A different perspective to America's declining birth rate

https://www.thedailybeast.com/yes-women-are-making-fewer-babies-but-no-its-not-womens-fault?ref=scroll

This article draws attention to how America is seemingly short on babies, with a record low birth rate of 59 births per 1000 women in 2018. Consequently, there is a newly widespread fear that this will be paralleled to Japan, where the country's ageing population has been a result of the supposed cultural belief that having children is no longer a priority. What this article emphasises on is, however, is that whilst these statistics are evidently true, they are not at the fault of women. Women entering the workforce and having extended careers is not the only cause for a reduction in births per year, contrary to popular belief and assumption.

Although women are birth-givers, this does not reduce the underlying truth that pregnancy and giving birth to children is ultimately "a two-body problem"; the behaviour of men, and the vast difficulty to find a "suitable and willing partner to father those children" in regard to heterosexual couples is an important point to consider. There are various behavioural factors on men's behalf which are also hindering childbirth- men are "fed a narrative that they can set their own schedule for parenthood", causing them to consistently overestimate their ability to have children at an older age, disregarding fertility problems that inevitability come with ageing.

Moreover, this article addresses society's unwillingness to admit men's role in having, or not having, babies, and in reality, this decline can not and is not for women to be single-handedly blamed. Reading this brought me back to our readings from the modern women's right women, in which women's lives revolved around having kids, raising them, and fostering a child-friendly household. How long will it take for articles like this one to be universally agreed on, and for us as a society to understand that women's progression into longer careers should be appreciated, rather than attacked for for matters that are evidently not solely a woman's issue?