A new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family sheds light on the experiences of involuntary childlessness among people in the United States and Israel. Researchers found that nearly 70% of sexual minority adults in Israel and 50% of people in the United States—regardless of sexual identity—have experienced the emotional burden of wanting children but being unable to have them.
Parenthood is deeply valued in many cultures, yet some people face significant barriers to achieving it. The new study aimed to understand the differences in involuntary childlessness between Israel, a country with strong pro-family policies, and the United States, where parenthood is socially valued but less supported by policy. While prior research had identified these challenges within individual countries, there had not been a comparative study across cultures to explore how factors like sexual identity and national policies affect the experience of childlessness.
“My main line of research is LGBTQ family formation and issues surrounding future family planning,” said study author Doyle P. Tate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Florida. “My mom struggled for years to become a parent as a single woman before having me and my twin brother using artificial insemination, and I also struggled for years to become a parent as a single gay man before becoming a father through surrogacy.”
“These experiences of involuntary childlessness were stressful and impacted every aspect of my life, from social and romantic relationships, career choices, and everything in between. My colleague in Israel has also been interested in these issues throughout his career, so we decided to work together on a study investigating experiences of involuntary childlessness and the stress from those experiences in both countries.”
To conduct the study, the researchers recruited a sample of 1,739 childless individuals, ranging in age from 18 to 54, from both the United States and Israel. They collected data from 1,026 U.S. participants, including 422 sexual minorities, via an online platform. In Israel, 713 participants, 326 of whom were sexual minorities, were recruited through online and social media announcements. The participants completed surveys in English (for the United States) and Hebrew (for Israel) that measured their experiences of involuntary childlessness, attitudes toward parenthood (or pronatalism), and the stress associated with their childlessness.
The researchers focused on three main aspects of involuntary childlessness: its prevalence, how frequently people experienced it, and the stress it caused. Involuntary childlessness was defined as the experience of wanting children but feeling unable to achieve parenthood due to social, biological, or other barriers. Stress related to this issue was assessed using a modified version of an infertility-related stress scale.
The findings showed substantial differences between countries, sexual identities, and genders. In Israel, 68% of sexual minority participants reported experiencing involuntary childlessness compared to just 32% of heterosexual participants. In the United States, roughly half of the sample—52% of sexual minorities and 44% of heterosexual individuals—reported involuntary childlessness. The study also found that people in the United States experienced involuntary childlessness more frequently and reported more stress about it than those in Israel.
The researchers speculate that Israel’s supportive policies for reproductive services, such as access to fertility treatments and surrogacy, may help mitigate the stress of not being able to have children. In the United States, where access to these services is more limited and expensive, the stress of involuntary childlessness might be more acute.
“Involuntary childlessness—wanting to become a parent but being unable to—is a widespread and stressful problem for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people in Israel and for every group in the United States, including men, women, heterosexual, and LGB people,” Tate told PsyPost. “In fact, people in the United States reported much more frequent experiences of involuntary childlessness and more stress from it compared to those in Israel. Differences in culture and the lack of effective and inclusive fertility policy in the United States may underlie these findings, but more research is needed.”
“I was surprised at the overall lack of differences and the small effect sizes within the United States as a function of gender or sexual identity! However, it is important to note that most heterosexual people of reproductive age already have children, and this study only included those who were not already parents.”
While Israel is widely recognized as a pro-natalist society, with strong social and governmental support for parenthood, U.S. participants reported higher levels of pronatalist attitudes. In the United States, both heterosexual men and women reported higher levels of pronatalism than their Israeli counterparts. Sexual minority individuals in the United States also expressed similar levels of pronatalism, underscoring the societal expectation to pursue parenthood. In contrast, pronatalist attitudes were lower across the board in Israel, especially among sexual minority men.
The study is not without limitations. The use of online surveys and different sampling techniques in the two countries may have influenced the findings. For instance, U.S. participants were compensated for their participation, whereas Israeli participants were volunteers. This could result in selection biases that affect the generalizability of the results.
Additionally, the study relied on self-reported data, which can introduce biases, and the measures used to assess pronatalism and childlessness were relatively simple. Future research could benefit from using more detailed measures and examining the role of specific policies, such as access to fertility treatments and legal barriers to adoption, in shaping these experiences.
“My long-term, ‘pie in the sky’ goals are to reduce or eliminate experiences of involuntary childlessness within society through my research, for both heterosexual and sexual minority people,” Tate explained. “However, more realistically, my goals are to continue to explore these experiences and the influence of social systems on how people are impacted by involuntary childlessness as a function of gender and sexual identity.”
“I am currently finishing up a mixed-method study using U.S. data to further investigate this issue, and preliminarily, as these results have not yet been peer-reviewed or published, the findings of widespread and stressful experiences of involuntary childlessness in the United States are replicating, and there seem to be many potential interventions and strategies to reduce the occurrence of these experiences based on qualitative data.”
“My team and I are hoping to submit this work for publication within the next week or two, but I am excited that the quantitative results are replicating and that our reasoning about culture and the lack of effective and inclusive fertility policy and reproductive healthcare are definitely being supported through qualitative data in the United States,” Tate said.
The study, “Involuntary childlessness in the U.S. and Israel: Pronatalism, gender, and sexual identity,” was authored by Doyle P. Tate and Geva Shenkman.
