Choosing a child-free life
More than a third of Canadians aged 15-49 said they have no plans to have children
In the old days they said children should be seen and not heard. But what if a more common choice now is whether to have children in the first place?
Choosing to remain childfree is a choice more people are making. It’s reflected in falling fertility rates and recent reporting that links decisions about parenthood to economic pressures and climate anxiety.
The notion that women are expected to have children is still prevalent today. Whether it’s young adults being asked when they’ll begin trying for a baby, or parents of one child being nudged about adding another to the family, the pressure to start or expand a family continues to reflect this historical norm.
However, recent data from Statistics Canada shows an increasing number of Canadians are choosing not to have children at all, due to a wide range of factors. In 2022, a full 34 per cent of those aged 15-49 said they have no plans to have children.
As well, the birth rate is continuing to drop. In 1851, the birth rate was 6.56 children per woman in Canada. During the years of the baby boom, the average was closer to four children per family; today that rate sits at 1.26 children per woman, a marked decline.
Compared to rest of the world, Canada ranks 186 out of 228 countries based on birth rate data collected by the CIA in 2024.
And while it is a trend seen increasingly often in young people, they aren’t the only demographic who have made this choice.
Lindsay-area couple Catherine McNeely, 62, and her husband Chris Sloan, 52, never planned on having kids, and have no regrets about following through on that decision.
“I never wanted to have children. I come from a family of four children. I babysat from the time I was 15. I’ve always been around kids, but I knew I never wanted to have my own,” McNeely said.
The couple feel they haven’t missed out on much, being close to their extended family and sharing their hearts with their cats. “As aunt and uncle, we had the opportunity to be part of a loving family and be part of children’s upbringing,” McNeely said, who is a former English-as-a-Second-Language teacher and now works in the not-for-profit sector. Sloan works for a public service union.
“It’s important for children to see that it’s not just your mom and dad. There really is a village that’s needed, and everyone plays a different role,” she added.
McNeely said when people find out she doesn’t have kids, she’s faced with pitiful looks.
“There’s just a nanosecond of ‘oh, you couldn’t,’” she said. The assumption from others is never that she’s chosen not to have kids, it’s that you couldn’t, “or they died.”
Georgia McIntosh, 28, who also lives in Kawartha Lakes similarly has always known she doesn’t want kids and has found herself having to explain why she’s made this choice. The single woman says “you get married, and kids are the next (assumed) thing. People expect that,” she said.
For her, part of the reason comes from her career as a social worker. “I see a lot of youth in addiction and homelessness. I could not fathom having a child fall into that. At the end of the day, you can be the best parent possible, and do all the right things, and there’s no guarantee that they’re going to be okay,” she said.
Local resident Joan Abernethy, 76, is a retired teacher and saw some of those same situations that McIntosh has in the kids she taught. “I worked with kids, but I saw a lot of injustice and a lot of family violence.”
Born four years after the Second World War, Abernethy lived at a time when families tended to be big. When she was a young child, she always told her family she was going to have 12 kids. “By the time I was 10, I remember really re-thinking that, and thinking that I wasn’t ever going to be a parent,” she said.
For Abernethy, there wasn’t any particular reason she decided not to have kids. “I’ve always felt like my DNA is just not that important. It doesn’t need to be replicated.”
Being single has led McIntosh to hear comments from many people in her life. “They say, ‘you’re single, so you don’t know. You haven’t found the person who would make you change your mind.’” But for her, her mind is made up. “Something pretty drastic would have to happen for me to change my mind.”
For her, it seems people can’t fathom someone choosing to remain childless. “People are so appalled…when you say you don’t want kids, like something’s wrong with that. I think there’s such a stigma around it.”
Abernethy never received much judgment from her family but has from other people. “People think you’re selfish and you’re cold,” she said.
She even had one doctor tell her to, ‘just go and get pregnant with anybody,’ telling her that her biological clock was starting to run out. Abernethy was faced with the idea that kids were a need. “Life is meaningful no matter what your situation is,” she said, feeling like she hasn’t missed out on anything without having kids.
McIntosh agrees with this statement. “It just doesn’t appeal to me, but I mean, power to the people who do it. I have friends who have babies, and I absolutely adore them, but it doesn’t really fit my lifestyle,” With plans to climb up in her career and travel, for her a child would get in the way.
“If I want to book a trip next week to go somewhere, I’m going to do that. Or if I want to stay over at a friend’s house because I had too much wine, I’m going to do that,” McIntosh said, highlighting how these freedoms are easier for her to enjoy without the responsibilities of parenting.
“Maybe some people see it as selfish, but I don’t want to lose those things by having a child,” she added. “I have such huge career goals. I don’t want to wait until I’m 40 or 50 to go after those goals.”
McIntosh hopes this idea of needing to have kids shifts soon. “I don’t understand this fascination around women having kids, and (how) you need to do it when you’re young,” she said.
In the past, parents needed to have more kids to help with chores. And with an infant mortality rate much worse generations ago, they needed to know at least some of their children would make it into adulthood.
In Empty Planet, Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson argue that the world will face population decline soon, not overpopulation as earlier predictive models showed. They note that the interrelated causes of declining fertility rates are urbanization, education, women’s liberation, and waning religiosity.
“Among millennials, especially,” Bricker and Ibbitson write, “the fertility rate is very low. Between 2007 and 2012, the birth rate among Americans who came of age after 2000 dropped by 15 percent, to the lowest birth rate ever recorded in the United States: 0.95, less than one baby for every mother.”
Gen Zed, the generation coming up behind millennials, about 13-28, shows every indication this trend will continue. A 2025 BMO survey reports that 70 per cent of this generation want to have children, but most believe doing so would jeopardize their financial security and so will refrain.
Broader surveys report climate concerns make them less likely to have children, too, with one recent survey finding roughly 40 per cent of Gen Zed respondents reporting that climate concerns reduce their desire to become parents.
McNeely, who cares deeply about the environment, looks at the benefits of not producing nearly as much waste as those with kids do. “We don’t create the amount of garbage we would if we were three or four people,” she said.
Sloan understands the feelings of this younger generation, especially regarding the cost. “It’s an expense to have a kid, and it’s never something we’ve had to worry about,” he said. His wife adds that she is also a type one diabetic “and so pregnancy can be really risky, and I’ve just decided I don’t want to take that risk.”
McIntosh, the social worker, also gets the expense reasoning. She works two jobs and feels as though she is just scraping by. “Life is so expensive now, and I don’t know how people afford it.”
Freedom of Choice
McNeely feels that she and her husband have had a fulfilling life. “We didn’t feel like anything was missing. It’s allowed us to have a life where we develop our hobbies and our interests.”
She’s hopeful that with this choice becoming more acceptable, younger women will stop feeling the pressure to have kids. “I think the worst message that young women can get is that you can only be fulfilled if you have a child.”
McNeely thinks back to her grandmother and mother, who didn’t have the same choice as her. “I never talked to my mother about not wanting kids. All my siblings had kids, and there was a sense that she understood that I was able to choose.”
McNeely has also begun to face the assumption that she has grandchildren. “It’s always ‘do you have grandchildren?’ Not even, do you have kids?”
The couple has also been asked by others who will take care of them when they get older. “We’ve seen families fall apart. We’ve seen families in serious estrangement,” Sloan pointed out, noting nuclear families aren’t a guarantee of care as one gets older.
As she approaches 30, McIntosh says she has found herself in uncomfortable situations. “You feel like you have to explain to someone why you don’t want (kids), or why you’re not having kids now.”
McNeely and Sloan feel for younger people who are choosing to remain child free. McNeely says that she’s gone through years of people “just feeling sorry for me,” instead of feeling she’s an empowered person who got to choose to live the way she wants.
“There’s nothing wrong with us. We’re not missing anything.”
