Research done in European countries suggests that part-time and flexible work arrangements are positively related to fertility. And the internet facilitates flexible schedules for those who do knowledge work. This could be why some studies have also found an association between internet access and fertility. For instance, a team of economists at the University of Pittsburgh and Bocconi University, in Italy, set out to investigate whether the rise of the internet was influencing people’s decision to have kids. Using data from Germany, the researchers found that the expansion of broadband internet there during the late aughts caused a rise in fertility, with one major caveat: The increase was driven entirely by highly educated women. A more recent study, based in Russia, found the same thing.

There is no American equivalent of these studies, but there is reason to believe the internet is having a similarly inequitable impact in the United States. A 2016 study found that the expansion of high-speed internet access in the U.S. led to an increase in labor-force participation among married women, and that the largest increases were among college-educated women with children.

“The internet is discriminatory in terms of work-family balance,” Francesco Billari, a demography professor at Bocconi and an author of the Germany study, told me. Not all jobs can be done remotely, and the ones that can’t are overwhelmingly manual and service-sector positions that require less education. Even where remote work is possible, many “unskilled” workers lack the bargaining power to demand such accommodation, Alicia Adsera, a senior research scholar at Princeton University, told me. Jobs that can’t—or aren’t allowed to be—done remotely typically offer lower pay and involve hours that are as unpredictable as they are rigid, which makes arranging consistent child care difficult, Adsera said. In other words, those most in need of child care are in the worst position to get it.