Articles about falling fertility rates always make me nervous. Often, they seem to carry the dangerous implication that women’s education, presence in the workforce, and bodily autonomy – all good, crucial things – are destined to end in catastrophe for humankind.

It’s also exasperatingly rare for such articles to consider men’s role in why women might choose not to have kids, e.g. women still feeling pressure to give up or limit their careers to be full-time parents while men don’t, men described as ‘babysitting’ their own children, etc.

Personally, I’m not having kids because I just don’t want them, and I won't apologise for that. But I’m sure there are plenty of women who do want kids – just not within a patriarchal framework.

Who created patriarchy? Men. But sure, blame women for daring to see it.

The implied solution often seems to be ‘bring back traditional family values’ – a veiled way of saying ‘make women barefoot and pregnant again’ – rather than ‘dismantle patriarchy’