I Don't Want Any Children... Ever: Gender Differences in Voluntary Childlessness in The U.S., 2002

DeAnna L. Gore, Florida State University
Carolyn Sawtell, Florida State University

The voluntarily childless population has been slowly increasing over the past decades. While empirical research is abundant for women, there has been little in-depth study in males who choose to remain childless. This paper uses the National Survey of Family Growth (Cycle 6) to compare various characteristics of the voluntarily childless and the postponing/involuntarily childless populations to those individuals with children. Multinomial logistic regression analysis shows that the major difference between the male and female populations is the effect of education and work status. Additional differences also exist between the voluntarily and postponing/involuntarily childless groups, where education has a stronger effect of the postponing/ involuntarily childless than the voluntarily childless. With relatively similar characteristics, the gender difference of the childless population still remains unexplained.