Posted on 12/17/2012 4:28:04 AM PST by Kaslin
FERTILITY IN AMERICA has been declining for years. According to the Pew Research Center, the nation's birth rate hit an all-time low in 2011 – just 63 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. It was almost twice as high – 123 births per 1,000 women – at the peak of the Baby Boom in 1957.
As babies and children disappear from a society, what takes their place? One answer, as journalist Jonathan V. Last observes in a forthcoming book, "What to Expect When No One's Expecting," is pets.
In surveys taken from the 1940s to the 1980s, fewer than half of Americans said they owned a pet. Today America's 300 million humans own 360 million pets. Last puts that in perspective: "American pets now outnumber American children by more than four to one." Often those pets are pampered to a degree that quite recently would have been thought eccentric. The average dog-owning household's spending on pet grooming aids, for example, more than doubled between 1998 and 2006. Last notes that when a kids' clothing store in the suburban Washington neighborhood where he used to live went out of business, it was replaced by a doggie spa – leaving the neighborhood "with six luxury pet stores and only two shops dedicated to clothing children."
A mania for pets isn't all that materializes when the birth rate sinks. So do economic stagnation, dwindling innovation, a declining lifestyle, the exploding health and pension costs of an aging population, and the ever-heavier taxes needed to maintain the government safety net when there are fewer workers and entrepreneurs. Optimism, booming markets, and technological dynamism recede, supplanted by intergenerational conflict and loneliness.
Many people, it's true, are still in the grip of the Malthusian fallacy. The superstition that that the Earth is already too full, and that more human beings will mean more hunger, misery, and environmental despoliation, is a popular one. But serious demographers, economists, and others have been warning for years that declining populations lead to shortages, misery, and upheaval.
"If you think that population decline is going to be a net boon to society," Megan McArdle writes in the Daily Beast, "take a long hard look at Greece. That's what a country looks like when it becomes inevitable that the future will be poorer than the past: social breakdown, political breakdown, economic catastrophe."
If so, Greece will have plenty of company. Fertility rates are falling everywhere. The median age in many countries is already over 40, well above the prime childbearing years. In some places, plummeting fertility can be attributed to dictatorial coercion: To enforce its "One-Child" policy, China has employed methods ranging from steep fines and loss of employment to compulsory sterilization and abortions. The results have been brutal: Hundreds of millions of births have been prevented, China's median age is at 36 and rising, and the Chinese fertility rate is now 1.54 – well below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population.
But as Last points out, the fertility rate for white, college-educated American women – a proxy for the US middle class – is 1.6. "In other words, America has created its very own 'One-Child' policy. It's soft and unintentional, the result of accidents of history and thousands of little choices. But it has been just as effective."
It is hard to overstate the demographic and social transformation this represents. It wasn't that long ago that getting married and having children were life goals shared by nearly every American. For most of the 20th century, well over 90 percent of US adults married at some point in their lives – at one point the percentage went as high as 98.3 percent. Now,according to Pew, barely half of all adults in the United States – a record low – are married. And nearly 4 in 10 Americans say marriage is becoming obsolete.
And as more people choose not to marry, more of them retreat from childrearing. For decades Gallup has asked Americans what they consider the "ideal family size." From the 1940s to the 1960s, roughly 70 percent said that three or more children would be best. But beginning in the late 1960s, the American "ideal" fell sharply. Today only 33 percent of Americans regard three or more kids as desirable. And in practice, one in five American women now have no children at all.
What happens to a society that increasingly turns its back on marriage and babies? In which singlehood becomes standard, and pets outnumber kids by four to one? Ready or not, America is going to find out.
You wrote:
“You do know that a lot of pregnancies abort naturally, without any intervention by humans, don’t you?”
Yes, and?
There is far more to declining birthrates than just money, the cultural factors I mentioned. At the same time as basic costs go up, so do cultural and government *expectations* of potential parents. And this can be both profound and discouraging.
Two generations ago, if children wanted to go to college, they would often as not work their way through, paying their own tuition. And importantly, tuition was paid up front. So when they graduated, they would be employable, but have little or no money to start with.
However, they also had no debt. What they earned, after taxes, was theirs, along with prospects for a long time job and promotions offering more money. They could timetable both marriage and children.
Today, to get through college, costs are so very high that most students assume very large debts, so when they graduate they do so “in the hole”. This translates to having to delay marriage *and children*, for years until they are “just broke”, “beginning their independent adult life” at 25 or even 30 years of age.
Since most people only have about a 20 year optimal window to have children, from 17 to 37, practically speaking only about 15 years, this tightens things up considerably.
Then other cultural and government factors come into play, such as demands on potential parents to provide a higher “quality of life” for their children. And this is not just money, but time and energy that is demanded of them.
Eventually it reached a point where having a child was a major burden, estimated cost a minimum of $100,000 for eighteen years, after both parents were debt free; having two children was much more difficult; having three or more almost out of the question.
Even with enough money, the demands of time and energy are such that “optimally” it would take four or five people to raise three or more children.
It is not only politics but the soft propaganda of popular culture.
It is not only politics but the soft propaganda of popular culture.
If the government on the federal, state and local levels didn’t take as much of our money, it would be an incentive to have more children and it would also mean more money floating around in the ecomony meaning more wealth and jobs which would encourage more people to have children. It might start a trend. Maybe people will begin in rebel against the sixties craziness and there will be a swing of the pendulum. I hope so.
I think we should push against the perverse liberal culture by putting in a good word for parenthood whenever possible. I am going to tell my granddaughters that twenty is a good age to start thinking about looking for a husband. I am not talking about pressuring them but giving them a timeline to work from. Starting to seriously think about finding a mate by twenty is a good time. They can start looking around and taking notes...what do I want in a spouse, what do I not want.
I don’t want my flesh and blood to be replaced. I want my line to survive.
First its college, then its the big wedding then the big house followed by big vacations. Somethings got to give. Americans have got into the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
What state do you live in?
Pets shall inherit the earth. LOL
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