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| Most people dream of children but fewer couples have them | |
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April 20, 1999 AUSTRALIANS overwhelmingly crave large families but are being restricted in the number of children they have by the realities of modern life. As a result, the dual-income-no- kids (DINKS) family has stolen the mantle of the largest family type in the nation. A Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research study of 2100 people has found the vast majority of Australians want to have children. Most would prefer to have more than one. "Two-child families and three- child families are very widely seen as desirable," the study report said. "Four-child families are seen as more desirable than childless or one-child families but larger families of five or six children are not. "Very few people in Australia hold a personal taste for very small families. It remains possible that they could nonetheless see very small families as ideal for society as a whole. "The huge majority of people with some reservations about the joys of parenthood also reject very small families." According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, DINKS now make up 40 percent of all families and have overtaken couples with kids as the largest family type. The latest report, contained in the Australian Social Monitor, also has debunked the popular perception that resistance by women to constantly being "barefoot and pregnant" was a driving force behind the trend towards fewer children. The study found women were just as likely as men to reject small families. "Those who hold that homemaking benefits women are no more likely than their opponents to regard very small families as ideal," the report found. "And those who see career costs – who feel that women's employment harms children's wellbeing – are no keener (and no less keen) on small families than are their peers who perceive that children are unharmed by their mothers' employment." Australian Families Association Queensland president David Grace said the bottom line on declining family sizes was money. "The average family has a higher expectation of what basic needs are and that requires a greater cost to provide and therefore to have a large family becomes an economic impossibility," he said. "What actually happens out there is dictated by financial costs but what people's desires are, maybe they haven't changed for 30, 40 or 50 years. "I don't think people have ceased to want to have children but people are getting married later and that would change things because the age at which you start having children is later." Women's Network Australia managing director Lynette Palmen said it was "just too hard" for some couples to balance work and family pressures. "Women feel the corporate structure isn't changing quickly enough and they are having to make a conscious decision not to have children," she said. "There is no movement of men taking over increased parental duties. We need a new model of motherhood. "Women are trying to work and keep the traditional model that their mothers had. You can't sit down and be there for the afternoon school work and do all these things that our mothers did." The report also found that only 4 percent of people worldwide endorsed single-child families as the ideal, with the greatest support in Russia and the Czech Republic. |
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