In a recent op-ed, Conn Carroll declares that there is no feminist solution to the fertility crisis, which, in his view, is a crisis of marriage in disguise. Rather than helping the people who raise children, mostly women, with things such as affordable childcare, he proposes giving men a raise.
To be sure, many of us could use a raise these days, given inflation, tariffs, and the general cost of living. But the idea that giving men an economic leg up will magically transform them into marriage material misses fundamental realities about both men’s and women’s lives, goals, and priorities today.
In an email exchange, Carroll clarified that he doesn’t believe marriage is purely an economic transaction, which I am sure his wife appreciates. But, he wanted to know, why is it that marriage started to decline initially among black communities in the 1970s, a decline that then spread to other communities? It is true that, as William Julius Wilson, David Autor, and others have documented, the loss of factory jobs and the corresponding decline in male wages have correlated with a decrease in marriage. However, Mr. Carroll’s solution is better suited to a half-century ago, since it ignores the many ways in which women’s lives have changed in the intervening decades.
As I’ve written elsewhere, most women still want children and want to be married. The majority of people are still heterosexual, although Gen Z, in identification if not in behavior, is eschewing heteronormativity at rates higher than earlier generations. Perhaps most importantly, a growing share of American women don’t see marriage as a viable option for them.
What are women pursuing instead of marriage? For starters, they are going to college in numbers far greater than their male counterparts, and they’re increasingly self-supporting, buying homes on their own, and finding careers in the knowledge economy, including growing fields such as healthcare. All of these changes have shifted the calculus around marriage.
If women can live independently, then a man must bring more to the table than a second income. The economist Elizabeth Ananat, reviewing Melissa Kearney’s book The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, suggests that a “soft skills” deficit among men may explain some of the decline in marriage. In other words, women want a communicative partner with whom they can productively resolve conflicts; many men today don’t have those skills. Moreover, simply having someone to share the rent and bills with is no longer sufficient. As Ananat points out, the fact that “negotiation costs are high enough between most pairs of individuals—strangers or even friends—to negate the ostensible gains from co-residence is made clear by the fact that living with roommates is a life stage most people try to move through as quickly as possible.”
What else could men, including low-earning men, bring to the table in this scenario? They could help around the house. But research shows that in heterosexual couples, men’s contribution to housework barely budges even as their work hours decline. This is the case even for theoretically gender-neutral tasks such as cooking and cleaning, and extends all the way to when men’s work hours are zero and their wife is the primary breadwinner. Unemployed men fill up the vast majority of those hours, instead, with leisure time. Surprisingly, women’s time spent on housework falls when they divorce, suggesting that husbands create more work for their wives, rather than lessening their load.
Then there’s the question of what Carroll described in our email exchange as a “shared understanding of the world.” Researchers such as Dan Cox have documented a growing divide, in America and around the world, between young women and men along several axes that would predict whether they can build a life together: the importance of reproductive autonomy, which political party best captures their values, and whether it’s safe to use a dating app. Carroll also noted the ubiquity of pornography and gambling apps that can harm men’s financial stability, as well as the decline of marriage itself, which leaves young men growing up without fathers who can model being a kind, caring, and responsible adult.
Policy can only address some of these issues. Some are attitudinal. Just because a couple splits up, a father is not compelled to disappear from his son’s life. Nor is it imperative to watch pornography; plenty of people function perfectly well without it. Men can enter fast-growing, female-dominated fields, and they can also do a lot more housework.
Where policy can intervene, Carroll suggests, is by boosting male-dominated industries such as construction, energy, transportation, and manufacturing, which presumably will create demand for more male labor and increase men’s wages. This, in turn, will make them marriageable, leading to more babies. That’s a very roundabout way of combating low fertility. I think it is unlikely to succeed unless accompanied by other, more qualitative changes that would make men more appealing partners.
THERE IS NO FEMINIST SOLUTION TO THE FERTILITY CRISIS
Recall that women have eggs and wombs. Although for some women, finding a partner is a key part of starting a family, a growing number of women are taking advantage of that fact to become solo parents by choice. One way to help this group have more children is to make parenting more attainable and less stressful, for example, by making serious investments in policies such as paid family leave and affordable childcare.
As I explore in a forthcoming book, the reasons people have fewer children than they would like to are complex, multifactorial, and not all easily addressed through policy. But I’d suggest giving women — who, by and large, are birthing and raising America’s children — the raise instead.