Every few months, a government discovers that its birth rate is falling and reacts as if it has just found a crack in the foundation. The proposed fixes start to blur together — cash bonuses, tax credits, childcare promises, marriage-friendly messaging and, in some places, a sharp moral shift that asks women to absorb more risk with less autonomy. China’s latest move is so blunt it reads like satire — a 13 per cent sales tax on contraceptives beginning Jan. 1, paired with a value-added tax exemption for childcare services.
I do not think the problem is that governments are noticing a demographic shift. The problem is that they keep misdiagnosing what people are responding to. Yes, finances are an immense barrier, but another major challenge is relational. Parenthood is building a life around the unknown, and right now, a lot of women seem to not feel they have a solid foundation, neither economically nor romantically.
If you want proof that the natalist policy imagination is stuck, look at the “condom tax” that is being met with unease. Making contraception more expensive does not make family life more appealing — it just raises the stakes of a mistake. It has sparked concern about unwanted pregnancies and HIV, which are the broader public health fallouts that come with making protection harder to access. It also signals that a government is more interested in steering outcomes than earning trust, especially when the burdens of pregnancy and parenting land unevenly.
But even in places where the state is not hovering over everyone’s reproductive life, the trust problem appears in a different way. The rise of online misogyny and the red pill ecosystem has warped how some men talk about women, and what they think relationships are for. In that worldview, women are framed as prizes to be won or managed, men are told they should be “alpha” and women are told they should want that kind of man. It also normalizes a sense of entitlement, the idea that attention, sex and emotional labour are things women owe, and that rejection is an insult that justifies anger. Add in the decline of in-person communities and you get a dating culture where basic emotional literacy is treated as a luxury trait.
For a lot of women, this mindset alters the emotional math of parenthood as having children starts to feel less like a celebration and more like a risk analysis. Pregnancy and parenting amplify the stakes of unequal labour and instability. If a partner is not willing to communicate, share responsibility or be a safe place when things are hard, a child is not a joy — it is a multiplier of vulnerability. No tax credit fixes the fear of doing everything alone or while managing someone else’s resentment.
Heated Rivalry has become an unlikely guide to what many people feel is missing right now. The reaction to the book and television adaptation has become bigger than a single explanation, and people are taking different meanings from it depending on where they are coming from. From my perspective, one takeaway is that it reflects a hunger for a different script for love, one where desire is not entitlement, conflict does not become punishment and masculinity includes tenderness, accountability and emotional competence. Even though the relationship is between two men, the appeal for many women is not that it removes women from the romance, it is that it removes the familiar threat that sometimes hangs over it.
Jacob Tierney, the show’s creator, put it plainly when he talked about what draws women to this story. Women are “endlessly exposed to sexual violence,” he said, and seeing male vulnerability can be “refreshing” because there is “no fear of violence.” Not because women do not want passion, but because too many women have learned to watch for warning signs in intimacy. It is not that the story does not have stakes — it is that the stakes are different because the relationship itself is not built around the kind of fear women see too often in real life.
The cultural moment has also begun to develop a backbone. Ottawa Pride Hockey (OPH) responded to the Ottawa Senators hockey team selling Hollander and Rozanov jerseys, welcoming the support and the indication that there is a demand to make hockey more inclusive. At the same time, they drew a firm line that inclusion is not just a vibe. OPH committed to holding the Senators and the NHL accountable when actions do not match community expectations, including pointing to the signing of goalie James Reimer.
This matters because it underscores something bigger than hockey. Many women are tired of the package deal with men that often comes with toxic masculinity, contempt for vulnerability, entitlement and the casual homophobia that treats care and softness as weakness. Calling out homophobia is calling out the broader culture that makes relationships feel less safe and equal.
I am in a happy, healthy relationship, so I am not writing this as a complaint about my personal life. I am writing it because I have felt the social weather changing around me. I can see how quickly online culture can teach some men to resent equality and respect. I can also see, in the Heated Rivalry phenomenon, a kind of collective call for something better — that love should feel safe, devotion should look like effort and masculinity does not need violence or emotional absence to be real.
If states want to raise birth rates, the most effective incentive is not another cheque and certainly is not a “condom tax.” It is leading by example in building a world where housing and childcare are accessible and where partnership is safe and more equal. Until that world feels plausible, the birth rate panic will keep producing policies that sound like bargaining. People will keep opting out, not because they do not want family, but because they want a life that looks more like devotion than bargaining.
