Aiming for love, a career, and a family used to be what everyone wanted. After all, we were all conditioned to think that all three meant a full life. But, more and more adults are opting to not have children.
A new study by Michigan State University says that a quarter of adults don't want to have kids. Researchers found that the higher number was due to the fact that previous studies looked at infertility rates instead of asking adults directly.
Interestingly, the study also found that child-free individuals were far more liberal than parents. Another thing researchers found? "People who aren’t child-free felt substantially less warm toward child-free individuals," co-author and psychologist Zachary Neal said.
As with all studies, however, there's still much more to look into.
"Most studies haven't asked the questions necessary to distinguish 'child-free' individuals—those who choose not to have children—from other types of non-parents," said psychologist Jennifer Walting-Neal in a release.
"Non-parents can also include the 'not-yet-parents' who are planning to have kids, and 'childless' people who couldn't have kids due to infertility or circumstance. Previous studies simply lumped all non-parents into a single category to compare them to parents."
