To raise fertility rates, it’s not women who need to step up

Chabeli Carrazana

Economy and Child Care Reporter

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The rise of tradwives might have some convinced that embracing traditionalism is the key to raising birth rates in the United States. But what if the solution was actually men stepping up more?

A new paper by Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin has found that countries where men take on more of the household labor and child care — in other words, those who buck traditionalism’s standards of the provider husband and homemaker wife — have higher fertility rates.

Goldin, who teaches economics at Harvard, found that women want to make sure their partner will share the load with them before deciding to have kids.

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“Why have a child