In the early 2010s, liberal feminists in major newspapers attacked mothers and fathers who had too many children for their “ smug fecundity .” Subsequently, amid a historic baby bust, liberal feminists in major newspapers are in full reverse, peddling the idea of "Feminist Fecundity.”

The United States, Europe, and wealthy countries in Asia can reverse their demographic collapse, the argument goes, if they become more feminist.

“Want more babies?” asked New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg in 2018. “You need less patriarchy.”

“The birthrate is low in Japan,” the New York Times declared in a caption in 2021, “in part because of cultural factors, like rigid gender roles.”

“France’s baby boom secret: get women into work and ditch rigid family norms,” declared the Guardian in a headline.

The latest installment comes from the New York Times: “How to End South Korea’s Birth Strike? Feminism.”

Journalist and author Hawon Jung convincingly makes the case that South Korea suffers from the misogyny that is bubbling up as social and economic dynamics change in that aging, shrinking country with a birthrate below 1.0 babies per woman of childbearing age.

“Women in particular are fed up with this traditionalist society’s impossible expectations of mothers," she writes. "So they’re quitting.”

But then, she asserts, without evidence, that “gender equality is the solution to falling birthrates.”

“A feminist approach would remove obstacles to motherhood simply by enforcing existing laws against workplace discrimination," she writes. "It would destigmatize births outside of marriage and make domestic duties everyone’s responsibility. It would condemn gender violence as reprehensible. A feminist approach would admit there’s a systemic problem.”

It is true that if employers are illegally discriminating against mothers, enforcement of those laws will help make motherhood easier. And, of course, if domestic violence is tolerated, marriage will be less desirable. But aside from those obvious points, Jung falls far short of making the case that feminism would actually juice birthrates.

Consider her examples, such as the un-feminist U.S. versus the feminist Sweden and France. Jung asserts that the U.S. has “plunging fertility” rates because of a lack of feminism and that Sweden has “cooperative fathers and good family policies” and thus has been doing better on births. But this just isn't true. In the decade before the pandemic, Sweden’s birthrate fell from 1.9 to 1.7, basically identical numbers to the U.S. during the same period.

France, meanwhile, has an extraordinary pro-natalist policy that might not fit into Jung’s definition of “feminism.” It’s sometimes called the “shared child-rearing benefit,” and it pays one parent not to work or to work only part time. A parent gets this benefit on top of the basic family allowance for six months for the first child, two years for a second child, and up to four years for each subsequent child. A couple who has four babies, spaced every other year, would have, in effect, 8.5 years of a stay-at-home parent benefit in a 10-year stretch.

The result, according to the United Nations Population Division, is that “63% of children [under age 2] were cared for mainly by a parent (nearly always the mother).” Day care is theoretically available for babies and toddlers, but as one "Feminist Fecundity" article from 2015 admitted, “Only 16% have a place in a day nursery.” In other words, France’s formula for fertility involves paying mothers to stay at home for years. In contrast, "Feminist Fecundity" typically involves subsidizing day care so as to get mothers back into work. This is not a family subsidy so much as it is a work subsidy.

The way to get more children and happier parents is to build a more family-centered culture. Work subsidies don’t do that.

All the talk of "family-friendly workplaces" often melds into talk of more work-friendly families — as in fewer children and lots of day care. What we need are more jobs that allow Mom or Dad to be off the clock and at home or pickup by 3 p.m. We need more jobs that allow Mom or Dad to be the breadwinner. We need more bosses who declare publicly and loudly that family comes first and who walk the walk when it comes to flexible schedules, paid time off, health coverage, and family-focused benefits.