Even though millennials are firmly in their family-building years, fewer people ages 25-39 have children than ever before, thanks to factors like the 2008 financial crisis, lack of paid family leave, or affordable child care, and many anxiety about the state of the world. Now, they can list “living a pandemic” among the problems that affect whether or not they want to have children.
Despite early reports of an anticipated coronavirus baby boom, demographers say it’s probably less likely. With so many Americans unemployed or without permits, fewer people are likely to feel financially stable enough to start a family. As a result of COVID-19, more than 40% of American women changed their plans to have children or how many children to have, according to new data analysis by the Guttmacher Institute of more than 2,000 women. More than a third of cisgender women said they would delay pregnancy or want fewer children than they had wanted before; That number is even higher for black, Hispanic, queer, and low-income women.
If having a baby seemed questionable before the coronavirus, it may seem unimaginable now, no matter how long you hope to become a parent at some point. But on the other hand, quarantine has a way of adjusting priorities and perspectives. Nearly a fifth of respondents in the Guttmacher study said that COVID-19 has made them want to have a child sooner, or have more children.
Bustle spoke to four women about how COVID-19 changed her plans to start families.
The interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Ally *, 33, Missouri
I’m not really interested in our culture’s maternity industrial complex, this idea that you have to carry out a certain kind of lifestyle to be a “good” mother. Thinking that if you weren’t worried about taking your son to a preschool with a longer waiting list than Harvard’s, you were not doing well, you used to discourage me the idea of having children. I used to think that being a parent meant having to change the way I thought about all of those things in a way that made me more selfish in the name of trying to do what was best for my son. And even before the pandemic, climate change and social unrest gave me the feeling that things weren’t in a great place in a world. Before, it felt like, “The world is a bad place, but I can solve it by not having children.”
The pandemic activated a switch for me. It reminded me that we are all a group of humans susceptible to things like sickness and death. I feel like I can understand how to have a child now that I have a better understanding that I am part of this wild and messy circle. It is a kind of surrender to the fact that the pandemic and our understanding of mortality is greater than all of us.
My husband and I have intensified the pregnancy attempt because we are closer together. It seems that now it is about giving in and accepting uncertainty. Why no Have children?
Jaime, 32 years old, Georgia
We got married in December. She was 31 years old, almost 32 years old. I thought we would have a two year period before trying to get pregnant. We wanted to travel first. That would lead us to have a baby around the age of 35.
But with COVID-19, my husband ended up losing his job, and our two-year plan is totally altered. There are not many jobs for what he does where we live, so we can be uprooted to go where the jobs are, in another city.
Right now I feel the pressure of having a baby from people I know and from strangers who say that due to my age, I may not be able to have one if I wait, especially if I wait even longer because of COVID. But it is scary to bring a baby into the world with so little certainty. Should we have a child right now, when we don’t even know where we will live in a year? With everything up in the air, postpone our timeline until we feel more comfortable.
But I wonder if I hope to have a baby until I’m 36, can I have a second baby? Can I even have one first? I have been taking contraception since I was 16 years old, and now I am worried that I will not be able to have a baby.
Elena, 32 years old, California
I always wanted to have children. Then five years ago, my husband and I bought a dog and I thought, “Oh, God, this is a big responsibility.” We like to travel; We want the flexibility to do what we want, when we want. I also have a lot of anxiety about climate change. We have spent the past five years saying, “We probably won’t have children, but we’ll see. We reserve the right to change our minds.”
Literally a week before closing, my husband got the dream job he had been waiting for all his life. We went from making ends meet and thinking, “How could we raise a child with this?” to say, “We could do this.” It made us begin to reconsider our position and think about trying. But now who knows? Even before the pandemic, we were concerned about climate change and the impacts of the current presidential administration on the world. It seems that if you have a pro-con list to have a child or not, the cons list is growing.
With the pandemic, it sucks to feel lucky not to have children. I briefly thought I was pregnant last summer. If it had been, it should have in the spring. I kept thinking, “Thank God I’m not pregnant.” It feels irresponsible to ignore the things that I thought the world could solve.
Stephanie, 26, Texas
I can’t wait to be a mother. People always ask me if my abortion works, I am an abortion narrator and on the board of an abortion fund, it conflicts with me wanting to have children. I’m like, “I want children, but on my own terms.” In any case, the pandemic made me realize how important families are to me. I have a mother and a brother and sisters, but weird people, we often have to create our own families.
I wonder what it would be like for me to adopt a child as a single person, to become pregnant alone. I spent months alone in my apartment, so I realized that when it comes to children, I can also do it alone.
The pandemic has made me feel really desperate at times. There is so much economic uncertainty that people are not sure what is legal and what is not [in terms of abortion access]They are not even sure if it is okay to leave home. Despite all that, it is wonderful to know that there are people who work to make sure that we have a society in which someone like me, someone who is strange and Latin American and lives in Texas, can raise a family.
* The name has been changed to protect privacy.
