I don't buy that traditional values with regard to marriage are responsible with lower birth rates. People were married with high birthrates for hundreds of yea

I don't buy that traditional values with regard to marriage are responsible with lower birth rates. People were married with high birthrates for hundreds of years, back when traditional values were just called values. Birth rates go down when people don't need a lot of children to work their farms or support them in old age, and when women get access to birth control and enter the workforce. This last part is tangentially related to marriage, but marriage (or the lack thereof) is not the cause. There are certainly other factors too, but those are the big ones.