In her book The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson describes pregnancy as an experience marked by a peculiar duality. On the one hand, it is deeply transformative, bodily alien, sometimes almost incomprehensible to the person undergoing it. On the other hand, pregnancy is one of the most socially accepted — nearly invisible — states one can inhabit. The same paradox applies to parenthood. At a societal level, it appears as an almost self-evident life choice: something statistically expected of most people and silently assumed as a precondition for the survival of the state and the welfare system. Yet for the individual, the decision to become a parent is rarely self-evident. On the contrary, it is often one of the most far-reaching and irreversible decisions a person can make, saturated with hope, anticipation, fear, and anxiety. Having children is simultaneously norm and exception, routine and existential leap.

In a time marked by economic and political uncertainty, fewer and fewer people are taking that leap. Birth rates are falling, and what long appeared stable now looks fragile. In 2024, the Swedish government appointed a commission on “A Future with Children” after the fertility rate dropped to around 1.4 children per woman — a historic low, not seen since the eighteenth century. This development is far from unique. Declining fertility has become a global pattern, particularly pronounced in high-income countries but increasingly visible in parts of Asia and Latin America as well. Across much of Europe and North America, fertility lies well below replacement level, with Italy, Spain, and South Korea as extreme cases. Even countries long associated with high birth rates, such as India, have seen sharp declines. Only parts of sub-Saharan Africa maintain relatively high fertility rates, though even there a downward trend is evident.

This is therefore not a cultural quirk or national anomaly but a worldwide shift with profound implications for the global economy and future systems of care. Ultimately, it reflects how political instability and increasingly conditional promises of the future intervene in the most basic of human decisions. A 2025 report from the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) shows that young working-class households often postpone or forgo having children due to economic precarity and fear of future hardship. Other studies suggest that climate anxiety also affects people’s willingness — or courage — to take the existential leap of parenthood.