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People, whether american or norwegian, claim to want things they do not want. For example, I 'want' a farm. When I think about owning a farm, I'm filled with happy thoughts of a pastoral life surrounded by nature, animals, etc. When people ask, I tell them 'yes, I would love to own a farm'. Of course, a few months ago, I had an opportunity to purchase one, and you know what I thought? Well, when I thought about the details... owning animals, caring for animals day in and day out, leaving my current home in the city, etc, I realized what I said I want and what I actually want are completely different things. Similarly, it's quite useless to ask people what they want. Most people have no idea. In particular, children are considered the default and there's plenty of marketing to show happy pictures of families with kids that make people biased to say they 'want' this, but for many, it's similar to my own idealistic view of what that desire actually entails. Many chicken out when it comes down to it. There's no way to measure this by self reports. If our ancestors were more desirous of children in reality than us or not, this study's methodology is unable to bear this out. Both generations may have said / may say they 'want' children, but there's many meanings of 'want.' |