On this week’s episode, Mark Regnerus joins She Thinks to help us explore the latest data showing the long-term decline in fertility, both in the U.S. and abroad. Some say that this is largely due to women choosing a career over motherhood, but does that paint the full picture? Mark and Beverly explore the many reasons why women aren’t having as many kids (or any kids at all) and what this means for them as well as for society at large.
Mark Regnerus is a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and a senior fellow at the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture. The author of four books from Oxford University Press and more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals, his research and scholarly essays have appeared in media outlets as diverse as Slate and First Things.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s Valentine’s episode, we explore the new data showing the long-term decline in fertility. Some are saying this is largely due to women choosing a career over motherhood, but does that give the full picture? Well, in this episode, we explore the many reasons why women aren’t having as many kids or any kids at all, and what this means for them as well as society. And we have a wonderful guest to break it all down; Mark Regnerus joins us. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and a senior fellow at the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture. He is the author of four books from Oxford University Press and more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His research and scholarly essays have appeared in media outlets as diverse as Slate and First Things. And it really is a pleasure to have you on, Mark; thank you so much for joining us.
Mark Regnerus:
You’re welcome, Beverly. Glad to be here.
Beverly Hallberg:
My first introduction to you — we have chatted before — was after you wrote the book, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage and Monogamy. I thought it was fascinating because it explored the American mating market. So before we get into the issue of fertility, which of course relates to that, what made you decide to study this area of research? Really get into marriage and monogamy, and how did somebody like you, a sociologist, decide that this is where you wanted to focus?
Mark Regnerus:
Right. This was completely out of my anticipated purview. I remember being back in graduate school studying the sociology of religion and thinking that people who were studying sexual behavior and relationship formation, were a little odd and slightly creepy, but the data just led me there. After I finished graduate school, I was plowing into this rich dataset that’s still active today and just thinking the stories around relationship formation, sexual coupling, things like that were fascinating and told a certain story that went in one particular direction, which was what Cheap Sex, the book, was about.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so a lot has changed in the recent decades. Some would say that that is because women’s behavior has changed quite a bit — most notably, women getting college degrees, women entering the workforce. So we will get into the data behind fertility rates. But overall, can you give us a broad view of how society has changed, how women have changed, and men, as a result?
Mark Regnerus:
Right. So one of the theses in Cheap Sex is that, over the past several decades, we’ve just watched the rise of women economically, educationally, et cetera, fed in part by the advent of safe and reliable contraception back in the ’70s, really, was when it came on board for the most people. That has basically had that unintended consequence of both delaying childbearing but also making for significant competition in the economic marketplace, slowing down relationships, slowing down fertility obviously. There’s no way you’re going to get the fertility data we have today without that. And creating these unintended challenges, especially in the mating market, marriage, remarriage. That’s led us to the place where we are today, where in some ways we’ve accomplished what we have wanted as a society, as in the West. Yet it’s fruited these problems that we would like to have all the goodies with none of the costs. Frankly, on this one, it’s not possible.
Beverly Hallberg:
I can just say, to give a little bit of my background, and I’ve shared some of this on the podcast before. I got married about a year and a half ago at age 41; I have no children. And part of the reason for that was because I wanted to wait till I had a spouse in order to do it. But somebody who lived in DC during my twenties and thirties, I can say, especially with the single female friends that I had, a lot of them had amazing careers, were gaining a lot of traction in their careers, climbing the career ladder, so to speak, but still looking for a spouse and struggling to do so. I tweeted about the fertility rates and got a lot of traction on that.
I thought we would just start by breaking down…. So like you said, there are benefits. There are a lot of benefits, for example, for me personally to be able to run a business, provide for myself when I couldn’t find a husband. So that’s great for women, but like you said, there are trade-offs. So what is the fertility data telling us today, not just in the United States but globally? Because there are new studies out on China — now, they have other factors in, the one-child policy for so long — but what do we know today about fertility?
Mark Regnerus:
Well, it’s at a historic all-time low here in the United States and around the world as well. So one of the things about fertility rates globally is how pronounced the bottoming out of them is in so many different places. Places that, when I was a child, were considered third world, developing world, now are at 2.0 or lower. You think about Iran, our long-term foe, one of them, they have a lower fertility rate than we do. India, now at or near 2.0; in some ways it’s stunning. U.S. is down to somewhere between 1.67 and 1.75 ish and has been for the last few years. COVID pushed it down a little bit further, but the bounce-back was not impressive. So it’s really gotten into our minds in some ways, which is why China’s one-child policy, they could lift it. They did. They said, “Okay, two.” That didn’t work enough. They bump it up to three, it doesn’t matter. They could bump it, they could get rid of it all and bump it up to 10 if they wanted.
They could start to reward it, and it’s not really going to matter because it’s ingrained culture and habit in the mind now and has been for generations. So it’s something that if you can suppress it by policy or suppress it by economy, it’s hard to get it back. Now lots of the West is looking down the road, but that’s decades away yet. And seeing the situation where we’ll have a relatively small workforce, comparatively speaking, basically providing for the tax base, the social security base, for enormous amounts of people who are living longer and longer lives….
So there’s just not the total fertility rates, there’s also the population pyramids. A population pyramid are like this, which is the oldest at the top and the youngest at the bottom, is characteristic of developing-world societies where they have lots of children to take care of very few elders. Then you have societies like this, where there’s a bulge in the middle and the people at the bottom are going to age up. There’s not going to be that many of them, and they have to take care of that bulge when they get to the top. So that’s where we’re starting to look like now. We used to be a little more flatter like this.
So it’s a real problem, but population problems can never seem to motivate people. The only thing one can do about them is big-level policies, taxation, increased social security, et cetera, which of course hurts your working families. I would say the United States is probably going to try to solve it by immigration because that’s the only way to do things quickly; you can’t regrow a society. Plus, when you solve it by immigration, basically you’re taking other countries’ people and replacing yours with them, solving your problem at the expense of somebody else.
Beverly Hallberg:
It’s interesting that this, also, this discussion we’re having comes when social security and Medicaid and Medicare, all being discussed in the State of the Union this week. I’m talking about social security, but the reality is, from just a policy standpoint, a practical standpoint, for a society, for our country, if you don’t have enough working people, a safety net like social security can’t last.
Mark Regnerus:
No. We’ve been seeing that we’re going to start to, I believe it’s withdraw more than we’re putting in pretty soon, if not already. Unless they tweak it somehow; that is going to be challenging. The interesting thing is you can compare the United States, which has somewhat better situation than nations like France, where they’re striking about raising the retirement age, I think it was from 62 to 64. We’re like 64? Boy, it would be great if we could retire at 64. Our situation is not as grim as some places, and yet it’s definitely coming down the pike. Now, one of the interesting things, too, with this is you saw Republicans and Democrats come together a little bit about this. Because there are so many people who are tracking in that direction, are already receiving their social security.
They feel like they’ve paid in and that they’re due that out. And frankly, as many people age and didn’t form families, this is their salvation; this what’s going to keep them going. You scale back and you roll back and you think about the societies in which we had a more family unit that was multi-generational, moved forward in time, grandparents in the home or very nearby, people taking care of people above them. That was their protection. I’m not saying that’s ideal, but decidedly our oldest citizens are going to be increasingly protected by strangers in the future. And strangers do not love you; you cannot force people to love and sacrifice for other people. Yet our patterns are predicting this is where we’re going to be.
Beverly Hallberg:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to get into some of the reasons why. There is an interesting study that came out just a few days ago from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, and they’re showing that half of women under 45 are childless. The study, the authors, credit several reasons for this trend. They talk about the higher levels of education, greater and longer career paths, changing family values, et cetera. And I was tweeting about this because a lot of people were discussing that it is because of women’s career choices, that they’re forgoing motherhood, their forgoing marriage. I find it’s a little bit more complex than that.
Mark Regnerus:
It is more complex than that.
Beverly Hallberg:
So can you get into the reasons why? We talked about the one-child policy so sometimes it’s policies. But in the case of the United States, it’s different. What are the reasons we are seeing fewer women having children?
Mark Regnerus:
As you said, it’s a lot more complex than that. Well, they’re having fewer children because we can effectively prevent childbearing these days. Contraception’s gotten very advanced from the early forms. People get on it early and have spells on it, get off it, get back on it. They can finish an educational career, start economic career, and push the idea of, well, do they have to commit to a spouse early? No, they can afford to be choosy. Women’s career success makes them more choosy. That’s just the way it is, they can afford to be. And most women would say that’s a good thing. Okay, I understand the impulse towards that end. And yet being more and more selective means fewer and fewer will actually get married. Because it’s not just about a delay in marriage; globally, as the average age of marriage rises, it predicts linearly the share of people who will ever marry. So fewer people will marry as —
Beverly Hallberg:
Is there a data point that people are predicting, such in 10, 20 years, how many of generation Z, let’s say, will get married? Women especially.
Mark Regnerus:
So the cohort I believe that’s born, I think that 1990, or probably about 30 today, 33? The expectation is that roughly a third of them will not. A third of those women will not marry, right? You say, “Ah, that’s a third.” But historically it’s been off and on in the United States, roughly around 10%. It hit a low in the ’50s and ’60s, about 5%. But we’re leaping from 5% to a third; that’s a big deal.
A lot of it has to do with not needing to get married. Marriage has many attractions about it, but it’s also historically been the way people survive and make it through difficult times. Well, we’re better at surviving and making it through difficult times now, and we don’t even actually need marriage towards that end. So it’s not surprising that some people wait. They often still intend to marry, and they often still intend to have children. It’s just, biologically, that becomes more difficult. Peak fertility is already done before age 30. It doesn’t fall off a cliff, of course, but the thirties is more difficult to have children in and the forties, even more so. I teach a class called Romantic Relationships and Family Formation at the University of Texas. Yesterday, we had the diagram of showing pregnancy, or I should say, quality and quantity of eggs at different ages in women. They’re stunned to see it is different than they expected.
Beverly Hallberg:
Do you think with this delay of marriage, and like you said, I even think society has pressured women a lot of ways to say ‘do your career first and then think about it.’ But a lot of times I do think that that’s changing. I think women, even in their twenties, are looking for a spouse. A spouse to do life with. When they get married, when they have kids maybe up for debate. But as you call it, the mating market has its own set of challenges these days. When you think about online dating — I met my husband through a dating app because it was hard to meet someone otherwise.
Mark Regnerus:
But you live in Washington, DC, which that’s one of the worst places to look for a mate, in part because the sex ratio is so skewed. So many more women there than men. You don’t have to be aware of that, but a social structural fact like that still works itself out such that, tons of women who spend time in DC complain about it.
Beverly Hallberg:
It’s a supply-and-demand issue, and we can’t get away from the economics. So can you tell us, for the single ladies listening, where they should go, where their best odds are for finding a spouse?
Mark Regnerus:
Yeah, the latest map…. People move, so the map I recall seeing is a little bit dated now. I remember Dallas and Denver being pretty good places in terms of sex rates. Austin wasn’t too bad. Anywhere you have basically a tech sector or a military area, basically you see more men, of different sorts, of course. I don’t recommend moving because of that sheer fact. I really don’t. One of the challenging things about the reality of Cheap Sex is that it’s not just one thing. It’s not just a sex ratio problem. The mating market itself is divided into corners, in a way that once was not.
So now you have a corner that’s basically a sex market where, in some ways, prostitution used to be outside of the market, back in the day. Now it’s roped back in a little bit, not intentionally, but how do you say it? Some people pay women for sex. Some people don’t pay women and still get sex. So it’s the corner of the mating market is for short-term relationships. Then the other corner of the mating market is for long-term marriage relationships. More women flow to the marriage side of this. They want commitment, they want something long-term. And they’re not wrong to want that; they’re absolutely right to want that. And yet there’s a turn in the market. There’s a lot of people, there’s not enough cycling off of the market by getting married. And there’s a ton of deception on the market: people feigning long-term interest when they’re really only short-term interest.
So there’s a lot of guesswork. There’s a lot of discernment and clarification that goes on. People signal things to each other. I’m sure when people chat about matches they’ve made, they’re trying to figure out what is this person after or into or want, before I even agree to meet him or her? So that’s a challenge. It’s a very different kind of challenge than we had in the past. Now, one of the challenging things about online dating is that, and you think, well, it’s more efficient, yes. But efficient at what? Efficient at putting people together to have a conversation. Then maybe they’ll meet, maybe. But Tinder has this Tinder insights. For individuals, they can ask for their Tinder insights, and Tinder will spit them out, as far as I can tell. To me, I look at some of these that people post, and it’s stunning, stunningly predictable about men’s and women’s behaviors on this — but also how many matches are made, how many conversations are had, how many dates are had, and yet how bloody few relationships actually come from it and almost no marriages. There are some, but really unusual.
I think, for something that was meant to bring people together, it’s clear that the goal, both of the software itself, frankly how people use it, is it’s not really for long-term relationships. You have to interject, intervene, and push your way towards what you want if it’s a long-term relationship. Because everything about it signals the consumption of persons, rather than the production of a family.
Beverly Hallberg:
It treats people as commodities. It allows you to move on very quickly. You get to be very choosy. I think a common statement — I’d be curious to hear what you hear from women maybe that you teach or women who contact you through your work — but there is definitely a disillusionment from women who want that long-term relationship and feel like they have to use the dating app but are so frustrated they get ghosted, they meet men who aren’t there for the right reasons, et cetera. What is the common thing you hear from women? Because I just know women are exhausted. A lot of the single women I know are just so tired and emotionally drained from it.
Mark Regnerus:
Yeah, so far as I can tell, not being on it myself, from what people say, it has the qualities of the dopamine stimulation of having conversations with multiple people at the same time, low grade conversations. But I can imagine talking to multiple women at the same time, seeing where this is going to go. By itself, it scratches an itch on the head. There’s this permanent suspension almost of a burgeoning relationship at the talking stage. But people will talk, we’ll say that, “Ah, we’re talking.” In a way that — I’m 52; we didn’t have that word back in college, et cetera, “talking.” That just wasn’t a phase or a stage. Now it’s not only a phase, it’s a longer phase, increasing longer phase. I think, how does it take so many people so long to move from talk to meet? Then you’ll get all sorts of explanations of this, but it really is this dissatisfying no man’s land in some ways. That women, especially women — because women on average would like to see a relationship that has promise moved forward a little more quickly.
But if you take a step back and you think the whole thing doesn’t happen quickly anymore, I don’t care, you can switch onto Bumble. So what? You get the first conversation, that’s it, right? It’s not a whole lot more advantage to it. It’s not really designed to get people off market and married, whether that’s human nature or how it’s programmed. The whole thing, you would think, is this great network to meet a lot of people. When in reality, the fewer options we have, the better. I’m married almost 30 years now, and I think I said it in Cheap Sex, I said, “I don’t know what I would’ve done had online dating been an option when my wife and I were having difficulties when we were still in college dating.” We made it work because our option pool was small.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I do want to take a brief moment to talk to you, our listeners. You may know that Independent Women’s Forum is the leading national women’s organization dedicated to enhancing freedom, opportunities, and wellbeing. But did you know that we are also here to bring you, women and men on the go, the news? You can listen to our High Noon podcast, an intellectual download featuring conversations that make a free society possible. Hear our guests, like Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin, discuss the most controversial subjects of the day. Or join us for happy hour with At The Bar, where hosts Inez Stepman and Jennifer Braceras join on the latest issues at the intersection of law, politics, and culture. You can listen to the past episodes at iwf.org or search for High Noon or At The Bar in your favorite podcast app.
And Mark, as we’re rounding out the conversation, I want to talk about the personal implications of this from women especially. I want to give a little tip. So this is the advice I’ve given on online dating as I’ve tried it over the years, to try to wade through who’s there for the right reason. It may work for some, may not work for others, but I actually did the opposite of what they said you should not do. They said, “Don’t talk about religion and politics.” And that would always be one of the first things I would talk about.
Mark Regnerus:
Absolutely.
Beverly Hallberg:
Because then you just weed everything out. Or as I like to say to people, “Whatever’s important to you and is a non-negotiable, put that out there right at the front, just see who’s on it.” And then the second thing, move to a phone or FaceTime conversation as quickly as possible. It’s the ongoing texting or conversating via text through the app’s platform that I think just prolongs what usually is inevitable, which is you’re not a match. So have you heard the same thing or think the same thing?
Mark Regnerus:
No, I haven’t heard the same thing, but it makes sense to me. I understand this impulse to, well, I don’t want to scare them off. Absolutely, you do want to scare them off if they’re not a great fit, and you want to do it upfront so that you don’t get hurt later. Why delay emotional pain? Put it out there upfront and just say, “I need to get this out of the way right now. These are my dealer breakers, et cetera.” Yes, and so fine, you have fewer options. You should have fewer options. Scores of options just stymie people; we don’t know what to do with that much. Putting out your deal breakers is a way, in some ways, of a little bit — not as good as, but mimicking — having friends checking for you, essentially. I introduced my very good friend of mine to his, became eventually his wife. But I had already known what she was about. What you’re describing is a way of pulling in a friend, a non-existent friend in terms of this conversation, to vouch for you.
Beverly Hallberg:
Vouch for you and do some of the sifting.
Mark Regnerus:
Right, it’s important.
Beverly Hallberg:
Because what you’re looking for, if you’re looking for a long-term relationship, you’re looking for somebody that’s very specific, and not many people are going to fit that bill. And that’s a good thing; if tons of people fit it, it probably wouldn’t be as special. And I don’t believe in soulmates, but there’s an aspect too. There are important things and non-negotiables to each person as there should be, and you need to find somebody who matches up with those. So finishing the conversation, I want to talk a little bit about Valentine’s Day coming up. This is hard for a lot of women out there, a lot of women who do want to meet someone who are struggling.
Of course, a lot of my friend base is in Washington, DC, which you said is the worst place to be if you want to find a husband — that’s discouraging. Do you have daughters yourself, and what do you say to women to maybe help them? Because I heard a lot and I hear women hear this, that they’re being too picky and that they’re intimidating. I don’t find that’s the case. I think a lot of times it’s just the supply-and-demand issue and where we are as a society. What do you say to women out there? Because I think a lot of them are blamed for not being married and therefore not having kids.
Mark Regnerus:
Well, certainly they shouldn’t be blamed. I’d say the average woman still wishes to get married, wants these things, wants children. Now sometimes it could be like, I want them on my own terms, my own timeframe. That could be challenging. I have a high school freshman and I have a 22-year-old. The 22-year-old — grad school, successful, bright, et cetera — hasn’t dated much. Frustrating. And is frustrated. One of the things I had suggested to her, because it was suggested to a woman that probably both you and I know, she said, “Mark, I find foreign men have been better for her daughter, 29-year-old daughter than American men.” I’m like, “Huh.” Anyways, I remember meeting this guy in Prague not that long ago, some talks I was giving, and I said, “You should come pay my daughter a visit.” Facebook friended, and started chatting a little bit. I don’t think it went anywhere, but I did think his level of maturity was exceptional.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t mature men here in the United States, et cetera, but culturally, the United States, we have a problem. To those who have been given much in the way of maturity, seems to have been extracted for that cost, it’s a challenge. She’s not in the position of…she’s not turning people down, she’s not meeting them. She’s not online, she’s not into online dating. I think it’s fine not to be at that age. College kids who are on Tinder, I’m thinking they’re not on Tinder because they’re looking to meet their future spouse. In some ways, it was a solve…a solution for a meeting problem. I think people on college campuses don’t fundamentally have a meeting problem. I think it’s not a bad platform, it’s just it solves one problem, but it’s creating another. The idea that we can sift through human beings like they’re dishes on a table.
Beverly Hallberg:
I think one of the things I wanted to do in talking to you, because I found your book was helpful to me, is I think a lot of single women ask why and what’s wrong with them? And I do encourage young women, especially those in their twenties, to focus on trying to find someone. If a man is pursuing you and you have a good relationship, don’t think, well, I’m going to delay this because I really have this great job. Focus on the marriage in your twenties if you can because, as you were saying, your fertility declines, and I know so many women in their thirties and forties who don’t know what to do now. But I also wanted to say to those who are still single, there’s nothing wrong with you because I think that’s how so many women feel is that there’s something wrong with them, and they have this desire to have children and they don’t know what to do. Is there anything you would say along those lines as well? Because I think the families of single women don’t know what to do, and single women themselves don’t know what to do. But if you’re saying, if the data is a third of women born in the ’90s and after aren’t going to get married and that statistic can get worse, we’re going to have to emotionally support women as well.
Mark Regnerus:
Right, yeah. I don’t know if this is terribly satisfying to hear, but there are multiple roles for people and families to play. Speaking of the Czech Republic, another dear friend of mine there, she’s 31 I think, would like to marry, not happening. But she’s an auntie to a variety of people who are not her actual nieces and nephews, and she has really uptake in this role. I think it’s important; the family is a system. It’s not just a nuclear thing. To find your place, to find your role, if the kind of role isn’t happening that you want, plus becoming an auntie kind of thing doesn’t mean you won’t actually meet someone. It just means you are plowing your family affections into other people and other people’s children for now. Maybe for the long run, but you’re richer for this sort of having invested in family life, even if it’s not your own family.
That’s part of the reason, part of the way we can solve some of this yearning for family relationships. Now, I can’t solve everything, but I do think responding rationally to the options presented in front of us to love. I think all women are called, and all men are called to love, whether that is a spouse and their children or other people’s children in other ways, I think we’re called to love.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I think that’s a great way to end this. Also, the call to love, loving someone else also brings so much joy too. Like you said, it can bring purpose even if it isn’t in the sense that maybe you’re praying for or hoping for. And that was a big reason why I wanted to bring you on, because I did really appreciate your book, Cheap Sex, wanted others to know about it. Because there is data behind what’s going on; this isn’t some thing that we can’t figure out, what the solutions are, a little bit more complicated. But thank you for this work, your work in this area. I know it’s going to continue to be an important area of Mark Regnerus, thank you so much.
Mark Regnerus:
You’re welcome, Beverly. Thanks.
Beverly Hallberg:
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