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These days, the issue of family size can be controversial - just ask any couple with several children. Large families are often seen as oddities and treated as an imposition. Why would anyone willingly have so many kids? Don't they know about birth control? Few comments reveal as much about our times as these. Those with even the slightest historical awareness would know that large families were the norm throughout human history, and for good reason. In the Bible, large families are seen as a sign of God's blessing and children are celebrated as God's gifts. Only with the development...

The birthing center at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital has seen an increased number of babies born this year. But that seems to be becoming more rare at hospitals across the Granite State. "I think we are bucking the trend by what we do offer as a small community hospital," says Arlene Patten, of Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital. According to the U.S. Census bureau, in 2006, New Hampshire had the lowest birth rate in the country with only 42 babies born per every 1,000 women. Vermont was not far behind at 42.2 babies. The national average is almost 55...

IT WAS A SPECTACULAR LATE-MAY AFTERNOON IN SOUTHERN ITALY,but the streets of Laviano — a gloriously situated hamlet ranged across a few folds in the mountains of the Campania region — were deserted. There were no day-trippers from Naples, no tourists to take in the views up the steep slopes, the olive trees on terraces, the ruins of the 11th-century fortress with wild poppies spotting its grassy flanks like flecks of blood. And there were no locals in sight either. The town has housing enough to support a population of 3,000, but fewer than 1,600 live here. SNIP The figure...

Britain is now home to more pensioners than children for the first time in the country's history, official population figures have disclosed There are 11.58 million pensioners - classed as men over 65 and women over 60 - compared to 11.52 million under-16s, according to the Office for National Statistics. In figures which illustrate how Britain's population is ageing rapidly, the ONS said that the number of people aged over 80 had almost doubled over the past three decades to 2.7 million. The over 80s are now the fastest growing age group as a result of medical advances and their...

"WASHINGTON - More women in their early 40s are childless, and those who are having children are having fewer than ever before, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the last 30 years, the number of women age 40 to 44 with no children has doubled, from 10 percent to 20 percent. And those who are mothers have an average of 1.9 children each, more than one child fewer than women of the same age in 1976.""

WASHINGTON -- If it weren't for Hispanic births, the United States could be confronting long-term population declines similar to those in Germany, Japan and other industrialized countries. Hispanics are the only ethnic group now producing more than two children per family, according to a Census Bureau report released Monday. That's the number necessary to replace the mother and father and keep the population stable.

With just a few exceptions, birth rates across the European Union have been declining steadily for decades. Economists warn of the consequences - a dwindling workforce bankrolling a growing elderly population. But from Paris, Lisa Bryant reports for VOA that European governments are awakening to their reproduction problems - and scrambling to put pro-baby policies in place. French university professor Nathalie Martiniere gave birth to her son Francois six months ago, and has been on a combination of maternity leave and summer vacation ever since. In September, she will return to her job as university professor in the city of...

FORGET those plans to have a third child for the country because further increases in the birth rate could harm the economy, the nation's productivity watchdog has warned. A major analysis of the nation's increasing fertility rate said it was at its highest level for 25 years - but the Productivity Commission yesterday warned further increases may aggravate rather than solve the problem of the ageing of the population. This is because it will shift women out of the workforce while they care for babies, depressing labour supply and reducing the taxation base as our population ages, the Daily Telegraph...

British couples should have no more than two children to save the world from global warming, according to a green think tank. Campaigners from the Optimum Population Trust said limiting family size was the 'simplest and biggest' contribution people could make to saving the planet. While Britain need not follow the example of China and ban large families, having more than two children should be frowned upon in the same way as using a patio heater or driving a gas guzzling car. But critics said doctors and governments had no right to tell parents how many children to have -...

Universal access to contraception is needed to help fight climate change, it has been claimed. A spiralling global population, with an annual increase of 79 million people, is driving up greenhouse gas emissions, John Guillebaud of University College, London, and GP Pip Hayes of St Leonard's Practice, Exeter, said. And in an editorial in the British Medical Journal they raised the question of whether people in the UK should be told that stopping at two children is "the simplest and biggest contribution" that can be made to saving the planet. The doctors said every person born adds to greenhouse gas...

A human rights activist and author says after years of a sagging birthrate, the U.S. has once again climbed above the all-important replacement birth rate. Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, recently he completed work on his latest book -- Population Control: Real Costs, Illusionary Benefits. As previously reported by OneNewsNow, Mosher says due to years of voluntary birth control, the native European population is dying off. But he says fortunately that is not the case in the United States. "The good news is that we have now gotten back up to 2.1 children [per family], which is...

IF ACCOUNTANT Ulrika Hylander happens to get pregnant here, she would rather return home to Sweden. After all, she and her husband would together be entitled to more than a year's duration of paid parental leave there. Under existing laws here, she would get three months. Her husband, three days. The 39-year-old moved here last July when her husband was posted to work as a finance manager in a Swedish company. She mused: "It's tougher to have children here." Perhaps not for much longer. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew hinted at a dialogue on Wednesday that Singapore is reviewing its...

New York, July 18 (PTI) More babies were born in the United States last year than any other year in history, pointing to a potential start of a new baby boom like the one that followed World War II. A record number of 4,315,000 babies were born in the US last year, nearly the double of those born a century ago, the National Centre for Health Statistics said. "It's a record, and it's a particularly interesting record because the year it beats is 1957, which was the height of the baby boom," Robert Engelman, author of "More: Population, Nature and...

I was surfing the web late the other night and stumbled on an interesting article in the New York Times. Entitled No Babies?, it is a lengthy and fascinating look at demographic trends in Europe. There was no mention of football or any other sport. Instead, the article’s author examined the reasons for low European birth rates and offered a rather unsettling suggestion of what the continent might be like in coming decades. (Think of a depopulated place that resembles a theme park, like Venice). Yesterday morning, after the first critical sips of coffee had worked their magic, a serious...

...In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the “replacement rate” — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level ... first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible...

The birth rate in Russia in the first four months of 2008 increased by 12 percent from the same period of 2007. In the first four months of this year, 547,100 children were born, an increase of 58,400 from the same period of 2007, the Ministry of Health and Social Development said. “The number of applications for maternity capital certificates is also growing,” the ministry said. According to the Pension Fund, 218,032 maternity capital certificates had been issued by June 7, and 17,569 applications are under consideration. As the birth rate grows, the natural decrease situation is also improving. In...

Dr. Love is struggling.... Dr. Love's allies in the war on childlessness have fared no better. The Singaporean government's official matchmaking agency, the SDU -- the initials stand for Social Development Unit, but it's known to snarky islanders as "Single, Desperate, and Ugly" -- is situated just off the city-state's main shopping thoroughfare, and it doesn't seem nearly as popular as the nearby Emporio Armani.... The developed world is experiencing a wave of pro-natalist sentiment that threatens to bully the childless, tax the single, and reorient states toward the production rather than the protection of citizens. In most developed nations...

Smart journalists should never mistake a single data point for a meaningful development. Data isn't the plural of anecdote, as the saying goes. But every so often you have to go with your gut. And so I'm suggesting—not declaring—that the recent results from Pediatrix Medical Group may indicate that the slower economy is causing a decline in births. Pediatrix owns group practices of neonatal specialists and employs 1,070 physicians and 400 nurse practitioners in 32 states and Puerto Rico. Its teams staff some 257 neonatal intensive care units, about one-sixth of the nation's total. Pediatrix has a market capitalization of...

Fertility rates in Jerusalem have been declining among Arabs and rising among Jews in recent years, according to statistics the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies issued to mark Jerusalem Day, today. Among Arabs the rate has dropped to 4 children in 2006, from 4.3 in 2000, and among Jews it has risen to 3.9 children in 2006 from 3.7 in 2000. However, the ratio of Jews and Arabs hasn't changed - 66 percent Jews (489,480) and 34 percent Arabs (256,820) totaling 746,300 at the end of 2007. The negative migration balance in Jerusalem continued last year as 18,750 residents (most...

Britain's Jewish community is enjoying a demographic revival for the first time in 50 years because of massive growth in its haredi population. Almost three out of every four Jewish babies in the UK are born to ultra-Orthodox families, who account for 46,500 out of the estimated 280,000 Jews in the UK, according to Dr. Yaakov Wise of Manchester University's Center for Jewish Studies. By the second half of this century, haredim will outnumber secular ones, he said. "Though Britain's Jewish population is the fifth largest in the world, it has declined by 40 percent, from over 450,000 in 1950...

The teenage birthrate in California increased in 2006 for the first time in 15 years and costs taxpayers $1.7 billion a year - or $2,493 per baby, according to a report released Wednesday by the Oakland-based Public Health Institute. ... The financial losses cover a range of things, said the study's authors, from public assistance to foster care to diminished future taxable wages and spending power among the parents. "The costs are really starting to climb now. That's not money we can afford to lose," said Dr. Norman Constantine, a clinical professor of public health at UC Berkeley and lead...

WARSAW (AFP) — As life expectancy grows and birth rates slump across the EU, around one third of the bloc's population could be over the age of 65 by 2050, a social shift with the potential to transform the lives of Europeans. Only three years ago, just 16.5 percent of the inhabitants of the European Union's current 27 member states were over 65. The proportion is expected to grow to 18 percent by 2010, 25 percent by 2030 and 30 percent by 2050, according to recent forecasts from the EU's Eurostat data agency. The number of European residents over 65...

Over at the Corner, they’re quoting Bruce Thornton: [Europe is not reproducing because] “children are expensive. They require you to sacrifice your time and your interests and your own comfort. If your highest good is pleasure, if your highest good is a sophisticated life, then children get in the way. Why would you spend so much money and so much energy on children if your highest good is simply material well-being? That’s sort of the spiritual dimension of the problem.” Read Dr. Melissa Clouthier on the news that she was pregnant with twins at challenging time of her life H/T...

Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family. That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can't explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears. The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic "Family and Civilization," which has just been republished in an edited version by...

Apparently I’m not the only American with a new little bundle of joy. Bucking the trend in other industrialized nations, we’re experiencing a little baby boomlet, with the most children born since 1961. Some 4.3 million babies arrived in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Associated Press medical writer Mike Stobbe wrote up an amazingly detailed report analyzing the data. Some readers noticed something was missing: The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births....

Abortions are Down Across the Country -- but Why?The conclusion of a sweeping new nationwide study released today that included interviews with every known abortion provider in the country is unambiguous. Abortions are decreasing. The study, conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches issues related to reproductive health and sexuality, found that in 2005, the U.S. abortion rate fell to 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 to 44, the lowest level since 1974. The total number of abortions also declined, to a total of 1.2 million in 2005, well below the all-time high of 1.6 million...

by Steven Ertelt LifeNews.com Editor January 17, 2008 Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new report by an organization affiliated with Planned Parenthood finds that the number of abortions nationwide have fallen to their lowest point in 30 years and have declined 25 percent since 1990. Pro-life groups point to laws limiting abortions, the effectiveness of pregnancy centers and abstinence education as the reason why.

ATLANTA - Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years. The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too. An Associated Press review of birth numbers dating to 1909 found the total number of U.S. births was the highest since 1961, near the...

ATLANTA - Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years. The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too. An Associated Press review of birth numbers dating to 1909 found the total number of U.S. births was the highest since 1961, near the...

For the first time in 35 years, the U.S. fertility rate has climbed high enough to sustain a stable population, solidifying the nation's unique status among industrialized countries. The overall fertility rate increased 2 percent between 2005 and 2006, nudging the average number of babies being born to each woman to 2.1, according to the latest federal statistics. That marks the first time since 1971 that the rate has reached a crucial benchmark of population growth: the ability of each generation to replace itself. "It's been quite a long time since we've had a rate this high," said Stephanie J....

In 2005, doctors Susan Bewley and Melanie Davies published an article in British Medical Journal about optimum age for having children, entitled: Which Career First? I interviewed them; they were nice, they knew what they were talking about. Bewley said, "I don't want to speculate about things I don't understand - sociology, psychology. All we're saying is, if you saw a herd of people travelling north, you'd say, 'It's getting colder, take some warm clothes!' There's a herd of women drifting into a hazardous state. We are picking up the pieces." Article continues This has been the line, from everyone,...

Released : Saturday, December 29, 2007 6:04 PM Russia lost more than 200,000 people this year, the statistics service said Saturday. The population decline of 0.15 percent was slightly smaller than in 2006, RIA Novosti reported. The country's population was estimated at 142 million as of Nov. 1, the Russian news agency said. While the death rate continued to exceed the birth rate, the number of immigrants was up 87 percent. Most newcomers were from former Soviet republics. The working age population was 75.1 million in November, or about 53 percent of the total population. United Nations demographers say if...

For the first time in 35 years, the U.S. fertility rate has climbed high enough to sustain a stable population, solidifying the nation's unique status among industrialized countries. The overall fertility rate increased 2 percent between 2005 and 2006, nudging the average number of babies being born to each woman to 2.1, according to the latest federal statistics. That marks the first time since 1971 that the rate has reached a crucial benchmark of population growth: the ability of each generation to replace itself. "It's been quite a long time since we've had a rate this high," said Stephanie J....

Horrors! The teen birth rate rises! Thus spake the mainstream media when preliminary data from the Centres for Disease Control showed that the teen birth rate rose three per cent in 2006, the first rise since 1991. The mainstream media reacted true to form. They rounded up the usual suspects: abstinence education and those pesky Christian conservatives. If only the media had troubled to examine the whole report, though, they might have noticed a few things that didn’t fit their template of sex-education-good, abstinence-bad. First, the overall birth rate increased so substantially that we could call it another baby boom....

The president of Estonia goes on national TV to urge his countrymen to have more children. Russian President Vladimir Putin warns his parliament about "a serious crisis threatening Russia's survival": the nation's low birth rate. The government of Singapore is trying to reverse that country's birth dearth by sponsoring a massive taxpayer-funded matchmaking service. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, panicking the world with dire predictions of a population explosion. By the year 2000, he predicted, the world would be so crowded that hundreds of millions would die of starvation. Although Mr. Ehrlich's prophecies have turned out to...

Man And Nature: Enviro-fanatics are sterilizing themselves to reduce their "carbon footprint." We dread where their nihilistic ideology — that mankind is an evil planetary force — will lead next.The U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper last week featured the beaming face of one Toni Vernelli, a British environmental activist who had sterilization surgery at the age of 27 because she considers children "a sinister threat to the future." It was no Monty Pythonesque spoof. Two years earlier, despite being on birth-control pills, Vernelli got pregnant and had an abortion because "it would have been immoral to give birth to a child...

London, Nov 14 (ANI): A top British Liberal Democrat has proposed a solution to combat global warming - put a full stop on babies. Chris Davies has warned that halting population growth, as an answer to global warming, would prove to be far more efficient than trying to cut pollution. The North West England MEP added that families should be encouraged to have no more than one child in an effort to combat climate change. But he said he did not support "Chinese-like ideas of compulsion". "What's the single most effective thing couples can do to play a part in...

The country's fertility rate continues to rise; the average number of babies born to Muslim women is falling; having babies before the age of 20 is less common, and the average age when women have their first child is up. These are some of the findings of the report on Patterns of Fertility in 2006 released this week by the Central Bureau of Statistics. A total of 148,170 babies came into the world last year: 71 percent of them were born to Jewish mothers and 23% to Muslims; 3% to women of undetermined religion; 2% to Druse; and 1% to...

The country's fertility rate continues to rise; the average number of babies born to Muslim women is falling; having babies before the age of 20 is less common, and the average age when women have their first child is up. These are some of the findings of the report on Patterns of Fertility in 2006 released this week by the Central Bureau of Statistics. A total of 148,170 babies came into the world last year: 71 percent of them were born to Jewish mothers and 23% to Muslims; 3% to women of undetermined religion; 2% to Druse; and 1% to...

A researcher is trying to figure out if more women are deciding not to have children because of changes in economics and birth control, or if genetic changes are affecting choices and goals. Lonnie Aarsen of Queen's University in Canada said the trend of childlessness in developed countries will ease because of biological evolution, despite the fact that women with more financial freedom may decide to pursue leisure and other personal goals, not parenthood. She said this is because the women who leave the most descendants will be those with an intrinsic drive for motherhood. Over time, she suggests, those...

MARIAZELL, Austria (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI blasted Europeans for being selfish and not having enough children, in a sermon on Saturday at the 850-year-old pilgrimage site of Mariazell in Austria. "Europe has become child-poor. We want everything for ourselves and place little trust in the future," the pope told a crowd of faithful from his canopied area at an open-air mass that took place under heavy rain. But Benedict held out hope, saying: "The earth will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished ....

AUSTRALIA should aim for a population of 50 million through "significant migration", says Queensland Premier Peter Beattie. Addressing a business luncheon at the Brisbane Club today, Mr Beattie said the current ageing population of 21 million was too small to meet future needs. "In terms of the general issue of migration - I know there are pressures on, and all that stuff, in terms of the environment - I think 21 million Australians is not enough," he said... "It is a matter for my federal colleagues, not for me, but I am one of those people who believe that inevitably...

Birth rate hits 15-year high in Russia RBC, 03.09.2007, Moscow 17:19:29.The birth rate reached a 15-year high in Russia in the first six months of 2007, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated at a traditional Monday meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with government officials. According to Medvedev, 142,000 babies were born between January and June 2007, a record number since the collapse of the USSR, the radio station Mayak reported. The number of childbirths increased 6.5 percent in the first half of 2007, compared to the same period a year earlier, while the death rate decreased by the...

Until recently, demographic changes were so slow that they hardly seemed to be a variable effecting strategic challenges. But today, many major nations are undergoing rapid and evident changes in their demographic structure. This is most obvious in Europe, but it is also the case in the United States, Russia, China, and Japan. Demographic disruption is impacting America, all of its major allies, and all of its traditional or potential adversaries. In Western countries, the combination of a sharp decline in the birth rates of the European or European-descended population, on the one hand, and the sharp increase in the...

Men with younger women have more children 13:50 29 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi A woman should get together with a man several years older than herself if she wants a lot of children – at least in Sweden. The analysis of Swedish birth records reveals that men who partner with women six years younger than themselves produce the most offspring. Across many cultures men and women prefer younger and older mates respectively, says Martin Fieder, an anthropologist at the University of Vienna in Austria. In theory these age preferences make evolutionary sense, he says. However, there has...

Men have evolved to choose young wives Last Updated: 12:01am BST 29/08/2007 There is a 25 year age gap between Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas Men have evolved to seek wives and girlfriends who are younger than they are to maximise their chances of reproducing, researchers have found. Couples are most likely to have a greater number of children if the man is about six years older. A team from Vienna University studied more than 11,600 Swedish men and women, aged 45-55, and their partners and found that relationships in which the man was six years older than the...

Alarming Trend: Broken Homes will be One in Four by 2011 in Spain Since election of Socialists Spain has become a leading anti-family EU country By Elizabeth O?Brien MADRID, August 24, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Calling for Spanish policy makers to commit to providing greater support for families, the Institute for Family Policy (IFP) reported an alarming trend than one in four homes will be single-parent by 2011, Catholic News Agency (CNA) reports. Mariano Martinez-Aedo, Vice President of the IFP, pointed out that recent trends in Spanish families have caused increased "fragmentation" that has weakened the structure of society. He said,...

Regular readers will recall that we are on the verge of a population problem. Fertility rates have been falling across the globe, and in nearly every industrialized country are already below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Despite the appearance of a world bursting at the seams with an ever-greater number of people, the current growth rate is slowing and the world's population is likely to peak about nine billion and then begin contracting - precipitously - by 2080. Regular readers also will recall that there are convincing, if not certain, reasons to suspect that population contraction could...

Aging Global Population is "Profound" and "Irreversible": UN Report States that lowered fertility is the cause, but fails to mention birth control, again By Elizabeth O'BrienNEW YORK CITY, August 16, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The United Nations recently released its global population estimates, revealing an alarming population shift that will have serious worldwide consequences within the near future. While blaming the problem on lowered fertility and increased longevity, the report fails to make the connection with contraception, abortion and sterilization.The report is a 2007 updated version of the 2002 "World Population Aging" report that was published during the Second World Assembly...

In February, representatives from the UN Security Council and Germany met to discuss possible economic sanctions against Iran. This came after reports that Iran has expanded its uranium-enrichment program in defiance of a Security Council resolution. This and other provocative behavior makes Iran the most dangerous nation on Earth. It also makes it important to understand what is driving the provocations. The standard explanation—Iran’s desire to dominate the region—is only part of a larger problem: Iran is living on borrowed time. In 1985, the average Iranian woman gave birth to 5.6 children, one of the highest birthrates in the world,...