If I were deciding today whether to become a mother, I would say no.

That is something that I, as a mother, am not supposed to admit. It sounds ungrateful, as though I must immediately explain how much I love my children.

So let me be clear: My children have made me better, softer, sharper, fiercer and more alive. They are not the problem. The problem is what this country asks of mothers — and how little it offers in return.

The latest provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that U.S. births fell 1% in 2025 and that the general fertility rate has declined since 2007. The usual response is to ask why people are not having more children. I think the harder question is why we keep asking women to enter motherhood under conditions that so many mothers describe as punishing.

When I became pregnant with my first child, I was young and hopeful. Then my daughter was born at 31 weeks and one day. Motherhood began for me in a neonatal intensive care unit, visiting a baby I could not bring home.

The Family and Medical Leave Act protected my job, but it did not protect my income. That distinction sounds bureaucratic until it is your body, your baby and your bank account. While I was trying to understand what was happening to my daughter, I was also trying to prevent a financial disaster. A few weeks after giving birth, I went back to work.

That experience shaped years of advocacy. I wrote about pregnancy discrimination, pumping at work, Black maternal mortality and the economic penalty women pay for doing the labor this country claims to value. I spoke with lawmakers and worked in spaces where motherhood was translated into employment policy, public health, legal protection and legislative change.

For years, I believed that if mothers brought enough data, testimony and moral clarity, the country might finally become honest about what it owes us.

Then the pandemic made the hidden bargain impossible to ignore. Schools closed. Child care collapsed. Work continued. Families absorbed the shock, and parents — especially mothers — were often expected to keep performing as workers while replacing the systems that had disappeared around them.

The country called us resilient, which is often what it calls women when it does not intend to repair the conditions that are exhausting them.

Now, when women say they do not want children, I do not tell them they will change their minds. I understand them.

Not every woman who does not want children is making an economic or political statement. Some simply do not want to become mothers, and that choice requires no defense. But a country that worries about declining birthrates cannot dismiss the material conditions under which women are expected to give birth, recover, earn money and raise children.

The American workplace is still organized around an ideal worker who has no body, no children, no aging parents, no illness, no grief and no caregiving responsibilities. Motherhood exposes that fiction. Instead of rebuilding work around the reality of human lives to support all parents and other caregivers, we keep asking families to contort themselves around it.

No employer has to order a mother back to work before she has healed when the system has already made rest unaffordable. Unpaid leave says it. Rent says it. Health insurance says it. Student loans say it. Child-care bills say it. The professional expectation that she remain available, grateful and composed says it.

When women ask for the basic infrastructure that would make raising children more sustainable — paid leave, affordable child care, maternal healthcare and wages that can support a family — children are treated as a private lifestyle choice. Yet when politicians discuss falling birthrates, family values or the future workforce, motherhood suddenly becomes a national concern — and politicians dwell on how to encourage more Americans to have more babies. Where is the support for people who are already parenting? That would send a powerful message. Instead, according to the Department of Labor, in some counties care for one child can cost more than rent. That also sends a message.

America does not love mothers as much as it loves the story of mothers: the baby bump, the gender reveal, the Mother’s Day brunch, the campaign photo of a politician holding a baby. It loves us most when our sacrifices are quiet — our bodies, our income, our sleep, our mental health, our careers.

Women considering motherhood are reading the fine print. Have the baby, but do not complain about the cost. Have the baby, but do not expect paid leave. Have the baby, but child care is your problem. Have the baby, but do not let motherhood affect your performance. Have the baby, but if the school calls at 11 a.m., somehow be both a fully available worker and a fully available parent.

I respect women who understand that not having a child may be an act of self-preservation. I refuse to lie to them. I have spent too much of my professional life asking America to value mothers and too much of my personal life learning how often it does not.

Paid leave is not a perk. Child care is not a personal indulgence. Maternal health is not a niche issue. These are conditions that determine whether families can move through ordinary life, let alone crisis, without collapsing.

Motherhood has given me more than I can explain. It has also taken more from me than this country is willing to admit. Both things can be true. I can love my children and still say I would not choose this path again. I can honor motherhood without recruiting other women into a broken system.

Before asking why women are choosing not to have children, America should ask whether it has done enough to deserve their motherhood.

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Christine Michel Carter is a writer and maternal activist.

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