It’s been hard to find a news outlet in the last week that hasn’t run with a headline like “Why ‘childless cat ladies’ are JD Vance’s biggest fear.” While many of Vance’s comments have been taken out of context, fertility, family, and childrearing have become deeply sensitive subjects, so the outrage is unsurprising. The most uncomfortable topics are often the most important. Young people’s lack of desire to build families suggests a lack of hope for the future—an alien sentiment in the United States.

I saw this firsthand as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, home to many childless, soon-to-be elites. I wrote columns in our school paper expressing my concerns about hookup culture, transactional relationships, and the lack of prioritization of dating. These columns often received the most pushback. In a pre-professional culture like Penn’s, claiming that marriage and family were our greatest contributions to society was often taboo, particularly for women. But why?