As joblessness, anxieties rise, rate of birth may fall
SAN FRANCISCO - Kristen Hirsch Montag took her time finding Mr. Right, so she didn't want to wait long to start a family. Yet at 39, Montag says the economy has left her little choice but to let her biological clock keep ticking.
While the couple were planning their October wedding, Montag's husband, Paul, lost the job he had held for seven years selling ads. His unemployment benefits will run out soon, leaving the newlyweds with two mortgages and heavy hearts.
"I definitely cannot think about getting pregnant now," said Montag, a marketing communications manager for a nonprofit organization in St. Paul. "I hope that a new job and a house sale will change things for us. But I am not too confident about the future right now."
As the financial crisis reverberates through Wall Street, Washington, and beyond, it is taking a personal toll on couples who are making the painful decision to postpone starting - or growing - their families. Once hopeful about their ability to provide for children, prospective parents are now filled with gnawing doubts as jobs vanish and retirement savings dwindle - even as the cost of having and rearing a child rises.
Many economists fear the recession will become one of the worst since the Great Depression. When that hit in the 1930s, the birthrate dropped precipitously, and the effects of having fewer people in the workforce rippled through the economy two decades later.
"If you can't pay your mortgage, the last thing on your mind is to have another child," said Dr. Khalil Tabsh, chief of obstetrics at the University of California, Los Angeles, who expects to start seeing a drop in pregnancies.
Baby booms and busts are reliable, if lagging, economic indicators, intertwined with the rise and fall of the nation's fortunes. For three-quarters of a century, economic downturns have triggered declines in the US fertility rate, which, at about two children per woman, is the highest among rich nations.
The fertility rate hit its post-World War II low of 1.7 in 1976, after the oil shortage and a severe recession.
With the country in a recession since December 2007, accompanied by a stock market plunge and growing numbers of people losing their jobs and homes, 8 in 10 Americans say they are anxious about the economy, a recent survey by the American Psychological Association showed.
Demographers say it's too early to tell what effect anxiety will have on the birthrate, which is already difficult to forecast with so many factors in play, including immigration and birth control.
They don't expect the recession to lower the rate below the replacement level, at which each couple reproduces itself.
But they say the rate could drop if the economic slump is deep and protracted. "We'll know in about nine months," said Carl Haub, a demographer for the Population Research Bureau, a private company in Washington. "It depends on how low it goes."
For now at least, childbearing is a family issue, not a national one.
Melanie and Phil Sheridan, both 35, were high school sweethearts who recently celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary. They have a 6-year-old son, Tyler, and Melanie has yearned for a second child for some time.
The Sheridans took a step in that direction in March 2007, when they bought a three-bedroom house in Carlsbad, Calif.
But eight months later, Melanie was laid off from her job as a marketing assistant for a home builder. The economic outlook is gloomy and their household budget is strained, relying on a single income from Phil's job as a project planner with San Diego Gas & Electric Co.
So they have decided to hold off on having another child.
"People tell me not to let money stop us from having a baby, that everything works itself out in the end," Melanie said. "That may be true, but right now having another baby feels more like a strain than the blessing it's supposed to be."
Their case is not unusual. "From now on, people will think twice before they have kids," UCLA's Tabsh said. "Especially, parents who already have one or two or three kids will probably defer pregnancy until things get better." 