Coronavirus Has Women Reconsidering When And If To Have Babies. It Makes Sense
I have never really been the kind to want kids of my own, since I was a kid myself. Stringently against the idea of having babies, the maximum that I saw myself becoming was a dog-mama and my reasons for it were quite simple – it was much easier for me to cuddle and train a cute Siberian Husky, than it would’ve been a human child. Of course this kind of ‘irrational’ thinking has got me a lot of flak over the years, with some family members even calling my decision ‘unwomanlike’, backing it uup with stories of how they had two kids by the time they were my age. But who knew, years down the line, when the pandemic would hit us all, I wouldn’t have been the only one reconsidering having babies.
You see, as per a survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute where they spoke to over 2,000 women on the topic, it was found that almost one third of the women have decided to have fewer children or delay pregnancy because of coronavirus.
Considering one thing that came in abundance during this lockdown was time, while there were a lot of people who used it well to catch up on cardio and family planning, there have been another group, that settled on rather not bringing a child into a world that is currently struggling with such a virus and a deadened economy.
The pandemic is making women reconsider when and if to have babies https://t.co/isN9OjhVDg
— alysesue.eth (@alysesue) September 1, 2020
Also Read : According To UN’s Latest Report, 90% Of The Population Is Biased Against Women And It’s Getting Worse. We Didn’t Need A Study To Tell Us That
This is a difficult world to bring a child into right now. Some women see it as bringing more love into the world, some find it scary. #EachWomansDecision #COVID19 #HavingChildren The pandemic is making women reconsider when and if to have babies https://t.co/swh0FYNYtH via @qz
— NOW-Columbia (@NOW_Columbia) September 1, 2020
In fact, the studies have explicitly shown that the change of plans is significantly more common among minority groups and those who are more economically vulnerable during this pandemic. The study that was conducted on women in the US, further compared the statistics to the time when recession had hit the economy both during the time of Great Depression in 1929 and in 2008. Both the years show that almost 2.3 million less children were born during 2008 and 2013, because parents considered conditions for family planning somewhat unfavorable.
Kasey Buckles, economics professor at University of Notre Dame spoke on the matter and said, “Given that economic hardship and uncertainty negatively affect fertility intentions, it is also not a surprise that Black, Hispanic, and low-income women are more likely to report these changes, as those groups have been hardest-hit by the pandemic,” while hinting at how the drop in fertility is a sign of lack of confidence in the future.
Whether it is just the financial crisis almost all of us are going through, or the fact that it would be long until things go back to normal, has people everywhere wondering if they really need to expand their families.
