The Case for One More Child
to argue that the American future depends on pushing our birthrate back above replacement level . . . remains an eccentric argument to many people: an interesting idea, maybe, but not a particularly urgent one, and certainly not the sort of issue that would make the cut of questions for a presidential debate.
Which is a bit crazy, when you stop to think about it. Whether a society is reproducing itself isn’t an eccentric question; it’s a fundamental one. The birthrate isn’t just an indicator of some nebulous national greatness; it’s entangled with any social or economic challenge that you care to name.
Why the dearth?
First, romantic failure – not just in breakdowns like divorce, but in the alienation of the sexes from one another, the decline of the preliminary steps that lead to children, including not just marriage but sexual intercourse itself. Some combination of wider forces, the postindustrial economy and the sexual revolution and the identity-deforming aspects of the internet, are pushing the sexes ever more apart.
Second, prosperity, in two ways. One, because a rich society offers more everyday pleasures that are hard to cast aside in the way that parenthood requires. (Nothing gave me more sympathy for the childless voluptuaries of a decadent Europe than the first six months of caring for our firstborn.) Two, because prosperity creates new competitive hierarchies, new standards for the “good life,” that status-conscious people respond to by delaying parenthood and having fewer kids.
Finally, secularization – because even if it’s possible to come up with a utilitarian case for having kids, the older admonitions of Genesis appear to have the more powerful effect. The mass exceptions to low birthrates are almost always found among the devout, and the big fertility drop-offs in the United States correlate clearly with dips in religious identification.
More at the link.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | Tags: Douthat
Paul Mouritsen
December 28, 2020
I am not particularly concerned if the gentiles and progmos are not reproducing themselves. It just means more resources for my grandchildren.
“For the evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.”
JRL in AZ
December 29, 2020
My concern is for the young LDS couples who voluntarily put of having children without understanding what they are doing because they have absorbed the larger culture’s message that it is better to wait to have children and then to only have a few. They’re good kids, but I don’t think they have even thought to question those ideas. That’s just the way that things are, so they accept it. I guess that some of these kids would think you were kidding if you mentioned the Lord’s commandment to multiply and replenish the earth.
nakedrat
December 29, 2020
That’s a valid concern. I’d say ~50% (or more) of BYU couples are doing that. Even when told explicitly the risks of self-sterilization, fertility aging, and personality changes, they choose the barren life.
Honestly, I don’t know how they can understand what they’re doing when their own parents likely came up with numerous reasons to follow culture and only have a few children themselves.
There is no balance on this issue – either your family line grows, or it withers.
Much like the Church’s guidelines on abortion, the ones on family size seem to allow interpretation… when in fact they are quite clear for those with ears to hear.
sute
December 30, 2020
Now is the time to prepare to meet God. We can’t meet him unless we are like him. Christ’s atonement is to enable that possibility within us, but if we don’t choose to become like him, we will never get there.
How can a son or daughter of parents whose eternal mission is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of their own children share that equal glory with someone who does not want to bring more life into the world?
If we don’t want to do the same work, why inherit the same glory? Or do we suppose we should receive an eternity of eating bread prepared for us by the little red hen?
If there never was a father without their first being a son, you’ll never become like the father unless you follow on the same path.
Rozy
December 31, 2020
We were out in ID over Christmas for our 2nd grandbaby’s blessing. Our son is married to the oldest girl of her family. She has two younger brothers who got married during 2020. I asked them which couple would be having the next “blessing” get together. Both said, “We don’t want to rush.” I told them that “No, what you don’t want to do is procrastinate.”
As JRL in AZ said, it seems the young adults have been indoctrinated by the culture around them and through the public schools (even in Utah, Idaho, etc.); and it seems that even in the church we don’t talk enough about what a blessing children are. We also don’t talk enough anywhere about how we don’t have to follow the world’s example and attempt to give our children every material comfort and luxury available. Nor do we have to pay for everything they want, up to and including college. Working hard for something desired makes that something more precious and valuable. The last thing we don’t talk about is how being a parent is a life long crash course in character development. I’ve learned and grown more from having children than any other thing. We don’t begin parenthood with all the necessary qualities, we develop them and refine them as we go along.
Bookslinger
December 31, 2020
Paul M has a point. In a real way, it’s a good thing secular nihilists are not having children.
The tragedy is when those who are capable of passing on Christian and (the good kind of) Western traditions have few to no children.
After a fashion, Rev Jeremiah Wright was correct too… to be consistent, God will eventually, perhaps soon, have to damn America as He did previous wicked societies. I believe the Book of Mormon predicts “just” calamities to befall this land.
This is the prayer I am thinking of, from 24 years ago: http://www.retiredscouter.com/prayer/wb21092.php
Other copies: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=joe+wright+prayer