The birth rate in the United States is the lowest it’s ever been. Between rising costs of living and anxiety about humanity’s impact on the environment, people are having fewer children than ever. And yet surveys indicate that we still want babies, and want them in larger numbers than they’re being born.
Demographer and pro-natalist Lyman Stone joins Grant to discuss why this desire doesn’t translate into a higher birth rate, why that matters, and what we should do about it. What should a Christian response to falling birth rates be, particularly in light of the Genesis command to be fruitful and multiply? How can we promote and support family life without objectifying children as merely economic or political goods? To answer these questions, Lyman teases out the many strands that go into a society’s overall fertility: the historical, cultural, and global factors that contribute to family size and structure, as well as the various ideologies—both liberal and conservative—that shape how many babies we have, and who we believe should have them.
Although women had more babies in early American history, on average only 3-4 children per women survived past childhood
During the fertility transition in mid-18th century America: people had fewer babies, but the number of surviving children remained the same
Replacement rate for a stable population changes according to the mortality rate
Immigration helped maintain stable birth rates in the US despite the availability of birth control and abortion; but as immigrants have assimilated and immigration has slowed down, the birth rate has dropped to a historical low
The tempo effect: women wait until later in life to have babies, causing a generational gap that affects the birth rate even if they have the same number of kids as previous generations; but delayed births are not usually made up
Pro-natalism: the policy or practice of encouraging people to have more children; “those of us who want more babies”
Ethno-nationalist pro-natalism: “we need more babies [because] it is fundamentally good for our genetic stock to be more numerous in the competition of species.”
Collective Liberal pro-natalism: "Parents need to have children for the purpose of creating a better future. If you don't, you're going to be beaten with the stick of the future."
Individualist liberal pro-natalism: "We should want higher birth rates because people want higher birth rates."
Fertility preference—how many babies women want—is the single most predictive determinant of how many children a woman will have; not attaining their desired reproductive outcomes leads to a decrease in happiness
Wanting more children is a reasonable desire in a decent society: "This is something that should be attainable."
Although fertility intentions have declined sharply in recent years, fertility preferences have not
Even draconian government policies, such as China's one child policy, cannot completely eliminate fertility preference
The drive to have more children makes sense from an evolutionary psychology perspective in order to keep the species alive
"As a Christian, I would give an account of that drive that is not simply brute psychological selection. I would argue that it is, in fact, a fundamentally creative impulse that exists in us, because it is in some sense the indelible imprint of a law given to us before corruption: go forth and multiply."
The language of marriage, children, and child-rearing frames much of the relationship between God and his Church
The three main factors in the discrepancy between desired fertility (how many kids people want) and total fertility (how many kids they have) are timing, cost, and opportunity cost
Social media increases the opportunity cost of having children by exposing us to curated images of all we are missing out on
Posting cute pictures of kids on social media can be a form of resistance
If feminism recognizes women's desires and preferences as on par with men's, it cannot ignore what women want; it most be pro-natal
"Fear about fertility does not come from low fertility rates. Fear about fertility comes from shrinking population," even if fertility isn't the actual problem
Pro-natal policies in the US need to reflect the fact that we are diverse, that families make different choices, and there is not necessarily a "one-size-fits-all" solution
Many highly fecund subcultures--such as the Amish or Hasidic Jews--don't have high retention rates in their communities, and thus don't impact the overall fertility rate
Although fertility rates among religious people are declining more slowly than among the non-religious, they are still declining
There needs to be a growing population to motivate the changes that will actually help with climate change (ie, changing factories to produce environmentally friendly light bulbs)
If we save the environment at the cost of the future population, who will benefit from it?
Links:
Is U.S. Fertility at an All-Time Low? Two of Three Measures Point to Yes
American Women are Having Fewer Children than They’d Like
It’s Time for Social Conservatives to Stop Fawning over Hungary
Cash for Kids: Does Public Assistance Undermine Family Life?
These Millenials Are Going on “Birth Strike” due to Climate Change