The issue of Western fertility might be the most important of them all.
We’ve all heard stories of the guy who went to the doctor to treat a minor issue, when all of a sudden the physician tells him that he has advanced cancer and needs to get to the hospital right away. If one were to ask the man on the street what the big issues facing the US today are, he would probably talk about millions of illegal immigrants, trans surgeries on kids, inflation, the war in Ukraine becoming a larger conflict, etc. What he probably would not mention but might actually be the biggest issue facing the US and all of Western society is the very low birth rates that keep going lower.
Birth rates are hard things to feel. When the Iranian missiles flew over our heads, that was something we could appreciate in terms of their potential for destruction. If a family has one child instead of two or no children at all, nobody is going to create a chart of what life would have been like if another child had been added to the existing family. It is what it is. So while experts show birth rates well under the accepted 2.1 children per woman replacement level, the concept really has no meaning on the personal level. Only the Nazis and maybe the commies made giving birth some type of national mission. Most countries leave their citizens to themselves, and China has disastrously limited children and finds today that it cannot catch up.
While Elon Musk and others point out the flashing red light of low birth rates, there is almost nothing that can be done about it. In a bygone era, having children was a fundamental religious obligation. “Be fruitful and multiply!” is the very first commandment in the Torah. And it was not unusual for families to have 10 or 12 kids. In previous centuries, children often died in childhood, so having many births did not necessarily mean having that many children. In the Orthodox world here in Israel, families are larger than average but smaller than in previous generations. Whereas an orthodox woman might have 10 brothers and sisters, her daughter is now having 4-6 kids. That is still a substantial number, but she also works for a Fortune 100 company. The company knows her needs and caters to her requirements for food, holidays, and lifestyle. A family friend has a daughter who works at Israel Aircraft Industries, whose products were all over the skies and ground in Iran. The company sends shuttle buses to pick her and her friends up and bring them home. The young orthodox women are worth the “trouble” because they are very bright and very good at what they do. Therefore, it is not unusual for a young Orthodox woman to balance a good job with five children at home.
In the regular Western world, we have removed the default from having children to not having children. One has a career. If there is an opportunity and the conditions are right, a working couple might have one or two children. Many in our current Western world do not marry, and many also do not have children. In the orthodox world, not having children, for say, medical reasons, is a real challenge. All around, friends and family are announcing births or making weddings. One goes and smiles and dances, and then comes home to cry. In the larger world, not having children is completely normal and in many circles perceived as the morally right thing to do to prevent climate change or the waste of Earth’s natural resources. One huge advantage in Israel is that family is usually not far away. Thus, when parents have children and work, their own parents, siblings, aunts, and uncles often can help cover for a child who is not feeling well or needs someone to pick them up after school. In the US, parents and children who have graduated from college are generally geographically separated.
So, from a starting position of many not really wanting to have kids due to expenses or their potential effect on lifestyle, how do public planners expect to get women to reproduce? If there were some religious revival and people felt obligated to bring children as an act of serving God, that would be one thing. But let’s stick to public policy. One can offer tax breaks, free college, help with mortgages, and the like. Those are all wonderful ideas that have been tried in various countries to little effect. These macro efforts generally don't bear fruit because they don’t help a young mother or father get a good night’s sleep or guarantee no loss of job due to having to take care of the kids. Over 50% of black children in the United States are born out of wedlock. I don’t care for any modern psychological mumbo-jumbo: a child with a stable, loving family with mom and dad present and supportive has a huge advantage over a child from a broken home with respect to future potential success. Just as a rocket uses over 90% of its fuel to get into orbit, a child needs a lot of love, support and direction to succeed when he becomes a young adult. How will authorities encourage people to marry and stay together? Tax breaks on joint filings won’t do it.
I don’t see a solution to the low birthrate problem. Children take a huge amount of time and are expensive today. Yes, there is nothing that replaces the love of a child and the precious time spent with one’s children. That’s true. But getting people to have babies that they otherwise did not plan to have is the problem facing bureaucrats who are watching their societies go over the edge, just as seriously-multiplying Muslim immigrants come to Europe to take over their aging and dying countries.
How will societies function when they are missing so many people? AI and Elon Musk’s robot revolution certainly will help on the technical side: robots will do much of what humans have been doing until now. On the societal level, having empty schools and nobody paying into Social Security are much bigger problems. Mark Steyn has said that when the war ends, Ukraine will never recover from its lost soldiers and very low birth rates. How will Ukraine proceed? Will whole towns just shut shop? Will they bring in immigrants willy-nilly to make up for babies never born? One of the biggest drivers for illegal immigration into the West is a lack of children. Without the 30 million or so Mexicans and others who entered the US over the past few decades, the overall US population would be in decline.
Identifying a problem is always the first step in fixing it. And while a cheaper world would encourage some to have children or bring more into the world, there is no non-religious policy solution to bringing birth rates back over 2.1. Even the overall global birth rate has dropped below this number; shortly, the number of souls in the world will start to decline, and the decrease will finally shatter the overpopulation myth peddled for the past few decades.