No Babies? Blame Capitalism.

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No Babies? Blame Capitalism.<br>ByKristen R. Ghodsee<br>Commentators are pinning low fertility rates on everything from feminism to smartphones. But they miss one glaring factor: capitalism, an economic system predicated on individual autonomy and naked self-interest whose incentives run counter to child-rearing.

Where the pursuit of profits trumps all other considerations, shrinking birth rates are merely the collateral damage. (Anke Thomass / ullstein bild via Getty Images)<br>Our summer issue is out soon. Get a discounted subscription to our print magazine today.

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No longer just a problem of the industrialized North, birth rates are declining for everyone, everywhere, all at once. In its panic about the implications of below-replacement fertility and its search for a culprit, the global commentariat has cast a wide net.<br>In an April 2025 article in the conservative Catholic First Things Magazine, titled “Feminism Against Fertility,” Darel E. Paul blames the decline in Western fertility rates on young women who wish to remain childless because “they have more important priorities or simply like being single.” In a May 7, 2026, guest essay for the New York Times, the insightful Anna Louie Sussman blames the baby bust on widespread anxiety about an uncertain future. Soon after, a piece in the Financial Times cited a University of Cincinnati study to posit that the emergence of smartphones bears the largest responsibility for the recent decline in youth romantic connections (and therefore fertility) worldwide.<br>Last week, the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson noted that “birth rates have been declining in developed countries for a long time, as child mortality has declined, as women’s education has increased, as female labor-force participation has soared, as contraception use has proliferated, and as modern notions of feminism have empowered women to take more control over their bodies and their economic futures.” He also acknowledged the phones, the housing crisis, the internet, and the decline of in-person socialization. But like so many other commentators, Thompson left out the one obvious thing that unites each of these disparate factors: capitalism.<br>Capitalism seems so inevitable to us that we sometimes fail to notice its explanatory power. In this case, it’s staring us right in the face. The incentive structures of capitalism run counter to those of child-rearing — and as market logics pervade deeper into every aspect of our society, the business of having babies makes increasingly little business sense.

Capitalism is built on contracts. Its early intellectual champions argued that voluntary exchanges grow the economy and make people rich, and that becoming rich is a worthy endeavor redounding to the benefit of all. The enlightened, self-interested capitalist subject freely enters into contractual relationships to exchange labor for wages or goods for profit. This arrangement incentivizes everyone to work, innovate, and create — accumulating wealth that benefits individuals and driving progress that benefits society as a whole. As Adam Smith wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”<br>But in a world where all social relations are viewed as contracts between self-interested parties seeking to increase their own advantage, starting a family makes no sense. Having a kid is always an expensive, sometimes exhausting, usually time-consuming, minimum-eighteen-year commitment to another human being you’ve never met. In an ever-accelerating economy offering little security, wherein even basic needs like housing and decent health care aren’t guaranteed, entering into a two-decade legal bond to care for and support a child requires an incredible leap of faith.

In a world where all social relations are viewed as contracts between self-interested parties seeking to increase their own advantage, starting a family makes no sense.Legal contracts can be abrogated, debts repudiated, spouses divorced, and bonds of kinship and friendship ignored or dissolved. But in most countries child abandonment remains a criminal offense, in recognition of the exclusivity of the parent-child bond and the particular vulnerability of children to harm from neglect. The decision to have a child confers legally enforceable responsibilities on parents no matter how much their own personal circumstances...