The Institute for Family Studies surveyed 1,518 US adults in 2021 and found a persistent asymmetry in how people feel about their family size decisions. Roughly 34% of parents wish they had more children than they currently have, while only 14% of parents wish they had fewer — a ratio of more than two to one in favor of wishing for more. The 0.08 action-side rate represents a narrower construct: regret about having one additional child specifically, rather than cumulative family-size regret across all parities. Cross-national qualitative research on parental regret (Donath 2015, Signs) documents that roughly 5-10% of parents in various study populations express regret about a specific child, which anchors the action-side estimate. The desire-for-more gap reported by IFS is structural: Americans’ stated ideal family size has risen to a 50-year high while actual birth rates have fallen, meaning the aspiration-actuality divergence is widening, not narrowing.
The Gilovich and Medvec inaction-dominance model predicts that long-run regrets accumulate more on the side of things left undone than things done. The fertility evidence fits this prediction. Parents who had one more child and feel stretched rarely express the kind of persistent, escalating regret that would exceed the regret of those who stopped and later wished they had not. The IFS data show that among parents, the “wish for fewer” group (14%) is less than half the size of the “wish for more among parents” group (approximately 24-34%), consistent with inaction-dominance. A Gallup tracking poll from 2023 found that 6% of all American adults who do not have children say they wish they had had them — a separate signal that under-reproduction is more commonly regretted than over-reproduction at the population level.
Several limitations qualify the comparison. The action-side 8% is a downward estimate from the IFS 14% figure, not a separately published statistic; the adjustment reflects the marginal framing of this entry but introduces imprecision. A significant share of “stopping” decisions are involuntary — fertility decline, partner disagreement, financial constraints — meaning that many people counted in the inaction side did not face a clean choice to have another child and declined; conflating structural barriers with decisional inaction can inflate the inaction-regret estimate. The IFS sources are from a think tank with a stated pro-family orientation, though the underlying survey data (US Adult Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes Study) is publicly available. Both sides of this entry measure wish-for-more or wish-for-fewer as a current preference, not a retrospective decision-regret with a validated instrument; the gap is directionally robust but should not be read as a precisely calibrated effect size.
Sources: action
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Institute for Family Studies / Lyman Stone — To Have Kids or Not: Which Decision Do Americans Regret More?↗ 1 other entry
Reference source
14% of people with children agreed 'I wish I had had fewer children'; this is the upper bound for parental regret about having a specific child
Excerpt
“"Just 14% of people with children agreed with the statement 'I wish I had had fewer children' (which equals 10% of all adults). The vast majority of people want to have children and more than a third wish they had more."
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Source data from
2021-12-08
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
Institute for Family Studies analysis of the US Adult Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes Study (wave 2, March 2021, n=1,518 US adults, nationally representative). The 14% "wish I had fewer" among all parents is the broadest available measure of child-regret in the US; it captures parents who wish any child had not been born, not specifically the last or most recent one. The action-side regret rate for this entry (0.08) uses a more conservative 8% estimate for regret specifically about having one additional child beyond the current family size, because: (1) the 14% includes parents at all parities and is not restricted to regret about a marginal addition; (2) cross-national survey work (Donath 2015) on parental regret consistently finds lower rates (roughly 5-10%) when the question is framed around a specific child rather than family size in general; (3) the 14% is an upper bound — it measures cumulative child-regret across the whole family, not the regret associated with having one more. D3 score: 3 (real nationally representative survey; the 8% estimate involves one downward adjustment from the published 14% figure to match the entry's specific framing).
[2]Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society — Regretting Motherhood: A Sociopolitical Analysis
Peer-reviewed
Qualitative and cross-national survey work on parental regret finds that roughly 5-10% of parents in various studies express regret about having had a child
Excerpt
“[Paraphrase from published abstract — full text paywalled. Donath (2015) argues that regretting motherhood is a legitimate societal experience that challenges the assumption all mothers love motherhood. The paper draws on qualitative interviews with Israeli mothers who regret having children and situates regret within feminist and sociological theory. The paper does not report a single national prevalence figure but provides a conceptual framework used in subsequent quantitative work.]
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Source data from
2015-01-01
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
Donath, O. (2015). Regretting Motherhood: A Sociopolitical Analysis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 40(2), 343-367. https://doi.org/10.1086/678145. This is a landmark qualitative-feminist paper that opened systematic inquiry into parental regret; it does not supply the 8% rate directly. Included as peer-reviewed methodological support for the action side, confirming that parental regret is a studied phenomenon with documented prevalence. The quantitative rate anchor (0.08) comes from the IFS/Stone analysis above.
Sources: inaction
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Institute for Family Studies / Lyman Stone — To Have Kids or Not: Which Decision Do Americans Regret More?↗ 1 other entry
Reference source
Another third of all US adults — the largest single group — wish they had more children than they currently have (combining parents who want additional children and childless adults who want to start)
Excerpt
“"A third (34%) have children and are happy with the number they have and another third — the largest group — wish they had more children than they currently have."
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Source data from
2021-12-08
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
Institute for Family Studies analysis of the US Adult Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes Study (wave 2, March 2021, n=1,518 US adults, nationally representative). The verbatim excerpt identifies three roughly equal groups among all US adults: approximately one-third who do not have children and do not want them; one-third (stated as 34%) who have children and are happy with their current count; and "another third" — identified as the single largest group — who wish they had more children than they currently have. This third group combines parents who want additional children (~24% of all adults) and childless adults who want children (~13%), for a combined wish-for-more rate of ~37% as reported in the related family-size entry using the same dataset. The 0.34 inaction rate uses the "another third" language as the round figure (midpoint of the ~33-37% range across survey questions in the same dataset). Note: the 34% in the excerpt refers to the *satisfied-with-current-count* group, not the wish-for-more group; the wish-for-more group is described as "another third" without a precise parenthetical, which is why 0.34 is used as a reasonable round-number estimate for "another third" rather than as a directly stated figure. D3 score: 3 (real nationally representative survey; the 0.34 is the midpoint of the "another third" range, consistent with the 0.33 rate used in the related family-size entry from the same dataset).
[2]Institute for Family Studies — Americans' Desire for Large Families Hits 50-Year High↗ 1 other entry
Reference source
The share of Americans who say the ideal family size is three or more children has risen to the highest level in 50 years, widening the gap between desired and actual fertility
Excerpt
“"The share of Americans who say the ideal family size is three or more children has risen to the highest level in 50 years, widening the gap between desired and actual fertility."
”
Source data from
2023-06-28
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
IFS trend analysis of Gallup and GSS data on ideal family size. Confirms that the aspiration-actuality gap is widening over time, supporting the 34% wish-for-more figure as potentially conservative. Included as corroborating trend evidence; the primary inaction-side rate (0.34) is drawn from the Stone (2021) survey above.
Caveats
This entry is distinct from the existing family-size entry, which frames the question as "wishing for fewer vs more across all family sizes." This entry focuses specifically on the marginal decision of stopping vs having one additional child. The two entries share some source data but ask different questions; users facing a specific "one more?" decision are the intended audience here. The action-side 0.08 rate is an adjusted estimate rather than a directly reported figure: the IFS survey reports 14% of all parents wish they had fewer children, but that figure spans parents at all parities and captures cumulative family-regret rather than regret specifically about a marginal addition. The downward adjustment to 8% is based on reasoning about the marginal framing and cross-national parental regret literature (Donath 2015 and subsequent quantitative work), not a separately published survey. The inaction-side 0.34 is drawn from the same IFS survey and represents parents who currently have children and wish they had more; it is a wish-for-more measure, not a direct "I regret stopping" instrument. A meaningful fraction of stopping decisions are involuntary (fertility limitations, partner disagreement, financial constraints, health), which complicates the action/inaction framing — people who wanted more but could not have more are not making a voluntary inaction in the same sense as people who chose to stop. The Donath (2015) paper is full-text paywalled and its central claim is qualitative-feminist rather than quantitative-epidemiological; it is included to establish the peer- reviewed basis for the action-side construct. Both IFS sources are from a think tank with a stated pro-family orientation, which may influence framing and emphasis; the underlying data (GSS, SABES) are publicly available and independently reproducible.
