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Childless By Choice - survey of women on having children - Statistical Data Included

American Demographics, Oct 1, 2001

In 1997, Candace Korasick, a 32-year-old graduate student from Columbia, Mo., launched the ChildFree Web site to link up with others like herself: married people who don't want children. Within days of posting the site, Korasick says, she was inundated with grateful e-mails from other deliberately childless couples, and was even offered cash donations toward maintaining the site.

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Korasick and her husband, John, 30, are members of a small but growing demographic group here in the U.S. According to the Census Bureau's 1998 Current Population Survey, a greater percentage of women of all ages are not having children. In that year, 5.7 million (or 18.4 percent) married women of childbearing age (defined by the Census as between 15 and 44 years old) were childless. And many of them like it that way. The National Center of Health Statistics confirms that the percentage of women of childbearing age who define themselves as voluntarily childless is on the rise: from 2.4 percent in 1982, to 4.3 percent in 1990, to 6.6 percent in 1995 (the most recent available figure). That's 4.1 million women saying no to motherhood in 1995.

It's a trend that applies to all age groups: For the 25 to 29 bracket, 28 percent were childless in 1998, up from 16 percent in 1976; for 30- to 34-year-olds, it was 20 percent, compared with 11 percent in 1976; for 40- to 44-year-olds, 19 percent were childless, up from 10 percent in 1976. The 2000 census figures on fertility weren't available at press time, but Amara Bachu, co-author of the Census Bureau's 1998 report, "Fertility of American Women," says: "From the data we've gathered so far, it looks like childlessness is continuing to go up."

The reasons for opting out of parenthood range from religion to ideology to simple lifestyle preference. (See Sidebar, next page.) Yet, whatever their motives, these couples say they are either overlooked or looked down upon by the surrounding, child-oriented society. "When I refer to 'my family,' people seem baffled," says Candace Korasick. "They say, 'I thought you didn't have kids.' I absolutely consider my husband and myself a family, but other people don't even use family terminology for us."

In recent years, a number of Web sites, including Korasick's, (web.missouri.edu/~cak307), have popped up, such as Child-free by Choice (www.childfree.net) and Childfree Families (http//24.89.14.183/cf.nsf/main), as well as social networks such as No Kidding!, an organization with 68 chapters in North America, up from 47 last year. The members of this group are not only clamoring to be recognized by society, but also by businesses. "Couples without children are totally ignored as a group, and businesses lose money that way," says Karen Smith, co-founder of the Leavenworth, Wash.-based organization Childless by Choice. "We are not to be lumped with single people or empty-nesters. After all, we're different ages, we have different priorities, different expenses, and we're at completely different life stages." Adds Scott Wenzel, 39, a computer consultant from Knoxville, Md., who is married and childless: "We're probably the largest and least recognized group in Western society right now."

Yet, as consumers, this diaper-free brigade wields considerable financial clout. According to analysis done for American Demographics by Third Wave Research Group, a Madison, Wis.-based demographic marketing firm, childless couples spend more per person in almost every consumer category than their married-with-children counterparts (See methodology, left). In general, married couples without kids have more discretionary income than households with children, says Ed Wallander, a principal at Third Wave.

"Marketers may take childless couples for granted when marketing to married couples as a whole," says Wallander. "But their discretionary income and their buying patterns - as well as their size and their growth - show that couples without children should be recognized as a unique marketing opportunity." He points out that in some spending categories, the higher per-person outlays by childless couples are especially notable: Compared with couples with kids, they spend 60 percent more on entertainment, 79 percent more on food and 101 percent more on dining out. (See chart, previous page.) They also spend a lot on booze, clothing and - surprisingly - pets. "Some cliches are true," says Elinor Burkett, author of The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless (Free Press, 2000). "Childless couples very often have pets, and they spend a lot of money on them. They also tend to be insanely generous to their nieces and nephews. Part of it may be overcompensation."

The spending behavior of childless couples rests on some attractive demographic qualities. Two-income couples without children are better educated than two-income couples with children. As of 1998, the census reports, 30 percent of childless couples consisted of two college graduates, compared with 17 percent of those with kids. The childless are more likely to have professional or managerial occupations (24 percent versus 16 percent of dual-employed couples with children). Although there is little difference in income (55 percent of childless couples have incomes over $50,000 versus 54 percent of couples with children), childless families have no child-related expenses to contend with. They don't have to save for their child's college education, let alone pay preschool tuition. They don't need to pay for diapers or baby food or their children's health care. There are no pediatrician bills, no orthodontists and no family-size SUVs. They also don't structure their lives around the academic year and school vacations or choose their residence according to the quality of the school district.

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Childless By Choice - survey of women on having children - Statistical Data Included

American Demographics, Oct 1, 2001

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