A study found that Charlotte is one of the least child-friendly cities. Really?

Even though I don’t want kids right this minute, I’m confident that I want them before all my eggs shrivel up and die inside of me. But according to a recent study, there are quite a few Charlotte singles who feel differently.

The study (which oddly enough comes from a dating site) found that Charlotte is the No. 2 “least child-friendly” city in the U.S.

If your brain works like mine you assume that this means that singles in Charlotte hate kids. But this study is using child-friendly in a different way. It’s referring to whether or not a single person wants kids. So the most child-friendly city is New York (where only one out of 10 people don’t want kids) and the least child-friendly is Vegas (where one out of five people don’t want kids).

EliteSingles looked at user responses from over 42,000 singles in 30 U.S. cities. Here’s what they found:

Side note: As far as I can tell, EliteSingles is an international dating site for people who went to college. Their homepage touts that 82% of their members have a college degree or higher.

In their study, EliteSingles gives a possible explanation for these findings. They say that larger cities have a younger demographic of singles, and therefore more singles who “could someday want kids.” Smaller cities (like Charlotte) have an older demographic who may already have kids or who now know that having kids isn’t for them.

EliteSingles didn’t mention anything about location, but I find it interesting that the East Coast is so heavily child-friendly and the South seems to dominate in the least child-friendly category.

There’s nothing wrong with not wanting kids, but I must say that I was surprised by these findings.

(Well, except for Vegas. No one is surprised by Vegas.)

From a person in her baby-making years, Charlotte seems like a very child-friendly city. Sure, we have a large number of hard-core career-driven people. But I’ve found that Charlotteans are a lot better at making time for family and fun than say, New Yorkers.

Another part of me questions findings that come from only one data pool (EliteSingles users). Would eHarmony or Match.com reveal the same findings from their user-bases?

We may never know why this study shows that Charlotte has so many singles who don’t want kids. But honestly, other than this being a good cocktail party tidbit, what does it really matter? What people do with their reproductive systems is up to them. And if singles in Charlotte don’t want kids that just means they’ll have more time to babysit my future taco-costumed children.