Photo: Taylor Swift Eras Tour – Arlington, TX – Folklore act 2; creator: Ronald Woan; CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
A British tabloid carried a grim headline announcing “America’s fertility crash,” over an article detailing the precipitous drop in the U.S. birth rate during the last 15 years. The decline was greatest in Utah, whose birth rate fell by more than a third despite the Beehive State’s reputation for large families.
Ignoring such a dire long-term trend that harms the health and happiness of the American people, our media have spent most of 2023 promoting entertainment aimed at single young women, starting with Barbie. That blockbuster movie featured an unmarried woman without children, with merely a cameo appearance by one pregnant character who is portrayed as an outcast.
The Barbie phenomenon is joined by the female pop star Taylor Swift, whose record-setting concert tour caused an unprecedented meltdown at Ticketmaster. Now the film version has broken the box office record for a concert movie, drawing mostly young women to theaters where they dance on chairs and sing off-key rather than merely watching.
Taylor Swift, herself childless and nearly 34 years old, was asked when she turned 30 whether she wants to have children. She curtly replied, “I don’t really think men are asked that question when they turn 30, so I’m not going to answer that now.”
For the most part, Swifties have not been attending these concerts on dates with young men. An estimated 90% of these concert fans are women, an imbalance so severe that it has caused havoc with the availability of restrooms at performance venues.
The messaging from the media couldn’t be any clearer. They are telling our young women that the path to happiness requires childlessness. This messaging isn’t new. Phyllis Schlafly was exposing these false promises all the way back when Betty Friedan was calling the home a “comfortable concentration camp” back in the 1960s. However, the new packaging on the same old lie shouldn’t be ignored today. We must help our daughters to see that for the vast majority of women, true and lasting fulfillment will be found in marriage and motherhood.
