Kate Marland: Anti-family propaganda has devastated a generation of women

Women who put off having children say they are not having as many kids as they'd like. Photo by Tero Vesalainen /Getty Images/iStockphoto

Article content

Overwhelmingly, women are increasingly dissatisfied with our modern conditions, to the extent that no Hugo Spritz or pair of Jimmy Choos can cure. A 2023 Cardus study found that over half of Canadian women are having fewer children than they would like. Contrary to what you might assume based on Canadian conservative messaging, the predominant factor here is not affordability or housing costs. This study found that the most influential factors affecting fertility rates relate to the idea that children are burdensome, parenting is time-consuming, and that women want to finish self-development and exploration before starting families. Somewhere between avoiding pregnancy from ages 15-29 and self-actualizing ourselves into six-figure, corner office jobs, it appears we have lost our way. Raised on a heady cocktail of Sex and the City, Girls, Lean In, and She-EOs, it’s no wonder we find ourselves here, in a society that prioritizes material success over family formation. Women who have been incentivized to put off having children to build a career are becoming increasingly aware that their lives are missing something.

Article content

Article content

A generation of women were indoctrinated to believe that pregnancy was a burden, only to be undertaken after fully self-actualizing, and with full awareness that it could be a career ending move. As a result, there is a growing divide between men and women when it comes to desire to have children. A 2024 Pew Research Poll of young American adults without children ages 18-34 found that young men are more likely to say they want to be parents someday by 12 percentage points more than young women.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Prizing achievement over fulfilment teaches us to view other people as competitors in the marketplace of human experience, actively incentivizing us to shred our bonds of human connection. But goods will never be a sufficient replacement for human connection or a sufficient antidote to loneliness.

Article content

Last week in London, at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference, American author Arthur Brooks diagnosed our socio-cultural malaise as the result of “using people, loving things, and worshipping ourselves.” If we are ever to re-weave our social fabric, according to Brooks, and restore meaning to our lives it must be by rejecting this framing and starting to “love people, use things, and worship the divine.” The pursuit of soulless self-interest will never soothe the societal ills that plague all of us, but in particular young women.

Article content

Article content

Our popular culture successfully recast having children as an obstacle to individual flourishing in itself and has done so in a way that forecloses any possible challenge to our new cultural hegemony. We have crafted a society that prioritizes self-interest to such a degree that to challenge this renders one hopelessly naive, unsophisticated, or “Trad” and we have redefined success in material terms, narrowly reduced to a slim definition of upward mobility and materialistic values.

Article content

Article content

If you are a young Gen Xer or Millennial, Sex and the City was likely critical to your understanding of the world. From early days, young women and girls were encouraged to put on the sorting hat and determine whether they were a Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, or Charlotte. These ladies were the blueprint for what life in your 30s should look like. Carrie and Samantha’s endless parade of one night stands was portrayed as the ultimate manifestation of success, while Charlotte’s obsession with getting married and having a family was always framed as naive and provincial.

Article content

The anti-hero to the faux-glamour of Sex and the City was Lena Dunham’s Girls. In Girls, we were introduced to a friend group very different than the glitz and glam of our Manolo-clad Sex and the City protagonists. Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna painted a much more pseudo-realistic picture of navigating your 20s in New York, replete with abortions, mental illness, and meaningless one night stands with men more likely to be found behind the sandwich counter than in a Calvin Klein campaign.