All indications are that Quebecers who give up having children to avoid human coming to earth or because they find the world is becoming too square are in the minority. In fact, 66% of 19-year-olds say they would like to have children in their lifetime.
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That comes from the Bulletin source famille? published by the Department of Family Affairs’ Department of Strategic Intelligence and Knowledge.
The simple questions it asks can be indicators of future demographic trends. The calculations carried out by the Ministère de la Famille are based on the analysis of data from a survey by the Institut de la statistique du Québec.
Young women aged 19 were more likely than young men (73% vs. 60%) to say they wanted children.
Determining Factors
“The fact of being a woman, having a spouse who wants children, having a defined career plan and being in debt are factors that make young adults more likely to express a firm desire to have children in the short or medium term” , is to read.
Conversely, it is not surprising that “remaining at home with no intention of leaving, contemplating postgraduate university studies, and attending school rather than work reduce the chances of expressing such intentions”.
All in all, young adults who consider themselves to be very or extremely indebted are “twice as likely to have a firm desire to have children within five years”.
Thus, a firm intention to have a child in the short or medium term “is proportionately much more common among young people who rate themselves as poor or very poor (20%) compared to those who rate themselves as wealthy financially (14%)”.
The same is true for young adults experiencing food insecurity “who are proportionately more likely to express a firm and predictable intention to become fertile in the short or medium term than those who do not experience such a situation” .
The ideal age
However, almost half of those interviewed who wished to have children stated that this project “probably should not come about before the age of 25, but rather before the age of 30”.
About 15% of those who want children say they will wait until their early 30s.
How many children do you want? A very large majority of young people say they intend to have two or more (90%) and few of them say they only want one (6%), while 4% are undecided on the size of their dream family should be.
The longitudinal study accompanies 2120 young people in their development and they are repeatedly asked the same questions up to the age of 25.
It remains to be seen to what extent the desire to have children will be realized by these respondents.
down trend
In 2021, the number of births (84,900) in Quebec returned to 2019 levels, after having decreased in 2020, as we can read in the 2022 edition of the Quebec Institute of Statistics demographic report.
The number of births has been falling slightly since 2013 and an analysis of the first eight months of 2022 shows “that the number of daily births for each month of 2022 is below the average for the years 2017-2019,” writes the Institute of Statistics from Quebec.
Current fertility is 1.58 children per woman. In 2021, the average age of mothers at the birth of their first child was 29.5 years.