Ideal family size: How many children do U.S. adults want?

Even as the U.S. birth rate continues a slow but steady descent, now at a record low of 1.6 births per woman, American adults say having two to three children would be ideal. But family size often falls short.

A new Gallup poll shows that the “ideal family” size averages 2.7 children.

When the poll was conducted this year between July 7 and July 21, asking 1,002 people by phone what they thought, more than 80% said at least two children is ideal. Forty percent picked two children, 27% picked three children, 11% said four. Only 2% said no children, while one child or five or more children was each picked by 4% of respondents.

What’s driving birth rate trends?

Wrote Megan Brenan for Gallup News, “In recent decades, the divergence between the ideal and reality has become especially wide as the fertility rate has dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain the U.S. population size. This suggests that the decline in births may be driven more by practical challenges that make it harder for people to have as many children as they want, rather than by changing attitudes about the ideal family size.”

When Gallup first asked the question in 1936, the ideal family size averaged 3.6 children. The average stayed above three children into the early 1970s, but has since been between two and three. Gallup theorized that concerns about population explosion that arose with publication of “The Population Bomb” might have contributed to why the number of desired children started to drop. But that’s not believed to be what’s happening now.

The Gallup article suggests various reasons for the difference between the reality of how many children families have and what is generally considered ideal could come down to “high costs for housing, child care, health care and higher education, coupled with delayed marriage and parenthood, birth control and declining religiosity.”

Others have suggested similar reasons. Lyman Stone, a demographer and research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, has on numerous occasions told Deseret News that among the big concerns with starting a family at later ages is the likelihood that women will not be able to have the number of children they consider ideal.

Studies have also suggested that finding the right partner is taking longer than in the past. As Deseret News reported on a 2022 study by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies, the most-often given reason for why couples didn’t reach their desired fertility was “still looking for the right spouse/partner.”

“Americans’ preferences for families of three or more children continued to fall throughout the 1970s and 1980s, which included three U.S. recessions. The average has since fluctuated between 2.4 and 2.7 but has held at 2.7 in the past three readings, in 2018, 2023 and now,” per Gallup News.

The ideal for different groups

While U.S. adults are about evenly divided in preference for one or two children (44%) or three (42%), there are some differences by gender, race, age and other demographics.

The figure is virtually the same for the number of men and women who say one or two children, since the margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. But the share of men who say three or more kids is much larger than the share of women, at 48% vs. 37%.

People who attend religious services weekly are more apt to prefer at least three children (53%) with smaller numbers wanting one or two (31%). Strikingly, the numbers are nearly reversed for those who attend less than monthly, at 51% choosing one or two children and 36% selecting three or more children.

Democrats prefer fewer children — just over half want one or two, compared to half of Republicans who say three or more is ideal. Independents are about evenly divided at around 43% for each choice.

The survey found people of color are more apt than whites to consider the larger families ideal. And while young adults ages 18 to 29 in greater shares prefer smaller families, so do those 65 and older but by a smaller margin. There’s virtually no family size preference difference from ages 30 to 64.

Fewer babies nationwide

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last summer that more than half of the states and the nation’s capital all saw lower fertility from 2021 to 2022, with the lowest rates in Washington, D.C., Vermont and Oregon. But even in areas like the Intermountain West where large families were once the norm, fertility rates have declined sharply.

Per Deseret News at the time, “Among those, Utah’s 3.4% decline was the largest. Nationally, the District of Columbia’s 7.2% decrease was the biggest annual drop, followed by a 5.2% decrease in total fertility in North Dakota. Texas fertility increased 1.9% and Delaware increased 1.8%. The other states with increases were New Jersey (1.3%), and Maryland and Florida, both at 1.4%.”

Policy makers and world leaders are worried about declining fertility, which is an issue in large portions of the world. The Trump administration has publicly pondered ideas to incentivize having children, including child allowances, single payments and tax incentives. And many other countries have actually done so, typically without outstanding results.

Stone has noted a number of challenges nations can face when birth rates fall well below the replacement rate, including increasing loneliness as people age, economic stagnation and greater inequality.

Kem C. Gardner Institute senior demographer Emily Harris told Deseret News that different age groups need different supports, including the fact that young workers contribute money to support older adults in programs like Social Security and Medicare.

She expressed particular interest in the “intentions” that drive declining fertility in the U.S.

“As fertility is continuing to decline, we really need to tease out why. Is this because people want fewer children or do they want to wait longer before adding a first child? Or is it because they can’t afford to have a child or they can’t afford to have more than one?”

She added, “We’re at this point where we really need to start having more research and survey work done on these fertility intentions and what are these actual pinch points that potentially could be addressed if we wanted to change fertility rates.”