Since the 1970s, the number of first-time mothers over the age of 35 has risen fivefold. This trend toward delayed childbearing means more would-be-mothers are struggling with infertility and miscarriage.

While this doesn’t surprise me, what does is how readily this has been blamed on the rise of feminism. The thinking here is that modern women are so busy leaning into their feminism-forged careers that they don’t want to start trying for kids until their mid-to-late 30s. They made the mistake of “wanting it all.”

Yet, among the women I know in this age group who have fertility issues, or simply missed the window to have children, none of them have what such critics consider “real” careers. Almost all of them were either dumped in their early 30s, or couldn’t find the right guy, or were toiling in the sorts of overeducated, debt-burdened underemployment that put their household income way below the threshold where they could responsibly raise a child. In other words, they weren’t waiting to “have it all” – they were waiting to have enough.

The rise of precarious employment, the evisceration of unions, degree inflation, and an inflamed housing market have all limited my generation’s access to the milestones of regular adulthood. It’s economics, not feminism, that has most altered our patterns of courtship and family-building, consigning us to the extended adolescence of baby-boomer legend.