Men as a group are pissed off because women are not putting them front and center anymore. Men aren't getting laid to the extent to which they feel entitled. Women are also not "delaying" motherhood--many of them also don't want kids. This is why any attempt to shore up the birthrate will fail. If people don't understand the real issue, then what they are attempting to do is a waste of time and money. More and more women frankly like the single life, no matter if there are financial pressures working against being alone, and all of the gaslighting and complaining by the political right will NOT change their minds.
Declining birthrates have been the rule for over a century, with the exception being the period following WWII (the baby boom era). High birthrates are not compatible with women's rights, and neither is marriage, with the rate plunging into the ditch on the way to well-deserved obsolescence and gradual evolution out of existence in industrialized countries. Marriage going on the way out has been predicted for at least fifty years, with authors like the late feminist Eva Figes in her 1970 book, Patriarchal Attitudes (the first feminist book I ever read), said that she was confident marriage would be seen as a "hollow sham" (her words). Many other second-wave feminists felt the same way, with some proposing it be abolished altogether as it was the foundation for patriarchy and could not in any way be fixed. Psychologist Lawrence Casler, in his 1974 book, Is Marriage Necessary?, was also convinced marriage would eventually evolve out of existence. He wrote the book at a time when marriage rates were still insanely high and when alternative living arrangements were starting to become more commonplace (cohabitation). People like Figes, many second-wave radical feminists, and Casler were right all along, and the political right KNOWS they are right, but they are going to fight the inevitable trend. Patriarchy is dying, and I say, good riddance.
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