Not many of the men I know who are child-free, whether by choice or circumstance, are routinely asked why they haven’t had a baby. I’ve certainly not questioned any of them – not unless it’s come up organically in conversation and they’ve been genuinely eager to share.
As a 39-year-old woman who has yet to procreate, I wish I could say the same. Five years ago, it didn’t seem to bother anyone much. Cut to my late thirties, and I get quizzed on or lectured about it on a fairly regular basis.
“Didn’t you want them?” strangers ask me at parties with a sad head-tilt, as if, upon turning 39, my womb must have burst into flames as instantaneously as those unfortunate enough to look upon the ark of the covenant at the end of the first Indiana Jones film. “You don’t wanna leave it too late, you know!” random, puce-faced men warn me at the pub while spilling lager down my dress. These days, people seem to feel fully entitled to discuss the contents of my womb – or lack thereof – regardless of the intimacy of our acquaintance.
I wish this phenomenon were confined to me, but I fear it’s reflective of a much wider toxic tendency to frame the global birthrate crisis as a “women’s issue”, rather than a societal one.
New figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have revealed that, once again, fertility in England and Wales has dropped to record lows. The provisional total fertility rate, defined as the average number of live children per woman across her childbearing life, has dropped from 1.41 in 2024 to an estimated 1.39 in 2025. The number of babies born in England and Wales last year also fell to the lowest level in almost half a century.
It’s part of a significant global trend: for some years now, the birthrate has been declining in every country around the world, other than in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Clearly, the continuation (or depletion) of the human race is an issue that pertains to, well, humans. As most of us know, even if hamstrung by a somewhat subpar sex education, it takes two to make a baby. Male with female. Sperm with egg. And yet you wouldn’t know this from much of the coverage surrounding the topic.
Listening to a radio segment on the matter, I heard the question, “Why have women stopped having babies?” posited again and again in various guises, as if creating life were a solely female endeavour. Women’s motivations, thoughts, obstacles and desires surrounding child-rearing were talked about incessantly. Experts weighed in to discuss how the increased cost of living and job insecurity were affecting women’s decisions, how birth control, egg freezing and career ambitions had led to women putting off starting a family.
Only once, in the entire segment, was the other half of the procreation equation mentioned: men.
Part of this madness surely stems from the fact that the language we use around fertility, the way we measure it and the kind of data we even collect on it in the first place are all skewed heavily towards women. Think about it: that “provisional total fertility rate” is entirely based on how many children the average woman has in her lifetime, not the average man. We don’t even bother to record the latter.
Similarly, we have far more wide-scale research around women’s fertility in general. Though some studies have suggested that there may be a global decline in the quality and quantity of men’s sperm, there is very little data to work from in order to come to robust conclusions. Though roughly half of fertility issues will originate from the man, it is often the woman who is told to change her lifestyle, the woman who is extensively tested and checked and prodded and poked, and certainly the woman who will exclusively have to go through invasive, painful treatment.
It might take two to tango, but women often feel like they’re out here doing a solo rhythmic gymnastics routine while their overweight coach occasionally shouts some half-hearted encouragement from the sidelines
But worse than simply making it a “women’s issue” is the propensity to point the finger at women – to position the birthrate decline as a consequence of our dangerously selfish, feminist ideas.
In one episode of his popular podcast at the beginning of the year, The Diary of a CEO, entrepreneur Steven Bartlett discussed the topic with his guest, the YouTuber Chris Williamson. The pair’s conversation veered onto a path that planted the blame firmly at women’s feet; Williamson referred to so-called “anti-family” sentiment among modern women, citing a TikTok influencer known as The Girl With The List, real name Abigail Porter, who has collated 350 reasons not to have children on her social media accounts.
The men, both in their mid-thirties, went on to talk about why neither of them has yet had children. They’d been focusing on their work, growing as people, living their lives, they said; that women might feel the same didn’t seem to cross their minds.
The irony is, although research has found that men are more likely to say they want children one day, the doing part is very different. Contrary to what we’re told as children, making a baby is usually a lot more complicated than waiting for a stork delivery or having a “special cuddle” – there are concrete steps that need to be taken in order to make it happen. The men I know who claim to want families talk in vague notions while doing little to nothing in order to turn that dream into a reality. The women I know, especially those in their mid to late thirties, are operating in overdrive, proactively dating and seeking serious relationships, getting their fertility tested, freezing their eggs and even mulling whether or not to give up on a partner and go it alone with the help of a sperm donor. According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), over 5,000 single women access fertility treatments with donor sperm each year, and solo women account for about 6 per cent of all IVF cycles.
It might take two to tango, but women often feel like they’re out here doing a solo rhythmic gymnastics routine while their overweight coach occasionally shouts some half-hearted encouragement from the sidelines.
The picture of why people are having fewer children is incredibly multi-layered and complex. Poor maternal and paternal leave schemes, exorbitant childcare costs and entrenched inequality that sees women take on the majority of responsibilities as the default parent, despite being in full-time work, have all been cited as factors. They doubtless contribute, though countries with pro-natalist policies and less gender inequality have also seen birthrates fall.
There’s the fact we’re having children later, leading to increased fertility difficulties; there’s the fact that Covid, climate change, war and economic uncertainty have all made the world feel like an unsafe place to raise a baby right now; there’s the fact that apps and swiping have poisoned dating, while a widening ideological and political gap grows between the sexes as liberated feminism meets manosphere backlash. And that’s before we even get into the burgeoning trend of replacing human romance with AI (which, when combined with realistic robotics, will surely spell the end of relationships altogether).
When people ask me why I haven’t had a baby, there isn’t one easy, straightforward answer. If I had to boil it down, I’d say that, until now, I’ve never had a partner I was sure I wanted one with, who was sure they wanted one with me. A similar sentiment applies to everyone I’ve ever met, man or woman, who thinks they might want children but doesn’t have them yet: it’s largely down to some nebulous combination of luck, timing and circumstance.
This is not something that’s going to be “fixed” with a pithy soundbite and a three-step plan. And it sure as hell isn’t going to be fixed by shifting the blame onto only one half of the baby-making equation. If women aren’t having babies, you know who else isn’t? Men.
