The right is sounding the alarm about declining birth rates, while cutting the supports and restricting the tools many families rely on to have children at all.
Last month, the newest fertility data dropped—and the U.S. fertility rate has fallen again, hitting another record low in 2025 according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
- The number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, in 2025, went down by .7 to 53.1, compared to 53.8 in 2024.
- The total number of births also went down by 1 percent, to 3,606,400.
Almost immediately, conservative influencers, media figures and elected officials pointed fingers at feminism, blaming women’s independence, career ambitions and access to contraception for the decline in births.
It’s a convenient narrative to push along their anti-birth control agenda. But it’s also wrong.
If you actually listen to women—and look at the data—the story becomes much clearer. The number one reason women are delaying or forgoing having children isn’t ideology, it’s affordability. Childcare costs, housing prices and healthcare access have made starting a family financially daunting for millions of Americans. Mix in student loan debt and political turmoil, and having a baby in 2026 is a scary venture.
And yet, instead of addressing these barriers, policymakers—and organizations leading the way like the Heritage Foundation—are moving in the opposite direction. They are cutting or rolling back the very programs that make family life possible.
From attacks on early childhood education programs like Head Start, to efforts to weaken the social safety net, to chronic underinvestment in childcare and family support systems, the policy direction is clear: less support for families, not more.
Meanwhile, the same ideological movement is also targeting reproductive autonomy—questioning access to birth control, opposing IVF and reframing these tools as threats to families. The contradiction is staggering: on one hand, sounding alarms about declining birth rates; on the other, working to restrict the very tools many families rely on to have children at all.
The Heritage Foundation, the far-right policy organization that authored Project 2025, came out with a 130+ page proposal earlier this year called “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” wherein they detailed their plans to come after contraception, fertility treatments and women’s education as “women who complete 4 years of college are less likely to have a child.”
Their proposal argues that “starting in the 1960s, the Pill and other contraceptives swept the country—which promised to reduce the unwanted consequences of casual sex with multiple partners across a lifetime.” The paper details how “the proliferation of birth control is largely responsible for the decline in children,” and details their hypothesis that there is a link between premarital sex and divorce rates.
The authors oppose policies that promote access to IVF, as “Greater IVF access might even contribute to fewer overall births as many younger women may overestimate IVF’s success rates and delay childbearing beyond their most fertile years.” They want to take away IVF and fertility treatments, contraception and education because they have decided feminism is the bogeyman causing the decline in American families.
But that’s where every data point shows they are wrong: Feminism didn’t destroy the family. It strengthened it.
We’re in an era where women have the ability to choose marriage, rather than being forced to enter it out of economic necessity. That shift has fundamentally improved the quality and stability of relationships. Divorce rates are at their lowest in 40 years. Women are marrying later—around 29, compared to 20 in 1970—and those marriages are more stable. Education and financial independence are strongly correlated with longer-lasting partnerships.
The real threat to U.S. families isn’t feminism—it’s policy failure. … Feminism didn’t abandon marriage. For many women, it has eliminated forced, unequal, economically dependent marriages.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that couples who both work and contribute financially report higher satisfaction and lower divorce rates—especially when both partners feel autonomy and agency.
Stability doesn’t come from dependency—it comes from choice. When women have education, income and independence, they don’t marry because they have to, they marry because they want to.
Feminism didn’t abandon marriage. For many women, it has eliminated forced, unequal, economically dependent marriages. And Millennials and Gen Z aren’t rejecting family, they’re seeking it out in different ways. They want partnerships rooted in mutual respect, shared responsibility and financial security. Dual-income households, where both partners have agency, consistently report higher satisfaction and lower divorce rates.
The real threat to U.S. families isn’t feminism—it’s policy failure. When childcare costs rival rent, when parental leave is nonexistent, when healthcare is unaffordable and when early education programs are on the chopping block, people don’t stop wanting families, they stop being able to afford them.
And until we address that reality, no amount of cultural blame-shifting will change the outcome.
If policymakers are serious about supporting families, the solution is clear: investing in the conditions that make family life possible, like affordable childcare, accessible healthcare, strong public education and economic stability—not rolling back women’s rights or restricting reproductive care.
Because here’s the truth: your marriage or your family doesn’t suffer from feminism. It benefits from it.
