Empowerment of women made not being forced to take a husband and pop out babies an option. The birth control pill gave women a choice and a ton of them immediately jumped on it to escape from the cycle of being constantly pregnant or breastfeeding. It's been a desire of women probably since the dawn of time to be able to choose whether and when to have kids.
I take serious offense at the idea that it's just less interesting than other options. As if women were just content raising children before the idea of literally doing anything else crossed their minds. As if women today are being selfish by having lives outside of the home. How dare they want to live their life and establish financial stability before procreating? They should be raising 5 kids while struggling to make their hard-working husband's paycheck stretch far enough to feed the family. Because that's what my grandparents did.
we're in violent agreement: the fact that women have options is a good thing.
Men also have more options (e.g. no closeted gay man that marry women just to save appearance) and that is also good.
A side effect of this is lower natality, and planet-wise that is _also_ a good thing, even if some economies will get screwed in the medium term.
Where do you get the idea that women are miserable due to being able to choose not to have kids early in life? That they're still miserable without kids and that they'd be more satisfied if they had children and no freedom?
There's not exactly a lot of women clambering to go back to having no rights, no choice, and no freedom because it's better than not being able to have kids at 18.
I take serious offense at the idea that it's just less interesting than other options. As if women were just content raising children before the idea of literally doing anything else crossed their minds. As if women today are being selfish by having lives outside of the home. How dare they want to live their life and establish financial stability before procreating? They should be raising 5 kids while struggling to make their hard-working husband's paycheck stretch far enough to feed the family. Because that's what my grandparents did.