The New Work-Life Balance: Don’t Have Kids: Sarah G. Carmichael

In 1992, Wharton professor Stewart D. Friedman — having become a father a few years earlier — asked graduating MBA students if they, too, were planning to become parents. Yes, said 78% of the class. Twenty years later, he put the same question to the class of 2012 and was shocked to find that number had plunged to 42%.

The reason? The millennials were deeply invested in having successful, meaningful careers, and they just didn’t see how they could juggle those jobs and the demands of parenthood.

Yet 10 years on from Friedman’s poll, it’s a choice more are making: The US ...