Everyone should have the right to decide if and when they have children. Yet over the past 50 years, the United States has built an economy that increasingly works against fertility — demanding more years in school and longer hours at work for people, especially women, in the years when it is biologically easiest for them to have children, and concentrating wealth and income among those past their reproductive prime.

As a result, American schools and workplaces are particularly ill-suited for supporting those who hope to start families earlier than average.

“If I were to complain about how society ‘has wronged me as a woman,’ it would be that it has treated my limited ‘fertility time’ with extreme disregard,” wrote Ruxandra Teslo, a genomics PhD student, recently on Substack. “At each step of the way I was encouraged to ‘be patient,’ do more training, told that ‘things will figure themselves out,’ even when I wanted and could have speedrun through things.”

The average age of a new mom is now 27.5, up from age 21 in 1970. I had no interest in having kids in my early twenties, but there are certainly reasons others might want that: Fertility decreases with age, and some find it easier to keep up with young children when they themselves are younger and have more energy. Others hope for larger families so may need to start conceiving earlier, or may prioritize making sure their own parents have many years to spend with grandkids.

Of course, discussing reproductive timelines is fraught. Having others invoke the fact that women experience a decline in fertility with age feels intrusive and insensitive. And the conversation is even trickier today, when anti-abortion activists are pushing a conservative pro-baby agenda from the highest echelons of government and the Heritage Foundation is putting out literature blaming falling birth rates on too many people going to graduate school. (The evidence for that is very weak.)

Yet it’s precisely in such moments that progressive leaders should offer clear alternatives that both respect women’s autonomy and ensure people can make less constrained choices.

If mainstream feminism ignores the barriers to early parenthood, the right will be all too eager to fill the void. “If the so-called feminists, as long as they play it by the elite rules, refuse to take seriously what [we] can do to support young families, then the right can move in and say, ‘You might as well give up on your stupid ideas and career aspirations,’” marriage historian Stephanie Coontz told me.

Not everyone wants to become a parent, but most women do still say they wish to have children one day. If we’re serious about reproductive justice, then it’s a mistake to ignore how our schools and workplaces have evolved to be broadly hostile to both fertility and parenthood. Having kids at a younger age is not inherently better — but for those who want to do it, the economy shouldn’t be working against them at every step.

Colleges need to support parents, pregnant students, and prospective parents

Many women believe, correctly, that college and graduate education are important paths not only for their own financial well-being, but also to afford raising kids in a country that offers so little........

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