childlessness childlessness childlessness is the state of not having children. childlessness may have personal, social or political significance. childlessness at the age of 30 childlessness, which may be by choice or circumstance, is distinguished from voluntary childlessness, also called being "childfree", which is voluntarily having no children, and from antinatalism, wherein childlessness is promoted. types types of childlessness can be classified into several categories: natural sterility randomly affects individuals. one can think of it as the minimum level of permanent childlessness that we can observe in any given society, and is of the order of 2 percent, in line with data from the hutterites, a group established as the demographic standard in the 1950s. social sterility, which one can also call poverty-driven childlessness, or endogenous sterility, describes the situation of poor women whose fecundity has been affected by poor living conditions. people who are childless by circumstance. these people can be childless because they have not met a partner with whom they would like to have children, or because they tried unsuccessfully to conceive at an advanced maternal age, or because they suffer from certain medical issues, such as endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome (pcos), that make it difficult for them to conceive. people who are childless by choice. the first three categories are often grouped under the label "involuntary childlessness". the latter category is often called "voluntary childlessness", also described as being "childfree", occurring when one decides not to reproduce. statistics in the united states the analysis of the three broad categories of childlessness (natural sterility, social sterility, voluntary childlessness) outlined above helps to understand how it has changed over the last century in the united states. at the end of the 19th century, income and education levels were low. this made levels of social sterility very high. in addition to the causes mentioned above, the spanish influenza epidemics meant that pregnant women who were infected were particularly vulnerable to miscarriages. the great depression also impoverished these generations, for whom voluntary childlessness was almost absent. on the whole, the rates of childlessness for married women born between 1871 and 1915 fluctuated between 15 and 20 percent. the rise in both education and overall income allowed subsequent generations to escape from situations where couples were “constrained” from having children, and rates of childlessness began to fall. over time, the nature of childlessness changed, becoming more and more the chosen outcome of some educated women. a low level of childlessness of 7% was achieved by the generation of the baby boom. it started to rise again for the subsequent generations, with 12 percent of women born in 1964-68 remaining childless. social causes of childlessness have now completely disappeared for women in union. this is however not true for single women, who are usually poorer, for whom social sterility still exists. from 2007 to 2011, the fertility rate in the u.s. declined 9%, the pew research center reporting in 2010 that the birth rate was the lowest in u.s. history and that childlessness rose across all racial and ethnic groups to about 1 in 5 versus 1 in 10 in the 1970s. the cdc released statistics in the first quarter of 2016 confirming that the u.s. fertility rate had fallen to its lowest point since record keeping started in 1909: 59.8 births per 1,000 women, half its high of 122.9 in 1957. even taking the falling fertility rate into account, the u.s. census bureau still projected that the u.s. population would increase from 319 million (2014) to 400 million by 2051. statistics in europe in a paper presented at a 2013 united nations economic commission for europe work session on demographic projections, swedish statisticians reported that since the 2000s, childlessness had decreased in sweden and marriages had increased. it had also become more common for couples to have a third child suggesting that the nuclear family was no longer in decline in sweden.: 10 the number of people over 50 in the uk without adult children in 2023 was reported to be 20 percent. causes reasons for childlessness include, but are not limited to, the following: voluntary personal choice, that is, having the physical, mental, and financial capability to have children but choosing not to (that is, voluntary childlessness), also called being "childfree". involuntary main article: infertility infertility, the inability of a person or persons to conceive, due to complications related to either or both a woman or a man. this is regarded as the most prominent reason for involuntary childlessness. biological causes of infertility vary because many organs of both sexes must function properly for conception to take place. infertility also affects people who are unable to conceive a second or subsequent pregnancy. this is called secondary infertility. obstetric or gynaecological problems, including physical injury caused by a previous pregnancy. mental-health difficulties, such as impairment of executive functioning, that prevent a would-be parent from being able to properly raise a child. practical difficulties involving features of one's environment: effects of social, cultural, or legal norms (sometimes referred to as "social infertility"): combination of lack of a partner or partner's being of same biological sex as person in question with social or legal barriers to family formation through non-biological means (adoption or family "blending"), e.g., prohibitions against adoption by single persons, adoption by same-sex couples, marriage to a partner of the same sex who already has children, etc. economic or social pressure to pursue a career before having children, increasing the odds of eventual infertility due to advanced maternal age lack of resources sufficient to make bearing or raising a child a practically viable option: insufficiency of financial resources vis-à-vis the level of family and other community support available insufficiency of access to medical care (often overlaps with insufficiency of financial resources) insufficiency of access to supportive care necessitated by employment commitments or mental-health impairments to daily functioning (see above) unwillingness of one's partner, where existent, to conceive or raise children (includes partners who are unwilling to adopt children despite being biologically infertile, of the same biological sex, or physically absent) the death of all of a person's already-conceived children either before birth (as with miscarriage and stillbirth) or after birth (as with infant and child mortality) coupled with a person's not having yet had other children for reasons ranging from physical or emotional exhaustion to having passed childbearing age. infant and child death can happen for any number of reasons, usually medical or environmental, such as biological malformations, maternal complications, accident or other injury, and disease. both the existence of many of these causes and the severity of their harm when present can be mitigated by ensuring that the infant's or child's environment features resources ranging from parenting and safety information to pre-, peri-, and postnatal medical care for mother and child. solutions for involuntary childlessness