Woman Argues That Birth Rates Are Low Because Women Don't Wear Lingerie To Bed
Her argument ignores the real reason so many women are choosing not to have children.
Volodymyr TVERDOKHLIB | Shutterstock Out of all the reasons that women are choosing not to have kids, and the birth rates in this country are steadily declining, this has to be the most preposterous. In a post to X, Andrea D. Huberwoman claimed that women need to stop wearing oversized T-shirts and unflattering pajama pants to bed, and should instead invest in sexier looks because it might help raise the birth rates in this country.
She argued that birth rates are low because women don't wear lingerie to bed.
Posting photos of a woman in lingerie, Huberwoman captioned: "Birth rates would sky rocket [sic] if girls wore this at home instead of some oversized homeless core outfit." Her opinion was met with an immense amount of backlash, with many women pointing out that lingerie has absolutely nothing to do with women choosing not to have kids.
Huberwoman's take completely ignores the reality of having kids, as well. She reduced the complex issues that come with parenthood into a warped view of gender norms and what women should and shouldn't be wearing. It directly feeds into a narrative that women are directly responsible for maintaining male desire, regardless of their own needs and autonomy.
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Women are not solely defined by their status as mothers.
Huberwoman's argument suggested that women are not only at fault for low birth rates, but that their only true purpose in life is to have children. While many women choose to have children, it's absolutely not their entire identity.
Having kids and starting families isn't on every single woman's radar, especially now, when there have been so many restrictions made against women's bodies by politicians and the government. Why would women feel safe enough to carry a child and birth one if there's no guarantee of their lives being protected in the process?
This issue of low birth rates is incredibly nuanced and doesn't just boil down to simple lingerie. If a woman wants to wear lingerie to bed, so be it. If she wants to wear her old high school gym shirt that's all stretched out from being washed numerous times, then so be it as well. The minute you start dictating the way women should dress just so they can catch the eye of a man, you're reducing them to nothing other than an object to reproduce.
Women are voluntarily choosing not to have kids.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the total fertility rate was 1.6 children per woman in the United States, or 1,626.5 births per 1,000 women. That's less than a 1% increase from 2023, one of the lowest years for birth rates.
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"The big data story from the CDC data is that women under the age of 30 are having less babies," Dr. Thoại Ngô, chair of Columbia University's Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health, told 60 Minutes Overtime. "Teenage pregnancy has been declining and… [there's] a macro-societal shift on how people value family, work, and personal fulfillment moving forward."
Demographers, according to CNN, pointed out multiple reasons why women are not having kids, including economic insecurity, political uncertainty, and shifting gender norms. There's also less of a stigma when it comes to being child-free. While the Trump administration laid out a plan where they would give a $5,000 "baby bonus" for every new birth as a way to incentivize women to have children, the real issue is that moms don't have enough support.
Throwing money at new moms, especially a measly $5,000, which wouldn't even cover the first six months of a baby's life, isn't a way to address the low birth rates. Maybe if there were better maternity leave plans on a federal level, more research done on the maternal mortality rate, better insurance plans that actually cover fertility costs, and more affordable childcare costs, then it's possible more women would feel comfortable and safer having kids.
Until then, lingerie and "baby bonuses" isn't going to fix the issue, and if we refuse to actually address the real problems and the real solutions that can fix it, women will continue to put their own well-being and interests first, which is something they should be celebrated for instead of shamed for.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
