By Leah Libresco Sargeant, First Things, Nov. 21, 2024
Leah Libresco Sargeant is the author of Arriving at Amen and Building the Benedict Option.
America is missing children because it’s missing marriages. However, fixing our fertility gap won’t happen by pressuring or humiliating singles. It requires fixing the broken dating cultures that are delaying marriage formation and leaving men and women feeling resentful of each other. The vast majority of young adults want to get married, but more and more find it isn’t working out as they expect. As a result, half of America’s drop in fertility is explained by the drop in marriage formation.
Most young Americans hope to be married at some point, but few have reliable social scripts for dating that could help them make marriage a priority. It’s a bigger problem for liberals than conservatives. When the Pew Research Center surveyed registered voters in June of 2024, only one in five Biden supporters said that “society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority.” Downplaying marriage is an overcorrection from the time when marriage was the default and it took strong, countercultural movements for women to find a place in the workforce. Today, twenty-somethings need to make a plan for actively pursuing marriage and children, just as they already make deliberate choices to further their career. …