One simple trick to reverse the falling birth rate

And no, it’s not forcing women to have babies

This week, among many other things, the Trump administration announced that all federal workers must return to the office. The move was an effort to lay people off without actually firing anyone. Axios reported Tuesday that Trump was offering buyouts for anyone who quit.

Among the many impacts of this policy, which disproportionately affects women and people of color, one is that it will hurt the birth rate.

America’s declining birth rate has been a cause of a lot of hand-wringing. Elon Musk, JD Vance, and the new head of Homeland Security, former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, declare that their policies and concerns are centered around growing the American family. Meanwhile, they oversee deportation raids, stop grant funding to programs that help families, and are pushing to end remote work.

It was never about the birth rate.

In 2020, remote work single-handedly contributed to a spike in births among women whose jobs allowed them to work from home. A study done by the National Bureau for Economic Research found that workplace flexibility helped reverse the downward trend of the birth rate. Additionally, research done by Claudia Goldin, a Nobel Laureate and professor of economics at Harvard, reveals that in order to stop birth rates from declining, men need to break through traditional gender roles and become more active partners (or just actually become partners). In a presentation on her research last fall, Goldin explained, “Much of the change in fertility will depend on if men assume more work in the home as women are drawn into the market, particularly if the home has children.”

“If they don’t,” she continued, “women will be forced to cut back on something.”

Fertility rates don’t decrease when women are active in the economy and public life; they decrease when women are required to do all the caretaking and domestic labor in addition to holding down jobs.

When men don’t do their part, women, exhausted and overwhelmed, cut back. And where they cut back is on the thing that is the most costly and the most life-threatening: motherhood.

America has the highest maternal mortality rates of developed nations. And as states roll back reproductive rights, maternal mortality and infant mortality increase.

Also, in America, homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women. That means that when women get pregnant, the biggest risk they face is their own partner.

All this pearl-clutching about birth rates, hiding behind the guise of overly concerned economists, is not about the tax base or the economy. If it were, we’d be seeing an increase in hybrid work and efforts to expand parental leave. And we most certainly wouldn’t be rounding up families and deporting them.

Cutting off access to abortion and birth control, forcing women out of public life and back into the home — all these measures are justified as a way to support American families and increase the birth rate. But there is no evidence those things will increase the birth rate.

What this is about, what it has always been about is forcing women out of public life.

And it also forces fathers out of family life.

This is always the point people miss: Rolling back women’s rights hurts all people. Women’s advancement doesn’t mean men lose. Women being forced back into the home doesn’t mean men win. It just means everyone loses.

Despite all the insistence that women working is ruining America and destabilizing the economy, the reality is that two things are holding us back: The refusal of men to participate equally in family and home life, and the ongoing gutting of the social safety net.

All of this might feel small in the ongoing cavalcade of horrors spit out by the news. But it still matters. We got to this moment in part because of fears about families, birth rates, women’s participation in the workforce, and the perceived losses of men. How quick and easy it was for politicians and voters to scapegoat women, trans people and people of color; how fast America was to go along with it.

But it is still possible to do something You might not be able to bully your senator into speaking out against Trump or taking real action against his administration. You might not be able to write enough emails or attend enough marches to turn this whole thing around. (You should still do those things! They are worthy endeavors.) But we aren’t helpless.

True equality and true social change begin in our homes and communities. They begin with acts of care for the people we love. They begin with building community and sharing in domestic labor. Calling the president “Drumpf” on BlueSky isn’t going to do anything to lessen the horrors, but stepping up for your partner, your friends and your neighbors can still help alleviate them.