Religion and Fertility in Canada (Executive Summary & Conclusion)
JULY 19, 2023
LYMAN STONE
Why do religious women in Canada tend to have more kids than their non-religious counterparts? This report explores what women told us.
Executive Summary
Canadian fertility rates have fallen sharply in recent decades and are now at levels far below what Canadian women say they want. Understanding this reality merits closer inspection. Our earlier paper, “She’s (Not) Having a Baby,” examined why half of Canadian women are falling short of their fertility desires. In this release, we use the same novel survey of 2,700 Canadian women to explore the role that Canada’s changing and diverse religious ecology plays in shaping fertility. This study illuminates to what extent, and through what means, religion influences fertility.
Overall, we find that Canadian women who attend religious services at least monthly desire to have more children, spend more of their life married, and ultimately have more children than nominally religious or nonreligious Canadian women. Contrary to popular narratives, our survey results show no evidence of meaningful differences in women’s employment across different religious groups. In other words, religious women have access to the same economic opportunities as nonreligious women. We take this to mean their higher fertility is not due to a lack of employment among religious women.
Rather, our study suggests that religiously observant women may have more children because their desires for larger families lead them to make different life choices. They marry earlier and thus spend more of their twenties and thirties, when conception is easiest, in married unions. They may benefit from more social support from their families and communities. They also experience less worry and anxiety about a host of different individual and global issues. Indeed, even when religious and nonreligious women have identical financial circumstances, they report dramatically different degrees of financial worries, suggesting that religious women possess additional nonfinancial resources (such as community support or psychological strategies) for managing their situation.
Thus, falling Canadian fertility may be closely related to dwindling religious participation. The rise in the nonreligious population may be one factor driving delayed marriage and increased prevalence of a variety of worries about family formation. As religiosity declines, and as Canada’s religious communities increasingly include a diverse array of faith traditions from around the globe, religious differences in family behaviours will only become a more critical part of understanding Canadian families.
......
Conclusion
Canadian women are having fewer children than they report desiring, on average. This is true across every religious grouping in Canada, and in fact, among women in their forties, “missing” children outnumber “excess” ones at each level of religious service attendance. While our survey shows that religious women have a larger gap between desired and actual fertility, meaningful gaps exist for all groups.
Religion’s role in shaping fertility is complex and includes multiple elements. Intensity of religious commitment, as measured by religious service attendance, predicts higher desired and actual fertility in general and within most specific religious traditions. Not all religious groups are the same, however: fertility desires rise more steeply with attendance for some groups, especially the Abrahamic faiths. Thus, both religious service attendance and religious self-identification independently matter for family formation.
Aside from differences in fertility motivations (intentions), religiosity may influence fertility by first influencing marriage. At every age, we find that religious women are likelier to be married. Since marriage remains a very strong predictor of fertility outcomes in academic literature and in our data, religion’s effect in motivating and facilitating earlier and more marriage in turn influences fertility.
But religious families are not open only to biological children. We find that more-religious women also have more non-biological (adoptive, foster, step) children and that they also use more of some forms of reproductive technology than nonreligious women. Thus, the religious difference in family is not limited to genetic family but manifests in a broader openness to many kinds of parent-child relationships, especially adoption.
Finally, religiosity is strongly associated with a lower likelihood of concerns, of the type women face when they contemplate having children. Religious women report less worry across almost every single category related to family planning that we surveyed. This difference is not caused simply by differences in socioeconomic factors: similarly situated religious women report much lower incidence of worries and concerns than do nonreligious women. It is likely that religious women benefit from more support from families, communities, and possibly even spouses than do nonreligious women. But it is also possible that religion affords women with particular strategies for psychological resilience. Faced with an often-uncertain world that presents numerous obstacles to childbearing, religious women do not perceive themselves to be as burdened by anxieties and cares related to family formation, suggesting that religiosity remains an invaluable source of psychological and emotional capital in Canada today.
https://www.cardus.ca/research/family/reports/religion-and-fertility-in-canada/
LYMAN STONE
Why do religious women in Canada tend to have more kids than their non-religious counterparts? This report explores what women told us.
Executive Summary
Canadian fertility rates have fallen sharply in recent decades and are now at levels far below what Canadian women say they want. Understanding this reality merits closer inspection. Our earlier paper, “She’s (Not) Having a Baby,” examined why half of Canadian women are falling short of their fertility desires. In this release, we use the same novel survey of 2,700 Canadian women to explore the role that Canada’s changing and diverse religious ecology plays in shaping fertility. This study illuminates to what extent, and through what means, religion influences fertility.
Overall, we find that Canadian women who attend religious services at least monthly desire to have more children, spend more of their life married, and ultimately have more children than nominally religious or nonreligious Canadian women. Contrary to popular narratives, our survey results show no evidence of meaningful differences in women’s employment across different religious groups. In other words, religious women have access to the same economic opportunities as nonreligious women. We take this to mean their higher fertility is not due to a lack of employment among religious women.
Rather, our study suggests that religiously observant women may have more children because their desires for larger families lead them to make different life choices. They marry earlier and thus spend more of their twenties and thirties, when conception is easiest, in married unions. They may benefit from more social support from their families and communities. They also experience less worry and anxiety about a host of different individual and global issues. Indeed, even when religious and nonreligious women have identical financial circumstances, they report dramatically different degrees of financial worries, suggesting that religious women possess additional nonfinancial resources (such as community support or psychological strategies) for managing their situation.
Thus, falling Canadian fertility may be closely related to dwindling religious participation. The rise in the nonreligious population may be one factor driving delayed marriage and increased prevalence of a variety of worries about family formation. As religiosity declines, and as Canada’s religious communities increasingly include a diverse array of faith traditions from around the globe, religious differences in family behaviours will only become a more critical part of understanding Canadian families.
......
Conclusion
Canadian women are having fewer children than they report desiring, on average. This is true across every religious grouping in Canada, and in fact, among women in their forties, “missing” children outnumber “excess” ones at each level of religious service attendance. While our survey shows that religious women have a larger gap between desired and actual fertility, meaningful gaps exist for all groups.
Religion’s role in shaping fertility is complex and includes multiple elements. Intensity of religious commitment, as measured by religious service attendance, predicts higher desired and actual fertility in general and within most specific religious traditions. Not all religious groups are the same, however: fertility desires rise more steeply with attendance for some groups, especially the Abrahamic faiths. Thus, both religious service attendance and religious self-identification independently matter for family formation.
Aside from differences in fertility motivations (intentions), religiosity may influence fertility by first influencing marriage. At every age, we find that religious women are likelier to be married. Since marriage remains a very strong predictor of fertility outcomes in academic literature and in our data, religion’s effect in motivating and facilitating earlier and more marriage in turn influences fertility.
But religious families are not open only to biological children. We find that more-religious women also have more non-biological (adoptive, foster, step) children and that they also use more of some forms of reproductive technology than nonreligious women. Thus, the religious difference in family is not limited to genetic family but manifests in a broader openness to many kinds of parent-child relationships, especially adoption.
Finally, religiosity is strongly associated with a lower likelihood of concerns, of the type women face when they contemplate having children. Religious women report less worry across almost every single category related to family planning that we surveyed. This difference is not caused simply by differences in socioeconomic factors: similarly situated religious women report much lower incidence of worries and concerns than do nonreligious women. It is likely that religious women benefit from more support from families, communities, and possibly even spouses than do nonreligious women. But it is also possible that religion affords women with particular strategies for psychological resilience. Faced with an often-uncertain world that presents numerous obstacles to childbearing, religious women do not perceive themselves to be as burdened by anxieties and cares related to family formation, suggesting that religiosity remains an invaluable source of psychological and emotional capital in Canada today.
https://www.cardus.ca/research/family/reports/religion-and-fertility-in-canada/
