Americans’ View on the Ideal Number of Children per Family

A 2013 Gallup poll found that Americans believe an average of 2.6 is the ideal number of children for a family to have. More specifically, the survey found that half of Americans (48%) think a smaller family of two children or fewer is ideal for themselves, while one-third favor a larger family of three children or more. For decades, the number of children that Americans consider ideal has shown little change, swinging between 2.2 and 2.8, although it was higher prior to the 1970s, fluctuating between 3.3 and 3.6. The average has sharply dr-opped, but it still remains above a total fertility rate of 2.08, which is needed to keep the U.S. population at a constant level.
Unfortunately, however, there is a large gap between the desired and actual fertility in the United States. A recent data released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the nation’s general fertility rate in 2014 recorded 62.9 births per 1,000 women (aged 15 to 44), which is a sharp dr-op from…