Jim Murphy

A thought-provoking read. The decline of family formation is one of the defining social issues of our time, and yet it’s rarely discussed. However, while the piece is right that for a generation of millennial and Gen Z women, having children has too often been treated as something that competes with freedom, ambition, and personal fulfillment rather than being a meaningful part of life — I’d put the roots of this problem a little differently. It’s less about Carrie Bradshaw or Hannah Horvath, and more about a generational pendulum swing. Boomer women were the first generation to truly have the option of career and/or family after generations of women who did not. Many understandably raised their daughters with a strong message shaped by a new world of freedom and choice: be financially independent, build a career, don’t rely on a man, and don’t let motherhood limit your options. Pop culture reflected and encouraged that message, but didn’t create it. The result was a generation of women handed a powerful vision of independence and career primacy — one that brought real opportunity and freedom, but also came at a cost: motherhood lost status. For millennials and Gen Z, what many of us absorbed wasn’t just that we could have careers—it was that in our 20s, we should prioritize education, career, travel, fun, financial security and self-development first, with family prioritized later—if at all. Then our 30s arrived, and many women discovered that the biological clock is real: fertility declines, energy is lower, relationships are more complicated, and trying to “have it all” is far harder than we were led to believe. And of course culture isn’t the only factor. Layer on housing costs, affordability pressures and high taxes, an ultra-competitive job market, workplaces still largely built around a one-income/one-full-time-parent model, and a culture that has not prepared enough men for the realities of husbandhood and fatherhood (another equally important issue, rarely discussed), and it’s no surprise so many women feel torn, delayed, and burnt out. The article makes an important point: a life ordered entirely around material success is not, for many people, a deeply fulfilling one. Personally, no one —not school, university, pop culture, or even my own mother — ever taught me that motherhood might become the most meaningful part of my life. Like many women, I had to discover that myself. Historically, that is a remarkable shift: for most of human history, motherhood and childbearing were understood as central to family and societal continuity. In much of the modern West, by contrast, motherhood is often treated as secondary to other forms of achievement and self-development. And it’s important to note that becoming a mother is not always as simple as just deciding to do so. Meeting the right partner, having financial stability, and being fertile are not givens. Combine that with a generation of women who weren’t necessarily taught that childbearing is both time-limited and a virtuous option worthy of intentional life planning, and it is no surprise that many women who wanted children have found themselves running out of time, or missing that window altogether. For me, this isn’t about telling women they should stay home or give up careers. Nor is it about suggesting motherhood is every woman’s calling. It’s about restoring motherhood to a place of equal honour. One day, when my daughter is asked what she wants to be when she grows up, if she says “a mom,” I hope she receives as much encouragement as if she said doctor, teacher, or business owner. She should have the freedom to choose children first, an ambitious career later, both, or neither. Motherhood should once again be spoken of as something beautiful, aspirational, and worthy of admiration — not as something that gets in the way of a woman becoming who she is. Embracing motherhood as part of that becoming is what has been lost, and that’s what needs fixing.