Any mention of “declining birthrates” seems to touch a raw nerve with some. Online, the subject quickly draws defensive comments, many from people frustrated by the assumption that they are being pressured to have children.
Often, at the heart of the resistance is money. Time and again, people say the decision not to have children – or not to have more – comes down to finances. One parent, who has a single child, put it bluntly: “It comes down to economics.”
But deeper discussions tend to reveal some raw, more complex truths. When women talk candidly about their choices, the story becomes less about numbers and more about the lived realities of raising children in a changing world.
Debra, who says she reached her limit at two children, entered motherhood in her early 30s almost by chance. It was not something she was actively considering, having a partner who already had children from a previous relationship. More startling was when she became pregnant, her doctor asked whether she wanted to get rid of the baby.
“I thought, ‘Why would I want to do that?’” she recalled. “So I said, I’ll keep it. Then later, the second one came, and I was like, ‘All right, I’m happy with this. Times are tough, there are expenses, so I stopped there.”
Raising children, she said, has been anything but straightforward. Despite her partner’s presence, most of the responsibility fell to her.
“Sometimes you end up having to carry the load, and that’s what happened to me,” she said, explaining that she wanted to raise children who had a deep understanding that they could be whoever they wanted to be, and did not have to reflect society’s standards. “You want your children to grow up thinking for themselves, not just following the crowd. But it’s difficult now for a lot of women.”
For others, the calculation is more deliberate. Rochel, 42, recently had her second child but admits the balancing act is exhausting.
“It is expensive to raise children,” she said. “Even with a village, it is very difficult to balance everything: work, school, activities, and just spending time. With two, you have to ensure you’re providing enough attention so no one feels left out or less loved.”
She added, “I’m happy my mom had three of us because we are so close, but I don’t think I would be able to have that kind of balance.”
The sobering reality is that many women and men of childbearing age are choosing not to have children at all. Saint Lucia’s fertility rate – the average number of children per woman – has fallen from 3.0 in 1990 to just 1.3 in 2020. Globally, the fertility rate has halved over the past 60 years.
Kendall Elva, the deputy director of social transformation in the Ministry of Equity, believes this trend is unlikely to reverse
“There are things you could do to encourage people to have children, like reducing the cost of living,” he said. “But I still don’t think these measures will return us to a time when a couple would have three or four children. That will not happen.”
Elva sees the shift as more cultural than economic. “With development come changes in how people think, our values, our attitudes,” he said. “I really cannot imagine a woman today, a career woman, saying she’s going to have three or four children, regardless of whether the government has a policy of giving each couple $20,000 per child.”
In his view, higher birth rates in the past were less about choice than circumstance. “A woman might have been left with children by one man, then found another partner to help provide, and ended up with more children through that. That was part of why the birthrate was so high,” he said.
Today, Elva argues, families are smaller because parents want to provide more for each child. “People are focused on giving their children the best, and I think that’s okay,” he said.
Referencing the often impassioned public debate, where the focus tends to fall on financial strain rather than less controllable factors like health, he said: “Sometimes people say it’s too expensive, but if we’re honest, if we really want to have a child, people will have children. There’s a bit of intellectual dishonesty in the way the issue is framed.”
Still, he concedes that government has a role to play in a population’s overall well-being. “However, for me, I also still believe the government should do anything possible to reduce the cost of living.
