American Family Size Preferences: Shifting Trends in Ideal Number of Children

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A loaded question if there ever was one. Most Americans say the answer is two to three children, according to various surveys over nearly 90 years, even as current birthrates drop lower than that.

You may have read that American fertility rates are falling below the critical “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per woman that keeps the size of the population stable over time. Rates have also trended lower since the 2007-09 recession and through a baby bust during the pandemic.

Against this backdrop, the surprise is that most Americans still overwhelmingly stick to an ideal of two to three children. In fact, the share of people saying they want three or more children has risen as the actual number of children being born has dropped.

“The general ideal has stayed relatively high,” said Alison Gemmill, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University.

By the mid-1990s, about one-third of Americans said the ideal family had three or more children. But since then, the share of respondents citing an ideal of three or more children has gradually climbed. Despite dipping briefly after the pandemic, that group rebounded again in 2022 to 44%, according to the General Social Survey, the more than 50-year-old survey of Americans’ social views conducted by the University of Chicago.

Meanwhile, the share of people who say the ideal family consists of two children slipped to 51.7% in 2022 from 62% in 1998. On average, the ideal family is 2.5 children, which is up slightly since the 1990s but relatively little changed over the course of 50 years. (Men and women express very similar ideals; this one isn’t a matter of a war between the sexes.)

more people are pessimistic than optimistic abour the future of the family.