A new study by Cardus, a faith-based Canadian think tank, shows the differences in birth rates between religious and non-religious women.
The study, titled Religion and Fertility in Canada, surveyed 2,700 women. It found that women who are religious have more children—1.8 children on average, compared to 1.3 children for non-religious women.
“That’s a pretty big gap,” said study author Lyman Stone, who is a PhD student at McGill University and director of research at the population consulting firm Demographic Intelligence.
Reasons for the gap include that religious women tend to marry more and earlier than non-religious women.
This “marriage advantage” means they may start feeling more stable in their lives earlier than non-religious women and have children earlier—despite facing the same economic uncertainties as everyone else in the country.
“This difference is not caused simply by differences in socioeconomic factors,” the study notes. “Similarly situated religious women report much lower incidence of worries and concerns than do nonreligious women.”
Non-religious women tend to put off marriage and children until after they have finished university and established themselves in careers, Stone said. Only then do they feel stable and secure enough to start a family.
Stone’s research rings true for Sam Reimer, who teaches sociology at Crandall University, a Christian school in Moncton, New Brunswick. Women and men who attend worship services regularly “are more likely to be married earlier and they desire more children, so they have bigger families,” Reimer said.
Ideal family size larger for religious women
In addition to actually having more kids, women’s ideal family size is greater for religious women. And the more frequently a religious person attends a service, the larger their ideal family size.
Stone has several theories as to why.
One is the sense of belonging and support religious women feel by being part of a worshipping community. “There is a sense of being connected to a community of shared practice,” he said, noting places of worship can offer supports to families that may not be available to non-religious women.
There is also the larger transcendental sense of meaning that comes from being religious. For religious women, having children may be “seen as a transcendent good,” a way of carrying on the faith, Stone said.
As well, being religious seems to make people less anxious about life. Religious women consistently indicated they were less worried about life than non-religious women—something that may make them more willing to bring children into the world.
“We found non-religious women were more likely to say they had more worries about finances,” he said.
As for why religious women may be less anxious, it could be because they feel supported by their faith communities, along with believing that God is in control or has a plan for their lives, Stone said.
“Religion supplies a set of moral and philosophical logics that help people deal with difficulties in life, a sense of meaning to overcome challenges, and a community to support you in difficult times,” he said. “It’s an important buffer, a way of dealing with the sometimes incomprehensible and inscrutable pains and difficulties of life.”
One thing Stone says is not true for why religious women have more children is because they are oppressed and disempowered and forced to stay home and out of the workforce.
“That ain’t so,” he said, noting the study found that religious women “have the same employment rates as non-religious women.” The study did not explore whether there were differences within employment types, such as pay, hours worked or required educational level.
They also have the same rate of contraceptive usage, Stone said.
Using those two measures, “we just don’t find any difference between religious and non-religious women” from an employment or empowerment perspective.
Immigrants significantly more religious
Recent data indicate Canada is becoming more secular. The 2021 census showed that more than one-third of Canadians report no religious affiliation, an all-time high.
A continuation of this trend could imply a reduction in birth rates.
However, a different Cardus study by Johanna Lewis, released in July, showed that immigrants to Canada are significantly more religious than non-immigrant Canadians. Fifty per cent of immigrants report being religiously committed or privately faithful versus 32 per cent of Canadian-born respondents.
This suggests that, in addition to offsetting population decline, immigration may raise Canada’s birth rate.
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