Australia's fertility rate is currently below replacement level, with women having fewer than two children on average. In this article, which is part of the Fertility Decision Making Project, the authors question whether this trend reflects what people really want, and examine the number of children that people wanted to have and the number they expected. It was found that most men and women wanted two or more children, and that people on average wanted more children than they expected to have. Despite these general trends most individual men and women felt they already had or would have the number of children they wanted.

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