By Tyler Arnold
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 12, 2025 /
07:00 am
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) issued a report that surveyed reproductive-age adults and recommended “reproductive autonomy” as a solution to global fertility rate decline, a solution that received pushback from pro-family experts.
The UNFPA, along with YouGov, surveyed more than 14,000 adults in 14 countries: the United States, India, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Morocco, and South Africa.
The report, “The Real Fertility Crisis: The Pursuit of Reproductive Agency in a Changing World,” found that about 39% of people in the survey who want children said financial limitations affected their family size, with many citing a lack of job security, housing limitations, and child care options as reasons. About 19% of respondents said fears about the future contribute to their expectation of having fewer children. Almost one-third reported they or their partner had an unexpected pregnancy.
About 45% of respondents were not sure whether they would have their desired number of children or did not answer the question. Only 37% responded that they expect to have the amount of children they want.
Nearly one-fourth of respondents said they were unable to fulfill the desire of having a child at a time they desired.
The dissatisfaction and uncertainty reported by many adults about the number of children they will have comes as “global fertility rates are declining,” the report acknowledged. Fertility has drastically declined in the United States and other parts of the Western world for more than half of a century and has also trended downward in other parts of the world in recent decades.
“One in 4 people currently live in a country where the population size is estimated to have already peaked,” it explained. “The result will be societies as we have never seen them before: communities with larger proportions of older persons, smaller shares of young people, and, possibly, smaller workforces.”
UNFPA blames lack of ‘reproductive autonomy,’ prompting pushback
Although the UNFPA recognized concerns about an aging population caused by the lack of children, the report concluded “the real crisis” the findings uncovered is a lack of “reproductive autonomy,” noting that people “are unable to realize their fertility aspirations,” with some having more children than desired and others having fewer.
“We find that when we ask the right questions, we can see both the problem and solution clearly,” the report stated. “The answer lies in reproductive agency, a person’s ability to make free and informed choices about sex, contraception, and starting a family — if, when, and with whom they want.”
To increase “reproductive agency,” the UNFPA report endorsed more sex education in schools, stronger access to contraceptives and abortion, adoptions by homosexual couples, access to assisted reproductive technology, and the dismantling of traditional gender norms.
“There are real risks to treating fertility rates as a faucet to be turned on or off,” the report stated.
The report also criticized campaigns that encourage people to start families. It claimed that tax credits for parents “can offer critical help” but can also stigmatize people who get the benefits and that incentives for larger or smaller families can “lead to constraints on reproductive choice by increasing men’s and women’s vulnerability to coercion from partners, families, or in-laws.”
“What is the alternative to policies seeking to influence fertility rates? Policies that expressly — in letter and spirit — affirm the rights of individual women and men to make their own choices,” the report claimed.
The U.N.’s purported solutions to the fertility crisis have faced pushback.
Rebecca Oas, the director of research for the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), told CNA that “low fertility is an important and timely topic to address” but said the report is, “like all of [the UNFPA] reports, packaged as a way to promote UNFPA’s typical priorities and values.”
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Oas, whose organization promotes pro-life and pro-family values at the global scale, said that UNFPA’s “north star” is “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” including abortion. She said the report ignored the main argument against abortion: opposition to “the taking of innocent human life.”
According to Oas, the report’s arguments were mostly “presented with a presumptive antipathy toward anything that might point toward traditional values, gender norms, and understandings about the family.”
“UNFPA’s definition of what constitutes human flourishing involves the redefinition of the family, the micromanagement of care within the home by the state, and legal, government-subsidized access to contraception and abortion, and for this reason, it falls well short of the ideal,” she said.
Catherine Pakaluk, an economics professor at The Catholic University of America and author of the book “Hannah’s Children: Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth,” bluntly called UNFPA’s conclusions “laughably pathetic.”
“I don’t think they really have a clue why people aren’t choosing children,” Pakaluk told CNA regarding the UNFPA. “… The difficulty is not controlling your fertility — we know how to do that.”
She criticized the report for besmirching traditional family and gender norms, noting that many parts of Europe have done that and “we just don’t see that there’s a rebound in birth rates.”
She said communities that tend to have high birth rates are ones based on “traditional and biblical religion — people who are incredibly religious.”
“People who believe that God loves children … and wants to bless you with children … seem to have a lot more kids,” Pakaluk added.
Although Pakaluk said some people may delay children for financial reasons, she said this also cannot explain lower fertility rates because “as countries have gotten wealthier, people have had fewer children.” She argued it is more about “lifestyle affordability, not cash flow affordability.”
“They are not able to prioritize children in that basket of things they are pursuing,” Pakaluk said.
“I think we can make a difference,” she added. “… The place to make a difference is to work on helping people see the value of children.”
Tyler Arnold is a staff reporter for Catholic News Agency, based in EWTN News’ Washington Bureau. He previously worked at The Center Square and has been published in a variety of outlets, including The Associated Press, National Review, The American Conservative, and The Federalist.
