OPINION:
For years, we heard about the “population bomb” that was going to lead to the demise of our planet.
After years of doomsayers, such as the late Paul Ehrlich, ranting about how overpopulation was going to destroy our world, the exact opposite is now happening.
Rather than having too many children, people are not having enough children to sustain the future of our planet.
The United Nations Population Fund just released an alarming report on the global fertility crisis, a demographic cliff that is particularly acute in first-world countries such as the United States.
Much of this global depopulation crisis can be potentially tied to the efforts of the United Nations, Planned Parenthood and others to limit population growth through “family planning” and, in many cases, abortion.
Although the U.N. report cites the usual factors (all of which have validity, such as financial limitations), it does state that 1 in 4 adults said they felt “unable to have a child at their preferred time” and 1 in 5 reported “being pressured to have children they did not want.”
Thus, the U.N. doubles down on its abortion advocacy, saying that one of the solutions is to lift restrictions on reproductive rights.
In first-world places, such as the United States and Europe, lower population growth will eventually lead to weaker economies, as there will not be enough available workers, and those who do work will not number enough to provide for expensive entitlements for aging generations.
For instance, the current fertility (replacement) rate in the United States is around 1.6, down from 2.1 in the mid-2000s. Meanwhile, improved health care, a good thing, is keeping people alive longer, exacerbating the population gap between the young and the aged.
Other studies have found that 1 in 3 Gen Z and millennial generation members either do not have or do not want to have children.
These are alarming statistics, but it is based on the view, promoted by Ehrlich and others, that human beings are a burden on rather than a benefit to societal well-being.
According to research by Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine and published through the National Bureau of Economic Research, more Americans see job satisfaction and close friends as more fulfilling than marriage or having children. That brings me to the other reason people are not getting married or having children. We aren’t doing either because our priorities have changed.
This concurs with an article by Jennifer Frey, dean of the honors college at the University of Tulsa, on the ramifications of current American attitudes toward parenting.
After reviewing several new books on parenting in our present culture, Ms. Frey found that statistics show that only 26% of Americans say having children is important for living a fulfilling life, compared with 71% who say they would choose having a job or career they enjoy and 61% who say close friends will bring fulfillment.
Ultimately, the answer to this question is a return to faith because it is faith that informs us to live beyond our own self-pleasure, or “You do you,” as goes the coined phrase, and for a greater purpose, which includes self-sacrifice and viewing marriage and children as a priority rather than an option.
All the economic arguments in the world will not change why people do not get married and do not have children. Instead, it all comes down to a matter of the heart.
As Nathanael Blake of the Ethics and Public Policy Center recently wrote in World magazine: “People will not be hectored into having more children so that the GDP will be a bit higher in 30 years. They will have more children if they believe that the natural family life of marriage and children offers a better, more fulfilling way to live than careerism and consumerism. Making this seem possible, as well as preferable, requires both men and women to share in the necessary sacrifices.”
It is not until that happens that our reverse population bomb will be diffused, whether it be here in the United States or worldwide. If we, as a global culture, reject selfishness, whether it be seeking pleasure over commitment or death over life, and embrace selflessness, we will be able to turn the tide and reverse the catastrophic course we find ourselves on.
• Timothy S. Goeglein is vice president of external and government relations for Focus on the Family. He served as special assistant to President George W. Bush and as a deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison.
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