Since the desire to have children is largely biological and hard-wired, especially for women, it is very surprising that so many female students don't want kids. And that the difference between being religious or not makes such a substantial difference. Social factors seem to be overcoming the most innate natural inclinations.
My observation from the perspective of looking back at tender College years, is that women's childbearing interest changes, often dramatically. It's pretty common that women who have their tubes tied at 18 or 19, change their minds. The biological clock alarm is as real as puberty. It starts to go off around 30 and gets stronger through to 40.
I also have to wonder how much the misunderstanding by young women about their fertility would change the results. Young women tend to think they can wait, and "Oh, there's always IVF." But it's not what they think, and at best those IVF protocols are difficult and damaging to health. Quite a few never recover from the injections, with serious obesity. There's some cancer risk.
As another comment, I might mention, as many here have read before, that I am working on a startup to do R&D. I plan to design it to correct many of the deficiencies I have observed in over 50 years of R&D effort in various venues; academia, government, corporations and nonprofits.
If we acquire sufficient resources, one of my goals is to create an R&D environment that is more "friendly" to families and parents with children and so on. I think that our current models of R&D organizations make it very difficult for people to have families and children without irreparably damaging their careers.
Surely we can do better than we are doing right now. Of course, I am open to all suggestions anyone might have about how to create more welcoming and supportive R&D environments. I have a few ideas of my own, but since I do not claim to have all the answers, I am willing to consider all thoughts that you might have in this matter.
This is a nice study and a nice essay. However, I might make a couple of additional observations.
I remember a survey done of MIT graduates/alumni a few years ago. More than half of all MIT alumni remained virgins, even years after graduating. I asked some female members of a regular monthly Zoom call I used to sit in on, consisting of my fellow MIT classmates from decades ago. The women laughed and said they were surprised that the percentage of virgins among MIT graduates was not higher. So just because they might want children, does not mean it will actually happen.
Also, after leaving MIT I was contacted by two fertility clinics asking me to be a donor. Back then, there were no rules or laws in place about how many offspring a single donor could have. So I was a contributor to two sperm banks in Southern California for about 9 years.
I did some estimates about how many children I might have, as a result. My own best estimate was about 5000. I worked with Grok 2 to come up with other estimates. Grok 2 thought it was at least 2000 as a bare minimum.
So I really have no idea how many children I might have. Of course, there are websites that allow one to get in contact with these kids, but given the difficulties and uncertainties with the laws, I am loath to be the target of lawsuits over my activity. So I have not pursued this further.
Anyway, this factor can also introduce a certain level of uncertainty into these statistics.
Since the desire to have children is largely biological and hard-wired, especially for women, it is very surprising that so many female students don't want kids. And that the difference between being religious or not makes such a substantial difference. Social factors seem to be overcoming the most innate natural inclinations.
My observation from the perspective of looking back at tender College years, is that women's childbearing interest changes, often dramatically. It's pretty common that women who have their tubes tied at 18 or 19, change their minds. The biological clock alarm is as real as puberty. It starts to go off around 30 and gets stronger through to 40.
I also have to wonder how much the misunderstanding by young women about their fertility would change the results. Young women tend to think they can wait, and "Oh, there's always IVF." But it's not what they think, and at best those IVF protocols are difficult and damaging to health. Quite a few never recover from the injections, with serious obesity. There's some cancer risk.
Miriam Zoll's book lays out some of this.
https://www.amazon.com/Cracked-Open-Liberty-Fertility-Pursuit/dp/1566569230/ref=mp_s_a_1_6
"Among the non-religious, it is important to separate atheist, none, and agnostic, ... and an atheist does not believe in God."
Lumping agnostics into the non-religious camp alone is biased. They are also in the non-atheist camp.
It is incorrect to say just that an atheist does not believe in God. Neither do agnostics. An atheist asserts that there is no God.
I notice the author uses the term "MITers" to refer to people who attend or attended MIT.
In my day, we called ourselves "tools". I am not sure if that term is still in use, or not.
As another comment, I might mention, as many here have read before, that I am working on a startup to do R&D. I plan to design it to correct many of the deficiencies I have observed in over 50 years of R&D effort in various venues; academia, government, corporations and nonprofits.
If we acquire sufficient resources, one of my goals is to create an R&D environment that is more "friendly" to families and parents with children and so on. I think that our current models of R&D organizations make it very difficult for people to have families and children without irreparably damaging their careers.
Surely we can do better than we are doing right now. Of course, I am open to all suggestions anyone might have about how to create more welcoming and supportive R&D environments. I have a few ideas of my own, but since I do not claim to have all the answers, I am willing to consider all thoughts that you might have in this matter.
This is a nice study and a nice essay. However, I might make a couple of additional observations.
I remember a survey done of MIT graduates/alumni a few years ago. More than half of all MIT alumni remained virgins, even years after graduating. I asked some female members of a regular monthly Zoom call I used to sit in on, consisting of my fellow MIT classmates from decades ago. The women laughed and said they were surprised that the percentage of virgins among MIT graduates was not higher. So just because they might want children, does not mean it will actually happen.
Also, after leaving MIT I was contacted by two fertility clinics asking me to be a donor. Back then, there were no rules or laws in place about how many offspring a single donor could have. So I was a contributor to two sperm banks in Southern California for about 9 years.
I did some estimates about how many children I might have, as a result. My own best estimate was about 5000. I worked with Grok 2 to come up with other estimates. Grok 2 thought it was at least 2000 as a bare minimum.
So I really have no idea how many children I might have. Of course, there are websites that allow one to get in contact with these kids, but given the difficulties and uncertainties with the laws, I am loath to be the target of lawsuits over my activity. So I have not pursued this further.
Anyway, this factor can also introduce a certain level of uncertainty into these statistics.