Couples who wanted to have more children and gave up: 'A real crisis'

Namrata Nangia and her husband have been discussing the idea of ​​having another child ever since the birth of their five-year-old daughter.

But they always come to the same question: "Can we afford it?"

The couple lives in Mumbai, India. She works in the pharmaceutical industry and her husband works in a tire factory.

But the cost of having just one child is already very high. School fees and transport, plus doctor's appointments, are adding to the financial pressure on the family.

When Nangia was a child, the situation was different.

"We used to just go to school, with no extracurriculars," she recalls. "But now you have to take your child swimming, you have to take them drawing, you have to see what else they can do."

A new report from UNFPA - the United Nations agency for sexual and reproductive health - suggests that the situation faced by Namrata is common in other parts of the world.

UNFPA surveyed 14,000 people in 14 countries about their intentions regarding the number of children they would like to have. One in five of them responded that they do not have, nor do they expect to have, the number of children they would like.

The countries surveyed were Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa and Nigeria. They represent one-third of the global population and form a mix of low-, middle- and high-income countries, with high and low fertility rates.

UNFPA surveyed young adults and people past their reproductive age.

“The world has embarked on an unprecedented decline in fertility rates,” said UNFPA chief Natalia Kanem.

"Most people surveyed want to have two or more children. Fertility rates are falling, in large part, because many people feel unable to create the families they want. And that is the real crisis."

“Calling it a crisis and saying it’s real is a departure, in my opinion,” says demographer Anna Rotkirch, a researcher on fertility intentions in Europe and a population policy adviser to the Finnish government.

"In general, there are more underestimates than overestimates in ideas about fertility," explains the professor. In other words, there appear to be more people in the world today having fewer children than previously thought.

Rotkirch has studied this topic extensively in Europe and his interest is to observe the repercussions on a global level.

She was also surprised to see how many study participants over the age of 50 (31%) said they had fewer children than they would have liked.

The research is a pilot for a larger study in 50 countries, to be conducted later in the year. As such, its scope is limited.

Regarding age groups in each country, for example, the sample sizes of many are too small to draw definitive conclusions. But some deductions are clear.

In total, 39% of people who did not have the number of children they wanted said that the reason that prevented them from having them was financial limitations. South Korea had the highest proportion (58%) and, in last place, Sweden (19%).

Overall, only 12% of people cited infertility, or difficulty conceiving, as a reason for not having the number of children they wanted. But this number was higher in Thailand (19%), the United States (16%), Italy, South Africa (15%), Nigeria (14%) and India (13%).

"This is the first time [the United Nations] has really focused its full efforts on low fertility issues," says demographer Stuart Gietel-Basten of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Until recently, the agency focused primarily on women who have more children than they want and the "unmet need" for contraception.

But fertility has been falling recently even in middle-income countries, where UNFPA focuses much of its work. And yet the agency advises caution in responding to declining birth rates.

"Right now, what we're seeing is a lot of rhetoric about catastrophe, whether it's about overpopulation or about population decline," Kanem said.

"[This] leads to this kind of overreaction and sometimes manipulative reaction, trying to get women to have more or fewer children."

She points out that 40 years ago, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Türkiye were all concerned about overpopulation. In 2015, the same countries wanted to increase fertility.

"We tried as much as possible to avoid these nations creating some kind of panic policy," explains Gietel-Basten. "If people are already scared and anxious about the future of the planet, why would we make them feel even more anxious?"

Many countries have adapted to declining fertility by increasing immigration or the number of women in the workplace. But in some cases this has led to cultural setbacks.

"We are seeing low fertility, aging and population stagnation being used as an excuse to implement nationalist, anti-immigration and conservative gender policies," explains the professor.

UNFPA has also found that lack of time is a significant barrier to having more children. This is the case for Namrata Nangia in Mumbai.

She spends almost three hours a day commuting from home to the office and back.

Nangia comes home exhausted, but wants to spend time with her daughter. As a result, the family ends up getting very little sleep.

"After a day at work, of course, as a mother, you have this guilt of not spending enough time with your child," she explains. "So we're focusing on just one."