Staff Reports
The clip of Megyn Kelly interviewing Dr. Leonard Sax is doing what good TV does — it points to a real problem and makes you look up from your phone long enough to worry. Dr. Sax, a physician, psychologist, and author, warns that fewer young Americans are forming stable couples and that this falling “coupling” rate is helping push U.S. fertility down. He’s right to make people uncomfortable. This is not just private drama; it is a national problem with social and economic fallout.
Why coupling matters — and what the data say
When fewer people pair up, fewer babies get born. Demographers and outlets like the Financial Times have shown that falling coupling — meaning less marriage and long-term cohabitation among young adults — explains a lot of the drop in births we keep hearing about. The CDC/NCHS reports also show a pattern: younger women are having fewer babies while older women are having more, which sounds like delay but also signals fewer stable relationships among young adults. This isn’t just bad news for family photo albums; it matters for schools, for communities, and for the economy.
The biology angle: sperm counts and reproductive health
We also can’t ignore the biology. Big meta-analyses, led by researchers such as Levine and colleagues, found long‑term declines in sperm counts across large parts of the West. That’s not a one‑year fluke — it’s a decades‑long trend that makes reproduction harder even when two people want to start a family. So while culture and money shape choices, biology may be quietly making it harder for some couples to succeed. Policy that pretends biology doesn’t matter is policy that will be surprised when the baby bump never comes.
Money, marriage markets, and who’s really earning more
Some pundits claim “women under 35 now earn more than men,” as if that explains everything. The truth is messier. Women have surged in college completion, and in some places and groups young women do out‑earn their male peers. But national BLS data still show men earn more on median in most age bands. The more useful point is this: for many young men, good jobs and steady income are scarcer than they used to be. Add dating apps that encourage choice overload, rising housing and childcare costs, and changing expectations about relationships, and you get a recipe for fewer stable pairings. Blaming one side won’t fix the market.
So what should we do?
Conservative common sense says fix incentives and strengthen institutions that support family formation. That means policies that help young men get useful skills and steady work — apprenticeships, trade school access, and a culture that prizes responsibility over victimhood. It means family-friendly tax and housing policies that make starting a household less impossible. It means admitting that social media and hookup culture changed the dating game and asking how public policy can support stable commitments rather than reward endless casual choice. We can bemoan the decline or we can nudge culture and policy back toward stable families. I vote for action — with fewer lecterns and more practical help for families.
