Cost and housing
People described the cost of parenthood and insecure or unsuitable housing as major barriers to the families they wanted.
People want families. The systems around them are getting harder to carry.
The question is not whether family remains possible. It does. The question is whether one inherited structure should carry every hope for love, children, care, housing and security.
Concept artwork
Documented reality
What people say is in the way
The desire for children has not simply evaporated. In UNFPA's 2025 survey across 14 countries, nearly one in five reproductive-age adults expected not to have the number of children they wanted.
Source: UNFPA, State of World Population 2025. The report focuses on reproductive agency: helping people have the families they actually want.
Below replacement is now ordinary across most wealthy countries
The OECD's 2023 figures run from a low of 0.7 to a high of 2.8 children per woman, with an OECD mean of 1.4.
This is not a prediction that any society will disappear. It is evidence that the conditions around partnership, care and children have changed.
Read the OECD evidence
Proposed pathway
Change the load-bearing structure
A larger marriage does not remove cost, grief, conflict or uncertainty. It changes how many adults meet them together. More incomes, more carers, more skills and more enduring relationships create a different starting equation.
Global group marriage is an additional framework for people who see strength, love and possibility in a larger family constellation.
See how the framework works