Free Republic

It has long been a cultural phenomenon that when people are confined to their homes due to dramatic weather events, babies start springing forth nine months later. Nearly half the worldÂ’s population is confined to their homes with two primary tasks: 1. Do not catch nor spread COVID-19. 2. DonÂ’t go nuts from boredom or cabin fever.In trying to accomplish No. 2, people are playing more board and card games. Others are catching up on sleep and preparing more homecooked meals. These are very good things.Husbands and wives are also finding themselves with plenty of time for other activities, and...

As 2017 drew to a close, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) urged Americans to have more children. To keep the country great, he said, we’re “going to need more people.” “I did my part,” the father of three declared. Ryan’s remarks drew some eye rolls at the time, but as new data about the country’s collapsing fertility rates has emerged, concern has deepened over what’s causing the changes, whether it constitutes a crisis that will fundamentally change the demographic trajectory of the country — and what should be done about it. Women are now having fewer babies and at...

Liberal mainstream media attacks on family values built on rather dubious foundations The attacks on “family values” in the liberal mainstream media seem never-ending. And yet, when we look rigorously at the data the anti-family value advocates use to support their claims, we often find the liberal attacks are built on rather dubious foundations. A recent article in the Globe and Mail newspaper proclaims that “‘it turns out ‘family values’ are bad for families.” This shocking conclusion is followed up by the core insight that “‘[t]he way to have more and better families today is to get far away from...

Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff,” wrote Jonathan Last, “The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate.” This view, as recently expressed in The Wall Street Journal and at greater length in Last’s new book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, holds that a decline in fertility rates (the average number of children born per woman) means nothing less than the end of civilization as we know it. According to Last, fertility decline will inevitably lead to population shrinkage, which in turn will inevitably doom us to economic stagnation and social breakdown....

Arrests of migrants sneaking into the U.S plunge to lowest level in decades, indicating illegal immigration is on the retreat even as states, Congress and GOP presidential candidates hotly debate the issue. Miriam Jordan explains on The News Hub.

In Maclean’s magazine last month, Mark Steyn wrote a plaintive piece about how his new book, America Alone, was unavailable in Canadian bookstores — an apparent victim of a fear of militant Muslim reprisals. The Chapters-Indigo chain subsequently insisted it wasn’t giving Steyn’s book the Mein Kampf treatment (banned from being sold in the chain by the boss, Heather Reisman), but that they hadn’t anticipated the popularity of America Alone (a best-seller) and hadn’t ordered enough copies. Last I heard, the book was in its fourth printing and, happy to say, a phone check with Chapters indicates they’ve now got...

Fertility rates around the world are dropping for a variety of complex reasons. While population itself continues to increase - the United States, for instance, recently passed the 300 million mark - this is the product of waning demographic momentum. The rate of increase is slowing, and, by 2080, world population will peak somewhere in the vicinity of nine billion before contracting.Which leads us to the next question: Is population contraction a bad thing?Some think not. There is a school of thought that argues that smaller populations are good. Population-control proponents claim variously that:We do not have the food to...

Dear Colleague: Seventeen European nations are now having so few wee bairns that there is little prospect of a demographic comeback.  Cardinal Trujillo is among those who recognize that Europe's days could be numbered. Steven W. Mosher President PRI Weekly Briefing   3 March 2006  Vol. 8 / No. 9 Facing the Facts of Europe's Suicide By Joseph A. D'Agostino Will the Muslims inherit Western Europe?  "If [Western people] don't do something, probably," replies Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Senior Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. "That's a very probable outcome.  The West doesn't...