recent studies show the same. In 2019, a study using data from the US census found mothers earned 71 cents for every dollar earned by fathers. Women have a justified right to complain.

Friendships can also take a hit. A survey of 1000 parents revealed almost half of moms and dads had fewer friends after children were born. In addition, there was less marital satisfaction.

CivicScience, a polling platform, adds another depressing note. They analysed one million responses and concluded that non-parents: lead healthier lifestyles, sleep longer, exercise more, drink less coffee, smoke less, avoid fast food restaurants, and were less overweight.

What about the health benefits of parenthood? There is good news for women, including decreased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Breastfeeding lowers the chance of type 2 diabetes. A University of California study reports that for children born to mothers over age 25, there’s an 11% greater chance of living to 90.

Finally, does having children mean parents are happier and less lonely later in life? Researchers in Germany found that parents tend to be happier than non-parents in old age, but this only holds if their kids have moved out! Older people without children get similar rewards to those having children; it seems, by maintaining any close social connections that share their issues and concerns.

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Written By W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million. His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!” Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Diana Gifford-Jones, the daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy. Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa. She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health. For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School. She is also a graduate of Wellesley College. She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy. She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University. She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

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