The Declining Birth Rate Isn't the Problem -- The Patriarchy Is
RFK Jr. recently called America’s declining birth rate a “national security concern.” He went on a disturbing rant about how teenage boys’ sperm counts are supposedly half of that of 65-year-old men (which is biologically implausible), and how girls are supposedly hitting puberty years earlier.
I don’t mean to sound like an alarmist here, but let’s be real for a second: why are we linking “national security," teenage sperm counts, and early puberty in girls? This line of concern doesn’t just sound off — it sounds sinister.
Childfree women are not blind to the fact that his statement fits neatly into an all-too-familiar pattern: powerful men panic about women not following the directed script.
Yes, it is a fact that the birth rate is declining. But the birth rate isn’t falling because women are selfish or confused about their purpose. It isn’t falling because of whatever culture war agenda this administration is pushing this week.
The decline I am sure, like most things, is multifaceted. A big proportion of it I am willing to bet is due to the system they (the patriarchy/oligarchy) built. You know, the one that denies healthcare, underpays labor, and strips away reproductive rights and over all makes family life unsustainable for anyone who isn’t rich? This isn’t a fertility crisis. It’s a reckoning with decades of patriarchal neglect bubbling below the surface.
They Broke the System — and Blame Women for the Fallout
Birth rates in the U.S. have been declining for years. In 2024, the fertility rate fell to 1.6 children per woman — the lowest in modern history and far below the so-called “replacement level.”
In the 1960’s, the fertility rate was around 3.5, but then fell to 1.7 by 1976 after the “baby boom” ended. It rose to 2.1 by 2007 then dropped again. Weird. I wonder what happened in the 1970s and again in 2008? Could it possibly have something to do with the economy and the housing market both times?
But women didn’t cause this decline because some wave of feminism made them hate the family unit. The patriarchy and oligarchy did by refusing to guarantee paid maternity leave, affordable healthcare, stable housing, or the kind of food security and childcare programs that make family life even remotely sustainable.
For decades, they’ve dismantled every structure that would make raising children possible: affordable housing, childcare, healthcare, paid leave, and reproductive freedom. Then they turn around and stupidly ask, “Why aren’t women having more babies?”
Maybe because the price of motherhood in America is too high—physically, emotionally, and economically.
The Birth Rate Panic Is About Two Things: Power and Profit
Look, humanity isn’t facing extinction the planet holds 8.19 billion people. The so-called “birthrate crisis” is nothing more than an economic panic among the powerful.
When politicians and billionaires demand more babies, what they’re really demanding is a larger workforce and more consumers. More people means more production, more consumption, and more money. It will never be enough for these insatiable assholes. They don’t want to protect families and they do not care about you. They just want to protect their portfolios.
They have financial stakes in everything we’re expected to buy to raise those children: formula, diapers, medicine, minivans, housing, food, entertainment. A smaller population means less consumption, and that threatens their bottom line and yacht money they get to spend while the rest of us are to thank them for the scraps and opportunity to lick their boots.
So they sell panic — “national security concerns,” “family decline,” “demographic collapse” — as a cover for their real fear: losing control. Losing money.
Even the most generous pronatalist policies can’t override the fact that modern women are no longer economically or socially trapped. Freedom changes the math. When women have access to education, contraception, healthcare, and equality, they make real choices about if and when to have children. That’s not the death of society; it’s evidence that autonomy is finally taking root.
When women gain freedom, patriarchy calls it a crisis.
They don’t want empowered, educated, financially independent women building wealth or questioning systems. They want obedient incubators — women too underpaid and overworked to resist. Women who cook, clean, raise kids, stay quiet and let the man feel important.
Because empowered mothers raise empowered children; empowered children don’t grow up quietly serving the patriarchy.
If they truly cared about the future of children, they’d focus on healthcare, climate change, gun violence, and education. Not on policing women’s choices. You can’t claim to care about “the next generation” while undermining vaccines, attacking public health, and pushing policies that make raising kids impossible. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
This isn’t a fertility crisis. It’s a control strategy disguised as concern.
The truth is simple: declining birth rates don’t signal the collapse of civilization — they signal a society where women finally have a say in their own lives.
If RFK Jr. and the political establishment want more children, they can start by building a world worth being born into: one with healthcare, housing, equality, and choice.
Until then, spare us the panic. Women are not failing the nation by choosing autonomy. The nation is failing women by making motherhood an economic punishment.
The birth rate isn’t the problem. Patriarchy is.
Her Childfree Life exists because of readers who support the work through The Full Blog — where I share early releases, longer essays, and members-only reflections.
Unlock full access to Her Childfree Life’s complete collection of essays, reflections, and commentary. Optional access to the paid version of Her Childfree Life's Substack, if you prefer to get posts directly in your inbox or join community discussions there.