Today, 52% of women aged 20 to 39 in America have no children. This striking statistic has been confirmed by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Pew Research Center, and the National Center for Health Statistics.
But let’s be honest: beneath these numbers lies a human and cultural catastrophe. Modern feminism and America’s consumer society have joined hands to reduce motherhood to merely an option—one that becomes more devalued every day. Media outlets and misogynist activists who call themselves defenders of women’s rights proudly publish these figures, as if the extinction of the next generation were an achievement.
In reality, a generation of women is growing up knowing nothing but jobs, income, and momentary pleasure. They have forgotten that a society depends on mothers who raise children with love, sacrifice, and human values. Feminists have labeled this sacrifice as oppression. Instead, they present “financial independence” and “career advancement” as signs of salvation.
So what is the result? A woman in her forties, living alone in her small apartment, with a pet, distracting herself every night with short series, and in her solitude asking herself: “Where, then, is that freedom and happiness that feminism promised us?”
Feminist thinking has always instilled in American women that children are an obstacle—that jobs and money are everything. American society, once built on strong families, has now turned into a machine producing self-centered, lonely individuals. Abortion is promoted as a point of pride, and any woman with a natural desire for children is labeled “traditional and backward.” Ask yourself: Why are we so afraid of the word sacrifice? Why does no mother dare say, “I am happy because I am raising my child”? Because feminism has forcibly taught us that any sacrifice is oppression, any commitment is a limitation, and any limitation is the enemy of freedom. But let’s be honest: What value is freedom in which no one is attached to anyone else? They speak of equality. Just look at the outcome of equality: men have become just as averse to having children.
A society without children is a dying society. Japan and Europe have sounded the alarm; America is heading down the same path. Yet feminists still speak of the 52% statistic as a victory. A victory over whom? Over nature? Over maternal instinct? Over the future of humanity? In truth, American women are victims of a sick ideological system that prefers instant gratification over lasting love.
If we become negligent in Iran, exactly the same disaster will befall us. Today, the 52% figure may not exist in Iran, but trends clearly show that we too are walking step by step down that same slippery path. Right now, in Tehran and other major Iranian cities, the average marriage age has risen above 30, the fertility rate has fallen below 1.7 children per woman (below replacement level), and in intellectual circles, childlessness has become a symbol of progress and freedom.
The Iranian version of Western feminism, with a few years’ delay, is injecting the same slogans and the same poisons into the Iranian family. Social media is full of influencers teaching teenage girls that motherhood is a restriction, that career comes first, and that you will live happier without children.
Just a few years ago, no one dared to openly say, “I never intend to become a mother.” Today, this statement is proudly proclaimed in the coffee shops of north Tehran. As if childlessness has become a new fashion, rather than a demographic warning sign. Let’s face reality: feminism is a comprehensive project.
First it calls for equal rights, then financial independence, then bodily autonomy (meaning free abortion), then says you don’t need to become a mother, and ultimately delivers a generation of women who, at forty, live alone in one-bedroom apartments with a few cats, deeply regretful. But then it’s too late.
America has experienced this equation. Japan and South Korea have walked the same path. In Iran, if we are negligent, the outcome will be nothing less than a demographic earthquake: a sudden aging of the population, labor shortages, bankruptcy of the pension system, and most importantly, the gradual drying up of what has built our identity—the family.
Faeze aghamohammady