Tener otro hijo vs. quedarse con el tamaño de familia actual
Si actúas
Tener otro hijo
14%
Si no actúas
Quedarse con el número de hijos actual
37%
Porcentaje de quienes luego se arrepienten de cada elección. Las barras y el registro completo aparecen abajo.
Familia
Última revisión 2026-05-13
Calidad de la evidencia 4.25/5
Puntuación de revisión en ocho dimensiones según la
rúbrica de calidad
. Cada dimensión puntuada de 1 a 5.
D1 Verificación de fuentes
4/5
D2 Autoridad e independencia de las fuentes
4/5
D3 Precisión de la tasa de arrepentimiento
3/5
D4 Comparabilidad de las fuentes
4/5
D5 Patrón de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Calidad de la prosa
5/5
D7 Completitud de las advertencias
5/5
D8 Calidad de la muestra
4/5
Media4.25/5
Arrepentimiento por acción
Tener otro hijo
14%
~14% de los padres dicen que desearían haber tenido menos hijos (arrepentimiento por el tamaño acumulado de la familia, no arrepentimiento por un hijo adicional específico)
Padres en investigación cualitativa y de encuesta transnacional
retrospectivo, sin marco temporal fijo
Arrepentimiento por inacción
Quedarse con el número de hijos actual
37%
~37% de los adultos de EE. UU. desearían tener más hijos de los que tienen actualmente (una medida de aspiración que agrupa a padres y a quienes nunca han sido padres, no un instrumento directo de 'me arrepiento de haber parado')
Adultos estadounidenses (padres y no padres combinados), representativo a nivel nacional
retrospectivo, sin marco temporal fijo
% que se arrepienten de esta elección
Tener otro hijoQuedarse con el número de hijos actual
14%37%
inaction dominates — Domina la inacción — la mayoría se arrepiente de no actuar.
Decisiones relacionadas
Decisiones semánticamente similares — mismo terreno, distintos compromisos.
The Institute for Family Studies surveyed 1,518 US adults in 2021 and found a persistent asymmetry in how people feel about their family size decisions. The single largest group — 37% of all adults, whether currently parents or not — wish they had more children than they currently have, while 14% of parents wish they had fewer. The two figures are not symmetric instruments: the 37% is a wish-for-more aspiration that bundles parents who want another child (~24% of adults) with never-parents who still hope to start (~13%), and the 14% is cumulative family-size regret across all parities rather than regret about one specific additional child. No US survey isolates regret about a single marginal child, so the action side uses the published 14% with that broader-construct caveat made explicit. The qualitative literature on parental regret (Donath 2015, Signs) establishes the phenomenon as real and studied but supplies no prevalence rate. The desire-for-more gap reported by IFS is structural: Americans’ stated ideal family size has risen to a 50-year high while actual birth rates have fallen, meaning the aspiration-actuality divergence is widening, not narrowing.
The Gilovich and Medvec inaction-dominance model predicts that long-run regrets accumulate more on the side of things left undone than things done. The fertility evidence fits this prediction. Parents who had one more child and feel stretched rarely express the kind of persistent, escalating regret that would exceed the regret of those who stopped and later wished they had not. The IFS data show that the “wish for fewer” group among parents (14%) is well under half the size of the “wish for more” group (37% of all adults; ~24% among current parents alone), consistent with inaction-dominance. Across the population, the wish-for-more group substantially outnumbers the wish-for-fewer group, a separate signal that under-reproduction is more commonly regretted than over-reproduction.
Several limitations qualify the comparison. The action-side 14% is the published IFS figure for parents who wish they had had fewer children, but it measures cumulative family-size regret across all parities, not regret about one specific additional child — no US survey isolates the marginal-child construct, so the rate is broader than the entry’s strict “one more?” framing. The inaction-side 37% is the published wish-for-more figure, but it bundles never-parents who never made a stopping decision, so it overstates retrospective regret about voluntarily stopping. A significant share of “stopping” decisions are involuntary — fertility decline, partner disagreement, financial constraints — meaning that many people counted in the inaction side did not face a clean choice to have another child and declined; conflating structural barriers with decisional inaction can inflate the inaction-regret estimate. The IFS sources are from a think tank with a stated pro-family orientation, though the underlying survey data (US Adult Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes Study) is publicly available. Both sides of this entry measure wish-for-more or wish-for-fewer as a current preference, not a retrospective decision-regret with a validated instrument; the gap is directionally robust but should not be read as a precisely calibrated effect size.
Fuentes: acción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
1/2 fuentes verificadas de forma independiente palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada
[1]Institute for Family Studies / Lyman Stone — To Have Kids or Not: Which Decision Do Americans Regret More?
Verificado
↗ 1 other entry
Fuente de referencia
14% of people with children agreed 'I wish I had had fewer children' (equal to 10% of all adults); this is cumulative family-size regret across all parities, not regret about one specific additional child
Extracto
“"Just 14% of people with children (10% of all adults) agreed with the statement [that they wish they had had fewer children]."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2021-12-08
Accedido
2026-06-30
Verificación
Extracto recuperado de forma independiente y confirmado palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada durante nuestra auditoría de fundamentación.
Cálculo
Institute for Family Studies analysis of the US Adult Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes Study (wave 2, March 2021, n=1,518 US adults, nationally representative). The action-side regret rate for this entry (0.14) is the directly published figure: 14% of people with children agreed "I wish I had had fewer children." This is the broadest available measure of parental child-regret in the US, and the regret_display labels it honestly as cumulative family-size regret — it captures parents who wish any child had not been born, spanning parents at all parities, and is NOT restricted to regret about a marginal one-more addition. No published US survey isolates regret about having one additional child beyond the current family size, so the entry uses the published 14% with a matching construct label rather than fabricating a smaller marginal-child number. (A prior version of this entry used an unpublished 8% downward adjustment fused with a qualitative paper to fit the "one more?" framing; that adjustment was not in any source and has been removed.) D3 score: 3 (real nationally representative survey, directly published figure; construct is family-size regret, broader than the entry's strict marginal-child framing — labeled as such).
[2]Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society — Regretting Motherhood: A Sociopolitical Analysis
Revisado por pares
Qualitative analysis establishing parental regret as a legitimate, studied societal experience; the paper supplies no prevalence rate
Extracto
“[Paraphrase from published abstract — full text paywalled. Donath (2015) argues that regretting motherhood is a legitimate societal experience that challenges the assumption all mothers love motherhood. The paper draws on qualitative interviews with Israeli mothers who regret having children and situates regret within feminist and sociological theory. The paper does not report a single national prevalence figure but provides a conceptual framework used in subsequent quantitative work.]
”
Datos de la fuente de
2015-01-01
Accedido
2026-05-13
Cálculo
Donath, O. (2015). Regretting Motherhood: A Sociopolitical Analysis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 40(2), 343-367. https://doi.org/10.1086/678145. This is a landmark qualitative-feminist paper that opened systematic inquiry into parental regret; it supplies no prevalence rate. Included as peer-reviewed methodological support for the action side, confirming that parental regret is a real, studied phenomenon. The quantitative rate (0.14) comes entirely from the IFS/Stone survey analysis above; Donath is not used to derive any number.
Fuentes: inacción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
2/2 fuentes verificadas de forma independiente palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada
[1]Institute for Family Studies / Lyman Stone — To Have Kids or Not: Which Decision Do Americans Regret More?
Verificado
↗ 1 other entry
Fuente de referencia
37% of US adults — the single largest group — wish they had more children than they currently have, whether currently parents or not; 24% already have children but still want more and 13% have no children but still hope to
Extracto
“"A third (34%) have children and are happy with the number they have and another third—the largest group—wish they had more (37%), whether currently parents or not."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2021-12-08
Accedido
2026-06-30
Verificación
Extracto recuperado de forma independiente y confirmado palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada durante nuestra auditoría de fundamentación.
Cálculo
Institute for Family Studies analysis of the US Adult Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes Study (wave 2, March 2021, n=1,518 US adults, nationally representative). The verbatim excerpt identifies the satisfied group as 34% and the wish-for-more group as 37% ("whether currently parents or not"). The inaction-side rate for this entry is the directly published 0.37 wish-for-more figure, NOT the 0.34 that labels the satisfied-with-current-count group (a prior version of this entry mistakenly borrowed the 34% number, an inversion that has been corrected). The 37% is composed of ~24% who already have children and still want more and ~13% who have no children but still hope to — so it bundles parents and never-parents. The regret_display labels this honestly as an aspiration measure that is NOT a retrospective "I regret stopping" instrument: it captures a current wish-for-more preference, and a substantial share of the group (the ~13% never-parents) never made any stopping decision at all. D3 score: 3 (real nationally representative survey, directly published figure; construct is wish-for-more aspiration, broader than and not identical to regret about voluntarily stopping — labeled as such).
[2]Institute for Family Studies — Americans' Desire for Large Families Hits 50-Year High
Verificado
↗ 1 other entry
Fuente de referencia
45% of Americans now see three or more children as the ideal family size — the highest share since the late 1960s — up from 38% in 2013, widening the gap between desired and actual fertility
Extracto
“"Today, 45% of Americans see three or more children as ideal, a steep increase from 38% in 2013 and from 33% in 2003. Not since the sweeping social changes of the late 1960s have more Americans considered a larger family of three or more children ideal."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2023-06-28
Accedido
2026-06-30
Verificación
Extracto recuperado de forma independiente y confirmado palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada durante nuestra auditoría de fundamentación.
Cálculo
IFS analysis of Gallup Social Series data on ideal family size. Confirms that the aspiration-actuality gap is widening over time, supporting the wish-for-more direction as durable rather than a one-survey artifact. Included as corroborating trend evidence; the primary inaction-side rate (0.37) is drawn from the Stone (2021) SABES survey above.
Advertencias
Esta entrada es distinta de la entrada existente sobre el tamaño de la familia, que plantea la cuestión como "desear menos frente a más en todos los tamaños de familia". Esta entrada se centra específicamente en la decisión marginal de parar frente a tener un hijo adicional. Las dos entradas comparten algunos datos de origen pero formulan preguntas diferentes; los usuarios que afrontan una decisión específica de "¿uno más?" son el público destinatario aquí. La tasa de 0,14 del lado de la acción es la cifra publicada directamente por el IFS: el 14% de los padres desearían haber tenido menos hijos. Esa cifra abarca a padres de todas las paridades y capta el arrepentimiento por el tamaño acumulado de la familia más que el arrepentimiento específicamente por una adición marginal — ninguna encuesta de EE. UU. aísla el arrepentimiento por el hijo marginal, por lo que el 14% publicado se usa con una etiqueta de constructo coincidente en lugar de un ajuste a la baja no publicado. La cifra de 0,37 del lado de la inacción es la cifra de deseo-de-más publicada directamente por el IFS; agrupa a padres que quieren más hijos (~24% de los adultos) y a quienes nunca han sido padres pero aún esperan tenerlos (~13%), por lo que es una medida de aspiración, no un instrumento directo de "me arrepiento de haber parado" — y una porción sustancial de ella (quienes nunca han sido padres) nunca tomó ninguna decisión de parar. Una fracción significativa de las decisiones de parar son involuntarias (limitaciones de fertilidad, desacuerdo de la pareja, restricciones económicas, salud), lo que complica el marco acción/inacción — las personas que querían más pero no pudieron tener más no están tomando una inacción voluntaria en el mismo sentido que quienes eligieron parar. El artículo de Donath (2015) está tras un muro de pago en su texto completo y su afirmación central es cualitativa-feminista más que cuantitativa-epidemiológica; se incluye para establecer la base revisada por pares del constructo del lado de la acción. Ambas fuentes del IFS provienen de un think tank con una orientación pro-familia declarada, lo que puede influir en el encuadre y el énfasis; los datos subyacentes (GSS, SABES) son de acceso público y reproducibles de forma independiente.
