Baby Bust, 10th Anniversary Edition

Ten years ago a groundbreaking cross-generational study revealed that greater freedom and new constraints were leading fewer young people to choose parenthood. In the intervening years, the decision to have a family has not gotten easier.Stew Friedman, founding director of The Wharton School's Work/Life Integration Project, studied two generations of Wharton college students as they graduated: Gen Xers in 1992 and Millennials in 2012. The cross-generational study produced a stark discovery—the rate of graduates who planned to have children had dropped by nearly half over those 20 years. While some might wonder what this privileged group can tell us about broader trends in the United States, Friedman argues that they were “the canaries in the coal mine. . . . if they could not see a way to make their careers and families work, how could those with fewer opportunities and resources square this circle?”In a new preface to this 10th anniversary edition of Baby Bust, Friedman observes that