The Coming Demographic Winter

Crisis Magazine ^ | January 7, 2014 | Regis Martin

[NYer]

Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He earned a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Martin is the author of a number of books, including, most recently, Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God (2012). He resides in Steubenville, Ohio, with his wife and ten children.

[NYer]

“In Italy,” as one observer wryly put it, “they don’t have children. They have dogs and cats.”

Ditto in the US.

[Morpheus2009]

The documentary, entitled Demographic Winter, can be found here, and watched here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZeyYIsGdAA

Even some secular professors will admit that those who are religious and poor, will pretty much make up the majority of the population.

[staytrue]

I think feminism bears much of the blame for this.

Feminism teaches women to men and men to be women. When this happens, procreation becomes more of a challenge.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Yep. Whenever I am in any sort of public gathering I am struck with how few visibly pregnant women there are. Random chance would dictate at least enough to notice.

Making all birth control “free” sure won’t help.

[3Fingas]

I did my part. Others have to do the same.

[Jeff Chandler]

I am astounded at the number of people I know of my generation who fall into one of these categories:

1. Never married
2. Married but no children
3. Married with only one child

On the bright side, we and our children are doing our part to make up for it.

PS: Most of the above have nicer homes, cars and vacations than we, but our weekends and holidays more fun.

[Salvation]

Chesterton on birth control/population control:

In 1925 Chesterton wrote an introduction to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which he said that “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.”

[rarestia]

As an Italian-raised Catholic with a large family, it is devastating to watch what it happening around me. My father’s oldest sister has three children, one of whom is gay, another who is married and avowed to not conceive, and another who is still too young to pin but is born of another man than the first two. My father’s youngest sister bore one boy before menopause, and he’s turning out to be a future convict.

My younger brother is yet to be married, and he turned 31 on Sunday. If there’s anyone who might, I believe it to be him. I turn 34 in a few weeks, but my wife is 6 years my senior and due to turn 40 in February. To say that I hear her clock ticking louder than she does is an understatement, but she’s an only child. We live very comfortably and give generously. As much as I want children, I’m starting to accede to the fact that it might not happen. It breaks my heart knowing that the entire next generation of my family might not exist or be left solely to one man who still has to put his life together after a decade-long battle with substance abuse.

On top of all of this, my wife and I talk all the time about how unjust would it be to bring a child into the world as it is? There’s so much death and destruction in our world now, and I feel like I would be helpless to make a child’s life great with so much devastation on the horizon.

I will continue to try until her very last eggs, but even as we do, I can’t help but think I’ll be dying without any children at my bedside; and it makes me feel so empty.

[Red Badger]

...one can always wander through the alleyways of the ancient city in search of the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, who long ago left Genoa to go in search of a New World.

No, he was looking for India. He found a place with people and called them Indians..............

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Even some secular professors will admit that those who are religious and poor, will pretty much make up the majority of the population."

This was predicted 2,000 years ago:

"The meek shall inherit the earth."

[mlizzy]

Whenever I am in any sort of public gathering I am struck with how few visibly pregnant women there are.

This is very true. I've seen maybe three or four expecting women since August. Our kids are all in their midish-20s, and only one has a friend who is married. The others group together and rent, or they live with their significant other, and then use birth control. It's so ugly, so blank, but that's all they've known, because they were born into an abortion world.

[Dan(9698)]

I am number 13 of 16, and my wife is number three of 5.

We raised 7 and have 31 grand children.

We are doing our part.

[Red Badger]

Now is the winter of our missed content..................

[Red Badger]

Don’t worry about the ‘world as it is’ for it has always been that way. Let God take care of the world, you just take care of the family and and He will reward you handsomely...................

[Black Agnes]

I’d subtract the poor in the developed world. The true poor in the 3rd world are still mostly meek. The FSA in this country definitely not.

[Morpheus2009]

Not all of them anyways, some of them buy heavily into what some demagogue preaches to them and get riled up, especially in the developed world.

[Morpheus2009]

Me too, it honestly doesn’t seem like there are that many anymore, but as I said before, it also seems like the reason why libs are so mad at some of the traditional religious types is to simply encourage us to go down with ‘em.

At this point, with TV thrown into the trash with recycled material and TV hosts like the crude tampon-earring lady, I personally don’t care to watch any of it. I might see what’s going on via the internet, and I know the alert sirens at this point, in case the TV Warning isn’t enough.

[heartwood]

When I am in some towns - where the young people are mostly Hispanic now, and the white poeple are older with families grown and gone - I see many pregnant young women, bellies displayed in tight T-shirts, pushing a stroller and a child or two holding on to that.

Another town, with a large ultra-orthodox Jewish population - mothers stand at one corner with a flock of little girls, waiting for the school bus, the fathers on the other corner with the boys. The pregnant bellies are concealed more modestly, but the women have a child every year or two, starting before they are twenty years old.

I live in a town where East Indians and Chinese have two children apiece, and white families of Christian origin can have as many as four without raising eyebrows, but this is a place where upper middle-class people come to have children. There are so many people who wouldn’t be caught dead out here in the ‘burbs - the city has so much to offer, except making it easy to raise children.

When I went to my twentieth high school reunion, about a third of the women had not had a child. Some have since had a late baby, but not many.

The future belongs to those who show up - I tried, but I fear my children will find themselves out-numbered.

[lurk]

Meanwhile islamic women in Europe are having 6 babies per woman. Problem solved.