High openness to experience linked with having fewer children
Feb 28th 2026
Researchers surveyed 1,024 adults and found that people scoring higher on Openness to Experience tend to have fewer children, primarily because they delay parenthood, report shorter long-term relationships, and feel fewer positive reasons to become parents.
- A study of 1,024 adults found that higher Openness to Experience is associated with having fewer children.
- The link was explained mainly by later age at first birth, shorter longest romantic relationships, and fewer positive motivations for parenthood.
- There was no significant association between openness and total number of sexual partners.
- People higher in openness did not report stronger negative motives for having children.
- Data came from an online snowball sample with an average participant age of 32.3 years.
- The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove causation and many participants may still complete their families.
- The sample skewed toward higher education and used a short openness scale, which limits how broadly the results generalize.
- The paper was published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences by Aleksandra Milić and Janko Međedović.