Views on having children are changing in the USA. New research shows that 25 per cent of adults do not want to have children. A quarter of American adults are happy being "child-free". They are happier without children. Psychologists Jennifer Watling Neal and Zachary Neal did research on why child-free people might be different. They wanted to find out what the differences were between child-free people and "non-parents". They said non-parents include "not-yet-parents" (those planning to have kids) and people who cannot have children because of medical problems.

The researchers looked at data from 1,000 adults. Ms Neal said: "We were most surprised by how many child-free people there are. We found that more than one in four people…identified as child-free." She said child-free people were more liberal than those with children. Unsurprisingly, parents were more likely to be in a relationship. Ms Neal also said child-free adults were a little younger and less well-educated than parents or non-parents. She added that more research is needed to find out why people want to be child-free.