Why Blaming Women for Falling Birth Rates Misses the Point

One-dimensional narratives about the ‘underpopulation crisis’ conveniently obscure what’s really going on

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The panic over low birth rates is becoming impossible to ignore nowadays.

And much of the blame is being placed — surprise, surprise — on women.

Current US Vice President JD Vance has called it ‘deranged’ and ‘very crazy’ for women not to have children due to climate concerns. Other American right-wing figures have frequently implied it’s women’s reproductive choices — or rather, the freedom to have them — that are to blame. Meanwhile, Polish politician Jarosław Kaczyński has gone so far as to attribute low birth rates to young women drinking too much alcohol.

Then there’s the endless flood of articles, social media posts, and even studies similarly lamenting how women and people assigned female at birth are too selfish, too lazy, too empowered. One recent study even suggested that low birth rates might be the fault of older women who haven’t retired yet because their continued employment means they’re unavailable to provide free childcare. Another, published in Hungary, blamed it on women wanting to pursue education.

Well, as a childfree woman, I can’t help but feel personally dragged into all of it, blamed for apparently everything that’s wrong with society today.

But just like it was the case with countless other things women have been blamed for throughout history — wars, immorality, disease, etc. — this is yet another oversimplified narrative that conveniently ignores the deeper social, economic, and structural forces at play.

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Here’s a fact that rarely comes up in population discussions: the world’s population has more than doubled in just the last 50 years, jumping from 4 billion in 1975 to over 8 billion today. The global fertility rate also continues to remain above the so-called ‘replacement level’ of 2.1 births per woman. Currently, it stands at 2.3 and isn’t projected to decline to replacement level until 2050. By then, we’re expected to hit nearly 10 billion people on this planet. And by 2100? We could surpass 11 billion.

To put that into perspective —  for most of human history, the total population fluctuated between 100,000 and a few million, and we managed just fine. (Actually, even back then, we were already driving species to extinction.)

The fears of an ‘underpopulation crisis’ are, in other words, overblown. But it is true that birth rates are declining across much of the world, from Asia and Europe to the Americas, except in some regions in Africa. So what’s causing it? Are individual women and their ‘selfish’ choices really the primary drivers of this trend?

For one, there’s a well-documented inverse relationship between income and total fertility — i.e. as countries develop and become wealthier, fertility rates tend to drop. Economic affluence combined with expanded access to education and job opportunities — including for women — leads to delayed marriage, later childbearing, and smaller families.

But that’s also hardly the whole story.

In a recently published paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Nobel-prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin argues that the gender gap in domestic and care labour plays a role, too.

By analysing data from two groups of countries, Goldin identified a clear pattern. In nations that experienced steady economic growth throughout the 20th century — such as Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, and the US — birth rates are now moderately low, and while the burden of domestic and care labour still largely falls on women, men make some effort to participate. However, in countries where rapid economic development outpaced social change — like Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Spain — fertility rates have dropped to some of the lowest in the world, while men’s involvement in domestic duties remains minimal.

Rapid economic growth may expand women’s freedom and job opportunities, but it rarely leads to an equally swift shift in men’s attitudes toward housework and caregiving, which they continue to view as ‘women’s work.’ As Goldin explains:

It is the speed with which tradition-bound people are catapulted into modernity that gives generations little time to adapt and brings old ways into sudden conflict with the new. I term this a generational conflict because it derives from men’s greater attachment to the past.

South Korea is a striking example of this. In 2024, it had the lowest fertility rate in the world — 0.75 births per woman. But South Korean women also spend nearly three hours more on housework and family care each day than men. In Portugal, the gap is even larger — women do four extra hours of domestic labour daily — and their fertility rate is barely above 1.4. Meanwhile, in Denmark and Sweden, where women do just under an hour more housework per day than men — a gap that still adds up to around 15 full days of extra work per year — fertility rates are notably higher at 1.7.

Goldin’s findings also align with previous research on fertility preferences among heterosexual couples. One 2019 study she cites in her paper found that in countries where mothers shoulder a much greater share of childcare than fathers, women consistently report wanting fewer children than men.

And it’s not exactly a mystery why.

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The persistent gender gap in domestic labour is already significant on its own. But it actually becomes even more pronounced among heterosexual couples once children enter the picture. A study published earlier this year in the Journal of Family Psychology found that while women’s already unequal workload obviously increases during child-rearing years, men’s does not. In fact, men contributed even less than usual during this period.

As Matthew Johnson, lead author of the study, points out:

There were some small fluctuations in who was doing what, but women did the bulk of the work; there were no household tasks where men did the most or even where the work was equally shared.

This gap isn’t much different among younger generations, either. While Gen Z men tend to have a slightly more egalitarian approach to household chores, an actual 50/50 split remains far from the norm. Women are still expected to do it all — often on top of full-time employment — which can take a massive toll on their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

And yet, what men do — or rather, what they don’t do — is an almost entirely overlooked half of the equation. But it matters. Why would a woman choose to have more children — or any at all — if she suspects the burden of caregiving will fall mainly on her shoulders? If she knows she’ll be the one paying for it with sleepless nights, mental exhaustion, and career sacrifices, while her partner’s life remains virtually unchanged?

A friend once told me, if she got to be the father, she’d have kids right now. And she’s hardly the only young woman who feels that way today.

If you combine the gender gap in housework and caregiving with the fact that women are more likely to experience a drop in pay after becoming mothers — the motherhood penalty — more likely to care for elderly parents while also raising kids — hence the term ‘sandwich generation caregiver’ — and more likely to end up as sole caregivers, which then increases their risk of poverty, the picture becomes even clearer. And then there’s the fact that in some countries, like the US, reproductive rights are being stripped away, effectively making pregnancy even more dangerous.

So, if anything, we shouldn’t be asking why women aren’t having children, but why would they want to in a society that doesn’t value their bodies, their time or their labour? Yes, some women choose not to have children simply because they don’t want to, and luckily, they have that choice today. But for others, the desire for motherhood is undermined by structural inequalities and patriarchal norms.

Still, even these factors are only part of the story. Financial reasons also play a massive role in the decision to have kids today. After all, it’s no secret that many young people today don’t own a home and doubt they ever will. Or that the cost of living keeps rising while wages in most industries remain stagnant. Or that the cost of childcare keeps skyrocketing. In 2023, global daycare fees increased by 6%, and in the US alone, they jumped by 9% — in just one year. A recent Care.com survey found, unsurprisingly, that the two most significant stressors among parents are now the cost of childcare and the difficulty of finding suitable care. This financial burden often forces one parent — usually the mother — to work part-time or leave the workforce entirely. But even that is becoming near-impossible.

And if all that wasn’t enough, there’s also the not-so-small question of what kind of future we’re facing.

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The biggest hypocrisy of all the tech bros, fundamentalist religious leaders, economists, politicians and other people who push the pro-natalist narrative that we desperately need more babies is that it’s usually these very same individuals who are then actively making our world a worse place to bring new humans into.

Our society isn’t just unconducive to having children because of pervasive gender inequalities, high costs of childcare and housing or weak (or nonexistent) family-friendly policies. It’s also unconducive because of the utterly absurd belief that relentlessly pushing our ecosystems to their breaking point in pursuit of ever-growing profits is somehow ‘good’ or ‘desirable.’ And yes, studies show that this influences young people’s decisions about whether or not to have children as well.

So how is any of this women’s fault?

Women aren’t preventing men from pulling their weight at home or demanding lower wages after becoming mothers. And they aren’t in control of most corporations and governments that are currently exploiting both people and the planet with little regard for the present or future.

This isn’t a crisis of individual women’s choices.

It’s a crisis of patriarchal entitlement, capitalist greed, and short-term thinking that benefits the few at the expense of many.

Of course, blaming women is certainly a convenient way to deflect attention from these systemic issues, shifting the focus back to regulating women and people assigned female at birth’s bodies in the name of ‘saving the world’ by boosting birthrates. But is this really even a problem? Who actually loses in a world with fewer people? It’s definitely not our planet, and it’s not most of humanity — at least, not if we plan ahead for an ageing and declining population.

What people are really worried about when they mention the slowdown in birth rates is that there won’t be enough babies to grow into future workers, consumers, and worshippers and that the very systems dependent on an ever-expanding population will eventually collapse.

But if these systems don’t collapse — or at the very least undergo significant restructuring — there may be no humanity left at all.

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Instead of obsessing over how to coerce women and young people into having children, we should focus on caring for the people who are already here.

That doesn’t mean ignoring those who do want kids, though. We absolutely should build societies with better work-life balance, affordable housing, lower cost of living, and extensive social programs —  such as highly subsidised childcare and generous paid parental leave. Societies where caregiving is valued and shared, not just a burden placed on women.

Everyone benefits from living in a world that actually values human life, rather than treating it as a resource for endless growth.

It’s a shame that’s so hard for some to understand.

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