Canadian women are having fewer babies than they say they’d like..Housing affordability, cost of living and the pandemic fallout dominate the national conversation and all contribute to Canada’s declining fertility. Yet Canada’s baby problem pre-dates current headline issues..New research suggests increasing secularization may be a contributing factor..At the think tank Cardus, we partnered with Angus Reid to survey 2,700 women aged 18 to 44, asking about their family and fertility preferences, expectations, and outcomes..Canada is becoming more secular, but it is also becoming more religiously diverse. So, we explored the relationship between regular religious attendance and fertility..The link between religiosity and higher fertility is well established, but we found that Canadian women who attend religious services at least monthly want more kids, spend more of their life married and ultimately have more kids than women who don't attend religious services..Canadian women aged 35 to 39 who regularly attend religious services have, on average, 2.3 kids while their peers who never attend or attend religious services less frequently have an average of 1.5 children..As religious life is pushed deeper into the private sphere, the evidence suggests that religious communities are important contributors to life in Canada..Politicians seem loath to address Canada’s dwindling fertility despite the significant implications for the labour force and our social safety net..Our research askes women what they want, and our findings suggest about half of Canadian women have fewer children than they intend..Canada’s total fertility rate — the number of children a woman is likely to have over her lifetime — fell to a record low of 1.43 in 2021..Of course, just as no one is ‘kind of’ pregnant, no woman gives birth to .43 children..Still, the internationally accepted measure does help capture year-over-year changes in fertility. Canada’s fertility rate has long been in decline and is well below the 2.1 rate needed to replace a population without immigration..So why might women who regularly attend religious services have more babies than their peers?.Our research found these women marry earlier and spend more of their 20s and 30s married compared to their peers..Despite declining national marriage rates, the majority of children are born in married-parent families and marriage is linked to larger families. One advantage to marrying under age 30 is that fertility tends to be easier..Not only do women who regularly attend religious services tend to have more biological children, they report being more likely to adopt children, have more stepchildren and more foster children than non-attending women..Religious communities can be a source of care, and regularly attending women report benefiting from more social support from their families and communities. Parenting can be challenging but a supportive community can make the prospect of having a child less daunting..Many women who want to have more children, delay or choose not to because they have concerns..We asked about an array of concerns including finances and affordability, lack of a suitable partner, and the desire for greater personal development just to name a few. Women who regularly attend religious services reported worrying less about housing, finances, childcare, unsupportive partners and other concerns compared to their less religious peers, even among women with similar financial means..Religious women may have more non-material support that offsets financial concerns. Or religious attendance may provide a psychological buffer, reducing anxiety, which would be consistent with earlier academic research on the influence of religious practice..Finally, while regularly attending religious women have more children than their peers, they still report having fewer children than they desire. This is an ever-present concern across religious and non-religious women..The gap between fertility desires and achieved fertility is complex, but this latest research suggests falling Canadian fertility may be closely related to dwindling religious participation..Although religion is being relegated to the private sphere, Canada’s diverse religious communities are an important part of wider Canadian life..Peter Jon Mitchell is family program director at the Cardus think-tank.
