The surprising gender gap at the heart of America’s baby bust

Vox

March 5, 2026

“Across party lines and demographic groups, young men are eager to be dads.” That’s the surprising conclusion that Anna North, my Vox colleague, uncovered when she dove into the data to find out young people’s views about forming families. Birth rates have been in free fall, and talk of a demographic crisis has increasingly filled the discourse. In much of that commentary, the brunt of the blame has been directed at young people, who purportedly aren’t interested in settling down. But the truth, according to Anna, is more complex. Key takeaways Young men across the political spectrum really want to be dads — more than you’d expect. Young women are far less enthusiastic, and the reasons why are pretty understandable. The gap has real consequences, but there are proven policy fixes that could help. In addition to Gen Z men expressing interest in procreating, she also found something else that was surprising: There is a real gender gap between young men and young women, with young women showing greater hesitation about the prospect of having kids. It’s a fascinating divide that could be hugely consequential, so I asked Anna to come join me on the Friday edition of The Gray Area to explain what she found in her reporting. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, which drops every Monday and Friday, so listen to and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. View Link What were you looking for when you started reporting on this piece on how Gen Z men and women are thinking about parenthood and how differently they’re thinking about it? I saw this really interesting poll of young voters, Gen Z voters, and looked at male Trump voters, male Harris voters, female Trump voters, and female Harris voters and asked them to rank, what are the things you think are important in a good life. The male Trump voters actually rated having children as number one among 12 or 13 different options. Nobody else had it up that high. Not any of the women, no matter how they voted. And not male Harris voters, either. And if you look across polls, overwhelmingly, you’ll see young men more excited, more enthusiastic about having children one day than young women. And I could think of a lot of possible reasons why that might be, but I wanted to dig into it a little bit. I have the numbers here, and I don’t want to butcher it. This is from your piece on a 2023 Pew poll: 57 percent of men between 18 and 34 said they wanted to have kids one day, and only 45 percent of women said that. That was a little surprising to me. Maybe it shouldn’t be. I was kind of surprised by that. As you say, I thought it was a pretty big gap, especially given that the narrative that I think we had heard about young Gen Z people generally over the last couple of years is this is a generation that doesn’t want kids. This generation doesn’t want to get married. This is a generation that’s really worried about the future, and feeling really alienated, and doesn’t want to take these steps toward conventional family. And so, I thought it was interesting that these high numbers of Gen Z men were saying, no, actually we do want kids. If you dig back into the historical polling, it’s a little wonky. There’s some evidence that women without children, for a long time, have had a little bit more trepidation than men without children. And partly that’s for reasons that make sense. They know that their careers could take a hit. They’ve all read those articles about the motherhood penalty. They know that they will probably have to give birth, which men don’t have to do, and deal with physical recovery and deal with all of the stereotyping and stigmatizing that comes with having a female body that becomes a mother in this world. So, it’s not weird that young women might have more anxieties. But, I think what was striking to me was the size of the gap and, really, the size of the enthusiasm among men of a generation that were expressing this pretty conventional social aspiration to have a family. How do you explain their increased interest? Why are Gen Z men increasingly fired up about being a dad? What are they telling you? I think I got a certain sense of that where one of them just talked about his friends who are male and think of this as something they’re going to do one day. They think of it as like a capstone or just a really important part of a full life. And it’s something that they assume that they’re going to do. What would you say are the primary reasons you get from women? Are you seeing the data from Gen Z women about why they’re hesitant? Well, one expert explained it to me: It’s never been more costly for women to have a child. And that doesn’t mean it’s harder than ever to be a mom.; it means that women, many women, most women in the US, probably have more options than they’ve ever had. Women’s salaries still aren’t at parity with men’s, but they’re higher than they have ever been. Women’s educational attainment is really high. There’s a sense that there’s an increasing social sense that women can live a full life without becoming mothers, and that’s fine, and there’s a lot more acceptance for it. Whereas women used to just really not have that many options for their lives, now they have lots. And you’re giving some of that up. When you have a child, you know, it’s documented that you’re giving up some salary. You’re giving up some time. And then, two, I think you’ll hear from young women this concern that their partners are not going to pull their weight. I get into this in the piece that we have seen real shifts in terms of how much childcare men do, but it’s not 50/50. And women know that. “If you’re worried about all these men who really want kids and women are not so sure, a great way to address that worry is to support the women.” I think a lot of women also know that they are going to end up, you know, contributing economically at least 50%, if not more than 50%. So, I think there is a worry that they’re going to be doing more than half on the home front. They’re going to be doing at least half, if not more than half, career-wise. And so, I think that can start to seem like a bad deal too. Maybe the thing that surprised me the most is that it would appear with Gen Z men, in particular, the trend is towards more of a preference for traditional division of labor — this idea that to be a man means to be the breadwinner. I do think it’s of a piece with some polling and data that we see from Gen Z men just like expressing a variety of traditionalist gender ideas. I talked to a guy who does a lot of polling with Gen Z, and he did say that when he polls young men, they really associate masculinity with being a provider, more so than any other characteristics. But, I also think that we’re seeing other moves in the opposite direction. If you just play this out a little bit, it seems like this is going to be a problem, with young men and young women moving in different directions, wanting different things, having competing visions of what it means to be a dad or a mom. And, of course, politically, young men are moving to the right, and women are moving more to the left. How’s that going to play out? You know, it’s definitely something that I think we see in a lot of data and something we talk about a lot, something that, like, has real implications politically for elections. It has implications for families. But, I think the bottom line for me — just from all my reporting about families, and childbearing, and all this kind of stuff — is there are lots of ways that we could make it easier as a country for people to have the families that they want. Two things, like paid leave or affordable child care — if you’re worried about all these men who really want kids and women are not so sure, a great way to address that worry is to support the women. And I think that ends up helping everybody across the board. Is there a world where women are able to have children without paying the professional price they’ve had to pay? Sure. I mean, there’s plenty of countries where the wage gap is smaller. You know, generally what people talk about, again, is things like paid leave and affordable, accessible childcare. In countries where women take really long leaves, like a year or longer, you tend to see less parity career wise and wage wise. But in countries where women can pretty easily take six months and don’t have access to good childcare options that are affordable, you do see better parity. It is possible. It’s not, pie in the sky. Another thing that experts pointed me to is Scandinavian countries that have introduced paternity leave that has sort of use it or lose it. The family has X number of weeks of leave, Y number of weeks can be used only by the dad. So, if the dad doesn’t use that, then you don’t get it. And that really incentivizes men to take that time and has been a big driver of social change in the countries where it’s been tried.

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Originally published on Vox on 3/5/2026