Namrata Nangia and her husband have been thinking about having another child ever since their daughter was born five years ago.
But it always comes down to the same question: "Can we afford it?"
Namrata lives in Mumbai, India, and works in the pharmaceutical industry, while her husband is employed in a tire factory.
However, the costs for one child are already too high.
Tuition, school bus fare, and even going to the doctor are huge expenses for a family.
It was different when Namrata was growing up.
"We just went to school, we didn't have extracurricular activities, but today a child has to go swimming, draw, you have to see what else they can do."
According to the latest report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on reproductive health, there are many people like Namrata in the world.
They say that fertility rates are at their lowest point ever and that hundreds of millions of people are unable to have as many children as they want.
Some of the reasons cited include the high costs of parenthood and the lack of a suitable partner.
UNFPA surveyed 14.000 people in 14 countries about their parenthood plans.
Every fifth respondent stated that they do not have or do not expect to have as many children as they actually want.
- Why Serbia is losing the battle with the white plague - five reasons
- The missing piece of the puzzle in the decline in birth rates – men
- Five ways in which countries solve the problem of population aging
The research was conducted in South Korea, Thailand, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, the United States (US), India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa and Nigeria.
A third of the world's population lives in these countries.
It is a combination of low-, middle-, and high-income countries, as well as countries with low and high fertility rates - the average number of children born per woman during her reproductive years.
UNFPA surveyed both young people and those who are no longer in their reproductive years.
"The world has begun an unprecedented decline in fertility rates," says Dr. Natalia Kanem, Director of UNFPA.
"Most of the people we surveyed want two or more children."
"Fertility rates are falling, in large part because many people feel incapable of starting the family they desire."
"And that is the real crisis," she emphasizes.
“I think calling this a crisis and acknowledging that it is actually happening is a change in approach,” says demographer and professor Anna Rothkirch, who researches birth plans in Europe and advises the Finnish government on population policy.
"In general, people are more likely to have fewer than more children than they planned," says Professor Rothkirch.
In other words, it appears that the number of people in the world who have fewer children than they wanted is higher than previously assumed.
She has researched this area in detail in Europe, and now wants to see what the situation is like around the world.
It was also surprising how many respondents over the age of 50 (as many as 31 percent) said they had fewer children than they originally wanted.
The survey, which is a pilot project for research in 50 countries later this year, included a limited number of respondents.
When it comes to age groups in each country, for example, many samples are too small to draw definitive conclusions.
However, some findings are clear.
A total of 39 percent of people who did not have as many children as they wanted cited financial constraints as the main reason.
The highest percentage of such cases was recorded in South Korea (58 percent), and the lowest in Sweden (19 percent).
Overall, only 12 percent of respondents cited infertility, or difficulty conceiving, as the reason they didn't have as many children as they wanted.
The percentage of these cases was higher in Thailand (19 percent), the United States (16 percent), Italy and South Africa (15 percent), Nigeria (14 percent), and India (13 percent).
“This is the first time that [the UN] has seriously and systematically addressed the issue of low fertility rates,” says Professor Stuart Geitel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Until recently, UNFPA focused mainly on women having more children than they wanted and on the lack and unavailability of contraception, but recently fertility rates have been declining even in middle-income countries, which UNFPA mainly works with.
However, UNFPA urges caution regarding reactions to low fertility rates.
"Right now, there are a lot of stories about disaster, whether it's overpopulation or population decline," says Dr. Kanem.
"That leads to these kinds of overreactions, and sometimes manipulative reactions, in an attempt to get women to have more or fewer children."
She recalls that 40 years ago, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Turkey were concerned about overpopulation.
And by 2015, those same countries were trying to encourage births.
"We want to try as much as possible to avoid these countries making any panicky and rash decisions," says Professor Geitel-Basten.
"If people are already scared and worried about the future of the world, what's the point of scaring them further?"
Although many countries try to adapt to falling fertility rates by increasing migration or the number of women in the labor market, this sometimes provokes a societal backlash.
"We see low fertility rates, an aging population, and population stagnation being used as an excuse to pursue nationalist, anti-immigrant, and gender-conservative policies," he says.
- How countries should fight against falling birth rates
- How many people can the Earth support
- Women who do not want to give birth because of climate change and the impact on the world
UNFPA also found that lack of time is a major obstacle to starting a family.
This is confirmed by Namrata from Mumbai.
She spends about three hours commuting to work and back home every day.
When she gets home, she is exhausted, but wants to spend time with her daughter.
The whole family is sleep deprived.
"After a day at work, you have that maternal feeling of guilt that you're not spending enough time with your child," she says.
"That's why we decided to focus on just one child."
BBC is in Serbian from now on and on YouTube, follow us HERE.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube i Viber. If you have a topic suggestion for us, please contact bbcnasrpskom@bbc.co.uk
- Why many Chinese women refuse to become mothers
- South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world – so why aren't more children being born?
- Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change?
Bonus video:
