In recent years, conversations about climate change and sustainability have expanded beyond recycling and renewable energy to include deeply personal choices like whether or not to have children. This raises an interesting question: Do environmentally conscious people believe that society should move toward smaller families, with fewer or even no children? At first glance, one might think the answer is yes. People who care about the environment might view limits on childbearing as one way to reduce the carbon footprint tied to population growth or may feel anxious about bringing a child into an environmentally damaged world.
However, evidence is mixed, at least when we look at quantitative studies using representative samples. Some find that people with stronger pro-environmental attitudes prefer fewer children, while others show only weak or no associations at all. This contrasts with findings from qualitative studies, which consistently report that individuals who express greater concern for the environment often say they prefer to have fewer or no children. So, what is going on?
Our study in Population and Development Review, “Dimensions of Environmental Attitudes and General Fertility Ideals,” seeks to make sense of this puzzle. We begin by outlining four potential reasons for the inconsistency between quantitative and qualitative findings. First, people’s beliefs about the ideal number of children may be shaped more strongly by other factors—like age or current number of children—than by their environmental attitudes. Second, it’s possible that pro-environmental attitudes have really strengthened only in recent years, so stronger links may show up only in more recent data. Third, the mixed findings could also be due to differences in who was asked; for example, studies focusing on young adults often find negative associations while studies using broader, population-wide samples do not. Fourth, associations might look weak because many quantitative studies often focus on just one aspect of environmental attitudes—typically environmental concern—while overlooking other relevant dimensions.
We use data from a nationally representative sample of American adults from two years, 2010 and 2021, to look at how three dimensions of environmental attitudes relate to beliefs about the ideal number of children for a family: 1) environmental concern, 2) perceptions of risk or danger from environmental threats, and 3) behavioral commitment, such as willingness to pay more or change one’s standard of living to protect the environment. Contrary to the first explanation we considered, associations between pro-environmental attitudes and beliefs about ideal family size were seen even after considering other factors, like age, number of children, religiosity, and political ideology. And because these associations appear in a sample that reflects the general adult population in the United States, this also challenges the third possibility we discussed (that differences came from looking at different groups).
Our findings provide some support for the second explanation: the connection between pro-environmental attitudes and beliefs about ideal family size does seem to have grown stronger over time. In 2021, compared with 2010, environmentally conscious Americans were not only more likely to believe that people should have as many children as they want but also more likely to view smaller families as ideal. However, this trend doesn’t play out the same way across all aspects of environmental attitudes. Back in 2010 environmental concern was the strongest (though still modest) predictor of family-size beliefs. By 2021, its influence had waned. Instead, people’s willingness to make behavioral changes to protect the environment became a more important dimension driving family-size beliefs. In 2021 those with higher behavioral commitment were more likely to say that two children was ideal and less likely to say people should have as many children as they want. The effects of perceptions of danger from environmental threats remained quite stable over time, but by 2021 they became the only dimension shaping preferences for small families. People who perceived more danger from environmental threats were more likely to view childless or one-child families as ideal. Together, these results support the fourth possibility we raised: measuring environmental attitudes only using environmental concern can produce weak and inconsistent results, even with more recent data. Our study highlights the importance of thinking about environmental attitudes as a multidimensional concept, especially when exploring how they influence decisions like family size.
About the authors
Naduni Jayasinghe, Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University
Heather Rackin, Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University