For Vox, Rachel Cohen Booth looked into data about men’s perspectives on falling birth rates, caregiving and domestic labor. The data shows that American men are more likely than women to see falling birth rates as a problem and more likely to desire a return to “traditional gender roles.” Booth contends that “understanding men’s attitudes remains essential.”
RACHEL COHEN BOOTH; [email protected]
Booth is a senior correspondent for Vox covering social policy.
Booth told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “I have been covering abortion rights and family policy for a long time, including the growing discourse around birth rates and pronatalism, especially as it’s become a focus for the Trump administration. Then I noticed a striking contradiction in the polling: men are registering more concern than women about falling birth rates, but they’re also voicing greater support for a return to ‘traditional gender roles.’ I wanted to dig into that tension. Do men care if that return actually makes fertility less likely? What responsibility, if any, do they think they have here for the problem that they say they care about? I started to realize this conversation was happening in parallel to the conversation about masculinity and ‘men in crisis.’
“I think there is a snarkiness, an eye-roll quality, in a lot of mainstream coverage—especially from fellow liberal female writers—when it comes to men and masculinity. I get it. Women are understandably impatient for change. But we need to take a beat and realize that the derision and distancing aren’t helping women get what they want either: more men who are happy and capable of being good partners.
“I was surprised to learn there has been real reticence among demographers to study men’s attitudes. What I found most interesting, and honestly a bit sad, is this growing chasm between what men say they want––meaning, purpose, partnership—and the models they’re being drawn to, which actually make those things less likely. These frameworks are steering men down paths that don’t align with what women are looking for in partners. But there is a constructive path forward here: if we can identify the disconnect, we can help men and women get better aligned.
“I think about my own relationship. My husband has never seen cooking, cleaning, or housework as at odds with his masculinity… He was raised to believe that not doing those things would be embarrassing, immature, childlike… The interesting thing about masculinity is that almost everything can be framed as either dominance and control or sacrifice and dependence. Women sometimes want men to do certain things like clean or cook not just as actions, but with the same motives as women often have. I’m more motivated by narratives of care, for instance. I think it’s okay if men are motivated by different messages. Instead of trying to shame those impulses, we should recognize there really are more positive versions of masculinity that align with being a strong partner.
“My husband clearly likes seeing himself as a ‘provider,’ even though he’d also say we have an equal partnership and he in no way wants to control me. I know ‘provider’ has a patriarchal, domineering history. But when my husband uses that term for himself in 2025, he means it in a caring, sacrificial way. I think that’s okay. We could use a lot more research and creative thinking about how to leverage these strong, longstanding ideas around masculinity to help men find ways to be what they’re looking for. We’re seeing it’s possible––in France, and even here in the U.S. The stakes are high because people really are unhappy with the status quo on all fronts.
“Some readers are understandably frustrated by the ‘men in crisis’ framing; it can feel like centering men yet again. What I tried to push back on is the idea that this is just about men’s feelings. This so clearly affects women’s feelings too. A lot of what we’re talking about is rooted in universal questions about how we need each other. I’m invested in care policy and the ways we’re all interdependent.
“I’m also deeply shaped by feminism and appreciate how feminism has widened the ways we can be women in the world. Instead of treating masculinity as an immutable synonym for patriarchy, we should recognize we can do for masculinity what feminism did for women—name the harmful pressures, expand what counts as being a ‘good’ man, and free people from norms that make them less healthy and less connected. If we don’t do that work, the Andrew Tates of the world are going to happily fill that void.”