Posted on 12/17/2012 4:28:04 AM PST by Kaslin
FERTILITY IN AMERICA has been declining for years. According to the Pew Research Center, the nation's birth rate hit an all-time low in 2011 – just 63 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. It was almost twice as high – 123 births per 1,000 women – at the peak of the Baby Boom in 1957.
As babies and children disappear from a society, what takes their place? One answer, as journalist Jonathan V. Last observes in a forthcoming book, "What to Expect When No One's Expecting," is pets.
In surveys taken from the 1940s to the 1980s, fewer than half of Americans said they owned a pet. Today America's 300 million humans own 360 million pets. Last puts that in perspective: "American pets now outnumber American children by more than four to one." Often those pets are pampered to a degree that quite recently would have been thought eccentric. The average dog-owning household's spending on pet grooming aids, for example, more than doubled between 1998 and 2006. Last notes that when a kids' clothing store in the suburban Washington neighborhood where he used to live went out of business, it was replaced by a doggie spa – leaving the neighborhood "with six luxury pet stores and only two shops dedicated to clothing children."
A mania for pets isn't all that materializes when the birth rate sinks. So do economic stagnation, dwindling innovation, a declining lifestyle, the exploding health and pension costs of an aging population, and the ever-heavier taxes needed to maintain the government safety net when there are fewer workers and entrepreneurs. Optimism, booming markets, and technological dynamism recede, supplanted by intergenerational conflict and loneliness.
Many people, it's true, are still in the grip of the Malthusian fallacy. The superstition that that the Earth is already too full, and that more human beings will mean more hunger, misery, and environmental despoliation, is a popular one. But serious demographers, economists, and others have been warning for years that declining populations lead to shortages, misery, and upheaval.
"If you think that population decline is going to be a net boon to society," Megan McArdle writes in the Daily Beast, "take a long hard look at Greece. That's what a country looks like when it becomes inevitable that the future will be poorer than the past: social breakdown, political breakdown, economic catastrophe."
If so, Greece will have plenty of company. Fertility rates are falling everywhere. The median age in many countries is already over 40, well above the prime childbearing years. In some places, plummeting fertility can be attributed to dictatorial coercion: To enforce its "One-Child" policy, China has employed methods ranging from steep fines and loss of employment to compulsory sterilization and abortions. The results have been brutal: Hundreds of millions of births have been prevented, China's median age is at 36 and rising, and the Chinese fertility rate is now 1.54 – well below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population.
But as Last points out, the fertility rate for white, college-educated American women – a proxy for the US middle class – is 1.6. "In other words, America has created its very own 'One-Child' policy. It's soft and unintentional, the result of accidents of history and thousands of little choices. But it has been just as effective."
It is hard to overstate the demographic and social transformation this represents. It wasn't that long ago that getting married and having children were life goals shared by nearly every American. For most of the 20th century, well over 90 percent of US adults married at some point in their lives – at one point the percentage went as high as 98.3 percent. Now,according to Pew, barely half of all adults in the United States – a record low – are married. And nearly 4 in 10 Americans say marriage is becoming obsolete.
And as more people choose not to marry, more of them retreat from childrearing. For decades Gallup has asked Americans what they consider the "ideal family size." From the 1940s to the 1960s, roughly 70 percent said that three or more children would be best. But beginning in the late 1960s, the American "ideal" fell sharply. Today only 33 percent of Americans regard three or more kids as desirable. And in practice, one in five American women now have no children at all.
What happens to a society that increasingly turns its back on marriage and babies? In which singlehood becomes standard, and pets outnumber kids by four to one? Ready or not, America is going to find out.
Contraception is killing this country.
Would you coerce women to have children? What about people who know they have genetic issues? Maturity issues? Sanity issues? Economic issues?
All the homosexuals will re-populate for us.
—a whole flock of rugrats are much less attractive when you don’t need them for subsistence agricultural help or to replace those lost in the hunter-gatherer culture-—
“But as Last points out, the fertility rate for white, college-educated American women – a proxy for the US middle class – is 1.6. “In other words, America has created its very own ‘One-Child’ policy. It’s soft and unintentional, the result of accidents of history and thousands of little choices. But it has been just as effective.””
Very well stated, and applies to EVERY country that does it. The bottom line is that if women are given the choice of kids or lots of money, but not both, many will go the money route - typically by either not having kids, not having as many kids, and (almost always) delaying whatever kids they have.
It’s all good and well to say that’s fine and if that’s what a free country allows - but countries do not exist simply as a place for the present generation to get old and die off, they also are intended to last a bit longer than that. And with what we have, along with Western and Central Europe and much of Asia, there won’t be much left in a couple of generations.
Oh yea, we can laugh as the idiot Muslim countries for being backwards, but they have figured this out and use their own means (however brutal) to assure continued population growth.
There are options available to Western countries to address the problem...but they’re likely gone too far politically to have the stomach for it.
Yep, declining birth rate is an inevitable result of children becoming an economic burden rather than benefit.
We’re not going to be going back to an unmechanized agriculture society anytime soon.
Any attempt to drastically shift tax burdens from families to the childless more than they already are is going to be political suicide for the party that attempts it, as it will enrage the childless.
And some sort of religious theocracy that bans the pill would also be futile. Nothing would be easier to sneak across the border.
People with children are statistically more likely to shop at Walmart and The Salvation Army than at specialty boutiques.
Maybe we could just import some African Muslims?
We can no longer deal with anything but ME. I want what I want, when I want it. It takes compassion and patience to raise kids and we don’t have it. If you are tied of a pet, just take it to a pet daycare for weeks on end or to the local rescue. Narcissism at its finest.
That “pack of rugrats” is the only way to perpetuate your culture. Imports from Mexico or Somalia may fill schools and take jobs, but bring enough of them and you won’t have America anymore — you’ll have Mexico and Somalia on formerly-American soil.
We welcomed our 12th grandchild to the world last Tuesday —a 9 lb, 1 oz baby boy, my daughter in law’s 5th child.
Bucking the trend.
Congratulations! That’s a very substantial baby!
Yes, and my DIL is a wisp of a woman. The baby is adorable! I had a 9 lb er and they look like they are a month old when they are newborns.
You are doing more than you part too at replacing the population. Congrats to you too.
For the young very wealthy, four or more children are the ultimate status symbol. For the very poor, such fecundity is the source of great government benefits.
For the in-between, kids are by usually—though not universally—wanted, and they are a major cost and a big drag on lifestyle until the grandparenting years.
As has been noted by others, when the completion of grad school is considered prudent before settling down, there are far fewer peak years of fertility before pregnancy and birth become significant medical challenges.
Kids that we do have are living with single mothers, taking anti-depressants and shooting up our schools.
When our kids have it pounded into their heads by the education system that people and Americans in particular are the problem, is it any wonder that they aren’t enthusiastic about starting families?
My wife and I have 4 children and stopped at the age of 38 with our last child. However, being 43 we have witnessed a lot of our friends still having children. I would say the average number of children amonst my friends has to be at least 3 because quite a few of our friends have 5 and a good many have 4. Very few of my friends have 2 children and I don’t know any that have zero. Could this be a media distortion of what is going on??? I mean they always have an agenda.
-- the USA as it was intended to be is done and gone---
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