How Views on Family Diversity May Impact Whether Someone Has Kids
By: Katie Burkhardt
Tags: Parenting, Sociology

How Views on Family Diversity May Impact Whether Someone Has Kids Katie Burkhardt Jul 2·5 min read

The “ideal” nuclear family. Source: H. Armstrong Roberts via Getty

This is the seventh and final week I will be writing a blog post about why people may choose to have children, and it has definitely been an informative journey for me. While reflecting on the things I’ve explored throughout the semester, as well as on the last chapter we read in my sociology class on the family, I find myself very intrigued by how people’s stances on diverse families may be correlated with whether they have kids. This isn’t to say there is a causational relationship between political views and whether you have kids, but rather I think they are related in a correlational way.

Cohen (2020, pp. 496–503) talks about how there are three main categories that people fall into when it comes to their opinion of growing family diversity. The three available responses when asked about peoples’ attitudes towards family diversity each correspond to one of the categories. People who think that family diversity is a bad thing are categorized as conservatives who promote the “singular ideal” of families being one man and one woman who are married and have biological children together. People who think that growing family diversity makes no difference are categorized as liberal for their hands-off approach to family structure, being neither for nor against the “traditional” American family. Finally, people who think growing family diversity is a good thing are categorized as critical because they see change and moving away from the “traditional” family as a good thing, and many may see getting rid of the traditional family structure as imperative to achieving equality.

Although the definition of the diverse family may not necessarily include a family with no kids, I think that if someone is open to diverse families, they would probably be more open to not having kids themselves and thus not meeting one of the requirements of a traditional family. I see this even in my family and the distribution of who has more kids. My dad and stepmom are quite conservative both in their general politics and in their view on family diversity. In fact, earlier today I told my younger half-brother (who’s six years old) that today I’m working on a blog post about why people may decide to have kids or not. In response to this, he said, “I know why! Because some people are smart (referring to people who have kids), and some people are dumb (people who don’t have kids).” My dad and stepmom thought this was hilarious and told me to knock it off when I tried to correct him. I know he’s only six, but I think this is still quite telling of the environment he grew up in. My dad’s sister never wanted kids and still doesn’t (coincidentally she is also liberal in her politics and view of family diversity), and my dad would always tell me how unhappy and unfulfilled my aunt likely is.

However, peoples’ views on family diversity don’t exist in a vacuum and doing so would ignore a lot of the nuance involved in why people choose to have kids. We can see in the graph provided by Cohen (2020) that peoples’ ages, religiosity, and political views affect their stances on increasing family diversity. Particularly in more republican-dominated and religious spaces, having kids and abiding by the nuclear family model is very important and can essentially determine whether someone’s life is fulfilling. On the other hand, people who aren’t in those spaces may feel less pressure on them to conform and may come to find that they would be happier if they didn’t have kids. Once again, this is something that I see in my own family, as my less religious family members find fulfillment in part through things besides the family (although everyone still values family, just not necessarily to the point where they think life is terrible without being a parent), and my more religious family has more kids because of their emphasis on the family as well as their belief that by not using birth control and completing every pregnancy, they are following God’s plan for them. One of my cousins actually had nine kids even though her doctor told her she should stop after her third kid for medical reasons, but she kept having kids because she believed that God wanted her to have more.

Overall, I think that someone’s stance on the importance of the nuclear family would have an effect on whether or not they want to have kids themselves, perhaps because they feel like if they don’t have kids then they can’t live up to the standard set for them by the nuclear family. And of course, this stance on the importance of the nuclear family is influenced by things such as their religious beliefs.

To end this series of blog posts on why people choose whether or not to have kids, I think it would be only fitting to include where I currently stand for whether I want kids in the future. Granted, I wouldn’t likely be ready to have kids until I had a stable job and a spouse, neither of which I have, but still I think it’s good to think about one’s future.

I value connection with others very highly and one of my top priorities in life is to form and maintain meaningful relationships with others. I think I would be happy whether or not I had kids as long as I were part of a strong community. However, I do also want to adopt when I’m older, and would likely choose to adopt older kids, both because older kids have less of a chance of being adopted so I would like to give them a loving family, and because I was a teenager when my little siblings were born, so I’ve seen how much work little kids are and I don’t think I could handle it. Maybe if I had a spouse who wanted kids and was willing to do an equal amount of childrearing with me then I would consider adopting little kids or having our own, but at least for now, I mainly don’t expect to have kids just because I don’t think I could handle the stress.