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My take is that those who don't have to spend 9 months pregnant if they wish to perpetuate the species don't really have much right to complain about low fertility rates.
You frame it as if the birth rate collapse is being caused by women choosing not to have children.
It's not, mothers are still having as many children as they did in the 1970s. The issue is that fewer women are becoming mothers. And it's not because they are choosing not to. Childless by choice women have always existed, but they've always been a tiny proportion.
The birth rate collapse is happening because young men and young women are not coupling up any more.
And given that men make up 50% of the non-forming couples, I think we are perfectly entitled to talk about it.
As the saying goes, men chase and women choose. Women are choosing not to have children.
That's false. According to surveys, women still want to have children. If every woman had as many children as she wants, every country barring a few would have above-replacement fertility.
But young people aren't coupling up, and that's obviously not 100% women, how could it be? That would have to mean that young men are asking out as many women as they always have, but the women are all saying no for some reason.
In reality, both men and women are socialising much less, and the effect is more pronounced among men than women.
Surveys don't mean much. If women aren't having children, it's because they don't want them, they biologically can't have them, or because they can't find a man to impregnate them. Infertility happens but there's no evidence it's increased anywhere near enough to explain the drop in TFR. The last is not credible.
Yes, that's exactly what I've been saying. Young people are failing to couple up which has caused the recent birth rate collapse. But that's not a unilateral decision on the part of any individual woman or man. It's a coordination problem. Leaving aside the fact that blaming 'women' is incoherent because 'women' cannot make a collective decision as billions of autonomous individuals, you seem to be ignoring the fact that it takes two people to have a baby. The average young woman wants to get married and have children, but no woman can do that on her own. She needs to find a man who wants to do the same, and do it with her. The coordination mechanisms we used to have for this (in person socialising in most societies) have broken down, so the birth rate has collapsed.
Blaming individuals for systemic problems, or blaming one sex for a problem that involves both sexes, is a lazy copout.
In my experience, when a woman claims that she is unable to find a husband, it's almost always because she has standards which are mathematically unreasonable. e.g. she is a 5/10 in desirability but wants a man who is an 8/10 in desirability.
Or is it because neither she, not her would-be suitor, are going outside?
Women have always had higher standards than men, and yet the fertilty collapse is (very) recent. In the 2000s, birth rates in the western world were going up, not down.
'Women be too picky' explanations have the same problem as 'people be too lazy' explanations for obesity. You can't simply point to an eternal characteristic (women are picky, people are lazy) and use it to explain a time-restricted phenomenon. You have to explain why the characteristic matters now when it didn't matter in say, 2005.
I tend to doubt it. If you are a 5/10 who will only marry an 8/10, the deck is going to be stacked against you no matter where you look.
I am pretty sure that in recent years, it's become much more socially acceptable and economically feasible for a woman to live her life alone without a husband. You disagree?
I would say it's similar to obesity. People have always had the propensity to pig out on unhealthy, addictive foods, but in the last 30 years such foods have become widely available.
Analogously, women have always had hypergamous instincts, it's just become much more socially and economically feasible to act on those instincts.
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