Could Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce Make America Have Babies Again or MAHBA?

The world paused when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce announced their engagement via Instagram this past Tuesday. Offices were disrupted, girls all over the world screamed, and NFL fans groaned with frustration as Swift will forever be a part of their precious Sunday nights. But isn’t Taylor’s love story coming true? The beautiful, successful woman finds the hunky football player in a crowded field, and marriage is suddenly hot again.

Swift has been an active advocate in the political world where she baked Biden cookies for the 2020 election, stood up for transgender rights in Tennessee, and even wrote the anthem “You Need To Calm Down” celebrating the LGBTQ communities. However, she’s now marrying the most white, American man she could find, showing her fans that she’s all in on the classic nuclear family.

The US birth rate hit its low at only 1.6 babies per female, on average, in 2024. Why is that? For the last few generations, young men and woman are deterred from marriage for a multitude of reasons: American divorce rates, career aspirations, lack of freedom, a decrease in faith, and I believe, culture.

Nowadays, our culture isn’t promoting you to find your lucky partner, settle down, get married, and have kids. Instead, it tells women that they don’t need a man and should always be the center of the universe. And for men, our culture isn’t training young boys to grow up and take care of a family, but to live life as “free” as possible and escape responsibilities.

Now living in NYC, I’ve met plenty of mid-40 year old men who have never been in a serious relationship. I see lonely women with their C-suite jobs hoping they’re still young enough to be labeled as wife material. How can we change this?

Well, I think Taylor Swift might be leading the charge. Her fans adore her in a way that no other artist has ever experienced. Swifties idolize her and I wouldn’t be surprised if more women start to take a hard look at their lives, and decide that marriage and kids are something they actually desire. Maybe they’ll start to sacrifice their career or “having fun with the girlies” to find men who want the same things. Just maybe we will see the MAHBA movement catch fire across America, especially in our biggest cities.

Even if Swift and Kelce never have kids, their upcoming marriage symbolizes much more. It represents a turning point for all the millennials out there who have decided that you can’t have a successful career AND a marriage. Or you can’t have fun AND be married. Or that you can’t experience the world AND be married.

The secret is, you can. You just have to make sacrifices and stand up for what you want. The world doesn’t just revolved around yourself, and it’s the relationships that you create in your life that makes life worth living.

And the relationships that you’ll treasure the most are your spouses and your kids.