Let’s get past the lie that patriarchy and a rat race economy aren’t to blame for falling American birth rates
Yes there is a correlation between women’s education and falling birth rates, but correlation is not causation. From Claudia Goldin’s 2025 paper:
Even though women’s enhanced agency is an important factor in determining fertility in most developed nations today, its role in altering birth rates has depended on a related element. That factor is the ability of women to be assured they can reap the financial and personal rewards from their education while raising their children. The more that men can credibly signal they will be dependable “dads” and not disappointing “duds,” the higher will be the birthrate in the face of greater female agency.
In a world where you need two incomes to raise children, men have to contribute equally to child care.
The more educated a woman is the less economic sense it makes for her to leave the workforce.
U.S. women are outpacing men in college completion, including in every major racial and ethnic group.
Nor is it reasonable to ask women to stay uneducated, barefoot, and pregnant because under rat race conditions there is a high risk that life choice would be both individually and nationally a disaster.
So patriarchy is currently the road block to sustainable birth rates. Now it’s difficult to say how many many are “duds” in the Goldin sense, but we can easily look at how many are willing to be stay at home fathers:
Not many — which is a strong indication that many fathers are refusing to pull their weight while raising kids.
But suppose even all fathers were willing to equally or greater than equally contribute to raising children. If the rat race cost of raising children continues to rise then ultimately it won’t matter. Achieving the career necessary to participate in this race requires ever further delaying children:
The average age of first-time mothers in the United States has risen to 27.5 years in 2023, up from 26.6 in 2016.
Since there are hard biological limits on motherhood, the result is second or even first children sacrificed to better careers.
Worse the rat race can create an environment that is not safe for children.
In South Korea, anxious parents enroll children as young as four in rigorous prep programs and have them sit for competitive kindergarten entrance exams. The results are burnt-out students and lost childhoods. Attempted policy reforms have merely shifted competition to earlier stages. To tackle the root of this issue, policymakers must confront the structural pressures that fuel the pervasive parental fear of their children falling behind.
Does this self correct as there are fewer American children?
The number of children in America peaked at 74.1 million in 2008, reached 70.9 in 2025, and is projected to decline to 66.5 million by 2050. However this projection relies on difficult to predict immigration levels.
So according to the above survey the richest native born non Hispanic whites have the replacement level required total fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman. Plus the economic pressure is evident as you must be above 60 percent household income percentile to statistically have a shot at producing two children.
But then why is TFR of some women in the lowest income percentile not affected by the rat race or patriarchy?
Because 74% of Americans believe their children will be worse off than their parents. So if you are in a low income percentile and have given up on the rat race then your own career and many of the expenses of raising children, like education, no longer matter.