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The debate over declining fertility has sparked endless conversations about the underlying causes. As the goalposts keep moving, one thing remains constant: Women continue to bear the brunt of the criticism. We’ve reached a point where the message is that women are “too old, too career-focused, and have high body counts,” while men are increasingly detached from the broader conversation about marriage and fertility.

To be fair, men have faced their own backlash in recent years. The era of “toxic masculinity” often dismissed traditionally masculine traits such as providing and protecting. The rise of women in higher education and the workplace brought many benefits, but it also coincided with the expansion of DEI initiatives that, too often, pushed men down in the process.

But we’ve overcorrected. The pendulum has swung from bashing men to bashing women. Yet tearing down either sex will not increase fertility rates, which ultimately depend on healthy men and women liking, not resenting, each other.

I’m challenging these claims because many factors are at play, and narrowly defining the problem — often done by people who married young and had children before experiencing the realities of the modern dating world — is not helping.

Here is the anecdotal pushback from women who have walked — or are still walking — the single road.

Claim #1 – Women who work don’t want marriage

In response to this increasingly popular claim, I posted the following on X in April:

I’m 46 and have worked in DC for 26 years. During that time, I’ve met and befriended many women in high-level careers. Not one has ever told me she chose her career over marriage. In fact, all of them were trying to find a husband.

The idea that Millennial or Gen X women…

— Beverly Hallberg (@BeverlyHallberg) April 11, 2026

Since then, I’ve asked numerous women across the country for their perspective on whether they chose career over marriage.

Woman, age 40, married at 35:
“I worked because I had bills to pay as the sole wage-earner in my home.”

Woman, age 38, single:
“I entered into a career after my education, but I have never ‘chosen’ a career over marriage. I’ve had a career as a way of supporting myself because no one else was going to support me otherwise.”

Woman, age 30, single:
“I’ve had a career, but I’ve always wanted to be married. Given the option, I would have chosen marriage over my job every time.”

The consistent response is that work is a necessity because bills don’t pay themselves. Rather than relying on welfare, many choose to work, acting as good stewards and contributing to the tax base, which in turn benefits other families.

A counterpoint often cited came from Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire.

It’s not so much that Millennial and Gen X women consciously choose careers over marriage. It’s that the choices they make (and are encouraged to make) make marriage less likely. Case in point: moving to D.C., where the men are sociopaths or homosexuals or both. https://t.co/fKsEpg3g1j

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) April 11, 2026

The claim that women are unintentionally choosing singleness doesn’t hold up, as data show most working women eventually get married and have children, just later than previous generations. And as Patrick T. Brown wrote, “A typical girlboss is not having as many kids as her grandmother, but she’s having, on average, as many as her mom, or is getting quite close.”

It’s fair to discuss the biological realities of marrying and having children later in life, but equating work with rejecting family just doesn’t add up when 80% of women work at some point in their lives, and many are or will be wives and mothers.

Claim #2 – Women are single because of “girlboss messages”

When the “girlboss” narrative was challenged, the blame shifted to “girlboss messaging,” with critics claiming the majority of women have embraced the idea that career is the most important thing in life.

I asked women if that was the case.

Woman, age 30, single:

“I have never personally felt discouraged from getting married. I have seen examples in the media of the message that women should enjoy their twenties and settle down later, but that has never resonated with me.”

Woman, age 35, single:

“I’ve been surrounded by positive people in happy marriages my entire life and soundly rejected narratives that discouraged marriage.”

Woman, age 38, married at 36:

“The only thing that has discouraged me from marrying were my experiences with men in real life and hearing about other women’s experiences in bad marriages online.”

They don’t deny that such messages exist, but they reject the idea that women simply absorb everything culture produces. It’s also worth noting that there is plenty of pro-family content in feminist culture.

The Kardashians are a prime example: Whatever critiques one may have of their lifestyle, most have children, with motherhood normalized rather than dismissed. Add to that Justin Bieber and his wife publicly celebrating the birth of their son, and reality programming like “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” which frequently features mothers, some documenting IVF journeys and others sharing the devastating experience of losing a child.

This brings us to the current claim.

Claim #3 – Hookup culture led to the decline in fertility

“Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper’s pregnancy announcement sparked backlash as though she should be condemned to lifelong spinsterhood because of past sexual behavior. While many men and women don’t sleep around, Cooper reflects broader secular norms. And this is where the conversation should begin — not with labels or double standards, but with an honest look at the cultural forces shaping sex, marriage, and fertility.

Some of those forces are clear. Feminism advanced the idea that women could engage in sex more like men, reshaping expectations around commitment. At the same time, COVID-era isolation and technology fueled rising loneliness and further commodified dating through apps. Compounding the problem are growing struggles among some men with pornography, drugs, online gambling, and gaming, all of which can create additional barriers to forming stable relationships.

Here’s what women are saying about dating bottleneck:

Woman, age 35, single:

“Dating apps and the paradox of having too many choices have made modern dating difficult.”

Woman, age 23, single:

“I am single because men in my circle have not pursued or dated me.”

Woman, age 38, married at 36:

“A lot of men waste women’s time in their 20s in forever-girlfriend relationships because they’re hoping someone better will come along but refuse to be alone. The solutions are to help men improve, not telling women to accept less than they offer themselves.”

Woman, age 33, single:

“I’ve stayed single so long because the pool is so bad. I try hard to give all kinds of men a chance, but they either aren’t happy, don’t have jobs, ghost once I say yes to a date, or some combination of those.”

Woman, age 40, married at 39:

“Are mature men leading droves of younger men away from selfishness, pride, and pornography? If so, humble, beautiful women in every city I’ve lived in would love to discover the coordinates of their base camp.”

If politics is downstream from culture, then fertility decline is as well. The problem with blaming women is not only that it fails to capture the full picture, but that it can also pressure some into unhealthy marriages. As someone who has written openly about leaving an abusive husband, I know firsthand that a destructive marriage is far worse than singleness.

If women are unwilling to marry men struggling with addictions, a lack of drive, or other character issues, they may remain single longer than they hoped — or not marry at all. In many cases, remaining unmarried can reflect wisdom rather than failure, however painful that path may be.

The right has its own form of identity politics, often reducing women to their marital and maternal status, even though many find themselves in this situation due to cultural factors rather than individual choices. If we fail to recognize this, we risk driving men and women further apart.

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Beverly Hallberg is the president of District Media Group and a senior fellow at Independent Women.

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Why So Many Good Women Are Still Single