The NY Times Thinks Women Aren’t Having Babies Because Of Scary TV Births

In case you didn’t know, the fertility rate in the United States is down. People aren’t having large families anymore, and in some cases, not having kids at all. Single, childless women are on the rise and a whopping one in five women not only doesn’t have kids, she doesn’t want them. Childless by choice is on the upswing as an increasing number of women (and men) astound convention by declaring they don’t want kids.

Factors to consider are perhaps the continual progress of women in the workplace, the recession in which even starting a family seems like a daunting task, and the high unemployment rate. Or, you can be like The New York Times which claims women aren’t having kids because of the all the scary, graphic births on television.

When recounting all the latest births on TV, Neil Genzlinger writes that women are no longer have babies because of too much time in front of the tube:

Will there be enough young American workers around two decades from now to pay for the knee replacements to which I’m entitled? No, there won’t, because women watch television, and what they’ve been seeing lately is not exactly likely to encourage baby having…Five weeks, six exceedingly traumatic births. Talk about antifamily programming.

Genzlinger paints a silly, intended to be humorous portrait of hospital wards shutting their doors and being converted in Pinkberrys, as women choose to become completely childless in the future due to such programming. The Times may not be aware of this given that it’s such a boys’ club over there (Hi Jill Abramson!), but childbirth onscreen is universally acknowledged to be ridiculous and unrealistic. Women hoot and howl for the sake of ratings, not for a true-to-life depiction of labor. Even as a woman who is terrified of labor myself, I know better than to take an episode of Up All Night seriously.

(photo: Shutterstock)