population

The Population Bust – What Have Men Got to do with It?

| alexandersanger

By Alexander Sanger

July 15, 2026

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! There has been a hailstone of articles in the press about the falling birth rate of the United States (and worldwide) with accompanying predictions that it is the end for our country and way of life. Various experts of varying political persuasions try to sort out the reasons why and pontificate what, if anything, to do about it. Falling fertility rates are hardly new news nor are any of the explanations or remedies proffered. Nonetheless, major publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have leapt into the fray, as have other publications, including The Atlantic and The Economist. A slow hot summer in the newsroom? 

The U.S. total fertility rate (TFR) now stands at 1.57. The world TFR average is approaching 2.1, which is equivalent to the replacement rate. Sub Saharan Africa is largely above this rate while the rest of the world is below it. It will take decades for world population to stabilize, so population will continue to grow assuming birth rates stay as they are, which they won’t. They never do. Some countries, Japan (TFR 1.1), Russia (TFR 1.4) and China (TFR 1.0) for example, are losing population now. A nation’s population size is due to several factor besides birth rates: death rates, emigration rates and immigration rates. There isn’t much immigration to these countries. Russia’s attempt to absorb Ukraine is one solution to its declining population. Is  absorbing Taiwan to be China’s solution? In short, nations care about population size. Nations want to continue, not fade away. Their way of life, their culture, their language all matter to them. Nations believe they are a gift to the planet. Yet their people are falling short, aren’t doing their part in this national aspiration. So, why?

Anna Sussman’s article in The New York Times on May 10, 2026 (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/opinion/birthrate-kids-parents-demographics-future.html)  argues that falling fertility rates, which remain stubbornly below the replacement rate, are the result of a world seen by potential parents as too uncertain and unpredictable in ways vastly different from the past. The economy, society and public health – all have been disrupted and now appear more volatile than ever. The Great Recession of 2007-2009 followed by the Covid pandemic are two examples. In sum, argues Sussman, potential parents live in an era of “polycrisis” and don’t see a world hospitable to having children. Other villains in the reproductive environment include nonstop digital information, and a decline in culture, family values and religion. And then there is an increase in the use of long acting contraception, which has reduced teen pregnancy in a spectacular fashion. However, it has probably also reduced everyone else’s fertility. All these factors combine, she argues, to delays in meeting suitable mates and marriage, which lead in the long-term to fewer children born because there is less of a fertility window for women in which to have children. 

Women’s expanded access to education, as is pointed out in The Wall Street Journal article on June 6, 2026 by Heidi Mitchell (https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/us-fertility-rate-impact-f8024b33), has led to women running out of the biological clock while still looking for a suitable mate. Finding an affordable home, getting job stability and later searches for a mate all lead to reduced baby-making window, as well as to increase in infertility (which affects at least one in six people) as women give birth, or try to, later in life.

The Mitchell article points out, rightly, that governmental intervention with subsidies and other inducements works only at the margins and may affect the timing of children, but not the ultimate number. Nonetheless, governments keep trying. The government of Turkey (TFR 1.5) recently extended parental leave for mothers and fathers (less for fathers), and also made cash payments for the birth of additional children. Experience in Western Europe shows these incentives are essentially a waste of money. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/world/europe/erdogan-turkey-demography-babies-family-planning-economy.html)

In another recent Times article of July 11, 2026 on Emma Waters of the Heritage Foundation (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/us/politics/emma-waters-restorative-reproduction.html), which supports financial incentives for marriage before age 30 and bonuses for more than two children, revealed that she supports only low tech methods to treat infertility and not the more high tech methods. I examine early childbearing as sometimes a successful reproductive strategy for certain parents in my book, Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century. It is not a universal solution for all.

In a recent opinion piece in the Times, Lyman Stone, of the Institute for Family Studies, (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/opinion/population-forecast-birth-rate.html) after bemoaning that our nation’s population is not at one billion (seriously?), calls for, “serious money aimed at the people doing the work of raising the next generation of Americans, an end to the marriage penalties woven through our tax and welfare codes, a surge in building family-size houses on par with the one during the last baby boom, and a culture that treats children as a future worth having rather than a lifestyle expense.” Conservatives like big government when it funds a baby boom. 

Perhaps a cultural change at far less expense is called for. Another Times article of July 12, 2026 entitled, “Did America Style ‘Gentle Parenting’ Spoil French Children”, (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/magazine/american-parenting-french-children.html) Madeline Schwartz compares receptivity to children in France and Sweden where greater gender equality and openness to children in public spaces mean that parents and children can more easily coexist. “Four percent of Swedish parents say their children limit their freedom… In France the figure was 38%.” That said, France’s fertility rate is higher than Sweden’s.  

One possible explanation for falling fertility that is noticeably absent or minimized in all these recent articles is the role, or lack thereof, of men. There was mention of women delaying finding mates but little, if any, about the quality or quantity of the males in the eligibility pool or other matters relating to mating and reproductive strategy. Are men delaying finding suitable women as much as the reverse? Are men dropping out of the reproductive dance? Are men nothing to write home about?

In recent articles there are three mentions of certain male behaviors that women see as an anathema for men as potential mates and fathers of their children. First, machismo. Derek Thompson, in an article entitled “The Great Depopulation” in The Atlantic, (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/global-birthrate-decline/687297/) interviews economist  Fernández Villaverde, who makes the point that economies are now more service based, which means that people work in shops and offices rather than on the land or factories. These jobs are easier for women to take than men because they do not depend on physical strength. Villaverde says, “in Mexico, Brazil or Colombia if you are a woman 22 or 23 years old with a decent job in the service sector and a guy comes to you and tells you, ‘if we get married, I’m going to be the macho in the home ruling everything and you are going to work for me all the time and we’re going to have three kids,’ you tell the guy no.” Over half the births in Latin America are to single women. (https://webfs.oecd.org/Els-com/Family_Database/SF_2_4_Share_births_outside_marriage.pdf)

Second, more machismo. The Economist article on “India’s Baby Bust” (TFR 1.9) (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/04/indias-surprise-baby-bust-is-a-warning-to-the-world) points out that there is a waning tradition of living as an extended family. Now 70% live in nuclear families because of urbanization and changes in the labor market. The article continues, “this makes childcare a bigger burden and creates an incentive to limit family size, but most Indian men do not seem to have noticed, ‘my husband sometimes washes his own plate’, says Kavitha Kannon, a farmer and mother of two from Tamil Nadu.” 

And third, still more machismo. Anna Sussman in her Times article talks about having a religious faith being indicative of having larger families. However, she notes that more Americans are identifying as ‘other’ or ‘none’ in surveys, and she also states: “of particular relevance is the rate of which women are fleeing the fold.” Sussman then adds parenthetically that one of her interviewees is “appalled by the manosphere.”

The conclusion of this cursory discussion of mating comes in the Journal article by Heidi Mitchell, where she notes the risk of women “running out of the biological clock while still looking for a suitable mate.” Note the word ‘suitable’ here. She does not elaborate except to quote Professor Claudia Goldin: “It takes two to make a baby and it takes two to raise a baby. If women are required to do most of the work racing children, we will have fewer children when women have greater autonomy. Men have to step up to care for the children they want.”

So, the discussion of males in these not-so-exhaustive articles on declining fertility comes down to cursory mentions of: macho males, the manosphere, men not sharing housework and child rearing and some males becoming more religious while women are not. These all seem to be correctable behaviors. So, men, shape up! Change your culture. 

So, what is left out in these articles? One factor in declining human fertility might be increased infertility. Mitchell does state that infertility affects one in six people, but she does not discuss male infertility, only female. In fact, female and male infertility rates are close to equal (female slightly more). Causes included: lifestyle, environmental factors, health factors and delayed childbearing. There are multiple studies on whether or not male sperm counts are declining, but there is no mention here. Same with male testosterone counts. Diabetes, obesity, alcohol – there are villains galore in male behavior, aside from environmental toxins which are all too real. (https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(25)01995-8/fulltext)

Beyond culture and infertility, are there are larger forces at work here?  

As none of the authors bother to point out, fertility has been dropping in some countries for centuries, for instance France since the late 18th Century and the U.S. since the early 19th. This “demographic transition” is well known, exhaustively studied and argued about. Economic and societal forces, the cost of children and their education, the decline of farming, rise of cities, changing culture, declining religion (but not everywhere) and the changing role of women, and the widespread use of birth control and safe, and unsafe, abortion, have led to a declining birthrate worldwide in every culture and religion. Fears of the collapse of the social security and pension systems and minoritization of majority races are paramount in the fertility panic in Western countries. In contrast, some of the more ecologically minded welcome a someday decreasing world population to ease the strain on natural resources and the environment. 

Is this reduction in fertility deliberate or unplanned? Wanted or unwanted? A choice or unconscious? Is it an idea, an aspiration?

Men, women and couples do not always have the number of children they say they want. Studies have shown that 20% of women in developed countries are having fewer children than they had planned on. Reasons include financial reasons, little or no access to fertility drugs and a view that the world was inhospitable into which to bring and raise a child. On the contrary, some women in developing countries have more children than they want. About 40% or more of pregnancies in the U.S are unplanned; the same is true in low-income countries. Not all have access to reliable contraception. Hence the high abortion rate worldwide, whether it is legal or illegal. All this I examine in Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century. “Unintended pregnancy” has to do with mating, and mate selection and reproductive strategy. Over half of these unplanned pregnancies end in abortion, and the remainder, less miscarriages, are, over nine months, converted into wanted childbirth. For those who blame birth control and abortion for the low birthrate, the solution is criminalize them. The U.S. did that beginning in the 1840s, or earlier, as the white Protestant birthrate was falling. The overturn of Roe v. Wade was not coincidental to the falling white birthrate since the Great Recession. Russia and China too are gradually restricting access to abortion and birth control. While U.S. national abortion numbers have risen since the overturn of Roe, driven largely by telehealth and interstate access, research shows births have increased in states with bans, with an estimated 32,000 additional births annually, disproportionately among young women and women of color, not the births that the Trump Administration wants.

Is there an argument that fertility and population move in cycles depending on the environment? Do external factors, including natural disasters, and the economy affect human fertility? Didn’t Darwin say that it is the most adaptable species that survive. Is the reduced fertility an adaptation to a new environment?

So, speaking of environment, we have seen its effect before with various plagues and natural disasters that have resulted in reduced fertility and population. In the medieval world, there was the bubonic plague, aka the Black Death, which killed perhaps a third or half of the population of Europe. To say that the plague introduced uncertainty and anxiety, and an end to predictable progress is an understatement. It was a profound disruption of a way of life. A ‘polycrisis’ indeed.

Demographers and historians have studied the effect of the plague on fertility with the challenge that there are relatively few accurate birth records or, for that matter, death records. They have found that repeated plague-related shocks might have ultimately triggered fertility reduction by fostering female employment (because of fewer males to work) and by delaying marriage and childbirth, and that plague shocks may have favored investments in child quality rather than quantity.

More recently in the 20th century, demographers have examined fertility rates after the outbreak of the 1918 influenza epidemic and found a decline in fertility across nations. The more recent Zika outbreak in Brazil led to a similar finding, as did Covid. One could argue that modernity taken as a whole is a natural disaster or a plague and is having the same effect on fertility as the Black Death, with the exception that it is lasting longer than the flu epidemic or Covid.

But, back to the males. It has been argued that males are in a two-fold spiral down: women control contraception more than ever and men, relative to females, are earning less, though there remains the stubborn wage gap. Women are taking control of their lives, reproductive and otherwise, and are getting more education and delaying children until they are more settled. With men getting less education (there are more women in college then men), there are fewer peer mates out there for women. Do women settle for a lower status male? Some. Go younger or older? Some. Go without and use artificial means to have a baby. Some. Get pregnant by someone else’s husband? Is all fair in love and war? Yes. Fair has nothing to do with it. Successful reproduction does. It seems that the lower status males are the ones not having children. It has always been thus. Because of the stresses and dangers of childbearing and childrearing, women are seeking reliable, supportive males. Women do the choosing. In the current climate some males are decreasingly suitable to be eligible. The resulting manosphere of those not chosen feeds on itself with anger and resentment.

Some men have responded by taking on more responsibility for child rearing. I see it daily in the park. Other men live in their parent’s basement and play video games. See Nicholas Eberstadt’s landmark 2016 study, Men Without Work. One in three men are out of work in the U.S. – the highest figure recorded, and one in three men under age 35 live in their parents’ home. There is anecdotal evidence that, as was reported by Sussman, men are joining male centered churchesor the manosphere with an anti-woman ideology. Some men on the extreme Right want to repeal the 19th Amendment and require women to stay home and have children. Not exactly the type of man most women want to father and raise her children. It can be argued that anti-DEI programs are aimed at increasing white male education and employment. While it’s true that some men are nothing to write home about, most are suitable husband/father material. Perhaps one investment is to compensate the child-care parent, be it the father or mother. Parenting is the most exhaustive, time consuming job on the planet. And it is uncompensated except emotionally. So, do we pay men to be fathers? You get more children and get men off the couch. 

Whatever we do, we must keep reproductive freedom and invest in women having the children they what. Men and women each have reproductive interests, goals and strategies. Most want to have children and have them survive and be healthy. The choice of a partner and the timing of childbirth are crucial to each as well as the number of children to have. Reproductive freedom is vital to male and female reproductive success. Yes, biological differences means that there is a battle of the sexes for control of reproduction, but there can be cooperation.

Women, thankfully, are now largely in control of their sex lives and reproduction. That said, there are women in the Third World who are not, and we at Fos Feminista are endeavoring to reach them through health and education services, advocacy and outreach. There are women in the First World similarly who are not getting services, especially after the U.S. Government cut off Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood. Is this U.S. cut of access to family planning a way to increase the birthrate? It is the poor who are affected, the minorities; these are not the population that the Trump Administration wants reproducing. But whoever said Trump’s policies made sense.

The Trump Administration’s reaction  to the recent birthrate figures called for a New U.S. Baby Boom. The Administration is revamping (i.e. eliminating) the Title X program which has supported contraception for low income women since its inception in the Nixon Administration. Now the program, according to a CBS news report, will focus on fertility, family formation, and reproductive health conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis, low testosterone, and erectile dysfunction. No contraception, which the program now describes as over prescribed and associated with damaging side effects. This is more of the typical Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. attack on medicine, but worse. Contraception isn’t overprescribed; women use it because they want to prevent pregnancy and time and limit their pregnancies. Over 80% of women of reproductive age use contraception annually. The only silver lining for males in this announcement is that male infertility is recognized as deserving of treatment. Men’s partners are now not going to get subsidized contraception as they have been able to for over 50 years. The Title X program is geared now to healthy pregnancies instead of preventing unintended pregnancies. Will it increase unintended and unhealthy pregnancies and abortion rates? Probably. Will men and women have more undiagnosed STDs and hence infertility? Yes. Will it increase birthrates? Yes. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-birth-rate-pregnancy-contraception-title-x/)

Trump also wants to make IVF more affordable. That is good news for couples struggling with the cost of treatment and will probably lead to an increased birthrate. But infertility is only part of the birthrate decline. It is estimated that halving the cost of IVF will lead to about an additional 150,000 births annually in the U.S. or would offset one-fifth of the decline in births since 2007. It is not a panacea. (https://www.newsweek.com/trump-ivf-prices-study-good-news-birth-rate-12190423)

There is no panacea. Huge societal, economic and cultural forces need to work themselves out, and humanity needs to adapt to them if they can’t be changed. Men’s needs and issues need to be part of the discussion, not just dismissed as the irredeemable Manosphere. Culture can be changed by men, machismo discarded by men, the manosphere abandoned by men. Men have to do their part. 

Public policies matter and not just those affecting access to legal birth control and abortion. Tariffs were meant to increase U.S. employment. They haven’t. Fiddling with the tax code to reduce the so-called marriage penalty hasn’t increased marriage. With birth rates falling worldwide, in some cases for 200 years or more, quick fixes might gain political points but not address the serious underlying economic and social issues. 

I suspect humanity will right itself. Couples will decide, as Sussman says at the end of her article, that the world isn’t so bad, and they’ll give parenting a shot. I think, like Sussman’s couple, they will get accustomed to the various “Polycrises”, treat them as the new normal and plunge ahead to have children.

Sources:

https://webfs.oecd.org/Els-com/Family_Database/SF_2_4_Share_births_outside_marriage.pdf

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-birth-rate-pregnancy-contraception-title-x

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-ivf-prices-study-good-news-birth-rate-12190423

https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/us-fertility-rate-impact-f8024b33

https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(25)01995-8/fulltext

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/04/indias-surprise-baby-bust-is-a-warning-to-the-world

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/global-birthrate-decline/687297

Make America/Russia Procreate Again

| alexandersanger

Amid the din about childless cat ladies, you may have missed the NY Times and Washington Post’s articles this week on the movements in Russia and the US to increase the birthrate, or rather the birthrates of some segments of their populations.

There have long been calls in America, starting in the mid 19th Century, for white America to increase its birthrate. The Know-Nothing Party rose in response to Irish-Catholic immigration of 1848 and the fears of white Protestants that they would lose power. Hence the criminalization of birth control and abortion because white men didn’t want their white wives using them (the fact that women of color would be banned also didn’t initially matter in their cradle competition).  The white Protestants went all in on their eugenics when they later targeted poor or immigrant women with hysterectomies, and legislation requiring sterilization for unfit women. 

The Great Replacement Theory that many US conservatives tout is old whine in a new bottle. It is immigration again that is the political lever that these conservatives are using to raise white fears of being replaced. Since they have already succeeded in criminalizing abortion in much of the country, birth control is next. Count on it.

In Russia, the Washington Post reported that Putin said the following: “Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven or eight children, and maybe even more,” Putin declared to an audience of ultraconservative religious and political figures who had convened in the State Kremlin Palace in November. “We should preserve and revive these wonderful traditions.”

Russia has a TFR of 1.4. The US is 1.6 (the rate for white women is slightly less than that of African-American and Hispanic women).  Russia is fighting a war, and men are leaving the country. Russia is kidnapping Ukrainian children to replenish the youth of the country. Putin, like US conservatives, seeks a country based on Orthodox Christianity and nationalism. Putin said, “Making sure Russians have as many children as possible is the underlying goal of our state policy.”

Women are a means to this end for both US and Russian nationalists. Women’s rights are disposable. 

See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/30/russia-putin-antifeminism-women-children-society/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3e88816%2F66a9b812b115535658dc2a42%2F60a4ff32ae7e8a50b536ca00%2F36%2F61%2F66a9b812b115535658dc2a42

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/why-jd-vance-worries-about-childlessness-00bb96cb

Buying Children, Jailing Mothers

| alexandersanger

Governments are at it again trying to increase birth rates. Recent stories out of Russia and China reveal that these government are doubling down on their policies to incentivize or force childbearing.  

Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader (the Chinese leadership is all male – not a single woman on the 24 member Politburo) – at a meeting of the  All-China Women’s Federation in November stated that “we should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture.” It is the role of party officials to influence young people’s views on “love and marriage, fertility and family.” China has over the past two generations gone beyond “influence” and had mandated family size through its One Child Policy.  Are we to see a two or three child policy mandated? Whatever might happen, gender equality is not part of this culture. Currently some Chinese provinces offer cash bonuses for couples having two or three children. 

Russian authorities are cracking down on abortion access, long a means of birth control in that nation, by cracking down on private clinics offering abortion. Russia reported about 500,000 abortions in 2022. The corresponding figure in the US for 2021 is over 600,000 (the CDC and Guttmacher differ in their estimates with Guttmacher reporting over 900,000). The US population is about 2.4 times larger than Russia, indicating a greater reliance on abortion in that country. Restricting legal abortion access puts women at risk when they resort to illegal ones – making them unable to have future children – a consequence it would seem the authorities would want to avoid.

At the same time, Russia is offering speedy citizenship to foreign fighters who immigrate to fight in the Ukraine, indicating the severity of their population decline and the attitude of the Russian males to being sent to certain death in a losing battle. It seems the authorities are desperate to preserve the Russian male to further and father their race.

Countries around the world have tried and mostly failed to influence birth rates with childcare incentives, cash bonuses, paid leave etc. These policies, at most, influence timing of births, not the number. Still, many couples say they are having fewer children than they want. Many social and economic factor come into play here, along with some basic biology. 

In the US, the support for legal abortion has risen since the Dobbs decision, with 55% saying they support abortion for any reason. This is about the percent that supported abortion rights in the recent Ohio voting. This is a healthy response to the conservative attack on women’s rights.

One wonders also the connection to a recent study in the US indicating that millennial women are losing ground in health and safety, including rates of maternal mortality, suicide and homicide. But Millennial women have also seen improvement in education and earnings, with 44% completing a bachelor’s degree, up from 28% of Gen X women. Women now earn 89.7 cents per dollar as men, compared to 82.4 cents for Gen X women. No surprise that women on their own, making it on their own, with increased risk of maternal mortality and violence in their communities, support unfettered access to abortion, and that their families do too. 

The US birthrate today has fallen to 1.6 (the white rate 1.6 and the African American is slightly higher at 1.67).  If there is anything to be done about this (and there is scant evidence anything can or should be done), then maternal and child safety should be at the top of the list for policy makers, including the racial disparities in these statistics and including providing family planning and safe abortion services so that children are born when the parents deem it best and those giving birth aren’t put at increased risk.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-give-birth-to-more-soldiers-hardline-russia-turns-on-abortions

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67495969

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/11/28/russia-limits-womens-access-to-abortion-citing-demographic-changes

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-population-births-decline-womens-rights-5af9937b

https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/09/china-wants-women-to-stay-home-and-bear-children

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/support-for-abortion-access-is-near-record-wsj-norc-poll-finds-6021c712

Losing More Ground: Revisiting Young Women’s Well-Being Across Generations

https://www.vox.com/23971366/declining-birth-rate-fertility-babies-children

Women, Men and Population Worries

| alexandersanger

By Alexander Sanger

The recent simultaneous release of the census data from the United States and China has led commentators around the world to ponder causes and effects of declining rates of childbirth in these and other countries. This is not a new phenomenon – birth rates have been declining in the West for 200 years, long before the pill. More recent declines have occurred in many countries in the East and West, North and South, for decades as women have become more educated and modern contraception has become more available. In many countries of varying incomes, fertility rates are stubbornly below the replacement rate, presaging declining populations.

Commentators have focused on the economic effects of reduced work forces, leading to reduced economic growth, innovation and standards of living, and on the budgetary effects of aging populations (in Japan diapers for adults outsell those for babies) leading to pressures on pension schemes. 

Discussions about what is causing this phenomenon have looked at the emancipation and education of women and the rising costs of childbearing and the never-yet-lessened demands childbearing and child raising place on parents. Parenting, or non-parenting rather, can be seen as a rational economic and lifestyle choice – an either-or between career and personal fulfillment and happiness on one side and the cost (financial and otherwise) of children on the other. Childcare and housing and outstanding student loans are cited as the major deterrents. Women especially still, despite decades of advancement, bear the brunt of this unpalatable choice – old gender patterns and expectations lead to women performing most childcare and housework and sacrificing more career opportunities. Add in the economic insecurity brought on by COVID 19, and the decision to parent becomes even more fraught. As a result, infertility issues are increasing, in women and men, as couples delay childbearing. Couples are having fewer children than they say they want.

Looking at the other side of the fertility coin, teen pregnancies and childbearing have fallen drastically in the US. Teen childbearing rates have fallen since 1991, when there were 61.8 births per 1000 teens. In 2020, the rate was 15.3. Cross that item off the culture war list. 

China had a long-term decline in adolescent childbearing (and marriage) in the late 20th Century but has seen a recent rebound in both in some rural provinces. The reasons for this rebound include the gender imbalance (more males in each age cohort than females due to the One-Child Policy), resulting in an imbalance in the marriage market and in males resorting to various strategies to land a bride as early as possible, including paying a bride price and finding younger brides. Rural girls are at greater risk for early marriage due to lower education levels, lack of opportunity and persistent traditional culture and gender norms.

Foregoing early childbearing leads to reduced overall childbearing – many women simply don’t catch up and have the number of children they want. The percent of women in the US age 30-34 who are childless rose from 26% in 2006 to 33% in 2018. Looking at US women age 40-44, in 1980, 90% were mothers; in 2006, 80% were mothers and in 2018, 86% were mothers. 

The New York Times on June 18, 2021 published a front-page story by Sabrina Tavernise and three others about women in the US delaying motherhood. Some of the above factors were discussed. Delaying childbearing was found more pronounced in areas with good economic prospects for women. Women there have more incentive to wait.

But the Times left out a few things. 

There was no mention of men. Are men delaying fatherhood like women are? Is taking two to tango a 20thCentury phenomenon not worthy of discussion in today’s climate? I remember an unmarried woman with no children in her 30s in a rural community saying to me a few years ago when I asked her about her romantic prospects, “there are no eligible men.” There were men in this community, it seemed as many men as women, but none measured up to her standards. She moved afield to find a mate. 

If we look at delayed motherhood, we must perforce look at the entire mating system including fatherhood – couples meeting, mating, sex, contraception, abortion, childbirth and child rearing. 

Are men and women in the US partnering or marrying at less rates? Yes. For all US men and women ages 18-34, in 2004, 33% had no steady romantic partner, whereas in 2016, it was 45%.

There are similar figures for adults under age 35 who are not living with a spouse or partner: in 2007 it was 56% and in 2017 it rose to 61%. In many instances, women are not, and cannot, rely on a male for support, hence they make their own career. In China, one report states that 15 million more adults lived alone in 2021 than in 2018. They are termed ‘empty nest youth’.

How about sexual activity? Quite a male/female difference. For men age 18-24 in 2000-2, 19% reported no sexual activity for the preceding year. In 2016-8, it rose to 31% of males. 

For women of the same ages in the same time periods, the rate rose from 15% to 19%. Quite a difference in reported sexual activity with far more males than females reporting none. 

Accurate figures in China are harder to come by. One survey in China found that during Covid, 53% of men and 30% of women had fewer sexual partners during Covid, and 40% of males and 32% of females reported less sexual activity. A similar gender gap as the US. 

What is going on with men and women and the mating system? 

Sex is down, pregnancies (intended and unintended) are down, abortions are down, and childbearing is down. Declining pregnancies can be attributed to less sex and better contraception.  Surveys indicate that couples are contracepting more and using better methods, including LARCS, Long-Acting Reversible Contraception. In China, contraception is harder to come by for adolescents but freely available to adults, including the long-acting methods. 

Are some sex differences at play here? The figure of men having less sex than women begs for an explanation. Are men fearful of approaching women, of dating, of initiating sex? Are women choosing more rigorously? Are more men not making the cut? Hence women having more sex with a smaller pool of eligible males?

Here we see individual choices ending up collectively driving governments batty. We have individual choices in two totally disparate countries, US and China, leading to the same end result. What is the commonality, if any? As women advance economically and are more educated, are males perceived to be (or are) in decline? Are women pickier? 

What are governments to make of this? Is it their business when and how many offspring its citizens have (or how much sex they have)? And what, if anything, can they do about it?

It is a valid function of governments to enable its citizens to have the offspring they want, i.e., to be able to reproduce, and to have those offspring survive and in turn reproduce. To be able to reproduce means maintaining the essential reproductive biology, i.e., fertility, including preventing environmental damage to reproductive organs for starters. Other damage to fertility comes from age, lifestyle, i.e., drinking and obesity, and STIs. Is infertility on the rise? Declining sperm counts have been in the news, though a recent report counters this. No matter the cause, shouldn’t governments be subsidizing fertility treatments for the married and unmarried if they want its citizens to have more children? China prohibits single women from using infertility services.

Then there are social, economic and cultural factors that relate to mating, sexual activity, pregnancy, abortion, childbearing, childrearing decisions. Each would take a separate volume to discuss and are of vital importance. These factors are what are now called intersectionality but have been reproductive factors since time immemorial and determine individual reproductive strategies, each of which takes place in a certain environment. In the days before modern medicine (and still in too many countries), childbirth was a major killer of women. The rates and risk were (and are) determined by such factors as race, geography, poverty, education, family unit, in addition to childbirth services and medical care. 

To the extent lower childbearing is a decision subject to outside influence, what are governments’ responses? Last month in China, the government adopted a three-child policy, now permitting married couples to have three. The likely effect? Near zero, just like the adoption of the two-child policy was five years ago. No mention of a right of unmarried women to have three children, not that many would, because non-marital childbearing is a rarity in China, unlike the US and much of the rest of the Western world – it is about 40% in the US and 42% in the EU and 55% in Scandinavia. It is well over 50% in much of Latin America. Many or most are in non-marital consensual unions/partnerships. The rate is under 1% in India. The only constant is that birthrates are declining in all these countries whether the parents are married or unmarried. So, put aside subsidizing marriage as a “solution” to the declining birthrate issue. 

Likewise subsidizing childbirth. Various EU countries have tried a variety of approaches including subsidizing childcare, tax credits, parental leave etc. and the effect is marginal, though not nil. Germany had an uptick after expanding access to affordable childcare and providing parental leave but not a major one. The uptick may be one of timing to take advantage of the benefits not an uptick in total number of children. China has a two-week paid parental leave for fathers though few take it. A government purchasing its future citizens is, generally speaking, money wasted.

How about free education? The expense of educating children is often cited as a deterrent (as well as unpaid student loans). About 24 countries around the world provide free (or nearly free) university education – many are in the EU, which has stubbornly declining birth rates. Others include Malaysia (at 2.0 births per woman and falling), Brazil (1.7 and falling) and Kenya (3.5 and falling). 

To solve the government’s fiscal issues, some are raising the age of retirement (easier for office workers than laborers) and increasing taxes on a reduced workforce (few or none dare reduce pension benefits). 

Then we get to the nub. What has all this to do with women’s and men’s individual choices about childbearing? And really, do, or should rather, governments have say?

Look what happens when governments intrude. In China, the One Child Policy led to a gender imbalance. Its policy against Muslim childbearing is akin to genocide. In Romania in the 1980s, the ban on birth control and abortion resulted in a generation of women rendered infertile by botched abortions. Government fines on the childless is the next frontier. If a government can prohibit childbearing, then can’t it require it? China and used to prohibit pre-marital sex, as did most US states. Can states require procreative sex? What is the difference in terms of asserted government powers? Is the Handmaid’s Tale coming?

In the US, states are adopting the Romania strategy and are falling over each other to prohibit abortion, — see Mississippi and Texas – itching to overturn Roe v. Wade. And then overturning Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized birth control. We see this push at the time the census shows a declining white population. We saw this in the mid-19th Century with white Protestants fighting back against immigrant Irish Catholics with the Know-Nothing Party to criminalize birth control and abortion so as to prevent the white Protestant women from using them. The Party also pushed to deny Irish the right to vote – the laws aiming to limit minority voting turnout and against immigration are nothing new. Tribal tensions and animosity are alive and well. 

What are women and men seeing when they think (consciously or subconsciously) about having children? In biology, there is the concept of reproductive strategy where each individual chooses, consciously or subconsciously, the timing and number of offspring to give them the best chance of survival and having offspring of their own. This includes choosing a mate. In many parts of the world, that means marriage. In much of the West, it doesn’t. The number of singles is on the rise in China. The sex ratio imbalance in China, that there are more men than women, is also a factor. Males have to compete more to attract a mate. Women can be choosier. What are they looking for: good genes, an equal partner, a provider, an equal helpmate in parenting – and … an apartment – the latest form of dowry. One commentator in China said, “housing prices are still the best sterilization tool.” Long work hours are a deterrent to men taking on more housework and childcare (the Times recently had an article on unmarried men in China choosing vasectomies). Long work hours for women and lack of affordable child care are also a deterrent to motherhood, as the Times also pointed out. The gender imbalance is alive and well—look at women being penalized more in COVID than men.  What in the US we call “intersectionality” is profoundly important to “solving” the problem – gender, discrimination, economic and social factors, all weigh in on individual lives and choices.

What we see are individual reproductive strategies at odds with national childbearing goals.