If "it's too expensive" were the reason why people are having fewer children, then paying women to have babies would work. But the article's title claims that it doesn't work.
A fundamental reason why fertility is below replacement is that when people have choices about what to do, they take them. A significant minority don't have kids, another minority (or majority) delays having kids so long that they can only have one or two. Part of the cause of this is the change of marriage from being a cornerstone of adult life, something to build your life on and around, to the capstone, something that marks success. So it is delayed by a decade or two. Yes, culture does play a role in shaping choices.
Women have been persuaded to adopt male values and standards of success as goals for themselves to achieve: high status career, high status goods like a large house in a good neighborhood, and so on. At the same time they have been persuaded to devalue traditionally female things like relationships and community wellbeing. Indeed: society, culture, will have to radically change to bring fertility above replacement.
A fundamental reason why fertility is below replacement is that when people have choices about what to do, they take them. A significant minority don't have kids, another minority (or majority) delays having kids so long that they can only have one or two. Part of the cause of this is the change of marriage from being a cornerstone of adult life, something to build your life on and around, to the capstone, something that marks success. So it is delayed by a decade or two. Yes, culture does play a role in shaping choices.
Women have been persuaded to adopt male values and standards of success as goals for themselves to achieve: high status career, high status goods like a large house in a good neighborhood, and so on. At the same time they have been persuaded to devalue traditionally female things like relationships and community wellbeing. Indeed: society, culture, will have to radically change to bring fertility above replacement.