A 29-Year-Old Just Gave The Best Explanation As To Why Millennials Aren’t Having Kids
You're probably aware that the fertility rate in the United States has been declining for over a decade (last year, it hit a historic low). And you might be familiar with how conservatives are pointing blame at childless millennials.
There was J.D. Vance's resurfaced comment from 2021 that went viral for suggesting that the nation was being run by miserable "childless cat ladies."
He's also called the falling fertility rate a "civilizational crisis" and has advocated that people without children should pay higher taxes and have less voting power than people with children. In defense of the childless cat lady backlash, he said Democrats are "anti-family" and "anti-child."
Then there was Fox News commentator Ashley St. Clair, who suggested millennials who "just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyoncé concerts" are a reason for falling birth rates. "It's this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family," she said.
But others are not so quick to blame cat ladies and Beyoncé fans — many argue that it's not that millennials don't want children; it's that they can't in the current environment. This is the case for 29-year-old Charlie Fitzgerald, who goes by she/they/he pronouns, and who went viral for laying out why millennials aren't having kids.
Charlie began, "I'm gonna drop some opinions on the whole 'millennials aren't having kids' thing as a working-class millennial."
They continued, "It absolutely baffles me that the government is pretending like they don't know why we're not having kids because, frankly, it is glaringly obvious. The economy is a fucking tire fire right now. The cost of groceries, the cost and availability of baby formula, the cost of diapers, the cost of childcare, the cost of giving birth in the United States."
Having a child in the US is notably not cheap — Business Insider found that raising one small child in 2024 will cost at least $25,714 (up 42% since 2016). In comparison, the average annual salary nationwide is about $59,428. That means you'd spend 43% of your income on your child alone, not including your own expenses like rent, food, healthcare, or taxes.
Charlie continued, "Statistically speaking, when you're born poor in this country, you're probably gonna die poor, and your kids are gonna be in the same boat. Being poor fucking sucks. I don't want that for my kid." This is a common phenomenon known as the poverty trap, or the cycle of poverty.
"It's not that we didn't try to have better lives," Charlie said. "A lot of us went to college and what did that get us? A bunch of us have debt that we're never gonna be able to pay off. A lot of us have degrees that are almost irrelevant because the jobs that we were told were there when we got our degrees aren't really there, as it turns out. Or they are there, and the people that are in those positions can't afford to retire, so they're just gonna stay where they're at."
"Where does that put the rest of us?" Charlie asked, regarding people who cannot find a job right now, with or without a degree. "Entry-level jobs, retail, food, customer service. In the state that I live in, that averages, like, $11 to $15 an hour."
A wage of $11–$15/hour is about $22,880–$31,200 yearly, assuming a person works 40 hours a week full-time. If a single parent with two kids makes this wage, they are at or below the poverty level.
As Charlie points out, many students who try to "escape" poverty with education end up with immense debt, keeping them in a poor financial cycle. And even though economists say we are not in a recession and the labor market is strong, people continue to share anecdotally how hard it is to find a job right now. Some data shows that the hiring rate for new workers is below its mid-2000s average, and the hiring rate for people with a bachelor's degree or more has fallen off.
As others have written, if you grow up working class, you're often told an education is a ticket to some elusive success. I, too, believed this, and while I wish I could reverse the clock and make a wiser choice, I chose the big-name school as I was told in the mythical pursuit of meritocracy. I have an amazing education, but as Charlie points out, I'm six digits in debt in a competitive job market. When my peers ask me about an engagement, wedding, house, or kids, I just have to laugh because while I'd love the choice, it's not even an option right now.
Charlie continued, "And before y'all hit my comments saying that people making that little money shouldn't have kids, that's most of us." A 2023 survey found that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, meaning one missed paycheck or unexpected cost could put them in a tough spot.
As well as the costs of caring for a child, which prevent many millennials from having children, Charlie also pointed out that many parents don't have paid maternity leave. "[This] opens up a whole slew of issues because you can't afford to take that time off, so you gotta go right the fuck back to work," she said. While the US Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) protects eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, there is no federal paid maternity leave in America, and many people can't afford to take unpaid leave even if it's offered.
Additionally, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) has qualifications — not every worker is guaranteed leave. Workers only qualify if they "work for a covered employer for at least 12 months, have at least 1,250 hours of service with the employer during the 12 months before their FMLA leave starts, and work at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles." So, for instance, if you work at a small employer with fewer than 50 employees, your employer is not required to offer unpaid leave under the FMLA.
Charlie pointed to further concerns parents have when going right back to work. She said, "Fuck the fact that giving birth takes a huge toll on your body. The people who have C-sections, which is a major surgery, can't afford to take the recovery time. When you've got to go back to work in two weeks or immediately, then you don't get that critical bonding-like period of time with your infant if you're working all day. Then you can't breastfeed your kid every couple of hours, so you have to depend on baby formula, which again is extremely expensive and potentially unavailable."
Charlie added that having overworked parents can also contribute to social issues down the line without a parent or family member around. Research shows that inflexible schedules due to low-wage jobs can negatively impact child development, and economic hardship can lead to emotional distress for the parent, which can lead to family conflict and, thus, affect the child's mental health.
"Then you've got to pay for childcare, which is outrageous. In the state that I live in, the average cost of just daycare is $15.77 an hour," Charlie said. "When you are making as little money as millennials are, childcare is literally inaccessible."
Childcare continues to be one of the most significant expenses for families, and a new report found that childcare is now more expensive than rent for the average American family (about two children) in most regions. For instance, in the Northeast, the average price of childcare for two children would cost $32,614 annually compared to $27,433 in housing annually. Nationwide, the average price of childcare for one child in 2023 was $11,582.
Charlie added that families in poverty also often wrongly get slapped with charges of neglect — an unfortunate truth for many parents in poverty who get separated from their children by the state. In a hypothetical situation, Charlie said, "Say baby formula wasn't available in your area, so you couldn't afford to feed your kids, so you get slapped with neglect charges. That company that couldn't provide the baby formula faces absolutely no repercussions."
Child welfare systems in the US often treat poverty as a reason to remove children from their parents, which disproportionately impacts Black and Indigenous families. Many argue that parents in poverty need resources to help them survive, not punishment and unnecessary trauma from separation. Rep Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) has been trying to introduce the Family Poverty Is Not Child Neglect Act, which would better ensure families are not separated because of poverty and provide resources instead.
For one of Charlie's last arguments for why millennials aren't having kids, he pointed to the housing crisis. He asked, "How many millennials do you know who own their own house?" He said many of the millennials he knows "are renters or live with our parents or live with a pile of roommates."
While 51.5% of millennials owned homes as of 2022, it's still out of reach for many. The Wall Street Journal reported that we're in the most challenging housing markets in decades, with home-buying affordability dropping to its lowest level since 1985. A 2023 survey found that about 25% percent of millennial renters feel they will be "forever renters," and two-thirds who want to own don't have enough saved for a down payment.
Down payments averaged 13.6% of the home's purchase price in the first quarter of 2024. The median sale price for a home is currently $412,300. So, if you needed to pay a 13.6% down payment on a $412,300 home, that would mean you'd owe about $56k upfront.
Charlie added that rising rents year after year (rent prices nationally have climbed about 19% since 2019) creates too much financial uncertainty. They said, "I don't wanna bring a child into a situation where I'm not sure I'm gonna have somewhere to live in a year."
@jimmyego / Via tiktok.com
In a final thought, Charlie said, "It's not that we don't wanna have kids. A lot of us do. In fact, I would love to have a kid with my wife, but I'm not gonna have a kid in this country right now. I'm not."
Adding on to this, she told BuzzFeed, "My wife and I want a child but are terrified to bring one (especially a newborn) into this world. We're more financially stable now than ever, but there are still so many major variables at play outside of finances. Will my landlord sell my home or hike my rent? Will I be able to consistently afford the necessities to raise a child? Would my child be safe in a public school, given how commonplace school shootings have become? These topics feel unaddressed or completely ignored by public figures criticizing millennials for not having kids."
Charlie added that the constant fear of school shootings is another reason she questions bringing a child into this world. "It's a complete gamble with statistically increasing odds with every passing day that your child's school is next," she told BuzzFeed. "When I was in school (class of 2013), we had lockdown drills (they weren't even called shooter drills yet) once a year, just as often as our regionally appropriate natural disaster drills. Now, they happen as often as fire drills and include specific strategies and plans we never even dreamed of needing."
Many people have expressed similar concerns over school shootings in America. Firearms have become the leading cause of death for children and teens in the US. Parents and children deal with fear of going to school somewhere that's supposed to be safe; some have contemplated moving, and young people have expressed uncertainty over bringing more kids into a world where this continues.
Since sharing the video, which he said was originally just a way to air out some grievances, Charlie said the response has been greater than he expected. He told BuzzFeed, "Most comments and private messages came from millennials (and a handful of trolls, but that's to be expected) with similar views sharing their feelings and bringing up other points I didn't talk about. My feelings felt very validated."
The video has since been viewed 1.9 million times.
In the video, Charlie also theorized that people in government have capitalist interests in pushing children and banning abortion because, without a growing population, "the working class isn't replenishing itself." She referenced historical moments where population loss due to plague meant a labor scarcity and thus demand for higher wages. "They actually had to pay them more in order to convince them to come work for them," she said. "Which we all know is the absolute last thing that any of these companies wanna have to do." Others echoed similar sentiments in the comments:
In reference to the first comment, World Health Organization scientists have accused infant formula manufacturers of using predatory marketing tactics and lobbying against breastfeeding protections and improved parental leave programs in favor of billion-dollar profits.
Some experts suggest that there is a dangerous economic gain in policing women's bodies, whether that's enforcing unwanted pregnancies or adopting pro-natalist agendas. Scholar Silvia Federici argued in Caliban and the Witch that it's not a coincidence that when population declined in early capitalist societies, "severe penalties were introduced in the legal codes of Europe to punish women guilty of reproductive crimes," aka, the early witch hunts.
Those accused of being witches — who were often just women who did not perform femininity in the way society expected — were persecuted for providing abortions and allegedly making men impotent, amongst other things. They were seen as a threat to the patriarchal family structure and potential population growth for capitalism to thrive. Some argue that the witch hunts of history are not too different from contemporary restrictions on women's bodies, as restrictive abortion laws like those in Texas allow anyone to accuse and sue suspected abortion providers, just as those accused of witchcraft for providing abortions in 15th-century Europe.
As for her circle, Charlie said most millennials she knows don't have kids. "The ones that did, frankly, were not planning for a child or had their children pre-pandemic. I've asked them if they would have children now had they waited, and the answer is overwhelmingly no," she said. "I also saw this sentiment a lot in the comments. So much has changed in the last four years alone, and we're pessimistic about the future." Like Charlie, people in the comments expressed wanting kids but not seeing it as an option:
"If life is only going to get harder, raising children — an already gargantuan feat in and of itself — will become less and less achievable for the ever-growing working and poverty class," Charlie told BuzzFeed.
Pessimism continues to be a common theme among young people considering their futures. A Gallup survey found that only 44% of Gen Z'ers feel prepared for their future, and 64% say financial resources are a barrier to achieving their goals.
Another report from 2022 found that Americans were the least optimistic they have been in three decades about young people’s chances of having a better future than their parents.
As for what she feels needs to change for young people to feel prepared to have children, Charlie told BuzzFeed, "What I feel would have the most impact for the most people would be financial stability — better wages, benefits, affordable housing, etc. We need more than just enough to cover necessities; life needs to be enjoyable, safe, and happy for the parents to give a child the childhood they deserve."
Like the 300k+ others who liked Charlie's video, I can't say I disagree. Unless I hit the jackpot or have an extreme stroke of luck, I don't feel any security bringing a child into the world. Even without kids, I worry one wrong move or ill fate will make me financially vulnerable, even though I consider myself pretty fortunate overall. I still have time to decide, but I worry that the decision has already been made for me.
Let me know how you feel, though, in the comments. If you're a millennial or Gen Z'er, why or why aren't you having kids?
