Americans still want children
March 11, 2025
America, like the rest of the developed world, is facing a baby shortage, and the inevitable reckoning has begun. Last year, The New York Times asked, “Why Are So Many Americans Choosing to Not Have Children?” More recently, The Atlantic warned of the consequences of the “baby bust” for the Democratic Party. The article talked as if the reality is still coming, but falling fertility has been happening for a while now. The real problems it poses for our future are no longer deniable.
Why Western fertility is falling, however, is a source of controversy. The most popular theory is that affluent and educated women in the West no longer want children because they are career-oriented feminists. In this way of thinking, women reject motherhood because they believe that academic and professional achievement is not merely better than, but wholly incompatible with having a family.
