While this decline is partially countered by a rise in cohabitation, the substitution of cohabitation for marriage translates to lower commitment of women to men and even more so of men to women. Although the decline does reflect women's increased economic independence, researchers add a new dimension to this argument, suggesting that men have begun to reject the financial obligations of a traditional family. If marriage is declining in centrality in both men's and women's lives, the centrality of parenthood is declining far more in men's lives. Most of the retreat from children has been on the part of men. Efforts that increase male involvement may decrease female autonomy in decisions about whether to bear children and how to raise them.
Demographers clearly have to take the role of men seriously in the study of fertility.
Robert J. Willis, University of Michigan, and John G. Haaga, National Research Council, point out that when nonmarital childbearing is no longer considered deviant behavior, then one more social restraint on childbearing is removed. Moreover, an increased supply of women willing to bear children out of wedlock would increase the attractiveness to men of nonmarital fatherhood. Young women who see a strong probability that they will not marry, even if they have children, or that they will divorce if they do marry, may take greater care to accumulate skills and experience in the labor force. On the other hand, if young men see little prospect that they can get ahead and earn incomes that will allow them to marry, support children, and own a home, they may not make substantial investments in study, acquisition of skills, and other such gratification-deferring behavior. Nonmarital childbearing is made possible when women have sufficient resources to rear children on their own and men are able to father children without bearing any economic consequences.