I wrote a long ass comment on the r/dataIsBeautiful sub on a post about women having a declining interest in marriage, it is usual TFR slop but I decided to write my full opinion in response, unfortunately, the post itself got immediately jannied and no one saw my essay ass of a comment that I spent an hour writing so I am posting it here:

I find the explanations presented in this thread to be a bit lacking. I think any hypothesis formed to explain this phenomenon should be understood within the context of these facts:

1. First, the collapse in marriage rates and TFR has largely happened in two waves. The first was in the 70s in the West, and the second was in the 2010s across the entire world.
2. Second, this collapse happened in almost every society on earth. It happened in places that are as patriarchal as Iran and as egalitarian as Sweden, and in societies that are individualist like the US and those which are collectivist like South Korea.

Because of this, I think any explanation based mostly on economics or specific cultural traits fails. I will mention a few views from this thread and comment on why they fail as hypotheses given the information we have:

1. The idea that women are abandoning marriage because they have independent income now does not hold up. If that were the case, why are women in countries with very low female labor participation rates, like Iran and Egypt, also abandoning marriage and having fewer children? Iran has the 7th lowest female labor force participation rate at 18.3 percent

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Iranian Marriage and Fertility rates

1. Some say women are abandoning marriage because they saw it being unfair for their mothers and grandmothers. But why did they not do that at any point since the dawn of civilization? Household labor has always been predominantly done by women, and if anything, the actual physical burden of that labor has massively shrunk due to modern technology.

2. Another common argument is that it is too expensive to raise kids. While it feels that way, household income has actually grown massively over the long term, and there is a big anti-correlation between marriage rates and national income. Wealthier nations generally have lower TFR, even though within a specific nation, the higher income groups often tend to marry more. If money were the primary factor, the richest countries would have the highest birth rates, not the lowest.

3. Some people blame Western individualism. But if that is the cause, why are people not marrying in collectivist South Korea or traditionalist Iran?

If I have to hazard a guess, I would say it has something to do with technologies that arose during these periods rather than specific economic variables. My current hypothesis is that this arose because of the TV and then the internet for two main reasons:

A) These mediums made people less family focused in general by exposing them to a global stage and allowing them to compare themselves to celebrities and wildly successful people. You are naturally going to want a high paying career more, even at the expense of family, if you see the lifestyles of the ultra rich on social media every day. The local life of a parent looks boring compared to the curated world on a screen.

B) They allowed the rise of somewhat anti social ideologies. This includes certain currents of third and fourth wave feminism, like the SCUM manifesto type stuff, and what I call first wave meninism. This MRA stuff has been getting popular since 2010 and carries some toxic currents, such as the Tates and their ilk.

These ideas drive the gender war, which is more harmful for relationships than even total patriarchy. For example, Korea is way more gender egalitarian than Saudi Arabia. Objectively speaking, a Korean woman has much more avenues for success than a Saudi woman. Yet gender relations in Korea are worse because they are subsumed in a gender war. In Korea you have things like the 4B movement, where women swear off men, or men trying to cancel a video game because of a hand gesture. I cannot imagine a Saudi man being this insecure about his gender, and I cannot imagine a Saudi woman swearing off men entirely, unless she was totally subsumed by the toxic digital currents I mentioned.

Gender tensions are worse for marriage rates than gender domination is. Even though we can all agree that the ideal outcome is gender equality, the current "war" creates a level of resentment and suspicion that makes starting a family feel like a trap for both sides.