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Jacqueline Stein had no trouble getting pregnant.
She also had easy and fun pregnancy and “great” labor and childbirth experiences. However, despite the dream scenario, Toronto residents did not want any more children after giving birth to their now four-year-old son, Alex.
“I always imagined a small family,” said Stein, 40.
Research shows that Stein is not alone.
Despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to rekindle US fertility rates, more parents are choosing to “find one.”
The president and his administration began walking through various policy proposals aimed at reversing the declining birth rate in America, including the “Trump Account,” in which all children born between 2025 and 2028 receive a $1,000 deposit in the “IRA for Children.”
But the White House works against decades of declining birth rates. According to the Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, 40-44 women have opposed the number of children, with one child nearly doubled from 10% in 1980 to 19% in 2022. This trend is consistent across all races and ethnicities, as well as educational achievements.
The struggle for fertility, rising costs of parenting and cultural changes are some of the biggest reasons why more parents choose to “finish one.”
“Parents today understand the complexities of our society and the challenges of raising any number of children, so there is much less pressure to have a second child,” she said. “It’s the only child revolution.”
“I definitely don’t want to do it again.”
More American women are married and have children later in life in order to pursue higher education and career growth, Newman said. With their fertility windows narrow, they face less time to have multiple children.
Of the 35-39 women, births have increased by 90% since 1990, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For women over the age of 40, the agency found a 193% increase in births.
Also, more women are pursuing auxiliary reproductive techniques such as vitro fertilization (IVF) to later give birth to children. Some people may not want to repeat that long and expensive process to have a second child, Newman said.
Erin Gallimore, 41, suffered from infertility for eight years before becoming pregnant with her son. After emergency surgery at birth, mom in Asheville, North Carolina said she had given birth to a child.
“I definitely don’t want to do that again,” she said. “We can care for one child and still love having our own life.”
The rising cost of being a parent
Toni Falbo, a social psychologist and professor at the Austin School of Educational Psychology, said the cost of raising a child is also a deciding factor for many parents to make their families smaller.
The costs of daycare and kindergartens in the US, due to a nationwide shortage of workers and facilities, are rising at a rate nearly twice as much as inflation. According to a report by a nonprofit childcare awareness for the United States, the average cost of care for two children is more expensive than the average rent in all 50 states and the average mortgage payments in 45 states.
But it’s more than just parenting. When children are in school, parents are also expected to provide resources for extracurricular activities such as clubs, summer camps, sports, musical instruments, and private tutoring.
“It’s very expensive because our expectations are so high,” she said. “It’s more expensive and requires more investment to successfully push a child through all the different stages of development.”
For Stein, she wanted to travel with Alex and provide him with the cultural experiences she had as a child.
“Traveling is very important to me and the cost of travel is rising,” she said. “For an average middle-income family, if you add another child, those experiences are often the first you have to shelve.”
“You know what’s best for you.”
Parents want to chase only one child, as they realize that only a lot of stigma related to children cannot withstand the data, according to Newman.
A common misconception determines that siblingless children are lonely, spoiled, or socially troubling, but reviews of over 100 related studies show that this is not the case. In fact, only children often showed generosity, social skills and emotional intelligence, Newman said.
“Among only American children, they seem to have enough self-esteem, and in some ways they seem to have higher self-esteem, like their firstborn, compared to someone from a very large family,” said Falbo, who wrote a large study in the 1980s. “Self-esteem is the foundation of mental health.”
The children’s parents say they want to maintain their mental health. Although having a child improves the mental health of a mother, studies have shown that the child’s well-being is reduced after all of the child.
Having created an online community for the mother of only children, Stein says that prioritizing her happiness and happiness will ultimately make her a better mother to her son.
“Whether it’s a choice or a situation… you know what’s best for you, and no one else is taking care of your child,” she said. “It’s your body, it’s your life, it’s your finances, it’s your mental well-being, and those are important.”
Adrianna Rodriguez can visit adrodriguez@usatoday.com.
