Posted on 05/20/2017 2:24:26 PM PDT by NYer
Friends who visit Europe with large families in tow tell me they soon become “tourist attractions” themselves.
Europeans are used to Muslims with large families. But Americans? People from a prosperous developed nation? How odd. Don’t they know that children get in the way of self-fulfillment? That population growth is bad for the environment?
The visiting Americans with large families are almost invariably Christians—another segment of European society that, along with children, seems to be on the way out. In 2016 more than 90,000 people dropped out of the Church of Sweden, and Norway’s State Church lost more than 25,000 members in a single month. The trend is similar in the UK where the Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh will cut the number of parishes from 100 to 30. Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Utrecht in the Netherlands announced that about a thousand parishes would close by 2025. The Archdiocese of Vienna is also downsizing. In the next ten years it will combine 660 parishes into just 150.
You’ve probably seen the dismal birth rate figures for native Europeans. In most countries it’s below replacement level. If you’re an investor, that means it’s time to buy funeral homes and sell doll house manufacturers. Actually, it’s well past time for that market move. A better bet would be to invest in that new chain of hijab and burqa boutiques that is all the rage in the big cities.
According to a new study, a quarter of European women born in the 1970s may remain childless. That trend is reflected in the fact that Europe’s most important leaders are all childless. That’s the case with the German chancellor, and with the British, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Scottish, and Luxembourg prime ministers. The newly elected president of France, Emmanuel Macron, is also childless and is likely to remain that way since the 39-year-old is married to his 64-year-old former teacher.
What’s the problem with leaders sans offspring? As every parent knows, people with children have more of a stake in the future. They worry about the kind of world that their children will have to live in. And once their children grow up, they start worrying about their grandchildren’s future. On the other hand, childless individuals have less reason to worry about what comes after them. This is less of a concern when the childless couple lives in the apartment upstairs, but when they reside in the presidential palace, or the prime minister’s residence it’s more worrisome.
It’s not a good omen when the leader of your nation doesn’t have to worry about what sort of country his or her progeny will grow up in. It’s even possible that the maternal or paternal instinct can be displaced onto non-native sons and daughters. For example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been called “the compassionate mother” of migrants, for having opened the border to millions of migrants mostly from Muslim countries. And if they don’t assimilate? Well, that’s a problem for other mutters to worry about.
President Macron has a similar solicitude about Muslim migrants. He has promised to facilitate immigration from the Arab world by preserving “an open and welcoming France,” called for the construction of more mosques in France, and has suggested that since “French culture does not exist,” there is no great need for migrants to assimilate to it. French critics refer to Macron as “Peter Pan in the Elysée,” but at least Peter Pan worried about the pirate problem. Macron, however, has rejected former President Hollande’s assertion that “France has a problem with Islam,” and he is against suspending the citizenship of jihadists.
Meanwhile, as Europe’s native population declines, Muslims in Europe are having children, and Turkey’s caliph—I mean, president—wants them to have more. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Turks living in Europe to have “not three, but five children” because “you are the future of Europe.”
He’s probably right about that. As columnist Mark Steyn likes to say, “The future belongs to those who show up for it.” And right now it’s the Muslim children who are showing up for Europe’s future. In Vienna, Birmingham, and other European cities, there are already more Muslim than Christian children.
Just to make sure that trend continues, Turkey’s Interior Minister, Suleyman Soylu, has suggested that Turkey could send 15,000 refugees a month to Europe. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned that “religion wars will soon begin in Europe,” and he cautioned that European politicians are taking the continent “to a cliff.”
Actually, Europe is not headed for a cliff; it’s already gone off it—the demographic cliff, that is. It just hasn’t hit bottom yet. The full effects of the demographic bust won’t arrive for a decade or so. That’s because the Euro-Stork brings fewer babies with each passing year. The people who were never born twenty-five years ago can’t very well make up the birth-rate deficit. And too many of the people who were lucky enough to be born aren’t passing on the good fortune.
That doesn’t apply, of course, to the European Turks, Moroccans, and Pakistanis. They’re having three children per family and, if Erdogan has his way, they’ll have five. A long time ago, Turkey was referred to as “the sick man of Europe.” Now it looks like the Europeans are the sick men of Europe, and the Turks look healthy by comparison. Unlike Europe’s childless leaders, the Turks do seem to take an interest in the future of Europe. But what they envision is an Islamic future.
After an EU ruling allowing employers to ban headscarves, Erdogan accused the EU of starting “a clash between crescent and cross.” But, as he surely realizes, no clash will be necessary. Time is on the side of the Turks, and so are the mathematics of demography. After another decade or so of demographic transformation, the aging population of Europe will be in no shape for a clash.
Editor’s note: Pictured above is newly elected French president Emmanuel Macron with his wife, Brigitte Marie-Claude Macron.
“Many women seem to try to fit their family responsibilities around their careers, as opposed to fitting their careers and job around their families needs.+”
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So do many men.
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The only way now that Europe does not become an Arabized Moslem society is if there is an invasion and conquest of the Continent by either Russia or America or both. That would require that America come to its own senses regarding Islam first.
As civilizations become prosperous they have progressively fewer children. It happened to Rome. In the West with the child labor laws and the determination to let kids be kids children have become a net financial liability whereas historically the more children the more prosperous one’s family. In an agricultural society you raise your labor force at home. In an early industrial society the more kids you have the more incomes from the factory support the family. In a late industrial society the suggestion that one’s children could help support the family draws gasps of horror even from people who consider themselves traditionalists and conservatives. The more expensive children become the fewer there will be. In more traditional less developed societies children are expected to pull their own economic weight by the time they are ten and usually do. In America we just made new laws that forbid farm children from doing “chores.” We raise children to be older children so that we have far fewer emotional adults than biological.
THAT is exactly what you see ALLLLLL over Japan.
It’s so much easier to care about “the children” than to care for an actual child.
Sadly I only have three children. Maybe God will send more. We will see
>As civilizations become prosperous they have progressively fewer children. It happened to Rome.
It’s not money. Poor, rich, it all doesn’t matter. The only thing that corresponds to birth rates is how liberated women are. More liberated, the lower the birth rate. The less liberated the higher the birth rate. This trend has been observed as far back as Ancient Sparta and Babylon.
This is why Muslims out breed everyone. They tend to keep their women pretty unliberated.
Look the groups in the America that have tons of kids: The Amish and the Hasidic jews both have tons of kids keep their women pretty unliberated and both are very wealthy groups.
From my own limited observation in the DC Metropolitan area, younger American couples of European descent marry and have families later, into their 30s, and fewer kids, but they are raising having and raising their small families. Today it’s rare in any metropolitan area to see an at-home mother. That’s just tragic IMO.
Here in the USA, the USConferenceofCatholcBishops prattles endlessly about “the poor”, and it objects to even modest modifications to any benefits to single women who have baby after baby and get increased benefit per child. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is opposed to premarital sex — which means faithful Catholics will marry young — as well as birth control, sterilization, and abortion. So, how does the USCCB support Catholic Families? By urging/demanding that Catholic parishes support Catholic grade schools and that the schools give breaks as the families get larger? Nope. Not a word about these Not a bloody word.
Depends on the Diocese. The one here gives discounts for each successive child and any more than 4 are gratis.
Delighted to hear that — and I’m not being sarcastic! Your post has made my day. Thank you.
By the way...where do you live? If not the diocese in particular, the area in general?
A boy out with his mommy- nice!
Women are as capable of performing acts of faith as are men. They are every bit as capable as men of fixing their gaze on the road to ruin, too.
A year or so back I met a female newbie at work. She said, and I quote, "Ok, I have four kids. Go ahead and berate me."
All I could think of to say was, "OK, but first, tell me. Is that a bad thing?"
That conversation worked to a conclusion. She said, "I don't think it is." I said, "Neither do I. Why do you want me to yell at you?"
It's pretty obvious she had been hammered a time of two or every day by those in her sphere. A woman who thinks a child is an albatross or a ticket to a bigger welfare check isn't worth the mud she walks on. I wouldn't wish such a creature on my worst enemy.
I’m in agreement with you. I grew up with and love animals. However, they had their place either as food, work or pets.
Tidewater Virginia. Diocese of Richmond.
There is a lot of not-so-nice hazing of women who have more than 2 kids.
That’s great! Be sure to let your bishop know how rare he is and how much you appreciate him.
>The sheiks, emirs, sultans, pashas, beys, and deys, suck off all the wealth beyond just enough to keep their people alive and breeding.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about. They made some much cash the welfare alone was in the 50k range per family in a lot of Muslim nations. The wealth has only started to decline as they’ve bred themselves to the point where it’s getting harder and harder to spread the wealth.
>More prosperous societies have more “liberated women” as in Rome.
Athens and Sparta don’t follow this model. Athens was massively richer than Sparta. But it was Sparta with their liberated women that had the problems with birthrates, not Athens.
Germany was the second country in Europe to industrialize after England and thus was quite rich. Their birth rate was very high because their women were unliberalized until they lost WW1. After WW1 Germany become very poor and had very liberated women. The birthrate dropped like a rock and never recovered to pre 1914 levels.
Growing up in my town 4 of my 6 best friend came from big families (1 had 13 brothers and sisters, another had 9, another 8 and the least had 5, the other two who didn’t come from big families had a brother and 2 sisters and the smallest family group was just him and his mom.). I don’t think big families will ever be in fashion, unless we get tax breaks for large families - married parents, not sperm donor...
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