An international study in 16 countries has demonstrated that the majority of adults consider reproducing and rearing a child in the family to be necessary for their personal development. A study in the United States found that more than 90% of women either have children or expect to have them in the future, while only 6% of women are voluntarily childless. This shows an attitude that continuing the genes or a dream for a family with children is the prevailing choice for most people.

One of the most prominent feminists, Simone de Beauvoir, criticised the oppressiveness of normative femininity as subordinate to reproduction and motherhood as if it is the utmost desire in the women's domain. She argued that women's reproductive bodies are a reason for their subordinate social status, while describing the strong emotional link between mother and child as “mutual and harmful oppression”. Thus, reproduction and its role in women's lives have led to disagreements among feminists regarding reproductive freedom and its interpretation – negative, as not to procreate, or positive, as to have children when wanted. Striving for liberation, feminists’ focus was set for a long time on the negative right promoting birth control, abortion and collective methods of childbearing. With the reproductive technologies revolution, feminists’ politics changed. The new liberation took place on several levels. Firstly, the biological age limits were extended (allowing women professional opportunities). Secondly, changing women's reproductive nature with the artificiality of reproduction relieved the social reproductive pressure and silenced the voices that claimed that women's intrinsic nature is above all to be a mother. Nevertheless, what is similar to the current battle for individual positive reproductive rights is the struggle to separate between public and private spheres, as expressed in the feminist's second-wave slogan: “the personal is political”. As this wave aimed at minimising the gender differences, thus lobbying for gender-neutrality, the more recent trends aim at celebrating female differences, among others the ability to give birth to a child, thus claiming the moral superiority of women. Moreover, treating women and men equally is a ground for injustice, bearing in mind their natural inequalities.