Sasha Roberts, a 20-year-old teacher from Brooklyn, New York, knows she'd like to have kids one day, but something major is stopping her.
"I would be raising them in a world that is essentially dying," she said, "which is kind of hard to grapple with emotionally."
It's an existential fear some older Gen Zers know all too well. Having come of age during a pandemic, a climate crisis, and global conflicts, they're considering whether they want children or even a partner, and, if they do, what that might look like.
"There's so many different ways for me to tackle" having children, Roberts told Business Insider. "I could freeze my eggs. I could adopt. I feel like it just opens me up to a multitude of opportunities and it doesn't box me in as much."
Gen Z is redefining what family and marriage look like, and those changes are likely to have far-reaching implications. In a survey of 1,880 American adults Business Insider conducted earlier this year in partnership with YouGov, about 27% of 18- to 26-year-olds said they saw starting a family as an important goal to achieve in the next five years. In comparison, 72% said they wanted to achieve financial security, and 59% said their goal was improving their health.
Many Gen Zers may not want to follow the paths of previous generations — they're prioritizing their careers and wellness above settling down and starting a family.
In a focus group held in September, Gen Zers between 18 and 26 spoke about what their future families might look like — if they choose to have them at all. Only two said they were set on having children. The rest, including Roberts, were largely ambivalent, saying they were undecided. Roberts said her vision for her life didn't include being a "traditional wife," adding, "I don't have to be married by 25."
Those who were either unsure or dead set against having kids wondered: Could they ethically bring a child into the world as it is? Several said that for Gen Zers to consider having children, the world would have to look very different.
Gen Zers debate whether it's fair to bring children into a 'climate catastrophe'
Annie Wright, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Berkeley, California, said her Gen Z clients expressed several fears about having children. The big one, she said, is "climate catastrophe."
The oldest members of the generation, who are inching closer to 27 — around the average age women in the US start having children — have recently witnessed devastating wildfires in Maui, apocalyptic floods in New York, and stifling heat in the American Southwest. It's no wonder climate catastrophes are top of mind: The number of billion-dollar climate disasters in a year in the US quadrupled from the 1980s to the 2010s.
Lindsey Weiss, a 26-year-old law student who identifies as queer, told BI the climate crisis made them "depressed" about the prospect of having kids.
"I wonder about the ethics of bringing a kid into a dying Earth," they said. "That kind of stands in my way more than anything else.
"We're aware that there's, like, 60 years of agricultural soil left, impending climate disaster, and debilitating personal and national debt," Weiss added. "So it sucks out here."
Cobie-Ray Johnson, 24, an urban farmer with an agricultural nonprofit in Harlem, described the climate crisis as the "big elephant in the room."
"We don't know how much longer we have, really," Johnson said, adding that she thinks it's something on the minds of a lot of members of her generation.
Wright said the climate crisis felt like an overwhelming problem. "Wars end, negotiations are brokered, relationships shatter and they're repaired," she said. "There is no end to climate catastrophe."
Gen Zers want to be emotionally and financially prepared for children
Gen Zers also worry about the finances of providing for a family, whether they do it on their own or with a partner. The economic think tank Brookings Institution found last year that families who had a child in 2015 could expect to spend more than $310,000, adjusted for inflation, to raise that child over 17 years. Meanwhile, the estimated median household income in the US has been trending downward: It fell to $74,580 in 2022 from $76,330 in 2021.
Johnson told BI she'd already begun thinking about the logistics of having kids because she identifies as queer and it "costs a lot of money." Intrauterine insemination, or donor insemination, can cost $300 to $1,000 a session. Meanwhile, adoption can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
No matter how emotionally mature I may get, children are like a whole other task.Jayson Lorenzo, 21
While past generations also had to worry about childcare expenses, Wright said Gen Z faces rising costs of food, housing, and childcare. "Couple that with out-of-control inflation, a changing job market, the rise of AI — who knows what that's going to do to the employment landscape in the next five to 10 years," she added.
Some Gen Zers want more for their kids than just meeting their basic needs. Having children used to be an expected step in a couple's relationship, regardless of their financial stability. Gen Zers are thinking more about whether it's the right step.
"I would just want to make sure that I'm so financially stable and have the perfect place to live, a comfortable place where I think kids would like to be," Tess-Mathilde Bryan, a 22-year-old florist and freelance writer, told BI. "I feel like people kind of used to just have kids to do it. It used to just be a normal step in people's lives, but I think people hopefully now are taking more things into consideration and trying not to put that expectation on themselves."
Then there's the psychological maturity needed to raise children — something several in the focus group said they felt their parents might not have considered. Some suggested that because Gen Zers are more likely to notice and report mental-health concerns, they'd likely be more aware of their children's mental health and needs. Wright said that's especially important for Gen Zers who were raised by emotionally immature parents or by people with personality disorders worried about repeating cycles.
"This is one of their biggest concerns when they enter the family-planning stage," she said, "which is 'given that I had no good templates, no good role models, how on earth do I do this?'"
Ash Caceres, 20, said that being raised by people who "weren't very good parents" affected their own desire to become a parent.
"I don't know if I want to continue my bloodline," Caceres, who works as a receptionist at an auction house, told BI. "There's too many things I don't know about it, and I don't want to have to gather up all of my background health, go through the generational issues. Just seems like a lot of work for something that I'm not even 100% invested in."
Caceres, who identifies as asexual, said they're open to adopting children and know it's easier to adopt as a couple. They said they might like to build a life together with a friend rather than a romantic partner because "there's not all that extra pressure put on top of it."
In 2022, parents with children under 18 reported spending just over an hour a day caring for and helping their kids as their main activity — like working on homework or playing with them. Some Gen Zers said parenting would be more work than they could reasonably do.
"No matter how emotionally mature I may get, children are like a whole other task," Jayson Lorenzo, a 21-year-old who works odd jobs, told BI. "It takes a village to raise a child, as my mom would say."
First comes marriage — maybe
Whether to have children isn't the only thing Gen Zers are questioning. Many are also examining marriage and long-term partnerships, deconstructing norms they grew up with.
"Gen Z is shaking up literally every sector, every sphere of influence, every institution," Wright said. "They're not afraid to point out what's wrong and not working."
The Thriving Center of Psychology said that in a survey it conducted this year, about 33% of Gen Zers who weren't married indicated they thought marriage was an outdated tradition. Still, 90% of them said they hope to be married one day.
For many Gen Zers, marriage may look very different than it has for previous generations. It might involve partners living separately, or at least having separate bedrooms — a throwback to how many married couples lived in the 1940s and '50s. Bryan said she wouldn't fear being "away from that person for a while" if "there's a chapter in my life where I just need to be alone or maybe they need to be alone."
"Our generation will be the one to normalize things like being happily married, living under the same roof, and having separate bedrooms," Jerai Spruiell, 26, the owner of a freight-dispatching company, said. "I need my own space. Sometimes I don't want to be around that person. I still love them. I'm still in love with them, but I need my own space."
Regardless of their views on cohabitation, the idea of a lifelong partner sounded fulfilling to several of the Gen Zers who spoke with BI. They just might not be taking that step anytime soon.
The median age at which American men marry for the first time is 30, up from 23 in 1950. For women, it's 28, up from 20 in 1950.
"I would like to really think about getting hitched to somebody who has the same goals, ideals, and spontaneousness that I might have," Lorenzo said, emphasizing that that would likely be "in the far future."
Weiss said that "the idea of having a buddy system in life" appealed to them.
Some Gen Zers, despite their worries, feel that kids and a traditional relationship are worth having. Among the Gen Zers BI spoke with, only the two self-identified heterosexual men were sure about having children.
Ben Holding, a 25-year-old marketer from Boston, told BI that having a family was paramount to him. "My mother, my dad, my sister — they're some of the closest people to me," he said.
Tymiq Williams, a 27-year-old real-estate agent and part-time hotel front-desk worker, agreed.
"There's no other point to anything," he said. "I feel like we are here to have kids, to build our legacy. So yeah, that's definitely going to happen. I've talked to people who are also in their 50s, 60s, or even 40, some people can't have kids, and it's kind of really sad to see how emotionally it affects them."
Williams said that while he "worried about the world they're going to live in, of course," he'd raise his family "in the woods" to be out of the fray.
"A lot of people are like, 'I can never bring a kid in this world,'" Holding said. "But everyone who has kids is like, 'This is one of the biggest joys of my life.' I think you're missing out a lot if you don't want to pursue one of life's greatest joys."
Dive deeper: Check out our exclusive survey on what Gen Z believes and how they live, work, and love.