Americans are waiting longer to have children than they ever have in history. Since 2007, the birth rate for women in their 20s has fallen by 28%. Over the past three decades, the median age for women giving birth has jumped from 27 to 30.
“The story here is about young women, whose births are plummeting,” Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College, told The New York Times. “All of a sudden, in the last 10 years, there’s this tremendous transformation.”
There are many reasons for the change in the birth rate. Women are dedicating more of their time and energy to building their careers and putting off having children. Further, the cost of living and raising children makes it prohibitive for younger people to have kids.
A poll taken earlier this year found that more than 50% of 18 to 34-year-olds said they would consider having children if the cost of living was lower.
Actor Chris Pratt, star of two of the summer’s biggest hits, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” thinks that people should push back against the trend of waiting until later in life to have kids. He says he got the idea from fellow actor and father, Adam Sandler.
Pratt has three children—Jack, 10, whom he had with his first wife, Anna Faris, and Lyla Maria, 2, and Eloise Christina, 1, from his second marriage to Katherine Schwarzenegger. The couple tied the knot in 2019.
“People say all the time, ‘Don’t rush to have kids.’ I personally disagree,” Pratt told Men’s Journal. “Rush. Have them. Of course, make sure you find a great partner but don’t wait.”
“I was talking to Adam Sandler a while back, and he said, ‘Every day you wait is a day they don’t get to have you in their life,’” he continued. “The younger you have kids, the more time they get to have with you. It’s wild. Having kids is incredible. The things you normally take for granted in life are new.”
Sandler, 56, has two daughters Sadie, 17, and Sunny, 14.
“As they grow up, it becomes more about connecting with them as individuals and what makes them unique,” Pratt continued. “The softness of their hearts. How their minds work. How they’re the same as you. How they’re different.”
Sandler and Pratt have a point. The earlier you have kids, the more time you can spend with them. You will also share the years when you are healthier and more energetic. When many people think about the time in their lives they spend with their kids, they only consider when they are young and living at home. But the adult parent-child relationship can also be very meaningful.
As a parent, having more years with your child also means you’ll have more time with your grandchildren as well.
However great the advice sounds, Sandler and Pratt are both very successful actors, and they probably don’t have the same concerns about having the means to raise children that most parents do. So, it’s a little easier for them to believe that people should have children while they’re younger instead of waiting until they are more financially stable.
But that being said, most parents would probably agree that they hope to spend as many years with their children and grandchildren as possible.