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.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
Thanks! One of my boys was 9 lbs. It was a surprise to see such a big baby!
Most of the people I know with large families also have pets, so it’s not one or the other, as the author writes. We currently have “only” six pets (two cats, four lizards), but we’ve had as many as 11 at one time.
It could mean that your circle of friends aren’t guilt ridden whacked out liberals.
Congratulations!
Narcissism at its finest.
**
Amen
It could mean that your circle of friends aren’t guilt ridden whacked out liberals.
That definitely has something to do with it. However, in my parents circle which included only Christian Republicans they were only having two children for the most part...My parents are 67 years old. My parents did have 3 but was looked on as “a lot”. My friends are mostly conservative but I have a few RINO friends amongst them. They vote Republican but are not near as conservative as my wife and I are.
Well, not intentionally, anyway, but it is the unintended consequences which could make that a reality.
Doggy ping list and Kitty ping list if you know who has that.
Thank you much!
That was my thought when reading that post -
a “subsistence agrarian society” is EXACTLY what we’re “going back to soon”.
Or it could be that after a couple generations of no fault divorce, a divorce rate of over 50% which has created a vast public/private divorce industry and a “family court” system that is very hostile to fathers, many men are saying no when it comes to playing this game. The risk/reward math no longer pencils out.
If the drop in birthrate were limited to societies in which those circumstances prevailed, then the, shall we say, “male crisis” might be considered causative. However, below-replacement birthrates are found in countries with a wide variety of legal and social systems.
Yes..and abortion! There will be great hell to pay.
It began striking me not long ago in any large public gathering (concert, sporting event, church service) how few pregnant women I was actually seeing. Just by the sheer law of averages common sense was telling me I should have been seeing many more.
Is it better to have unexpected babies?
Demographically, when a nation reaches a particular economic plateau unique to them, suddenly its birthrate drops from strong growth to just a “maintenance” birthrate of 2.1 to 2.3 children per family.
The most recent of these drops has happened in Mexico and much of the Arab world.
Importantly, government and culture are almost incapable of increasing the birthrate, but they can drive it down even further rather easily.
Only once has this situation been reversed, in the post-WWII baby boom in the US, which came about because of a unique set of conditions.
To start with, during the war there was a long period of “delayed sexuality”, in which many men and women who otherwise would have had sex for pleasure instead of procreation, could not. This meant that when the men came home, the emphasis for sex had shifted strongly to procreation. This abstinence meant that they had a great abundance, a surplus of energy, to make and raise children.
The next factor was the explosive growth of cities with suburbs across the US. Suburbia is far better for having and raising children than are high density urban areas. And along with these new cities and suburbs there was a huge demand for high wage employment.
Importantly, these jobs were for men, but with relatively low taxes, a single breadwinner could support his family, with his wife at home to raise their children. While many more women were educated, being left at home and bored was a good motivation to have children.
Another factor was how these boom towns had few adult entertainments, and were designed with a family orientation, that is, plenty of churches, schools, children’s recreation, shopping malls, etc.
There is also a long list of the things government and the culture did to dampen down the baby boom, and to drive the birthrate down strongly after this period; and most of these restraints still exist today.
Declining birth rate is the way we're locking in economic decline.
Just watched a program on the “Black Death”.
After burning itself out in the wake of killing nearly 50% of the population of Europe, the Plague actually caused a Baby Boom.
Good grief...I hope we don’t need something like THAT to adjust the American Birthrate!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.