You’ve seen the headlines.
“Why More Women Are Choosing to Stay Single” – Cosmopolitan.
“Mankeeping Is Why Women Are Done With Dating” – Vice
“Why Can’t I Stop Thinking About Child Free Women” – Elle
“A Wedding Weekend, No Spouse Required” – New York Times
And, “I Regret Having Children” – New York magazine.
Why is so much of our media, especially media consumed by women, so anti-family?
Well, demographer Lyman Stone, who did corporate market forecasting for diaper and formula companies, has a theory. In response to that last New York magazine headline, “I Regret Having Children,” Stone explained:
Young women drive a lot of consumption, especially brands coded as luxury.
When young women have kids they tend to a) see income decline and b) shift consumption towards lower-margin product categories (diapers, etc)
As a result, there are a large number of high-margin brands whose markets skew childless, and thus a lot of aspirational female-coded material skews childless, and as such there is a permanent supply of women who experience genuinely significant sensations of loss upon having children
It may be couched many different ways, but I think the root dynamic really is just the consumption pattern drives marketing strategies which in turn structure self-image.
Stone’s theory does not require a conspiracy between advertisers and editors. It requires only overlapping economic incentives. And there is considerable evidence those incentives exist.
Start with income. Economist Henrik Kleven has found that men’s and women’s earnings follow remarkably similar trajectories before children and then diverge sharply after the first birth. In the United States, parenthood reduces women’s employment by about 25% and earnings by about 33% relative to men. The effect is immediate and persistent.
Then comes the evidence that most directly supports Stone.
A 2026 Columbia Business School study linked actual consumer transactions with verified birth records to measure what happens when people become parents for the first time. While couples did spend more on low-margin items like groceries after a child, new parents also spent significantly less on dining, travel, beauty, and other discretionary purchases. The shift was especially pronounced among younger parents and people who had been bigger spenders before having children.
Consider what that means for advertisers.
L’Oreal reported a 74.3% gross margin in 2025. More strikingly, it spent $14.2 billion on advertising and promotion — 32.2% of all sales. These companies spend enormous sums convincing young women to buy beauty products, clothes, restaurant meals, vacations, and other discretionary goods.
And media companies have a financial incentive to deliver those consumers.
A Journal of Media Economics study found that magazines with disproportionately young or affluent readers can charge advertisers a significant premium compared with publications with similarly sized audiences.
There is even evidence that advertising incentives shape editorial content. A Journal of Marketing study found that greater advertising spending led to more editorial coverage, with the effect strongest at publications most dependent on that industry’s advertising.
Again, this doesn’t mean L’Oreal executives call Cosmopolitan and demand stories discouraging marriage and motherhood.
The process is much more organic.
A media ecosystem financed by beauty, fashion, travel, restaurants, and luxury goods naturally values women with lots of disposable income and freedom to spend it. The aspirational lifestyle presented to those women therefore tends to emphasize independence, experiences, career, beauty, travel and consumption.
Then a woman has a baby.
Her earnings may fall. Her freedom certainly declines. Her dinner reservations and vacations become less frequent. Her spending moves from cosmetics and cocktails toward groceries and diapers.
THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON MARRIAGE
She may genuinely mourn what she has lost even while loving what she has gained.
But the media ecosystem built around profiting off her single life has no incentive to promote the real happiness of her married life.