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:
[From the video]
“There were a few naysayers, like the Catholic Church…So it was said, and we can’t blame the people back then for not understanding what would happen.”
Really?
If a parent sees his kids adopt a bad ideology, which to the kid appears beneficial, but is in fact dangerous, the parent is going to warn the child and encourage them to reject it. Suppose the child ignores his parent’s warnings and is now suffering the consequences. Realizing now that he has made the wrong decision, the child voices his excuse, “Well, you know, there is no way I could have known that was going to happen.”
Now, on one level, we would expect an arrogant kid to say something like this. But we would also recognize that the kid experienced the consequences because he ignored the warnings. He may not have seen the wisdom of his parents’ words at the time, but that doesn’t mean he is without culpability. He was warned, he rejected that warning, and now he is to blame for that decision.
Americans have a problem with taking responsibility for the reality that they freely chose. In this case, it was to ignore what the Catholic Church was teaching at a time when the moral climate was extremely difficult to navigate.
In many ways, the Protestant Americans decided that they were going to argue against the Church and favor their own understanding and hubris. All of us can be guilty of this. Pride is the chief sin.
But what is particularly ugly is not that people fell by their own pride, but that they brush off the consequences of this fall as if it has led to a minor offense, rather than acknowledging that these choices and the ideas that motivated them led to atrocities that are, to put it mildly, competing with the evils of Nazism and the Soviet Union.
Today, our country faces the threat of extinction. We now know what the ideas were that led to it, the theology, philosophy, and leaders who permitted and/or promulgated it, as well as the ones who defended truth and preached against the dangers of contraception and the effects it would bring upon the world. Babies are being murdered by their own mothers to the tune of 1.5-4.5 million babies per year, when you include children lost to both abortion and IVF.
The Warnings of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Response.
In July of 1968, Pope Paul IV published his famous encyclical, Humanae Vitae. I gave an AI the following prompt:
“What are the most prescient quotes from the Papal Encyclical Humanae Vitae?”
Here are the major themes of that document as summarized by AI. I’ll discuss the actual quotes in a little bit:
Marital Infidelity and Lowering of Moral Standards
Loss of Reverence for Women and Objectification
Risk of Government Coercion and Abuse of Power
These are the same themes that the woman in the video listed off, but then said, “No one is to blame, because they could not have known.”
Imagine if the Israelites said something like what this woman had said in the video: “Well, God, we know that you sent prophets and stuff, but I mean, we couldn’t have really known what they were talking about because it hadn’t happened yet!”
The following are quotes from Pope Paul VI, and the prescient quotes that so many in the Western world rejected. It is clear that God was guiding Pope Paul VI on these issues, and that those outside the walls of the Church desired to lean on their own understanding, rather than submit to sacred tradition and teaching that has been guided by the Spirit of Truth for 2000 years.
Marital Infidelity and Lowering of Moral Standards
Recall that in our video above, the woman said the following,
When the birth control pill was invented, most people thought it would be a good thing. There were few naysayers like the Catholic Church, but most people who are outside of the church thought that this [would] help people and give them control over their fertility. It’ll make marriage stronger. These kinds of arguments advanced…
Instead, divorce rates skyrocketed. Cohabitation took off. Families became broken on a scale not seen before in history. And abortion also skyrocketed. So there are complex explanations for why these counterintuitive things [that took] place. But they did. That left families in a more fractured situation than we have ever seen.
Now, let’s read the encyclical from Pope Paul VI on contraception, and see if there were any warnings that did in fact predict the negatives of contraception.
Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law.
Humanae Vitae, 17.
Clearly, there was some understanding among many on the other side of the Tiber that the Western Protestants were playing with fire.
Loss of Reverence for Women and Objectification
Objectification of women has been a major problem in our culture. Technology is increasingly dehumanizing us, but it can only do that if we lack an authoritative teacher who seeks to humanize us. Today, you will either submit to the technologists or the Church.
Contraception is one of the major reasons for that. Why? Because it was the first step to seeing pleasure as the primary purpose of sex, rather than the proximate one. Instead of seeing a woman as a potential mother or mate, contraception made it possible for us to sever that connection psychologically and societally. Something that Pope Paul VI said in his encyclical,
Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.
Ibid.
Risk of Government Coercion and Abuse of Power
This is the final quote from Pope Paul VI that I want to cover. In it, he predicts that most of us would have probably thought, “Hmmm…possible, but I doubt that would happen.” But then it did. Read on.
Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government that, in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country, resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods that they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.
Ibid.
Paul VI is essentially saying that the marital act is so foundational to society that if we make it subject to technology, it will become mutable and shapable in the eyes of government leaders. Hannah Arendt, philosopher on the Holocaust and the psychology behind it, said that the new priesthood was the Scientist. Pope Paul VI is essentially echoing this sentiment. If the scientists become the moral arbiters, then the government will have no qualms about enforcing its opinion on the people on matters that should largely be left up to husband, wife, and the Church.
Today, we have the government trying to force Christian companies to pay for insurance packages that cover abortions, IVF procedures, contraceptives, and even force bakers to bake cakes and counselors to affirm delusions rather than help clients come back to reality. This is because technology fundamentally warps reality and our understanding of it.
Contraception is the start of a cancer that spreads first technologically, then philosophically, and then theologically, and now we have new technology that is exacerbating the tumors that were growing many years ago.
The issue is that, if America is going to turn from her wicked ways, they will have to turn to Rome. For she is the only expression of Christianity that has maintained her doctrines and authority during an era where technology is destroying the soul of mankind.
How Protestants Responded
How did Protestants respond to these ideas over the years? Over the years, Protestants came to realize that Catholics were right, but not because of the magisterium or because of scripture, but because of reality looking them in the face from behind a jar of formaldehyde.
In an article from 2015, the Baptist Press interviewed former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Dr. Richard Land, on the topic of abortion, and why protestants were so slow to respond. In that interview, he said,
They pretty much bought into the idea that life begins when breath begins, and they just thought of [abortion] as a Catholic issue…
In this same article, the journalist describes the scene that “drove the point home” for the former leader, Dr. Richard Land,
For Land, a high school science class drove home the reality that unborn babies were humans worthy of protection. A classmate whose father was an obstetrician brought a fetus to school in a jar of formaldehyde as a prop for a presentation and stored it beside Land’s desk. When Land told the teacher he was disturbed by the fetus, he was sent to the principal’s office, where a school administrator asked, “You’re not Catholic, are you?”1
In his book Defenders of the Unborn, Daniel K. Williams points out that a major reason for the accelerated acceptance of contraceptives was that Margaret Sanger intentionally targeted Protestant ministers to help her challenge the “taboo” of contraceptives.
In the early 1920s, Margaret Sanger and her American Birth Control League (which later became Planned Parenthood) challenged this taboo and quickly won widespread acceptance among middle-class Protestants for the use of contraceptive devices… By the late 1930s, national committees of the American Episcopal, United Methodist, United Presbyterian, and Congregational Christian Churches had officially endorsed birth control….By 1946, 3,200 ministers were members of Planned Parenthood’s Clergyman’s Council. The nation’s physicians—especially those who were not Catholic—also joined the cause. In 1947, 98 percent of American doctors approved of contraception for health reasons and 79 percent approved of it in cases when a family’s economic situation required it…In less than a generation, a once-taboo (and often illegal) practice had become a positive good that was now used by most middle-class Protestant couples, prescribed by their doctors, and endorsed by their pastors.
Williams, Daniel K.. Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade (pp. 13-14). Kindle Edition.
This is not to say that no one in the Protestant world was standing against contraception and abortion, especially later. Dr. Land and others became prominent voices in the fight for life. But before the 80s and 90s, these voices were a minority. This is evident by the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention ended up exhorting its members to pursue legislation in their elections that would make abortion legal.
Additionally, the first President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, Norman Geisler, wrote extensively on how he believed that abortion, contraception, eugenics, IVF, and Surrogacy were all permitted biblically in his text Ethic: Alternatives and Issues. To his credit, he later recanted the position and told the publisher to pull the book from print, but that was after his writings on the subject were circulating for nearly 20 years.
Daniel K. Williams continues,
A few heavily Catholic states in the Northeast, including Massachusetts and Connecticut, continued to restrict the sale of birth control devices until the 1960s, but those states were in the minority. After the 1930s, the overwhelming body of Protestant opinion in the United States was in favor of birth control use, with 85 percent of Americans in 1943 believing that married women should have access to contraceptives, according to a Fortune magazine survey.
Ibid.
Conclusion
We saw many theories proposed as to why our birthrate is falling into the grave. Some believe it is smartphones, others believe it was the technological innovations in biology that had unpredictable effects. Yet, we can see that the Church has been the “city on the hill,” shining the light on the moral and ethical challenges of our day.
The Protestants do not have an authoritative teaching, and it’s clear because their teaching led to the entire Western world, including Catholics, being led astray by the promise of sex without kids and double-income households with no inflation. The era of prosperity was here, and if you wanted kids, you could have them, but if you didn’t, that’s cool too.
Well, now our society is facing a collapse that no one can really imagine. Those who adopted these ideas and promulgated them, many of them are long gone.
But there is still hope. The only way out is if we, as many Protestant ministers are fond of saying,
“If My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
— 2 Chron. 7:14 (KJ21)
The only challenge for America right now is whether we will be humble enough to acknowledge that the teachings of the Church are what mankind actually needs. These teachings are not merely intended for Catholic Christians, but they are for all men and women of good will.
We can see this in those addressed by Pope Paul VI at the top of his encyclical:
TO THE CLERGY AND FAITHFUL OF THE WHOLE CATHOLIC WORLD, AND TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL
So, the question now is, will Americans humble themselves and recognize that they need not just their Bibles, but the Catholic Church?
Time will tell. The only problem is, we don’t have much time left.
— DR
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