We Can’t Blame America’s Population Decline On Women Having Fewer Children—The Real Issue Is Childlessness

Women have more fertility-related complications than ever before in history with upwards of 12% of women suffering from PCOS, around 10% affected by endometriosis, and an ever-growing population of women going on hormonal birth control which can temporarily (or even permanently) shift their ability to have children. And male testosterone levels are declining; the men of today have sadder sperm counts than their grandfathers. But is the reason for America’s population decline that women are having fewer children? No. Rather, America’s population is at risk of collapse due to childlessness.

Let’s Face the Facts about Fertility

The “fewer children” misconception was brilliantly debunked on a recent episode of the Modern Wisdom podcast, where data scientist Stephen J. Shaw dropped a few major red pills for reproductive discourse. If you just glance for a moment at fertility rates, your gut reaction might be that of fear and concern. Official birth data in America released back in 2020 revealed a grim fact: Births have fallen continuously for over a decade, declining by as much as 20%. You’ll also hear this communicated as America’s fertility rate being below “replacement fertility,” which means that our population wouldn’t replace itself without added immigration.

The big problem with numbers like this being taken at face value is that they’re actually a measurement of America’s “total fertility rate,” meaning the average number of children per woman throughout her entire life. As Shaw explains, this fertility rate is really just an average and doesn’t address the root cause as to why we’re having a population decline. The missing piece to this puzzle is that women today aren’t necessarily having fewer children, they’re just delaying motherhood.

According to Shaw’s research, the average American mother in the 1980s had “2.5 children,” but in more recent years, American mothers on average actually have raised that number to “2.6 children.” (The decimal point is indicative of some women having three kids, some women having two, and an average setting the standard somewhere in the middle.) Isn’t it fascinating to see that the overall birth rate is actually higher? Shaw even points out that this trend tracks in places where we typically hear about doomsday-like population decline, such as Japan.

“If birth rates across ages are stable over time, then the total fertility rate will accurately capture the average number of children a woman will have over her lifetime. But, if birth rates across ages are not stable, this statistic will inaccurately forecast lifetime births. In particular, if women are having the same total number of children, but at older ages, the total fertility rate will temporarily fall,” fellows Melissa Kearny and Phillip Levine from The Brookings Institute’s Center on Children and Families reported.

Births have fallen continuously for over a decade, declining by as much as 20%.

So what’s the deal with these numbers? Well, they don’t compensate for present-day childlessness. Indeed, women may be having the same number of births, but they’ve opted to do so at a later age. While there are both pros and many cons about delaying motherhood, Shaw points out one thing that should be kept in mind: If you’re childless at 30, at most you have about a 50% chance of ever becoming a mother, as he puts it.

To put all the pieces of the puzzle together: Women today who are having children are having the same number of (or slightly more) children than women in the '80s. However, because modern women are having children later in life, that's causing a skew in the data, making the fertility rate look lower than it is. Plus, delaying motherhood can cause a woman to be more likely not to have children at all, which further affects the fertility rate data.

Fewer Women Want To Be Mothers To Begin With

After analyzing a report from the U.K’s Office for National Statistics, which stated that half of women in England and Wales are childless at age 30, Holly Williams from The Guardian posed a question and answer: “Why assume it’s a problem if a woman is child-free at 30? Maybe she prefers it that way.” From her own personal experience as a childless woman in her 30s, Williams shared that some women have developed the conviction that a “deep, primal maternal urge” isn’t shared among all women. Any historic ambivalence toward having children may have been stomped out by societal pressure.

With Western nations evening the playing field between the two genders, signing key legislation into law, and shifting societal norms, motherhood is now a choice. Williams asserts that this choice is not a cause for concern and rather a cause for celebration. Increased freedom to make that decision is certainly a good outcome for each person’s autonomy, but there’s also the risk of a snowball effect. If more women observe other ladies living child-free lives, touting their happiness and fulfillment, they may feel inspired to push off or totally swear off motherhood entirely. The Daily Mail recently affirmed this shift in sentiment, explaining that the Millennial and “Zoomer” generations prioritize career, travel, and relaxation over pondering parenthood.

To all women who feel that pang of intrigue or jealousy, perhaps looking at how, say, Mariah Carey or Salma Hayek was able to put off motherhood (or proudly opt out of it entirely like Miley Cyrus) and instead saw enormous career success, an influx of riches and luxury goods, and endless memories made traveling, I urge you to remember that if you make a similar choice, you’re not guaranteed the same level of “success.” Furthermore, this success doesn’t always lead to happiness or fulfillment. For every corporate girlboss or jet-setting celebrity, how many childless women are living in the city, working a standard job, and not living out an Insta-worthy travel itinerary a few times a year?  

Though it’s difficult to prove whether motherhood definitively leads to a woman feeling fulfilled, studies do point to motherhood contributing to a woman’s greater subjective sense of well-being. Look, you do you. If being a medical device sales rep at age 43 without a child in sight leaves you feeling “a deep sense of satisfaction,” then who am I to say otherwise? Yes, women who forgo marriage and motherhood are richer, but will an increase in wealth provide you with the same payoff that the mutual love between mother and child can?

Is Motherhood Just Not Alluring Anymore?

Sociologists from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University blame what they consider a heteronormative, pronatalist society, harkening back to feminist thought by Simone de Beauvoir where the pinnacle of femininity was perhaps wrongfully conflated with birthing and rearing biological children. It’s nothing more than a “common assumption” that we culturally link motherhood with normalcy and that there’s a biological clock which “pressures” women to make timely decisions about if they’d like to continue their bloodline.

No longer is the politically correct term du jour for a woman without children “childless”; in fact, now the social norm is to call them “child-free,” as it signals an active decision to not be a parent. Another active decision that bears great weight in matters of childlessness is the decline in marriage rates. Understandably, it’s more likely that a married woman gives birth than an unmarried woman, but of course, there are plenty of kids who come into our world out of wedlock. Familiar family forms are still commonplace, but as time goes on, more and more women (and men) opt to either cohabit with their significant other, date with no ring in sight, or embrace a solo lifestyle.

Millennial and “Zoomer” generations prioritize career, travel, and relaxation over pondering parenthood.

Establishment media props up role models for us on a pedestal that challenge societal norms. Tabloids (which have far more sway over the pulse of the press than we’d probably like to admit) will go bonkers over a Kylie Jenner pregnancy announcement, despite her relationship being anything but consistent and her baby daddy seemingly refusing to put a ring on her finger. 

Sure, ladies like her are having children and contributing to America’s replacement rate, but they also have seemingly endless resources to pay for parenthood. As younger generations idolize celebrities who set unrealistic standards, it’s no wonder people make poorly planned parental decisions or choose to skip it all entirely.

Alas, despite many claims that motherhood isn’t an innate, primal instinct, it’s worth noting that 80% of women without children didn’t intend for that to be the case. In a 2010 meta-analysis, research revealed that 10% of women had actively planned to not have kids and 10% were physically unable. The remaining 4 in 5 childless women who didn’t intend to miss out on parenthood either struggled through fertility treatments for years, ended up adopting, embraced their role as an aunt, or just opted out of the process entirely.

Break That Glass Ceiling, Girlfriend!

For many years now, research has pointed to the correlation between women being child-free and holding advanced degrees. Rates of childlessness typically increase the higher a degree a woman attains. Not too long ago, more than half of American adults perceived child-free people as leading “empty lives,” but as time goes on, people consider children to be a much less central aspect of having a good marriage and a good life.

When you’re constantly berated by media that puts this anti-natalist model on a pedestal, giving plenty of press to successful, childless women and far less press to successful women who also happen to be mothers, it’s unsurprising that there’s a new ideal standard. We’re pushed down the pipeline of getting a general education, pressured into seeking higher education, earn degrees that many of us don’t even use to their full capacity, and then we push off baby fever to climb the corporate ladder. All of this career growth rides on the back of delaying time that we could have instead spent at work gaining technical experience or planning for a family.

Don’t get me wrong, women can and should seek an enriching education and contribute to a productive workforce. In my own line of work, I’m surrounded by champion women who write policy, influence legislation, educate on civic issues, and more. But what struck me as refreshing when I joined my team was learning just how many of the brilliant, successful women I work with indeed manage motherhood and their career. They don’t have to sacrifice one over the other because they’ve structured their lives around freedom and flexibility.

One simple way that motherhood has actually become more attainable is through the normalization of the work-from-home lifestyle. Motherhood has become a possibility for many women thanks to the normalization of remote work environments. Before Covid-19 lockdowns, a mere 7% of employers nationwide offered their employees the option to work from home permanently. Though many companies have returned to their normal, in-person operations, it’s interesting to look back and see that over half of employers offered remote work at the height of lockdowns. Clearly, it’s more realistic now than ever before to work remotely, so why not embrace the WFH life where you don’t have to choose between your family and career?

Why Budget for a Dream Vacation, but Not a Child?

Without a doubt, one of the biggest hindrances for many young women mulling over motherhood is the financial responsibility of raising children. Individual families benefited from an overall lower cost-of-living until what some consider to be runaway inflation made the prospect of parenthood feel even less realistic. I don’t blame anyone for feeling apprehensive about parenthood after looking at how high rent is getting, how much more money it takes to buy the same size house our parents got for a fraction of the cost when they were starting out, how expensive insurance is for one person alone without factoring in a husband and kids, and how an increasing minimum wage can affect the baseline cost of child care.

It just doesn’t seem like the “right time,” right? Well, if you insist on taking a pessimistic view of the way things are going, perhaps there’s no better time since things are just bound to get worse! Or, if you take a realistic view, you know that proper family planning can actually make motherhood more affordable and less stressful than establishment media leads you to believe.

Historically, giving birth has led almost half of American women to leave their jobs, but since nearly all working women now have access to some amount of family leave and many are offered paid benefits, there’s really no need to feel like children destroy your ability to work. Of course, not all bill-paying jobs offer remote work, but the point is, workplace flexibility is at an all-time high, so we shouldn’t push the narrative that children will rob a woman of her own financial autonomy.

Is There Any Hope in Sight for the Baby-Curious?

To be fair, while there isn’t a total lack of support for American parents, there’s also a lot of room for smart improvement. Ready to take some notes?

First, we simply can’t stifle a strong gig economy through bad policy choices; if we do, we actually walk back some of the most freeing options for a woman in tight labor markets. Gig work, or working as an independent contractor (yes, being your own boss babe in a sense), empowers women to be able to bring in an income on her own clock. If you’re not expected to be in the office at 8 a.m. sharp after a lengthy commute, it’s a lot easier to balance parental priorities like taking a kid to school or taking care of your household.

Politicians have touted legislation that destroys the gig economy, like California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) which is being used as a framework for federal labor laws like the Biden administration’s PRO Act. In President Biden’s recent State of the Union Address, he called to pass the PRO Act “because workers have a right to form a union,” but failed to tell the American people that this bill also would enact AB5-style labor laws. Florists, nutrition coaches, private tutors, musicians, ASL interpreters, writers, holiday performers (yes, mall Santa included), and many more had their flexibility and freedoms threatened. If we want to support women to not have to choose between the baby and the bag, then we need to support freelance work at every chance we get.

What about when a woman is mulling over motherhood but feels nervous about taking time off? Interestingly enough, when paid leave policies get established by the government, they lower a person’s take-home pay over time and increase gender wage gaps. This happens because federal and state-based programs are funded through a payroll tax which disproportionately affects lower-income workers. Why make motherhood even more burdensome for a family’s financial strength by standardizing their benefits?

This is similar to how getting the government involved in health insurance displaces, rather than expands, employer-provided health coverage. Would we really want to walk back significant strides made for family planning, like how pre-pandemic paid parental leave policies almost doubled, and then during lockdowns, 36 of America’s 100 largest employers announced new paid leave policies?

Women can be equipped to pursue both career goals and family goals.

Alright, what about the UBI-equivalent (universal basic income) to childcare? When President Biden took office, part of his Build Back Better bill was to enact government-run childcare programs that any parent could access when, where, and if they need it. Sure, universal programs offer *some* childcare, but do they offer the caliber or quality of childcare that a parent wants?

Not to make light of the struggles which families faced under the Iron Curtain, but think about Soviet-era breadlines. If the government is going to offer a standardized product to everyone, the product (bread) might temporarily fill a person’s stomach with carbs, but they lack nourishing and satiating qualities. As a less extreme example, think about how one-size-fits-all education systems fail to provide the right type of education for each unique child. Or how one-size-fits-all clothing might sit well on your silhouette, but not on your BFF’s.

Childcare is a diverse, innovative field, and a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t take into consideration differences in learning capabilities, extracurricular interests, and even religious background. Faith-based childcare centers are actually used by over half of all working parents. Research out of Tennessee showed that state-run preschool programs hinder the achievement and behavior of low-income children. The answer isn’t to regulate; the answer is to reduce red tape so that a more diverse selection of childcare providers can compete with one another. In turn, childcare becomes more affordable and accessible for people who might be nervous to start a family in tough economic times.

Closing Thoughts

We can’t sugarcoat the truth and pretend like there’s not something seriously ill about Americans attempting to rethink family. It’s oh-so-trendy among celebs and influencers to date for a short period of time, have a baby together, and then have on-and-off relationships tailored to the tabloid beat. Then, there’s the segment of our population that’s succumbing to the trend of temporary or permanent protection from pregnancy led by one of the many beliefs thrust upon us by the gender revolution – from empowering sex with no strings attached to hormone replacement therapies to surgeries being the answer to affirm alternative identities. 

But more than anything, we’re allowing childlessness to become a cultural norm even though first-wave feminists fought for women to have a choice. Women can be equipped to pursue both career goals and family goals, and it’s up to us to successfully empower one another with the truth about our fertility and our impact on future generations.

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