The cross-national correlation between gender equality and lower fertility is exceptionally strong (r ≈ 0.81). After the 1960s, a unique mating regime spread across parts of the world-with female emancipation, individual mate choice, and effective birth control-followed by a continuing rise in singlehood and declining fertility. Almost all women still want to reproduce, but many struggle to find a good-enough partner. This article argues from an evolutionary perspective that many men's utility to "free women" has been so diminished that solving the fertility crisis by increasing pair-bonding rates seems unfeasible. A viable means for aiding the survival of low-fertility nations could be to provide women with the economic and social resources necessary for them to conclude that having children alone makes for a better life than remaining childless. Such policies would likely exacerbate male marginalization, but new technologies are on the horizon that could offer men reproductive equality.
Larsen et al. (2026) studied this question.