2026-10-02
26 分钟This is In Conversation from Apple News.
I'm Shumita Basu.
Today, why so many people want kids, but feel like they can't have them.
Fewer babies are being born all over the world.
According to the UN, global fertility rates have dropped from 4.8 births per woman in 1970 to 2.2 in 2024.
For millions of people, it's not that they don't want kids.
It's that between the rising cost of living, housing insecurity,
changing norms around coupling up and career building,
political anxiety, climate anxiety,
well, bringing a kid into the world feels increasingly out of reach.
This used to be a really straightforward, kind of basic experience.
You met someone, you had a kid, it was just a part of life.
And now, for the people who still want this, it feels harder and harder to achieve.
Anna Louie Sussman has spent years reporting on the intersection of economics, gender, and reproductive health.
For her new book, Inconceivable: The Impossibility of a Family in an Age of Uncertainty,
she looks at families in the US and around the world
to unpack the many reasons why people who want kids are not having them,
from the big structural forces all the way down to the personal choices.
I sat down with Anna to talk with her about what we as a society lose
when people who want to have children feel like they can't,