The world has been experiencing an unprecedented decline in fertility rates – 5 children per woman in 1950 to 2.25 children in 2024 -, which has led the most conservative politicians in the West to alert against a “”, although sharing the planet and the longevity increasing, the human population has never been so high. At the same time, they alert against the demographic explosion in the global south. The reality is that millions of people do not have children or not as they want because they face economic and social barriers that prevent it. This is the main conclusion of the latest report, made public on Tuesday, and entitled The true fertility crisis: the search for reproductive agency in a changing worldwhere the body denounces that the most intimate reproductive decisions, such as using contraceptives or forming a family, are being undermined or denied to millions of people.
“This is not a story about people who renounce maternity or paternity, but about people who are being prevented from exercising that right by economic, social and systemic barriers,” said the executive director of UNFPA, Natalia Kanem, during a meeting online With the press. “Even in countries with lower fertility rates, most people want to have two or more children. The problem is that they cannot,” he added.
Even in countries with lower fertility rates, most people want to have two or more children
NATALIA KANEM, Director Ejecutiva according to UNFP
To reach this conclusion, the UN Fund conducted a survey with more than 14,000 people in 14 countries that represent more than a third of the world’s population. The results are overwhelming: one in five adults of reproductive age believes that they will not be able to have the number of children you want. Among those who had already completed their family, 31% said they had fewer children than they wanted. And one in four ensures that he wanted to have a child, but he could not do it at the time he would have liked.
The reasons are multiple, but there is a factor that stands out above all: the economy. 39% of the people surveyed declared that financial limitations affected or affect their ability to have the number of children they want. The lack of access to dignified housing, labor precariousness, the high cost of education and child care are some of the most cited reasons.
But there are also others, such as “the concern for conflicts, the environment or the political climate in which one lives,” says Kanen, who recalls that a young Ukraine told them that he wanted to have children, but that he contemplated every day the difficulties faced by families in their country. “I do not want a life like that or for my future children,” he said, according to the director of UNFPA.
The report dismantles, therefore, according to Kanen, one of the most repeated premises by certain conservative governments and pronatalist currents: that current youth has lost interest in forming families. Instead, what it reveals is that the frustration of reproductive desires is a global phenomenon. It occurs in both high and low fertility countries, both in women and men, in married or single, heterosexual or LGBTIQ+people.
Threat against freedom
However, in the same way that millions of people do not have the children who want, the UNFPA survey throws at the same time, that one in five people claims to have been pressed to have children when I did not want and one in three women of legal age has had an unwanted pregnancy.
“Many countries face aging and decreased population, labor scarcity and increased health and pension costs. They are real concerns that, however, are taking some A,” says Kanem. The director of the UNFPA alludes to the “”, instead of “promoting the participation of women in the labor market, which is demonstrated that it improves economic productivity in a context of aging of the population.” He adds that “in some cases, it can be the neighbor next door that you urge you to marry before it is too late; in others, it can be the government, with advertisements” that the weight of the offspring loads on women, slides.
There are governments that go further and “impose restrictions on the availability of contraceptives”
Natalia Kanen, Executive Director of UNFPA
But there are also governments that go further and “impose restrictions on the availability of contraceptives” or limit the right to abortion, Kanen complaint. The lack of access to safe abortion, recalls the director of UNFPA, “leads to insecure abortion”, which is one of the main causes of maternal mortality in the world. In addition, among women who survive an insecure abortion, many suffer infections that are one of the main causes of secondary infertility. “True threat is not the decline in fertility rates, but the threat against people’s freedom and their ability to choose,” ditch.
And while heterosexual women living as a couple pushes them towards motherhood, “LGBTIQ+ people and single people are often denied access to fertility services, and immigrants are sometimes denied access to affordable maternity care,” Kanen denounces. And he asks: “Who is considered deserving of the option of founding a family?”
In the case of Sub -Saharan Africa, infertility, which causes great stigma especially for women, is the main reason for gynecological consultation, according to UNFPA. And yet, “only 2% of affected couples have access to effective treatment.”
Faced with the obsession with the birth rates and the demographic composition, the UNFPA proposes a change of focus: instead of asking how many children a country needs, we would have to ask what people need to have – or not to have – the children they want. And the answer is to guarantee quality and reproductive health services for all people, promote conciliation policies (paternity permits or economic nurseries), promote gender equality in care or consider migration as a valid strategy in the face of population aging.
As the report concludes, “the real problem is not that individual reproductive decisions do not align with the objectives of a state or an economy, but that environments and policies are misaligned with people’s desires.”
