Poll: US adults split over desire for large, small families
- New polling surveyed U.S. adults about their ideal family size
- Birth rates don't necessarily correlate with desired family size
- Young adults were twice as likely to report not wanting any children
FILE: (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
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(NewsNation) — Americans are evenly split when it comes to preferring large families or small ones, with an average preference for 2.7 children.
Gallup surveyed Americans regarding their ideal family size, finding that 47% preferred smaller families with two children or less, while 45% said three or more children was ideal. Two percent of those surveyed said no children was ideal.
Support for large families peaked in 1945, with 77% of Americans calling three or more children ideal. That number remained relatively high until 1967, when it began dropping to just over half of Americans who said three or more children were ideal in 1971.
While there have been ups and downs over the decades, a preference for large families has been trending upward since 2018, though Gallup did not ask the question during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nine in 10 adults in the U.S. said they either already have children or would like to in the future, with just 8% of adults saying they did not plan to have kids.
While younger adults are more likely to say they don’t have children and are twice as likely as middle-aged adults to say they don’t plan to have kids in the future, a majority hope to have kids (63%) or already have children (21%).
The desire to have a large family has not necessarily correlated with birth rates in the U.S. Among U.S. adults, 31% don’t have any children, 14% only had one child, 28% two children and 15% three children. Just 7% have four children and 5% reported five or more children.
While gender doesn’t appear to make a difference in whether someone believes a large family is ideal or not, Republicans, lower-income families and religious families are more likely to show a preference for large families. Black and Hispanic adults were also more likely to prefer more children.
