[This piece has appeared in variously edited versions, with various titles on RH Reality Check, Huffington Post, and Ms Blog] New CDC birth data out Wednesday confirm that the U.S. birthrate dropped one percent to reach an all-time low in
Thanks, flowerpowermom, for a great post on Ready, women & activist policymaking: Why We’re Ready for Change.
Childless women of all ages are under assault. If you’re a teenager, you’re pushed toward motherhood by “moralizers.” If you’re a woman 35 or older, you’re subject to ominous news stories creating fertility anxiety. Lately the anxiety peddlers have been expanding their targeted danger zone to include women in their late 20s and early 30s.
Part of the background to the current confusion about how long fertility lasts is the fact that there is very little good data. … The closest thing to a thoroughly controlled experiment of women’s fertility so far involved a Protestant religious sect called the Hutterites, pre-1950.