Speaking of society’s cultural norms… I find the headline here equal parts interesting and infuriating. “Fewer women are becoming mothers.”
Maybe this article is alluding to the fact that women are more empowered to be the primary decision makers when it comes to having children. However, after reading, I’m left more with this sense of blame - that declining birth rates are the fault of educated women.
There is a lot of emphasis in feminist critique on the “empowerment” framework of falling birth rates, which I understand — it does seem intuitive to believe that most childless women are voluntarily opting to not have children.
However, in reality, there is a large gap between the proportion of women (in the USA) who have children, and the proportion that say they would like to have children.
This suggests there is some factor preventing a large cohort of women from having children, even though it is their stated preference. That factor is probably part financial, but largely cultural (as the article we are commenting under points out).
Speaking of society’s cultural norms… I find the headline here equal parts interesting and infuriating. “Fewer women are becoming mothers.”
Maybe this article is alluding to the fact that women are more empowered to be the primary decision makers when it comes to having children. However, after reading, I’m left more with this sense of blame - that declining birth rates are the fault of educated women.
There is a lot of emphasis in feminist critique on the “empowerment” framework of falling birth rates, which I understand — it does seem intuitive to believe that most childless women are voluntarily opting to not have children.
However, in reality, there is a large gap between the proportion of women (in the USA) who have children, and the proportion that say they would like to have children.
This suggests there is some factor preventing a large cohort of women from having children, even though it is their stated preference. That factor is probably part financial, but largely cultural (as the article we are commenting under points out).
The way this article completely ignores the fact that a certain percentage of women deliberately chose not to have kids doesn't sit well with me.