Childlessness Bothers Men More Than Women

The study argues that even though its data is at least 10 years old, that gender gap still may be pivotal in shaping attitudes toward childlessness. Conditions in terms of work and other issues for women considering parenthood don't seem to have changed much, Koropeckyj-Cox noted, but "one of my next steps would be to keep looking at it with more recent data."

At first, the findings seem "counterintuitive," said Irene Goldenberg, a professor emerita of psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles. "People would say that women care more" about children. But, as the study implies, "women know the costs more."

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The finding that women's acceptance of childlessness increases with the amount of education they have shows that "the smarter you are, the more you know about the costs," Goldenberg added. "You understand that it's difficult to do both things. The whole idea of doing both is really tough. Doing both at a high level is maybe possible for only a few women. Ordinary women can't handle it all."

Goldenberg added that she thinks "women are not really going for childlessness, but that they are more attuned to the demands -- both economic and social demands -- of parenthood, and they carry more of these responsibilities."

Nadine Kaslow, chief psychologist at Emory Medical School in Atlanta, viewed the findings similarly, adding that "women who are successful professionals make a choice that they don't want to have children in their lives, because they have other things in their lives." Men, however, "tend to think that is what you do in life. You grow up and have a baby."

That male attitude may come from their most primal being, explained Barry Ginsberg, a Pennsylvania psychologist specializing in relationships. "For a man, the loss of having a family and carrying on the gene pool makes men helpless, because they can't give birth," Ginsberg said.

From an "evolutionary standpoint, men would go around impregnating all the women they could find, so that at least one of those women would survive" and produce a child, he explained.

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