'Encouraging signs' for family life as desire for 3 or more children rises to highest levels since 1970s

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Americans’ preferences for larger families reached a new high in a new Gallup poll Monday.

According to the poll, which was conducted in June and July 2023, a plurality of Americans, 44%, said that two children were the ideal number a family should have. In addition, a combined 45% of Americans said that three or more children were the ideal number. Only 5% of Americans said the ideal number was one child or none.

"Americans’ belief that the ideal family size includes three or more children has been rising steadily in recent years, currently up four percentage points from the previous reading in 2018 to its highest point since 1971. The latest measure is one of the few instances when preferences for smaller families (of one or two children) and larger families (of three or more children) are statistically tied in Gallup’s trend," the poll noted. 

Gallup also found that among subgroups, young adults aged 18 to 29 were the most likely to say three or more children were ideal at 52%. Black adults, Republican-leaning voters and Catholics were also more likely to prefer larger families. Men and women, however, were evenly split.

Religious Americans were more likely to want larger families than non-religious ones. (iStock)

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The poll also reported, "Regardless of the number of children they consider to be ideal, nine in 10 U.S. adults have children or would like to. This includes 69% who already have children, 15% who are aged 18 to 40 and are not yet parents but say they want to be someday, and 6% who are aged 41 and older and do not have children but wish they did. Just 8% of U.S. adults indicate no intent or longing to have children."

University of Virginia's National Marriage Project director W. Bradford Wilcox praised the poll numbers and hoped that it would lead to more Americans marrying and having larger families. 

"This is one of the few encouraging signs I have seen regarding family life recently. This new Gallup Poll suggests plenty of Americans would like to have more than two children. This is encouraging because the US fertility rate has been well under the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman for more than a decade. In other words, a majority of childbearing-aged women are actually having fewer than two kids right now," Wilcox told FOX News Digital.

National Marriage Project director Brad Wilcox called the poll results "encouraging." (Courtesy of Advocate Children’s Hospital – Oak Lawn)

He added, "But if people are going to make good on this aspiration, they’re going to have to get married in greater numbers and generally do so before their mid-thirties. Marriage is a huge factor in fertility, obviously. And women are much more likely to have three or more kids if they marry in their twenties or early thirties."

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Gallup began reporting on Americans’ preferred family sizes in 1936. At the time, 64% of Americans preferred having three or more children with support peaking at 77% in 1945 at the end of World War II. The number then dropped between 1967 and 1971 from 70% to 52%. By 1973, the preference dropped to 43%, where it remained until 2023.

However, Gallup remarked that this may not transfer into higher birth rates any time soon.

The poll concluded, "Americans’ preference for smaller families, which has been the norm for the past 50 years, is shifting as their view of the ideal number of children in a family has crept up to the highest level since 1973. Still, the U.S. birth rate remains low compared with the 1970s, suggesting that Americans’ views of the ideal may not be their personal reality."

The percentage of Americans preferring three or more children rose to its highest levels since the 1970s. (Photo by H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images)

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Wilcox encouraged lawmakers to capitalize on the poll findings by enacting policies to encourage marriage and families as an attainable and preferable option.

"To make America more marriage and child-friendly, policy makers should eliminate the marriage penalty in our welfare policies, advance a child allowance for working families, and teach the ‘Success Sequence’ [which stresses the value of marriage] in schools. Measures like these would make marriage and family life more attractive and attainable," Wilcox said.

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