The Economy Wants You to Stay Single

Scroll through any major outlet, open Instagram, or listen to the latest podcast geared toward women and the message of individual female empowerment comes with relentless consistency. Marriage is framed as optional, outdated, a potential career detour or emotional liability. Absorb this messaging without thinking critically and you might start to believe that settling down with a man is outdated. You might put marriage on the back burner indefinitely, even if somewhere deep down it remains a genuine goal. I see the effects of this messaging every day. Women who once daydreamed about weddings and shared futures now speak about "protecting their peace" or "not needing a man." They treat the desire for a husband and children as something slightly embarrassing, a secret preference that requires justification. Wanting to get married has become taboo in many circles, it seems. That shift didn't happen by accident, and it's costing us more than we realize. Over the past year, the vast majority of net new jobs, 94%, have gone to women. Why the constant push to delay marriage and family? It's not solely about "female empowerment," though that language is used ironically to begin with. Look closer and serious economic incentives appear. Our economy has become increasingly dependent on female labor force participation. Female-dominated sectors like healthcare, education, administrative services, and certain service industries have driven much of the job growth for years. Over the past year, the vast majority of net new jobs, 94%, have gone to women. According to the August 2026 Jobs Report , 162k new jobs were added, and 98% went to women . When nearly all the expansion happens in fields that rely heavily on female workers, keeping women in the workforce longer becomes a structural priority. How do you encourage that? By normalizing the delay of motherhood. Pregnancy, childbirth, and early child-rearing still pull many women out of full-time work for stretches of time, even with modernized leave policies and social stigma attached to being devoted moms. Framing early marriage and children as a threat to independence keeps more women available for the labor market longer. There are secondary economic effects as well. Single women, on average, spend differently and often more freely on housing, travel, beauty, dining, and experiences. Dual-income or family households shift spending toward long-term stability, savings, and children's needs. And, as some more skeptical observers note, individuals without deep family ties can be more mobile, more flexible, and in certain ways easier to control within society. These incentives are easy enough to understand once you look past the "empowerment" slogans. Yet the same policies and cultural cues that keep women in the workforce longer are producing consequences that also harm the economy and society as a whole. The most obvious and urgent is the collapsing birth rate. Framing early marriage and children as a threat to independence keeps more women available for the labor market longer. A stable population requires a total fertility rate of roughly 2.1 children per woman. In the United States, that number has fallen to around 1.57 . In some states it's even lower. Globally, the trend is the same: advanced economies are seeing fewer babies year after year. This isn't some distant problem for our grandchildren. We'll begin feeling the effects within the next decade. School systems already face enrollment declines in a lot of districts. Fewer children mean fewer classrooms needed, fewer teachers hired, and eventually pressure to close schools or consolidate entire districts. The pipeline of future workers, taxpayers, innovators, and caregivers shrinks in real time. There are organizations trying to push back against the cultural current. One project worth knowing is the Institute for Family Studies' marriage maps , at gogetmarried.org . It helps young people who actually want to marry figure out practical next steps like where to meet compatible partners and how to think about readiness. Resources like this matter because the mainstream conversation rarely offers them. These maps tell us that Middle Americans are still getting married in their 20s, while those living in coastal cities are waiting until their 30s to tie the knot. The maps show us the importance of dating markets, and the even greater role culture plays in encouraging marriage. I delayed marriage and family formation the way so many women of my generation were encouraged to do. Career first, experiences first, "figure yourself out" first. Maybe I'll just be a cool stepmom! By the time I reached my 30s, my feelings and the landscape looked different from the promises I had absorbed. Finding a husband became harder. Fertility is not infinite. Health concerns creep in. The message that "you have plenty of time" turned out to be wrong. I don't regret the years of growth, but I do regret how thoroughly I internalized the idea that wanting a husband and children of my own early was somehow less sophisticated than delaying them indefinitely. That experience shaped my mission. I want the next generation of women to hear a different message: if marriage and family are goals for you, don't put them off forever in the hope that the conditions will somehow improve later. The optimal window is real. The social skills and habits that make lasting relationships possible are easier to build earlier rather than later. Love isn't a secondary priority that you schedule after every other box has been checked. It should be the central human experience that gives the other achievements meaning. Love isn't a secondary priority that you schedule after every other box has been checked. Society once embraced this more openly. We used to treat the formation of stable families as a public good rather than a purely private lifestyle choice. Schools spent time on literature, history, and lessons that assumed the importance of commitment, responsibility, duty, and intergenerational bonds. Today the curriculum rarely addresses love, marriage, or family formation with any seriousness. The media, peers, and institutions often treat those things like something from the past. We can do better. Teaching young people that healthy relationships require effort, that commitment is a skill, and that children are a profound good rather than a career interruption would not be reactionary or regressive. It would be realistic to make sure humanity thrives. Not every woman has to marry young or have children. Individual freedom remains essential. Some people will thrive single. Some marriages will fail despite best efforts. The point is narrower and more urgent: wanting to marry should not be treated as a taboo preference that requires an apology. The cultural pressure to delay has real costs: economic, demographic, and personal. Pretending otherwise doesn't make those costs disappear. Society has always depended on love and families. When we systematically discourage the formation of that institution, we shouldn't act surprised when the foundations begin to crack. The solution isn't that complicated, even if it's culturally difficult: tell the truth about trade-offs, stop pathologizing the desire for marriage, and support the young people who still believe that building a life with someone else is worth the risk.