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September 2024The reality is clear: Americans are having fewer kids. In 2023, America had 2% fewer births than in 2022, hitting a record low, according to newly released finalized data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While Americans haven’t had enough kids to keep population levels stable for decades, there has been a steep decline in recent years: The number of 2023 births was 17% lower than the number of births in 2007.
Yet at the recent Democratic National Convention, Planned Parenthood provided free vasectomies and abortion pills. An 18-foot inflatable IUD, a type of birth control device, was placed on display near the convention by Americans for Contraception.
America’s Future Is Filled With Seniors, Not Children
A shrinking population doesn’t bode well for any nation. A smaller tax base will affect government spending and benefits or lead to increased taxes, and fewer workers will create economic challenges. “Low U.S. fertility combined with an aging population have the potential to generate significant headwinds to economic growth,” admitted the Biden administration in a brief this March.
Yet a shrinking population is what we’re on track for. By 2029, there will be more seniors, adults 65 or older, than children in the United States, according to a November estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2038, the U.S. is expected to have more deaths than births. Furthermore, the data suggests that it’s conservatives, not liberals, who are having more children, making the Democrat convention’s focus even more concerning. “The 17 states with the highest general fertility rates are all designated by Cook Political Report as Republican, or GOP-leaning, including such Republican strongholds as North Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana, Utah, and Texas,” writes Steven Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, in City Journal. “By contrast, the bottom six states — and nine of the 10 states with the lowest fertility rates — are all either Democratic or Democratic-leaning.”
Republicans also seem to prefer larger families. A 2023 Gallup Poll found that 50% of Republicans, compared to 40% of Democrats, wanted three or more children.
A nuance that seems to be increasingly lost in our childish political squabbles is that you can see that all people, regardless of parenthood status, have inherent value and dignity and that, at the same time, it would be better for our society if we had more children.
Why Americans Aren’t Having Children
In July, Pew Research Center released an extensive survey of childless Americans. When it came to younger Americans, those 18-49, only 13% citied infertility or other medical matters as a major reason they didn’t have children.
The top major reason, identified by 57% of respondents, was “they just don’t want to.” Other reasons cited as major (respondents were allowed to pick multiple major reasons) were wanting to focus on job or other interests (44%), concerns about the state of the world (38%), concerns about affording a child (36%), concerns about the environment and climate change (26%), and not finding the right partner (24%).
Some of these we as a society can help address, from pushing corporations to be more family-friendly to promoting sensible economic policies that make housing and food more affordable. If the corporate media would start allowing a more honest conversation about the environment and climate change, Americans would realize it’s possible to both protect our world and welcome more children, instead of succumbing in despair to the Malthusian mindset. But as shown by the 57% saying “they just don’t want to” have children, this is also a cultural and spiritual crisis.
Missing the Magic Children Bring
When did we lose the sense of the joy children bring? Sure, as anyone who is a parent or who has observed a parent knows, parenting is incredibly hard work. It involves insane levels of patience, wisdom, and, well, grit. But what happened to talking about the good stuff of parenting?
Recently, on Reddit, which generally is a place where the dialogue skews toward recognizing the downsides of having children, there was a thread in a forum for women aged 30 and older from a user asking people to make the case for why she should have kids.
Another user responded by talking about how her mindset had shifted after she had become an aunt, after her brother and sister-in-law had an unplanned pregnancy. The user, “heylookoverthere_,” wrote that she thought during the pregnancy the couple was being “weird and irresponsible” and worried about the baby being “annoying and an inconvenience.”
“But then he came along, and my worries just … didn’t feel relevant anymore. He wasn’t just an abstract idea of a baby. He was an actual baby. He was a real human being with a head full of hair and little fingers and toes that were just learning to grab things,” she wrote.
These are the kinds of “magical” stories we need to hear more about. In my own life, my reason for not having children has been not finding the right man (until I met my wonderful fiancé). Yet I also, looking at the struggles, sometimes felt ambivalence.
However, in recent years, between acquiring nieces and dear friends having babies, I’ve spent more time with kids in any time since my own childhood. I’ve found myself joyful just because my niece stood up in her crib and breathed “Hi” when she saw me, just because my friend’s toddler said my name, just because another friend’s daughter shared her first birthday cupcake with me.
In an interview with Megyn Kelly last month, Tucker Carlson said, “I feel sorry for childless people...And I mean it as someone who has four children who are the root of my happiness. I really feel compassion. And the whole point...is, we should be encouraging people to experience the things that make them the happiest.
“And I think any parent will tell you, as hard as it is having kids, that is one of the main sources of happiness for people from the beginning of time. And if we’re discouraging that or making it impossible for people to have kids, that’s on us.”
Carlson’s right. Sure, we might be losing out on economic prosperity because of our child-avoidant culture, but even more so, we might be losing out on one of our best chances at a happy, fulfilling life.
