The question has echoed through every generation since women began stepping into spaces they were once denied: Can women have it all?
The career. The marriage. The children. The lifestyle. The peace of mind.
The Modern Equation of “Having It All”
Today, more women are child-free than ever before. In the United Kingdom, around 50% of women born in 1990 have not had children by age 30, compared to only 38 percent of their mothers’ generation at the same age. Across Europe and the United States, birth rates continue to fall despite access to fertility treatments and family support initiatives, but this is not simply about delayed motherhood. It is about choice, and what those choices reveal about the world women live in now.
Many women are not rejecting motherhood out of rebellion. They are making conscious decisions within a reality that demands constant trade-offs. The cost of living has surged, corporate structures still reward availability over balance, and the emotional toll of raising children, often without shared responsibility, feels heavier than ever.
Beyond the Male Comparison
There is a heavy narrative that everything women achieve is in spite of men. That our liberation is defined only in contrast to patriarchy. But maybe it is time to stop making men the centre of our problem. Not to ignore the historical impact, but to recognise that the battlefield has changed.
Perhaps the question is not about men at all. Perhaps the disconnect lies in evolution, that women have evolved faster than men socially, emotionally, and intellectually. We have adapted to independence, ambition, and the weight of multi-hyphenate lives. Yet many men have not evolved beyond the traditional frameworks of what partnership, ambition, or contribution look like.
So, when fewer women are having children, is it because men have not evolved to match the version of womanhood that now exists? Or because women have finally decided that their fulfilment does not have to be attached to motherhood?
The Cost of Choice
Maybe it is not selfishness. Maybe it is awareness.
Women in the workforce understand the financial and emotional responsibility of raising children in a world that feels increasingly unstable. A world of political tension, wars, economic uncertainty, and generational shifts they no longer recognise. Perhaps many women simply do not want to bring children into a future they are not confident about.
Or perhaps, for the first time, women have met a version of themselves they do not want to lose. The self that values peace, freedom, purpose, and identity outside of family.
So, Can Women Have It All?
Maybe the answer depends on what “all” even means.
Because “having it all,” a thriving career, a devoted partner, time for children, mental stability, and personal freedom, assumes balance in a world that was never built for it. Women are still expected to perform at full capacity in every role: nurturing yet ambitious, feminine yet resilient, available yet independent.
The truth may be that we can have it all, but not all at once, and not without cost. Something will always stretch, bend, or break.
So perhaps the real question is not whether women can have it all, but whether we still want to.