Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Fertility Rates ≠ Infertility: Reproductive Choices Aren’t a Crisis

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

“U.S. fertility rate hits an all-time low — less than 1.6 kids per woman…”  Sounds like an emergency that women are solely responsible for, right? Not so fast.In this episode, we unzip the nuance behind those sensationalist headlines, breaking down the difference between infertility and national fertility rates — ahem, birth rates — and why conflating the two isn’t just misleading, it’s harmful for everyone.We explore how the media often pins declining birth rates on women, while ignoring the real drivers behind reproductive decisions: restrictive laws, lack of parental leave, unaffordable childcare, rising maternal mortality, and — let’s be real — the fact that some people just don’t want kids And that’s valid.Join us as we unzip what a headline about “fertility rate” really means — and why it’s time to stop blaming women for a trend that reflects a much bigger, more complex pictureIf you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to have the kinds of real, woo, unfiltered conversations about sex, sexuality, and relationships that most people are too afraid or too embarrassed to start. No shame, no judgment, just open, honest talk. So zip down and let's get candid. And oh, by the way, did you know you can watch us now too? That's right. Unzipping Taboos has officially gone to video. So if you've ever wondered what it looks like when Dr. Sue raises an eyebrow or gets mad at a term that she's always hated in this space, which is super fun, or you see me cringe or go, oh, what? Mid-myth busting, now's your chance.

you'll find us wherever you stream your podcasts and you can now watch us on spotify or youtube so with all of that housekeeping out of the way today's episode is going to be centered i'm just going to kind of phrase it around words matter and a little bit more before people yeah of course of course but yeah words matter and really what it's about is the fertility rate, the US fertility rate. And we'll get into a little bit about how we got to this episode topic today. But first, Dr. Sue. Hi, Charlie. There you are. How you doing? I'm doing well. I really wish we'd been recording before we started. I know we had a really good conversation about this.

Yeah. Yeah. But okay, now we get to do it for everybody. Yes. but before we do would you like to give our listeners a little bit about your background before we get started no yes you would maybe one episode we switch and i give information about you and you give information about me try that for those of you who are who are relatively new to the show some of you have heard this before for those of you relatively new to the show i i hate this because i really just kind of want to dive in um but as several of my friends have yelled at me in real life for that I need to spend a little time here. So I'm going to spend a little time

talking about it, but if you're curious what that was all about. So I am Dr. Sue. I have a PhD in human sexuality education, which has led me to work primarily in academia, which isn't bad, but it was never a full enough picture for me. So I do teach academia. I do teach human sexuality classes along with other health classes my first two degrees are in health I've here we'll throw make sure I throw it in I've written co-written a textbook on human sexuality which you shouldn't really run out and grab because it's a textbook but hopefully one day a popular a pop culture book will come out but on top of that I realized that I wanted to do a lot more and serve the larger community rather than just the people sitting in front of me so now you can find me

all over instagram social media youtubes the youtubes that just sounded so old um as hey dr sue so folks will submit question anonymous sex questions to me once a week i answer them i also have spoken nationally and internationally on a variety of health and sexuality topics and i think that's more than i ever actually give in terms of i know that last part was a beautiful edition i've included in rolling stone which i said to some young folks you know like the band I'm like how do you know the band but not the magazine why would the band quote me anyway so yeah so that's me in a nutshell um but I do not do this show alone because otherwise it would just be me talking to myself which is my normal day but we're not doing the show and and Charlie's

here to really kind of bring a whole nother level to it so for those of you who are not familiar with charlie uh charlie is our curious co-host who is always ready to dive into all those topics that we as a culture consider to be taboo um she's also supposed to keep me on task which i think sometimes i'm paying attention and just really we're tasking her more and more with like asking the questions we think you would ask if you were in this situation which is a really kind of heavy lift for her but she does it beautifully so but now you get to talk more about you i mean no more needs to be said no Dr. Sue and I have been friends for many many years um and we found when we met that almost immediately we dove into all sorts of candid um taboo topics uh what

one not once but when I learned about what Dr. Sue does for a living um I've mentioned this in a couple of episodes sometimes she gets this little glint in her eyes when she feels pretty safe to say it kind of slightly unfiltered and I saw that glint and she said it and I didn't flinch and I think that signaled something to Dr. Sue and we have been friends ever since that conversation in that hallway and I am just someone that really finds it important I'm gonna I'm gonna switch up by phrasing than what I usually use. I find it important to question and to challenge taboos, especially as a woman in society, especially as a woman in American society, because that's the only experience I have, but I can see worldwide what's happening. And it is, to me, important

to question, to challenge, to live as unashamedly as possible in my skin, in my humanity as a woman and my femininity and challenge some of those things that we're conditioned to believe that women are supposed to the little tiny box that women are supposed to operate in and feel comfortable in. So I'm curious, I, as Dr. C mentioned, I, and I just, I am always observing how we are all trying to do this human experience and navigate this human experience. coexisting together because whether or not you like some of the people around you that you're coexisting together so you got to figure it out so that's me can i talk about how we got to the topic do you want to me too i don't want to steal the stuff so the way we come up with

topics um some of them are generated by you folks and if you have not yet looked at the link in the description there is a link for you to send topic ideas and don't worry if it's not a whole show um maybe we can do pieces of things um so more and more actually we're getting our topics from viewers so thank you for those of you sorry listeners consumers viewers and listeners now viewers and listeners um so thank you for those of you who've been contributing for others it's conversations we're having in real life for people going oh you should talk about this so still user generated consumer generate i don't know what's this you people generated audience generated oh there we go that's a much better

but every once in a while there's a topic where i'm like i want to talk about this i want to talk i'm either getting questions from reporters or i'm getting questions from students or it's just coming up in a lot of conversation and and a lot of times it's me going we need to talk about this like this sorry state of sex ed we we need to talk about this but this one was charlie generated it was so i got a message from charlie with with a headline that pissed her off quite a bit and that started a conversation and then we decided we were going to make it this the topic of this conversation but do you want to do you want to tell us what it was and why I pissed you off yeah absolutely um so I'm sure as many of us do we scroll through our instagrams our tiktoks or

or preferred social media, dopamine hit, daily dopamine hit, or hourly or whatever it is. But as I was scrolling through this one day, there was a post, it was a screenshot of a post and a response to the post from NBC News. And it read the fertility rate in the US dropped to an all-time low in 2024 with less than 1.6 kids per woman net new federal data shows and i had an immediate kind of gut reaction to that phrasing and then the response to this was you know i'm starting to think overturning roe v wade isn't going how y'all thought it would uh-huh so but i really took issue with the phrasing of that headline and and we dr sue before we hit record um we're having really kind of fascinating discussion about this and the

reaction it elicited in me and then um dr sue's reaction when i sent her the the message with it and then the conversation um during in that thread and then today and just conversations we've had since i've sent it so where would you like to start unpacking this so so in case anyone's curious i i got sent the message and it was i hate this and i'm like it was very therapist-y like oh how would you change it what would make it better for you because for me i didn't have as much of a visceral reaction to it i had also and i my problem is also like i've seen it now again and again and again getting into the issues we were talking about sometimes when we do our pre-show we're like oh we're never gonna phrase it that way again we wish

we recorded it and so much came out in this one that was definitely one we wish we recorded because what we started getting into as someone who reads research when i saw fertility u.s fertility rate i didn't bat an eyelash because for me that's how we report it we report it as birth rate we report it as u.s fertility rate and then in talking to charlie and and then also talking to other people in my life who are educated humans and i'm not trying to poke it uneducated the reason i point that out is that there's an assumption about what the words mean and what consumers understand yes um but some educated people that i know would then follow up with oh i saw this thing why do you think women can't get pregnant i'm like whoa whoa whoa there is a difference between

fertility rates and infertility the problem is the way it's being presented and i think what pissed you off yeah it was i shouldn't actually speak for you do you want to tell us why you were so pissed off so i send the screenshot and the message underneath it uh is this phrasing infuriates me and i said why yeah how would you rephrase it was that what i wrote yeah i was really in teacher mode that day you were you were and i was impressed but it was also like oh she's she's momming me right now because that's something my mom would say too But no, it was great because I am who I am partly because of my mother. So my response was, I wouldn't use the word fertility, something like average family has

dropped to 1.6 children per household. This headline perpetuates that women are wholly responsible for the amount of children in the world and that it's our fertility, women's fertility, that's the problem. And so that was my reaction. And it was coming from this place of and part of the conversation that we had before we hit record was there's Dr. Sue, who is in academia and reads research articles and there's scientific research. And that is very much the word that they should use. Yeah, we even looked at it before we got on here. We looked at the actual publication they had gotten the data from and it used the term birth rate and fertility rate.

Yeah. And the issue that I took with this phrasing was that it was coming to the general population, the general consumer, people, many of whom are not in scientific research industries or academia industries in this way where you're constantly reading peer-reviewed articles and results. And it's a very different way of writing and presenting information versus this and that distinction. And to me, this is also part of the discussion that we had, the onus isn't on science and academia to say, hey, media, when we use this term, this is what it would mean to the general reader. It is on the media. Like, to me, that's a journalistic integrity thing. You know you have a wide demographic of educational background, life experience, different parts of the country, and so it really was that phrasing. So for me, it would have probably been more accurate to the general consumer to read the U.S. birth rate has dropped or or as I said, you know, the average family household has gone from this to one point six children per household or whatever. So so that's.

And it infuriates me. and then another thing because of the client especially because of the climate we're currently in yeah that's why I had that reaction to me 10 5 10 years ago I won't say 5 um but 10 15 years ago I don't think I would have had that reaction but I know for me moving through society right now I am hyper aware and hypersensitive to, to things that give a wrong impression that put me in danger. And this is, this is, this contributes. Yeah. This contributes because it said per the women's fertility. Right. And so there's like five things, sorry. And I was looking up, which I usually don't do. So if you're new to the show, welcome or newer to the show,

i tend to make up statistics and own that i make up all statistics i usually try to ballpark them and that's just because statistics change so often and i don't really need to get stuck in is it 54 or 55 but while you were talking i was double checking the majority of the country reads somewhere they usually say around the seventh or eighth grade reading level and what i wanted to what i want to make sure i actually got the statistic right was that 54 of americans read below the sixth grade reading level which is why i'm not sure how we get an average around eight but i'm sure there's some math there i don't understand so if if the majority of your country is reading below an eighth grade reading level and and we can't so i struggle with this because i i

do work with with teacher kids students who want to become teachers i use the word kids a lot when i talk about my students i do work with students who want to become teachers and i do a lot of work with think about the grade level you're aiming at and and it's not just the grade you're teaching but think about the parent reading level like you cannot assume anyone has above an eighth grade reading level who's an adult and they get really frustrated with well how do I tailor my message and like well that's your job as an educator is to tailor your message and to make sure it's getting across in a manner that fits your audience I don't know anything about journalism so I don't know if they're thinking about that the same way and it is really easy to confuse fertility with

infertility and I and that one little word I think that's what's and I know the people who are asking me questions like well what's wrong with women I'm like no no no that's an infertility rate this is this is how many people are giving birth which is more decision-based for many women and for many men um so i think part of it is just not understanding who you're writing for but again i let me own this any journalists who are getting pissed at me i know nothing about what you're trained for as journalists but but it is very easy to confuse those topics and i i do think that sometimes it's your job to go above and beyond what you're reading in a news brief from an out from from the government and saying okay well this is what it says but how do i actually want to write

it because when we do talk about birth rates we usually talk about per couple and that headline you read me was definitely per woman now i have issues with saying per couple because some women choose to be single parents we also have people being raised in groups of two you know not just couples but also in groups of three or co-parent so many different scenarios like i don't want to get locked in per couple but that specifically said per woman and to me that that was the biggest offense but i didn't want to bring it up because you were already so big well that was the offense that I took right was that it was specifically per woman it wasn't the fertility it was the the knowing or having an assumption I'm all own having an assumption that the general reader of

that headline was going to equate it with women's infertility and there's no that that was the issue that I took okay it was exactly that it was that it was it only said women but I but knowing now knowing that that article that research that's how they phrase that right it's live births per woman uh it's live births hold I have it open normally I don't okay from one screen we had this is one of those I definitely wanted to have everything open and ready to go uh la la la la la la so i am reading i actually smell if it says per one yes it does say per and that and that's because women are the ones who give birth so they're saying who are pushing out the babies yeah

no i just want to make sure it didn't because you used to say we used to talk about it per couple because when we look at the reason i don't know if you want to get into this why we're suddenly so concerned that it's drop below two I don't know if you want to hop on to that that was one why not okay so so one of the things if you're reading it and so I started reading sources I wouldn't normally read because I really wanted to see how this was being painted you didn't realize how much homework you had given me by having that reaction but I started reading articles I normally wouldn't read from sources I wouldn't normally read just to get a better picture was it was it just this author was it just this news outlet and there was a lot of it that was about

women and and there was one that finally nailed what i think a lot of people were quote of yeah if you're looking you get to see the air quotes if you're not air quotes concerned about is that once you drop below two it means that you're not having population growth because if you have and couples don't through moms and dads and i don't want to get into that because that's way too much in the weeds today but but acknowledging different episodes right you may have a woman who is impregnated by a man she's not involved with or may never know who it is thanks to sperm banks but when we're talking about growth it's if you're below two because you're thinking it's a woman and a man so if they have two kids they're essentially keeping population stable if it's above two then

we're seeing population growth as soon as you drop below two it's no longer population growth and the only way to grow a population in a country i don't know how many people i'm going to trigger with this one the only way to grow a population in a country when your birth rate has dropped below two is to rely on immigration not everyone can see your face you have to explain the face well she's giving a face i am giving a face i am giving a very yeah no shit yeah and immigrants are not the problem no in many ways they're a solution to a country that's not that many countries rely on right i want to i want to point that out that many countries rely on right and so that's why it's being painted in this instead of saying hey look women are actually

thinking about whether or not they want to be parents couples are thinking about whether or not they want to be child free or if they want to be parents instead of celebrating how much power this gives individual women which is terrifying for some people but also giving couples the like the kudos for being like oh so there's a couple you've decided you don't want to do this good for you for making that choice that's best for you instead it's painted as this horrible thing that's happening and while we're not really going to blame women by outright saying those those women who are choosing not to have it we're going to make it sound like it's a problem with their bodies and then somehow we're gonna we're gonna come back to you this is bad because it's

opening our doors to immigration which right now some portion of this country is terrified of even though it's been what makes our population great but so yeah so that's where that two is that's why everyone's freaking out about below two because now we're not having population growth we're having population decline yeah the other piece of this that i thought was interesting that you pointed out um as we were preparing was the thing that gets lost in this part having this discussion focusing on it in this way is the teenage birth rate yeah the teen birth rate's been going down for like decades i mean we've had a couple of years where it's been like whoop just kidding but the teen birth rate we still have one of the highest teen birth rates um the teen birth

rates have been going down and it's so funny because i don't think anyone's like oh the population you know fertility rates are going down let's see an increase in teen pregnancy not that there's anything wrong with teen parents because i know some who are fabulous parents and I know people who are older who are crappy parents so we're not trying to say the teen pregnancy in and of itself is a problem but as a culture we've kind of labeled it as one the age group where we're seeing the drop is women age 20 to 39 below that above that remaining study it's women in age group who are making decisions that are best for them in a country that is taking away their rights so yeah but yeah teen birth rates are actually

going down which most of the time we'd have great headlines about i haven't seen a single one about it yeah well and to to go back to that what you just said about that the demographic um 20 28 20 to 39 20 to 39 making a decision while decisions are being taken taken away i mean i don't want to say correlation is causation but but but there is but there's got to be something there right the other thing is that the part of the conversation that also got lost is that this deep piece has been happening consistently for about five years we had a little bit of bump in in birth rate and i'm going to use the term birth rate you had a little bit of bump in birth rate around 2020 to 2021 not as big as everyone was expecting because of covid everyone thought it

was going to be like huge baby you know it was going to be the second baby boom the second baby boom and instead people were like i don't like you like i'm in stuck in a house all day and i don't want you to touch me breathe that way that's gross we actually saw a huge divorce increase as soon as people were able to safely get out and get divorced because some people were in unsafe situations but that was like a one percent i mean i may be making that number up it's below two i don't know if it was a one point something this is how i generalized statistics um somewhere around a one percent ish bump but this decline has been happening for years so the fact that all of a sudden that it's this low and it may be because we've dropped below two but the fact that we're

telling women they can't control their bodies we're taking away rights we're having national arguments about this and now we're going to put out headlines to target women this has been happening it's it's not like women just woke up last year and was like i'm not having a baby it's been happening it's the fact that how we're presenting it now and how we're tailoring that presentation that's i think pissing both of us off yeah just a little bit just a little bit well it goes to what i talk about in often is understanding what you're consuming too being analytical about about where that that i mean that headline that was nbc news and you know in this climate reliable ish um i i don't have much faith in modern media

um but anyway it is it's about understanding the motivations of these organizations because these are private corporations they are driven by revenue and that revenue is generated by ads because they can't rely on a subscription model anymore and so that i think that's the that's exactly it that's why it's upsetting is because in the climate that we're in with everything that has been changing around women's health and abortion access um it very much seemed a way to play into well this is why we need all of this this is why he's doing what he's doing and why i think he's so great and that he is the person in the white house um with orange hair as i say with great pink hair um orange skin orange skin orange skin

yellow hair that's right anyway but that that's really it and i think the other part so peeling or going up a little bit to a higher level with it is the pieces that get lost with this kind of messaging and general public buy-in to ascribing a responsible gender for the decline is that there are other issues that are actually impacting infertility and impact and i know that male infertility has like that is what would the term be risen yes okay it's on the rise yeah um and so so we don't so we draw attention and resources away from things that could um that could help infertility issues yeah yes okay i wasn't sure if i was on there i i wanted to catch myself before i went i just started meandering

can i the teacher in me wants to define infertility yes please yeah um so infertility there is an actual definition but for those of you who have dealt with the beginning of infertility or have worked with infertility clinics you know this is not a hard and fast rule so essentially infertility is when you have tried to get pregnant like really given it that good college try um but you've been trying to have get pregnant unprotected sexual intercourse for at least a year and there's there's no pregnancy for those of you who are like i'm going through this and i can't wait a year like it's driving me nuts um there are infertility clinics that will work with you before that but not after like a month like you can't just be like oh I had sex twice I didn't

get pregnant I'm infertile I had a student I had what was a community participant she came up to me after a presentation she was 16 and I'm sorry if this is getting off topic but this is why the difference between the word fertility is and infertility matters so uh she comes up to me after a presentation and she goes I'm I'm infertile I'm like whoa that's that's a really big diagnosis at 16 like how are you how who made this diagnosis because I I would have concerns about doctors saying that and she looks at me in that way that only 16 year olds can when they think you're stupid and she's like I had sex all last month and I can't get pregnant and I didn't get pregnant so obviously I'm infertile and I'm like that's that's not it at all that's not how that works and I'm

also concerned about whether or not you're doing this to try to reach a goal and like if you're putting yourself at risk and things like that yeah um but we don't we very rarely define the term infertile and so we use this term infertility and then we don't really define it and then we throw out the word fertility rate and people are like oh yeah like what's the fuck is the difference like isn't it the same thing and they're not so infertility is when you've been trying for a while to get pregnant and can't and whether it's six months or a year I mean technically it's a year but again some clinics will work with you before that when I first started my education way back in the day I joke with my students I'm like way back before

electricity and they don't bat an eyelash I'm like how old do you think I am um but way back when google was just a baby google did not exist back in the day this was before the internet when I was in college um I just kind of aged myself there a little a lot anyway when I was going through my education it was always like oh well if a couple can't get pregnant we need to talk about what's wrong with the woman because we've always ascribed it to a problem with women and so now we don't I don't do that when I talk and more and more I see like it takes two to make a baby and when we're seeing a couple with infertility issues we need to look at both of them and when you make a statement like women can't get pregnant I did see one that almost like I was almost sure

that was the next word I was going to read they didn't say can't they said aren't but the whole tone it's like oh women just can't get pregnant we're taking away education like you said the opportunity to do education for men we are seeing an increase in infertility in men but when you label it as a women's issue it makes them even more reluctant to go get that checked out or to even understand that they have a role in this so yeah i just need to sorry so i get so it talks a little bit about infertility and and then the word the word fertility and the it just really is the conflation for me

mm-hmm and most people don't know and like i said people were coming up to me afterwards and being like what's wrong with women like is there something in the water and i'm like right now can we not talk about things in the world like yeah but but it's a you know for some of them it was a true concern that there was something going on that was impacting women's bodies and i would very depending on who i was talking to because i always have to judge my space sometimes my answer is oh what's happening to u.s bodies is u.s legislation we're we're taking away women's ability to make decisions about their body so for them some of them we are seeing more and more women choosing to be celibate and abstaining i mean that's where

this air quote male infertility male infertility male loneliness epidemic comes from is that women are choosing not to engage with men because they are finding there's nothing in it for them and not just as a partner but they don't necessarily feel the need some of them some of them don't necessarily feel that having sex with a man is worth all the things that come with it and so they're choosing to abstain because for some of them they live in states where there's a very real fear of if i get pregnant and i don't want to be i have no options or if i get pregnant and i have complications i will die right because i cannot get the care that i need because abortion is illegal right because of where i'm at in my term right or that we i don't even want to say this

that loud i'm a little afraid of saying this some people are referring to women as host bodies have you heard this i have not i wish i could say i was surprised i know sorry i didn't mean to do that to you yeah i'm glad i was sitting down right clutch the pearls there were so so i didn't hit my head from falling over from the shock so the problem is when we when you when you term a woman and only her ability to give birth to a baby and don't care what happens to her and women are like wait i don't have to have sex this isn't worth it for me i want to work on my career i want to work on myself i want to work on my sanity and not welcome all this into my world that's one of the reasons why i think i mean we're never gonna know

to live like we're never gonna know without a shadow of a doubt why the the rates are going down the birth rates are going down but i'm pretty sure it's because there are a lot of women who are trying very hard right now not to get pregnant because it is fear it's a fear state for them to do that and so when people are like oh what's wrong with women i'm like u.s legislation that's what's wrong yeah it's really simple i can do that sometimes becoming pregnant becomes a death sentence it really and we did an episode on that recently with the maternal mortality rates go check out that episode if you haven't already the u.s has the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialized world so like even if you do get pregnant even if it's something you're like

joyful like yes i met this person and i want to be with them and now we're gonna have a baby and you're gonna die in the process um that's a very real fear for a lot of women in this country and for some of them it's not worth it we also have women who are able to make that decision in a way that they haven't been in the past that that their role was always like you're gonna get married and you're gonna have babies 2.4 of them and a white picket fence and a dog and I think a cat now is technically part of that um but now as they should be absolutely um but but now women are like hold up I don't really want to be a parent it's not something I've ever wanted to do and I know some people like oh the the birth rate's going down instead of looking

at this as women are making decisions to not fill a role they don't want to fill and I always get confused when people are like well you're supposed to have a baby I'm like but don't you want a baby being raised in a family that where it's loved and wanted and not just uh i check the box or i'm supposed to do this right so so part of its u.s part of its uh legislation part of it is that women now have the power to be like this isn't what i want and and the ability to say this isn't what i want i i don't think i'd be a good mother i don't want children like why would we ever want someone who says i don't want children and be like tough be a mom that's not that's a recipe for disaster so i think there's a few things going on there um and men also are starting to

be like i don't necessarily want to be a parent either it does it takes two and there are some men who never wanted children um who are now like oh you don't want children either okay cool cool we're good let's go on vacation um and so you know 15 years ago do you remember the term dink when it first came out no double income no kids yeah no yeah double income no kids there was one if like you were a pet mom or dad but there was a whole movement probably about 10-15 years ago it was like people were proud of being dinks like we have two incomes we have no kids we can do whatever we want we go on vacation we buy these beautiful cars blah blah blah and people are like yeah more power to you what did you think was going to happen in the birth right

which is great and i'm not showing saying this part people shouldn't have been like you know enjoying their decision but now now now that we're looking at women as as being part of a system and only having one responsibility of having kids now we're not so okay with it but we're not going after the men in that situation which is yeah yeah dinks i don't i'm surprised you didn't hear maybe it was an east coast term i don't know maybe yeah maybe yeah i think that's uh that's it's so important to to understand and i'm glad that we're having this conversation around the vocabulary um because that's one of the reasons why we wanted to have this podcast was to when we see something like this that's like i i charlie as a general

population person this hits me in a certain kind of way and dr sue's like but they're not wrong they use the right things like okay but but i think that's so important especially you know my focus is always on our social conditioning and and what we're consuming and being analytical as analytical as you can with what we what you're consuming the mess where the message is coming from how it's being phrased how it's being sold to you essentially um so if we could just go through it kind of so fertility means the fertility rate is the number of breaths per rates of women i'm not sorry i'm getting caught up in the like the actual definition when we look at i'm going to stop using the term fertility rate and start saying when you hear

fertility rate i want you to think birth rate yes so when we're talking about fertility rates we're really talking about births we're not talking about pregnancies because not all pregnancies wind up as births. But we are talking about number of births. When we talk about infertility, we are talking, let me make sure I'm saying that again, infertility, one word, we are talking about an inability to get pregnant after trying to and not being able to. So for those of you watching, I'm kind of giggling to myself because infertility makes me think of the scene from Three Amigos. If you're old enough, you know, you know he's not only famous he's infamous but anyway yeah no I just want but yeah so fertility

rates I want you to stop thinking when you hear the term fertility rate I want you to start thinking birth rate because that's if it's coming from the U.S. government that's what they're talking about they're talking about the number of births per or rates per however they're breaking down those numbers but infertility is about I wanted to get pregnant and I can't or I want to get someone pregnant than they can. Well, and I think that's where that confusion comes in, because it's a positive and a negative prefix, right? So if there's infertility, infertility, there's infertility, then obviously, fertility means you are a bountiful provider of life and contributor to that bounty of life giving um and so i think that's why it

matters and i think that's really great that you put it that way and so if you are reading things and you see fertility followed by the word rate just switch your brain and know that they're talking about birth rate and not a gender's ability to have babies i mean baked into that partly yeah i mean but that's just a component and it's not it's the fertility rate is there's so many things going into that rather than women's infertility is rising yes women women are becoming barren is what they really in was the implication yeah that's what some outlets yep that's what some outlets and i think that's what some of the news the news outlets are trying to get you to fear is that perpetuate to justify certain agendas right because we have any other

contributors and donors and i i don't yes all of that sorry um i don't want to get into it but there is a religious overtone that we are failing you know to like reproduce i don't know anything about religion i mean i'm very actually i'm not sure i know more than the general public i think um but there's part of it you know the whole idea of be fruitful and multiply so now some people are being like this is a sign that you know god is upset with us and we're not doing what we're supposed to do so many air quotes for those of you who can't see it but it gives people hopping all over the place but like you said if i want to scare people and get people to do things tying into some of that is how i'm gonna do it right to me i read it and and it's so funny

because i had to reread it like a couple of times i said like why is she pissed um and that's why i that's really legitimately i asked you i wasn't trying to be in teacher mode no um i didn't take it that way okay so because for me i'm like oh yeah no not a surprise it's been going down for a while like why where were they why didn't they report it last year or the year before that well and then there's that yeah like why what like why is this suddenly being presented this way and then you take a look at all the other news around women and women's rights and women's bodies and this idea that we have to pay like there are people who want to pay people to get pregnant there's one more piece of this that we haven't talked about which is well you know we're trying

to get this idea of like oh women should be please note air quotes god it's really air Cody episode I feel like we haven't done in a while um the idea that okay you want me to get pregnant you want me to have babies but you're not going to support me afterwards you're not going to give me maternal maternity leave that's in any way shape or form decent or on par with the rest of the industrialized world paternity leave is still a joke across a lot of parts of the United States you're not going to give me financial support if I need it you want me to send my kid to a school where they may not be able to be safe and part of that is bullying and part of that is gun violence like so you want me to bring a baby into the world but then you're not

going to help as a community we're not going to create a safe environment for it like where's we haven't even started scratching that itch yet yeah and that that is playing into some people's decisions like why would I want to bring a baby into this world right now with all the things that are happening and so i feel like it's safer because i do know that one of the things they're saying that certain types of men on social media are saying it's like oh if a woman tells you that she doesn't want to get have babies have you seen these clips that it's a red flag yes because she's selfish yes instead of saying i have a story about that oh go for it then well instead of just saying like oh women have decided that babies aren't right for them which is fine maybe that's putting

them first but again why do we want women who don't want to be parents why we want to make them parents and make them miserable and maybe not make great homes like you go ahead to your story oh I I got I got called selfish I forget how this conversation happened but I was checking in for a doctor's appointment no and the the receptionists they were talking about their kids and I was like god bless you guys for having them they're like you're not gonna have kids because I was younger and I was like no fuck and they called me selfish I said yeah I mean like I'll own it if that's your assessment because I I see you every couple of months right a few times a year whatever but I did find that kind of fascinating in my charlie way of like huh interesting yeah because i feel

like i'm making a smart decision for me for not only for me and there were the pieces that you were talking about like why would i want to bring a child into this current environment and the future environment why do i want to burden and and this is not this this is my process i don't want to give our listeners the thought that i i am demeaning or dismissing your that's absolutely not true because i adore my nieces my nephews my my cousins all of that um children are great if that's your journey right and my brain goes in a different way and i just so it was not a decision for me yeah and and we know when we talk to women that a lot of them who are parents are like question whether or not that was the right thing and then we're also looking in

a culture where with the divorce rate being as high as it is and then you know you hear these stories about not being able to get child support and like or women who are staying in marriages that aren't very happy and they're essentially single moms while in a relationship we haven't painted a great picture for supporting mothers or fathers the fact that we don't give paternity leave just drives me nuts oh that's insane i have another story about that but but if we really want to look at why at why the the birth rate's going down and again do we really question it's a bad thing and if you're anti-immigration of course you think it's a bad thing because we want to keep our numbers up um but if you're really looking at the birth rate as a bad thing instead

of looking at it as a like oh why are being women being so selfish we should really take a look at why do women not feel like it's a good place to bring children into but that holding up that mirror is really hard to do so instead we just blame because we're already blaming women for everything else yeah loneliness epidemic which i fucking hate that term that's a follow-up episode to that topic yeah we did there's an episode on that too by the way if you're just checking us out um but we're blaming women for the state of decay of everything in this country instead of saying what are we doing to make women be in the situation where they're making choices that i don't want to say are bad but they're just different choices we don't want them to make

right is what it is yeah so well and i as as we begin to wrap up i think part part of it i just want to throw out is maybe one of the most maternal decisions to make is recognizing in yourself, this is not the journey for me. That is the most empathetic decision analysis that someone can make about themselves and, and recognizing their potential impact on another human and their experience in their life. Yeah. And sometimes, and I, and I, also add that you may not always know whether or not you want to be a parent

and then you become one and you're like oh my god I'm so happy I became a parent and that I'm on this journey that's great that is fantastic and I'm very happy for you and your child, children but there's space for

both of these things and no one gender is responsible for the drop in the birth rate yep so on that note any other thoughts dr sam i've had a couple of thoughts that are running through my head but now i feel like i feel like that was a good the thing that keeps popping in my head if you've ever read the book eat pray love there's a scene where she's questioning whether or not she ever wants to be a parent and one of the i think it was one of the other women in the story says becoming parents kind of like getting a face tattoo you gotta

really want it like and I think that in a lot of ways women have never felt like they have that power and so for me watching the birth rate go down for years because it's like no it's not a one-year drop like this has been happening over time for me what I'm seeing is a lot of women saying I want to feel I want to make the right decision for me I don't want a face tattoo I don't want a face tattoo I I don't I don't think this is something I'd be good at I don't feel safe doing it I'm not in a safe relationship where I can ensure the safety of myself and my child or my children um i don't get paid enough for this especially with the cost of child care oh my god some of my friends recently had babies and they were telling me about the cost of child care and

it's ridiculous why we haven't created a we haven't really created a space where the average american citizen can thrive because we've set up systems that don't pay us what we're supposed to pay them we don't give them leave the way they're supposed to get leave we don't give financial i don't want to say support because not everybody needs it but there's costs that go with this and we've set up a we've set up a world where it may not be the best thing for them right now and so i see it as like wow couples women men couples are making decisions that feel better for them instead of women are the root of all evil and causing the decline of the country yes watch that be the soundbite that gets repeated

yeah yeah and then we saying yes yeah that is not women are not that's not what happened that is not the context that is not that is not the context although we never get a chance for about it yeah right right um well on that note everyone i want to thank you for joining us today on a on another episode of unzipping taboos candid conversations about sex if you like what you heard and saw now that you can see us don't forget to like subscribe leave a comment on this episode if you have some thoughts that you want to share leave a review you can leave comments on any other episode that you are interacting with and if you know somebody who's ready to unzip a few taboos with us or might need to hear this conversation feel free to share

it. Now that we're on video, also feel free to wave to us. We might not see it, but we'll love the vibe. And if you've got a question or topic ideas that you want us to dive into, please head to the link in the episode description and we want to hear what's on your mind and we might be able to dive into it. As Dr. Sue said at the top of this episode, many of our topics have come from audience suggestions. So thank you to those of you who have given us ideas. So we also want to give a very special shout out to Ali O'Brien for incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Ali. And until next time, keep the conversation going. Keep unzipping those taboos and everyone take care.

Thanks for watching!