Here's the one thing missing from the fertility panic conversations
What if we listened to women?
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As I wrote last week, research shows that families and women overwhelmingly report that they want childcare and maternity/family leave—things that take the exorbitant financial strain out of childrearing.
As luck would have it, a few days later the White House announced that they want to coerce, I mean “persuade” women into having more children. Tellingly, none of their proposals include the things that women—the backbone of most families—have been clamoring for.
Whenever I write about this, there are people who point out that social supports don’t raise birth rates in other rich countries like Europe, so they don’t “help.” I find this strange, because of course the social supports are helping! They are helping women and children and families thrive in those countries. The goal should be helping humans thrive, not breeding for corporations or to prop up social security.
People also point out that there are lots of factors that impact fertility rates, not just affordability. Which is true.
There are a million reasons that people have kids, and a million reasons that people don’t have kids. There are plenty of people that just don’t want kids, and the fact that living childfree can be pretty awesome. There’s climate change and uncertainty about the future, there’s the fact that guys generally don’t pull their weight in childrearing and housework, there’s infertility and health issues. There’s the fact that the country is currently being run by billionaire clown villains who are crashing everything from the global economy to the department of education. So many reasons!
To unpack all the reasons you’d have to write a book. Or, in my case, write an entire Substack about the issues that most impact women and girls, and their experiences.
But. If you ask women what they want from the government to make childrearing less onerous and more accessible, the research shows that people that do want children, or want more children, overwhelmingly report that they want childcare, family leave, and/or child subsidy payments, for starters—things that make the sheer cost of parenting doable in the way that all our peer countries do.
As the above Pew research graph shows, one of the top reasons that people choose not to have kids is “can’t afford to raise a child,” and for those 36% of people, that’s something that the government can easily address.
Every time a survey is taken of people who do want kids, or want more kids, or are on the fence—they say they some version of, please for the love give us some childcare, maternity/family leave, and a way raise kids that doesn’t require shelling out the equivalent of buying a new car every single year.
This 2024 survey found that of the people who do want kids but don’t plan to have them, cost was the #1 reason. One-third of Millennials who don’t plan to have kids cited that “the overall cost of having a child is too high.” They listed the cost of childcare as the top concern, or listed the cost of childcare as their “biggest financial stressor.”
It also found that for people that already have kids but don’t plan to have anymore, the #2 reason, for 22% of parents wasn’t that they didn’t want more kids—it was, you guess it—the cost of raising another child is just too damn high.
Of course, these basic structural supports are also linked to having a child and also having a little time for leisure, for exercise, for your partner or other relationships, or just a moment to be alone and hear yourself think. Costs, as with all class inequality issues, also relate to general quality of life and ability to create and maintain a self.
And again, I want to reiterate that I don’t think that people should be “persuaded” to have more kids. The notion of breeding to prop up the economy, or social security, or anything, is gross.
I think that true freedom would mean the opportunity to have as many kids as you want, or none at all. Right now in this country, we have neither.
The data indicates that some people would like to have kids but can’t afford to, due to class inequality and the government withholding essential services (in most peer countries withholding childcare subsidies and maternity/family leave and basic child support payments would be considered unworkable, akin to not offering public K-12 education).
Of course, abortion bans mean that some people with uteruses are forced to have babies that they don’t want. Either way—whether forced to have children they don’t want, or unable to afford children that they do want, the way I look at it, American women and childbearing people are robbed of their freedom.
And what’s extra frustrating about all this is that women—the backbone of most families—are experts in what’s needed to have a family that thrives. And they have not been quiet about it. Since Covid especially, they have been shouting from the rooftops that they need more support.
This week I asked women in our MR community group chat about this, and the responses came in fast and furious. I asked: What, if anything, would make it more viable/desirable to have a kid, or more kids? I asked to hear about their awesome fancy-free kid-free life, or what would make it easier to have kids if they want them/wanted them. Anything from actual women (and men too) about what they want/how they make choices about their lives.
They did not hold back.
They asked for equal partnership and childcare, they asked to be able to expect to not die in childbirth, they asked for patriarchy to simply leave them alone to live their happy single lives. They were incandescent with rage, they were tired, they were fulfilled with what they already have. (I’ve removed names here, but the chat is public and you can see dozens of responses here. Thank you so much to readers for sharing your experiences, I loved it!)
I was so intrigued by the responses from those in other countries in Europe and Canada, who reported that yes it’s easier with more support, but it’s still hard to raise kids and that’s part of why the birthrates still aren’t high. Any guesses what is still making it hard in those countries with more support?
That’s right—they report it’s still a patriarchal society that makes it hard for women to juggle it all. “My husband still earns way more than me, I still had to take a career break, I was still judged as a ‘risky’ hire,” reports one reader from abroad.
And this response below particularly struck me. This reader didn’t have a wish list, they just wanted a total cultural overhaul that sees children, families, and parenting as a communal responsibility that brings us all together and puts all of us, regardless of gender or age, in touch with care and our humanity again. The dream!
Given that women are not quiet about the things that would make them feel free, or allow their families to thrive, the question is: at a time when “pronatalism” and baby promoting, and marriage-promoting are in the headlines so much, why is no one listening to women?
All of these situations require—women! And yet women’s voices are missing from these convos.
I keep being reminded of a quote from author Jessica Calarco when we interviewed her about her book, “Holding It Together” about how women are America’s safety net.
“Women prove they can hold it together; we thank them by giving them more to hold,” Calarco said. It evokes an image of piling more and more on women until they can’t move or speak.
There’s a creepiness behind the deafness to the evidence, the research, the women’s voices. It’s as though women are erased, or invisible, as though they are just vessels or property of the state to be leveraged to meet the needs of the economy, the billionaire class, to prop up social security, or for political ends.
Next, I’ll write about how some well-meaning voices in the marriage-promotion rhetoric have a similar effect, as though women’s part in marriage is a tool of the state, or a way to meet the needs of the men who are “in crisis.”
As both conversations rage, it’s hard not to stand by as a woman and not feel like you’re treated as a mere vessel or tool to solve other’s problems, or create opportunities for others.
And if people are asking why more women aren’t inclined to have more children, or choose male partners, in a society that doesn’t see them as full people with their own wants, needs, and voices—that might be more than half the answer.
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Further reading:
I think this sentence really crystalized it for me: "It’s hard not to stand by as a woman and not feel like you’re treated as a mere vessel or tool to solve other’s problems, or create opportunities for others." It is an outrage that so much policy and public discourse is driven by men or people who block out the voices of women in this country. It's gaslighting and cruel. Always appreciate the way you amplify experiences here Lane!
“Women hold everything so we give them more to hold.” OMG. At a team offsite, they had a motivational speaker come. Our team was 100% women, and we provided executive and business support, everything from calendar management to travel to office and space management to budget oversight.
The speaker asked for a volunteer (I offered). She then asked me a series of questions about what I did at work, and for every answer, gave me something to hold. Within a minute, my arms were full of items representing work.
Then she asked me about personal life stuff. Hobbies. House. Fitness. Cooking. Family stuff (pre-kid). And within another minute, I could no longer hold everything she handed me.
Perhaps one of the most visceral experiences ever of “women hold everything”.