As a mother of eight, I approach every Mother’s Day with mixed feelings. I look forward to the burned French toast, illegible handmade cards, and sweet (if clumsy) gestures from my children. But I also feel sadness. As a 40-something mom of a large, happy family, I am an endangered species. The United States is on track to surpass Switzerland as the global leader in childless women in their 40s.
I have a great life. I’m never bored. I’m constantly challenged to give more of myself, and I receive more love than I ever imagined when I was still single. Married mothers report the happiest, least lonely, most meaningful lives in our age group. In fact, 80 percent of mothers say they are “happy with our lives,” compared with just 68 percent of childless women.
I don’t say this to brag (most days I still wonder how I got this lucky). I say it because I want to build a society where women are happier and more fulfilled — and all the signs suggest that to get there, we need more married mothers.
The Real Fertility Gap
Even the corporate media has started to admit that women aren’t having the children they want. A pro-natalist movement has gone viral (and lives rent-free in the NPR editors’ heads) thanks to voices like Elon Musk and cringey-but-earnest influencers like the “techno puritan” Collins family.
The Trump coalition, big-tent as ever, has opened a path for both secular birthrate alarmists and religious (mostly Catholic) voices to find common ground. In late April, The New York Times profiled policy ideas from the natalist camp: a $5,000 “baby bonus,” menstrual health education, and a “National Medal of Motherhood” (thanks again, Collins family) for women with six or more kids.
The problem is, every government-led effort to reverse the baby bust through payouts, tax cuts, and or other incentives has failed.
Why? Most pro-natalist ideas focus on encouraging women who are already mothers to have more children. Demographer Lyman Stone’s 2022 analysis shows that’s not where the problem lies. A married mom of one is likely to have a second. A mom of four today is just as likely to have a fifth as her grandmother was in 1958.
It’s not mothers who’ve changed — it’s the number of women who become mothers in the first place. According to Stone, childless women are driving 100% of America’s fertility crisis. Within a generation, 1 in 4 young women will remain childless.
Why Aren’t Women Becoming Mothers?
There’s no doubt we’re facing a demographic crisis and an epidemic of loneliness. The answer isn’t just “make more babies.” It’s “make more mothers.”
The good news? Most childless women want to be mothers. As Brad Wilcox notes, the number of children American women hope to have hasn’t changed much. Their ideal fertility remains a little over two children per woman. So why aren’t they becoming moms?
A 2021 Institute for Family Studies survey found the top reason is marital status: 55 percent of non-mothers say they’re “still looking for the right spouse.” Second is affordability — even in the world’s richest nations, 36 percent of women say they just can’t afford a child, especially with the rising opportunity costs for working parents.
What helps a woman choose motherhood? Confidence — in stable housing, food, educational choice. Smart policy can help here, by reducing financial fears and affirming family formation. But policy can only go so far.
The entire developed world is facing a demographic cliff and the problem isn’t that women (and men) want more money before they procreate. When facing a civilizational crisis, we need to get back to the bedrock of civilization: the formation of healthy families through happy marriages.
For most women, the promise of traditional marriage – and the confidence that it’s their primary path to happiness – is still the strongest incentive to become a mother.
More Marriage, More Babies
In addition to material securities, the young people who can form these unions need a culture-driven change in mentality. The education and entertainment industries for the last 60 years have promoted the narrative that marriage is misery and babies are nothing but a burden. The health care industry, too, has driven an “opt-out” mentality for women and their mentality with regard to their fertility.
To counteract the broader cultural disdain for marriage and motherhood, it is time for people of faith to promote pro-marriage and pro-child voices. For thousands of years before the sexual revolution, Christians in particular have responded to attacks on children and families with their witness and material aid.
Today, the stakes are even higher, and it is incumbent on us to take back the institutions that broke down families in the West and deceived millions of men and women into rejecting marriage and children.
Recovery is a long shot, but it is possible. For each of us individually, it starts with honoring our mothers this Mother’s Day, but even more importantly, with the mothers themselves (and their husbands) offering joyful, inspiring witness to the greatest happiness on earth – the blessing of babies.
Erika Ahern is a seasoned journalist and Managing Editor for Refine, CatholicVote’s lifestyle newsletter, and co-host of the LOOPcast.
