Birth rates are dangerously low in all western countries because when women are told that all they are good for is having children, but that having children doesn’t make them important, they simply opt out. Women are told that they must reproduce to benefit society, but also that they’re ugly, useless and ready to be discarded by the time they reach 40. Women are told to take on the overwhelming majority of work in the home, to sacrifice the most to care for their family and let their husbands excel in their careers, but if their husbands don’t treat them well enough to keep them, then they are a burden to society and deserve nothing as a result. Women see all of these talking points every time they open social media or scroll a timeline. Even women who sought a more traditional dynamic are being turned off and reconsidering their desire when they see how men talk about them. Men asking for stay at home wives and mothers while also saying that her contribution and sacrifice is so minimal to the point of being worthless is abhorrent. Women know that having and raising children is going to be hard, that they will be living their lives in servitude, and the majority of women are happy to do it, but not for men who tell them that it’s all they’re good for. Not for men who tell them that once they’re done having children they’re ‘used up’, that if the marriage doesn’t work out then everything belongs to him, and that doing all of it still doesn’t make her important. Despite pleas for women to start having children again, women don’t want to have children with men who don’t value them, so they’re not. In a world that doesn’t value mothers while telling women that that’s all they’re good for and reiterating that doing so still doesn’t make women important, women won’t become mothers. If you want to fix the birth rates, you start by treating women and motherhood with the value and respect deserved.