Loudt Darrow
1 min readFeb 10, 2023

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This is a fair point.

The reason why it sounds like that is because, in the last 50-70 years, the single greatest contributing factor to declining birth rates has been women having more career choices and freedom in general.

It doesn't mean women are to blame (in fact, women having more freedom is unequivocally awesome), it simply means that this wider range of choice generates a ripple effect.

Of course we can also blame the economy, the pandemic, and a dozen other things, but when it comes to fertility, language and rhetoric will always be primed towards women because you guys are the ones that push people out in the world.

If we were talking about, say, wars and military conflict, language would naturally have a male-oriented bias, because it so happens that our collective imagery sways that way. That doesn't mean "oh these pesky warmongering men always warmongering around," because military conflicts are much more complex than a bunch of dudes in a dick-measuring contest.

The same goes for fertility. Women aren't the only cast, but are the protagonists. And as so, women serve as the main anchor for symbolism and figurativeness when it comes to talking about it

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Loudt Darrow
Loudt Darrow

Written by Loudt Darrow

Humor writer, great at small talk, and overall an extremely OK person

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