Why Is No One Having Kids?
Something is missing in the world. Have you noticed? Kids.
The most recent data puts our birth rate at approximately 1.53 children per woman in the United States. I’m no mathematician, but that’s not a good sign. Why is this happening, and what can we do to reverse it?
There are several factors that people think are the reason for the lower birthrate. Some say it’s because we’ve stopped having sex, and others say it’s because of smartphones. But there are problems with these conclusions.
We are in a dire situation. In approximately 40-50 years, America will not be America unless something changes. Some individuals believe that they have identified the problem. Let’s take a look at what they think are the primary factors affecting our Western world.
We’re just not having enough sex…
On its face, if we have fewer babies, one might conclude that it’s because of fewer sexual encounters. This is basically common knowledge now that younger generations are turning from alcohol and sex. Some are celebrating this as a sign that the next generation is more virtuous, but that would be jumping to moral conclusions that are contradicted by other factors.
Enter Ben Sasse, a former Republican Senator who is in a battle for his life with cancer.
Sasse is an inspiring Christian man who is demonstrating the value of our faith in times of trouble. In one of his interviews, his face was bleeding excessively from the cancer treatments. He is an inspiration for what it means to suffer well. Pray that God heals him and elevates him for his astounding faith. Regardless of your Christian background, you should learn more about Ben Sasse.
Regarding our subject today, Sasse was asked for his opinion about the birthrate during an interview with 60 Minutes. Below is a transcript from his interview,
“All across the industrialized rich world, people have just stopped having babies in the last couple of decades. We’re at replacement rate birth rates nowhere in the industrialized world except Mormons and Jewish populations — Israel and some parts of the US. Except for those two categories, every other industrialized nation has stopped having babies. That is super weird! We’ve stopped having sex…”
On the face of it, this makes sense. But Sasse is only identifying the symptom. He’s not identifying the cause. For example, well before we were addicted to cell phones, people had been, and still are, aborting their children at a rate of 1-1.5 million babies a year. 30% of Generation Z never made it out of the womb alive. That reduces the mating pool significantly, without anyone having to pick up a cellphone to play Candy Crush or doomscroll on the internet.
I’m about to push back on this, not because I want to critique a cancer warrior, but because we need to address something modern Christians have neglected, and that is this: “Ideas have consequences.”
If you believe that abortion eliminates a parasite rather than a baby, then this idea will be the actuating belief that leads you to abort your child. Similarly, people don’t just stop having sex and having babies. They do this because they have adopted some ideas about sex, marriage, and family.
Even if people were having sex, the majority of them would do so using contraception to prevent pregnancy anyway. They would only do this if they presumed two things: that children are not a gift worth sacrificing for, and second, that contraception is a morally permissible practice to prevent the burden of children.
The idea that “we’ve just stopped having sex” is only part of the problem. Given the rate of contraception use among virtually all sectors of society, it would not matter if people were having sex frequently anyway. According to a National Health and Statistics Report from 2013,
“Current contraceptive use was higher among women aged 25–34 (67.4%) and 35–44 (70.0%) compared with women aged 15–24 (47.4%).”
So, even if someone thinks a few summers of love would do the trick, most likely the fruit of that “love” is being contracepted.
Additionally, if the child is conceived at an inopportune time, there is a good chance that the child is going to be aborted, even, in some cases, by “conservatives” who claim to advocate for prolife policies.
Sasse might be correct that the frequency of sex is lower, but after years of “family planning” propaganda rooted in materialism and individualism, even if we increased the rate of sexual encounters, it would not matter because contraception and abortion would continue to negatively affect the birthrate.
No one is dancing, and it’s technology’s fault!
Sasse continues his thoughts on the fertility crisis and associates it with us being distracted by our dopamine addictions. He continues,
“…How weird that we’ve stopped having sex, stopped making babies, and decided being distracted by dopamine hits around Candy Crush might be a good way to spend our time.”
Rod Dreher, an Orthodox Christian and conservative author with great works on Communism and Christianity, recently shared a video on his socials that also shares the sentiment that technology is ultimately the reason for our declining society.
In this clip, the speaker is Connor Leahy, an AI researcher, speaking about the reality that none of his friends have kids. His theory is that kids don’t want to take romantic risks because they are being recorded constantly. He says at one point, “Kids don’t dance because they know they are being recorded.”
Watch:
As a homeschooling father, I can assure you that kids dance, but I’m sure Connor would disagree with homeschooling being the solution. But I disagree with Connor’s assessment here. There are a plethora of issues that are symptoms of a deeper issue that contribute to a lack of sex drive and lower birth rates:
Pornography
Abortion
Contraception
Double Income No Kids (DINK)
But these are symptoms or effects of a deeper issue. They are not properly speaking, the cause of our declining birthrate. Yes, our phones are contributing to a lower birthrate, but it is only a symptom of a terminal cancer that has been metastasizing for decades.
The rate is so bad now that politicians and businesses are trying to figure out how to reverse it. Many prominent Christian writers and influencers jumped on the clip and said the man was absolutely correct. These included thinkers and writers like Joshua Charles from Eternal Christendom, and Rod Dreher (already mentioned), both men I respect and enjoy reading. So, gents, if you read this, don’t take this as a dig; I just respectfully disagree with some of the implications of your posts.
While yes, it is true that technology is exacerbating the atomization of people, and this will necessarily reduce the mating pool, the fact is that we have been on this road for a long time. So, what are we supposed to do about it? How do we reverse the existential threat to the decline of the West?
We must recognize that we were wrong in our theology and philosophy about sex, marriage, and children, and now we are paying the price. That’s the first step. The second step is to turn to those who warned us about the dangers of adopting contraception and tried to warn us that doing so would lead to immorality and cultural decay that we had not yet seen.
We are living through what Pope Paul VI presciently taught in Humanae Vitae, and the only way out is going to be if we adhere to his teaching. This is because, as the videos above point out, technology is dehumanizing, but the teachings of the Church are intended to humanize you.
Therefore, the only way to get out of this mess is to become more human, and the only way to become more human is to become more Catholic.
Children, from gift to burden…
Ben Sasse made another comment that I think is the most important line of his interview. This is perfectly in line with the teaching of the Church on the truth that children are a gift, but that they are a gift that requires sacrifice. Sasse continues,
Having a baby is a bet on the future…Babies have always been an inconvenience and the most glorious thing you can do to enrich your family and make a bet on the future.
Sasse is right that children have always required sacrifice. But anything of great worth requires sacrifice. If you want to have a great country, someone is going to have to sacrifice. If you want your religion to flourish, someone is going to have to sacrifice. If you want to have a society, someone is going to have to sacrifice for the next generation, rather than living the life of a glutton.
We are suffering as a society because we have been told to sacrifice for our own comfort, rather than for the good of our neighbor or our future generations. We have adopted a kind of political and theological solipsism.
One of the major shifts that impacted people’s perceptions of having kids was that it shifted our understanding of sex from a physical-spiritual act that produced a spiritual and physical being, a child, to an economic decision that was largely a private one made by the couple around their finances and their personal desires. If children fit into that, great; if not, no couple is immoral for choosing to do what they feel like doing.
Children became viewed as an economic burden, rather than a spiritual and political legacy of the future. In other words, somewhere along the line, the “Christian Nations” that were founded on God, family, and country became rooted in the ego and the appetite.
In 2013, Time Magazine ran a cover story about the phenomenon of young married couples wilfully choosing not to have children.
But where did this idea come from? How did people get the idea that it was morally permissible to be married without kids so that you can have lots of money and travel the world together?
No one could have predicted it. Really?
There is a video circulating on the internet. It is a woman describing the cultural and philosophical climate that led to the rapid adoption of contraception. What she says is very telling of the older generations’ refusal to acknowledge that they had been morally compromised at a systematic level.
Watch: