Women Are Having Fewer Kids Because They Don’t Want Them

Most conservatives are too afraid to admit what many feminists proudly own: The decline in fertility rates is the direct result of the feminist project and women prioritizing careers over childbearing. Since the 1970s, when the feminist movement transformed gender dynamics and women entered the workforce by the millions, the fertility rate has been below replacement, and there is no prospect of this changing. In 2025, the fertility rate hit another record low, according to CDC data.

Women in their early 30s now have the highest birth rate of any age cohort, a profound cultural shift without precedent in history. This pattern aligns with the feminists’ ideal timeline: Climb the corporate ladder early, have kids later, or not at all. Roughly 85 percent of women aged 20-24, and 63 percent of women aged 25-29, are now childless.

The high cost of housing, healthcare, and childcare are the usual culprits cited in the fertility discourse. There is something to this, of course, and sound policy initiatives to address it should be implemented. But it should also be remembered that having a family has never been easy or cheap. Moreover, fertility was already in sharp decline when housing was much more affordable, and the Boomers were buying their homes. So something more than that cost explains declining fertility. The extraordinary cost of childcare, though also real, is an entirely newfangled problem that seeks to rectify the severe, and vastly underreported, shortage of full-time mothers.

Blaming impersonal economic forces is an attractive choice because it never hits cultural bedrock: It lets women off the hook for life choices they often consciously and even proudly make. This choice presupposes feminist principles that hold women’s autonomy as the ultimate societal good. Little is said about how this relegates the needs of the young and demographic sustainability to minor concerns. The discourse is limited to making children “affordable” and “convenient”—while avoiding anything that might impose limitations on women’s career choices.