Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal ran a long article addressing the fact that huge cohorts of young American women no longer want to get married or have children. This is a big problem for America and a tragedy for both young men and women.

The essay opens with the usual anecdote, this one about a Boston-based 29-year-old woman who has given up. She’s college-educated, financially self-sufficient, and had “a handful of underwhelming relationships and dozens of disappointing first dates.” She’s given up and says she’s at peace with that decision.

The essay quotes Daniel Cox of the American Enterprise Institute, saying that the problem is systemic:

“The numbers aren’t netting out,” said Daniel Cox, director of the survey center at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank. He ticked off the data points: More women than men are attending college, buying houses and focusing on their friendships and careers over dating and marriage.

The AEI has the data to prove it:

Over half of single women said they believed they were happier than their married counterparts in a 2024 AEI survey of 5,837 adults. Just over a third of surveyed single men said the same.

As of now, 51.4% of American women between 18 and 40 are completely single: no husband, no boyfriend. Meanwhile, per a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 48% of women no longer believe marriage is important, even as 39% of men think it is. Both these numbers have gone up in just the past few years.

The essay zooms in on a few of the big issues: Women are more likely to have college degrees than men and consider it marrying “down” if the man has no degree. Women are also earning more than men and, again, consider it marrying “down” to pair with a lower-earning man. My two cents is that this is an atavistic feeling. No matter how modern women are and how disinclined toward motherhood, their lizard brains tell them that they need a man who can support them and their babies.

And speaking of babies, the article also says that men are more likely to want them than women are. That’s because men envision a Leave It To Beaver household, where they work outside the home while the woman works inside the home. Women, however, expect to continue to work and, therefore, expect the men to help around the house.

Arlie Hochschild discussed this mismatch in her 1989 book The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. She discovered that old-fashioned men who didn’t think their wives should work were much more helpful around the house if the economy forced their wives into the workforce. Younger men, however, who paid lip service to helping out around the house, actually did very little. That was a raw deal for women.

And, of course, concludes the Wall Street Journal essay, women have shifted dramatically leftward politically while men have gone in the opposite direction.

All these trends are a disaster for America as a whole and for both men and women. Pairing up is nice and natural. Having a life companion and children are great blessings.

My thoughts are best expressed by looking at one specific young woman I know. Maeve (not her real name) is 31, college-educated, and has a good job that she loves. She’s charming, intelligent, and truly adorable. She’s also a pretty hard-leftist. She doesn’t believe in God, despite a somewhat traditional upbringing in a loving, two-parent home, but does believe in climate change.

Maeve has already determined that she will not have children because of climate change. Not only is there no future for these hypothetical children, but they will put even more pressure on the planet. It’s a lose-lose. And if she’s not having children, why have a husband?

Maeve is paid well at work, gets promotions, and has great reviews from her boss. It fills her emotional needs. Telling her that, when she retires at 65, no one from the job will ever call her to say, “I love you,” is meaningless to her. She cannot imagine being 65 and alone. She cannot imagine getting sick and having no one who cares about her. The job is fulfilling; that’s all she needs.

Maeve came out of college liking guys, but she also considers them deeply flawed. She won’t use the word “toxic,” but the fact that guys are not girls is a problem. While the French used to say “vive la difference” when considering the male-female dynamic, Maeve belongs to a cohort that would say, “putain la difference” (damn the difference). Her take on the old Henry Higgins song would be “Why can’t a man be more like a woman?”). She’s by no means a lesbian, but men fail to meet her emotional needs and practical standards, and she’s not willing to bend.

Finally, Maeve is deeply affected by hook-up apps. Remember how that Wall Street Journal spoke of the young woman’s “dozens of disappointing first dates”? We gals of an older generation probably didn’t have “dozens” of first dates. It took work to get a first date. But the hook-up apps mean that if one connection fails, there’s always someone else out there for both guys and gals.

Thus, if the meet-up isn’t movie-perfect, there’s no need to give someone a second chance. Just swipe left on that person, ghost ‘em, and move on. This is especially true for genuinely attractive women like Maeve. She can afford to be picky at a level no young woman ever could before. The concept of bending before non-essential imperfections doesn’t exist in her world.

When you have women who have been trained not to like men, to consider babies immoral (not just babies out of wedlock, as in the old days, but all babies), who get their emotional fix from work and friends, and who feel that they have endless choices...well, a genuine, imperfect man, one who forgets to put the toilet seat down, belches after he drinks a soda, and smells rank after a day of physical labor...the truth is, he doesn’t stand a chance.

Image by AI.