OPINION — Gen Z women like me are having fewer babies. That shouldn’t be a surprise. With prices for everything going up, our parents’ steady jobs, white picket fences and retirement packages feel much less attainable for us.
But the government wants to make us change that. In the U.S. and elsewhere, anxiety over aging populations and shrinking labor forces has been woven into the claim that women in their 20s somehow owe the economy more babies.
Our fertility becomes an asset on a balance sheet to counteract falling birth and marriage rates. Women who choose to put our own lives and interests first get branded “childless cat ladies,” as Vice President J.D. Vance once called us. But if being in no rush to get pregnant means I’m a selfish cat lady, I’m proud to claim the title.
