Marginal Revolution, in a post titled “Common sense in charge,” has highlighted findings from a new working paper by Raquel Fernández, Inés Berniell, and Milagros Onofri, circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The paper (w35651) examines how evolving attitudes toward children, parenting, and fulfillment relate to the decline in intended fertility — the number of children people report planning to have, a survey-based measure that demographers track alongside realized birth rates.

As quoted by Marginal Revolution:

“…children are increasingly seen as interfering with the freedom of parents; views on whether mothers of young children should work have become markedly more progressive and account for a substantially larger share of the decline among the tertiary-educated; and fewer people believe that women or men need children to lead a fulfilled life. This last attitude changed most over the decade and is the largest contributor to the fall in intended fertility, above all among less-educated women.”

The passage identifies three interrelated attitudinal shifts: children are increasingly viewed as a constraint on parental freedom; opinions on whether mothers of young children should work have become markedly more progressive, which accounts for a substantially larger share of the decline among the tertiary-educated; and fewer people now believe that women or men need children in order to lead a fulfilled life.

Of these, the authors report that the last attitude — whether children are necessary for a fulfilled life — changed the most over the decade studied and stands as the single largest contributor to the fall in intended fertility, with the effect most pronounced among less-educated women.

The NBER, a private nonprofit economic research organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, distributes working papers to circulate research for discussion and comment; as is standard for the series, the paper has not been peer-reviewed, and its findings may be revised as it circulates.

The paper's subject matter sits within a broader, widely documented demographic context: fertility rates have declined across many high-income countries in recent decades, and researchers have accordingly examined whether changing norms around work, family, and personal fulfillment are contributing to that trend. Sustained low fertility is closely watched by demographers and policymakers because it shrinks the future working-age population relative to retirees, raising long-run questions about pension and health-care financing. The Marginal Revolution post was published on August 24, 2026.