Today’s Alex Berenson piece nudged me to write up some analysis I recently did on trends in births in the US. Alex correctly points out the demographic decline in most (all?) rich countries. My additional contribution is to add in information on the family structure of the births that are occurring. Namely, let’s look at two trends simultaneously:
While I don't have the sources/links, there are some studies that confirm that religious couples (almost always married since that is part of a religious/faith understanding of God's intent for male-female relationships) have more children than non-religious couples. As we are becoming a more and more secular society (along with Western Europe, and really, much of the world), we are having less children per couple.
Two fairly intuitive reasons for this:
First, most world religions understand marriage as being "blessed" when it is fruitful and bears children;
Second, religious faith teaches selflessness, which is necessary to "happily" raise children. Secular people are more self-centered, and therefore less likely to make the sacrifices necessary to raise children - especially more than one or two.
We are really in uncharted territory here and it’s hard to see how we turn it around. A declining population, with a substantial (perhaps majority in near future) of people growing up in homes without married parents?
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And it's worth pointing out that the incentives are designed to get this exact result. We can debate if that was on purpose or not.........
I’m a mother and probably part of this trend. I don’t think its all bad on the unmarried part.
I am educated, and had a professional career through my 20s. I met my boyfriend at 31 and we talked about marriage and children. Before he proposed though, I fell pregnant. There is no shame in being an unmarried mother here (UK) now, so we had our daughter as unmarried parents. We married once I could fit into a wedding dress and had our son a year or so later. By this time I was 36 and didn’t want a third child: I wouldn’t have been able to go back to work, we’d have needed a bigger car and house and we wanted to pay for private education for our children - too expensive to do for 3. Besides, we had one of each gender and didn’t feel the urge for more. They’re 14 and 16 now and we are still a happy family, by and large.
I work with a lot of highly paid single women in their 20s and 30s. Most of them want children. The difficulty is finding a partner - they work so hard they don’t meet anyone. They want kids and are freezing their eggs and stuff. They are - for the most part - going to be very disappointed in their lives. I stopped work to find a husband because I could see the same thing happening to me. It has to be an absolute priority if you know having children is important to you. Making the next promotion cannot be the most important priority for a woman if she wants a family. There will always be jobs out there, but you won’t always have viable fertility.
While I don't have the sources/links, there are some studies that confirm that religious couples (almost always married since that is part of a religious/faith understanding of God's intent for male-female relationships) have more children than non-religious couples. As we are becoming a more and more secular society (along with Western Europe, and really, much of the world), we are having less children per couple.
Two fairly intuitive reasons for this:
First, most world religions understand marriage as being "blessed" when it is fruitful and bears children;
Second, religious faith teaches selflessness, which is necessary to "happily" raise children. Secular people are more self-centered, and therefore less likely to make the sacrifices necessary to raise children - especially more than one or two.
It’s called socialism. Children don’t need parents and families when they belong to the state.
I recommend the following documentary:
https://www.birthgap.org/spaces/10215679/page
We are really in uncharted territory here and it’s hard to see how we turn it around. A declining population, with a substantial (perhaps majority in near future) of people growing up in homes without married parents?
---------
And it's worth pointing out that the incentives are designed to get this exact result. We can debate if that was on purpose or not.........
I’m a mother and probably part of this trend. I don’t think its all bad on the unmarried part.
I am educated, and had a professional career through my 20s. I met my boyfriend at 31 and we talked about marriage and children. Before he proposed though, I fell pregnant. There is no shame in being an unmarried mother here (UK) now, so we had our daughter as unmarried parents. We married once I could fit into a wedding dress and had our son a year or so later. By this time I was 36 and didn’t want a third child: I wouldn’t have been able to go back to work, we’d have needed a bigger car and house and we wanted to pay for private education for our children - too expensive to do for 3. Besides, we had one of each gender and didn’t feel the urge for more. They’re 14 and 16 now and we are still a happy family, by and large.
I work with a lot of highly paid single women in their 20s and 30s. Most of them want children. The difficulty is finding a partner - they work so hard they don’t meet anyone. They want kids and are freezing their eggs and stuff. They are - for the most part - going to be very disappointed in their lives. I stopped work to find a husband because I could see the same thing happening to me. It has to be an absolute priority if you know having children is important to you. Making the next promotion cannot be the most important priority for a woman if she wants a family. There will always be jobs out there, but you won’t always have viable fertility.
Why not judge the unmarried parents? The trend is dysfunctional and very harmful to kids.