When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. This was true even after we controlled for gender attitudes at the individual or country level, as well as how much people said they valued family. The effect of workism (that is, of societies placing a high value on work) on fertility was bigger than the effect of gender attitudes across all data sets, and similar to the effect of placing a low value on family. The number of children that American women have is less than the number they tell pollsters they prefer, and that gap has only grown over the past quarter century. Our research helps explain that finding. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policy makers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome. This would be no problem if fertility rates in the U.S. were anywhere close to what women say they want or to a level that could ensure a healthy economy, but they’re not. American birth rates are near their historic lows, which will lead to less economic dynamism and more inequality. But even countries whose leaders explicitly acknowledge that low birth rates are a problem cannot quite bring themselves to recognize the role workism plays. Japan, under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, instituted a jumble of policies known as “Womenomics” that were intended to make the labor market more gender-egalitarian, but came paired with the belief that, somehow, they would also encourage Japanese couples to have more children. The experiment (predictably) has failed: Japan’s birth rates in 2019 were lower than when Abe took office, and have tumbled even lower during the pandemic. Meanwhile, in Europe, some experts discourage policies that support all families (such as child allowances), and argue that only work-focused benefits like leave and child care can boost fertility. The argument proffered is that “feminism is the new natalism”—which is to say, that a sufficiently strong commitment to egalitarian attitudes and economic structures can boost birth rates.