Posted on 06/10/2014 7:13:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Pope Francis said something so important last week that it will either be widely ignored or widely disparaged.
The pope criticized these marriages in which the spouses do not want children, in which the spouses want to remain without fertility.
This culture of well-being, he said, has convinced us: Its better not to have children! Its better! You can go explore the world, go on holiday, you can have a villa in the countryside, you can be carefree. It might be better more comfortable to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the dog.
He is right. More than ever before, young men and women in most affluent Western countries (and Russia) have decided not to have children. Instead, many shower love and attention on dogs and cats. Ask many young women married or single if they have any children, and if they do not, you are likely to be told, I have two cats or I have two dogs. There are authors whose book-jacket photo shows them with their dog or cat.
In much of the West, animals are the new children.
The pope made this declaration for two reasons: one demographic and one religious and moral.
The demographic reason is that the populations of European countries such as the one in which he lives, Italy, are gradually disappearing.
Italys birth rate is approximately 1.41 children per woman, making Italy 203rd out of 224 countries in terms of its fertility rate.
LifeSiteNews, a religious-oriented news website, reported that Italian demographer Giancarlo Baliga said last year that by 2041, The age group most represented in the structure of the Italians will become the 70s.
According to Fred Pearce in the Guardian, Italy has the worlds second oldest population.
According to population-statistics website Geohive, Italy will have 2.5 million fewer people at the end of this century than it had in the beginning. And the only reason it will not have far fewer is that so many Italian residents will be immigrants.
In fact, according to Professor Peter McDonald, former president of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, if Italy remains at its current fertility levels and does not compensate with immigrants, it will lose 86 percent of its population by the end of the century falling to 8 million people, compared with todays 56 million.
The pope knows that Italians and other nations are slowly disappearing.
The question is: Why? Why do so many people prefer to parent pets rather than children?
Throughout history, there were three primary reasons people had many children: Lack of contraception, economic necessity, and religion.
All three reasons are gone.
Thanks to modern contraception, couples can have all the sex they want without conceiving.
Most people in welfare states no longer need children to care for them in old age because the state will do that.
And with the demise of religion in the developed world, there are no values-based reasons to have children.
Because of contraception and the welfare state, the one compelling reason to have children is that ones values demand it.
Those values overwhelmingly come from religion. The dominant religions of the Western world, Judaism and Christianity, hold up marriage and children as an ideal. Consequently, the people in affluent Western countries most likely to have more than two, and certainly more than three, children are Orthodox Jews, Evangelical Protestants, religious Catholics, and active Mormons.
But secularism is now dominant in the West, which ends the values-based reason to have children.
One might argue that there is a fourth reason to have children a desire to raise and love children and have a family. But one shouldnt put too much stock in that argument. Without religion, even those who want children almost never have more than two. And more and more secular individuals find that their desire to nurture is fulfilled by loving cats and dogs.
That was the popes point. Its an important one.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His most recent book is Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
They need to be fixed --- as we all do --- by being saved, which is to say, by placing their faith, hope, and love in Almighty God and honoring His purposes for a free, responsible, and dignified human life.
I admit, I am confused. It is my understanding that single mamas are paid money to have kids, per say. Didn’t the numbers just come out the other day regarding how many illegals are having babies in Texas?
My head is spinning, I can’t make heads or tails out of any of the news lately.
RE: I admit, I am confused. It is my understanding that single mamas are paid money to have kid
Actually, money is given AFTER they have the child and have no way of supporting the child.
Saw a bumper sticker the other day. It had a “rainbow “ paw and it read, “ I Love My Two Mommies”
They don’t need to be “fixed” in the sense of being spayed, a veterinary approach which annihilates human dignity.
They need to be fixed -— as we all do -— by being saved, which is to say, by placing their faith, hope, and love in Almighty God and honoring His purposes for a free, responsible, and dignified human life.
I won’t argue with that because you’re right.
Perks of Pet children:
1. No college tuition worries
2. No teen angst to deal with
3. They don’t complain about off brand clothing
4. They don’t care where you go for vacation
5. No babysitters required
6. 12-15 year lifespan (no adult problems to deal with)
Notice the Beneful dog food ads using the term “Pet Parent”?
Aren't you confusing Emerson with Thoreau? Emerson was very pro-hindu, however.
Thank you for this post.
Some conservatives can't seem to make up their minds if they're for or against abortion/birth control/sterilization. It seems to all depend on which "civilization" we're talking about.
Perhaps in their home countries they have to. Once they're here, there's no need to eat the family pets when they have food stamps and earned income credits to feed their innumerable offspring.
You’re right - all this concern over falling birth rates seems like an obsession with quantity over quality. I’m more concerned with skyrocketing birth rates among indigents in the Third World (especially when they spill over here) than I am with low birth rates in developed nations.
The trouble is, the low impulse controls are the ones with the most children these days. Every gangbanger has sired about a dozen by the time he's 20, not one of whom is provided for.
I think openness in communication was the big change. It used to be that if you didn’t want to have kids that was your dark little secret and you went and had kids because that’s how things worked. My MIL is now very open about the fact that she never wanted kids, but she had them anyway (and did a pretty bad job of it in 2 out of 3 tries and her grandkid) because that was what you did. By the time I came of age enough people were open about the fact that they didn’t want kids that you could actually use it as a spouse selection criteria, which I did.
I think in the long run it has very good implications for society. Birthrate will eventually level out, and only people who actually want kids, and will put the effort necessary into raising them properly, will have kids. Some of the biggest messes I’ve ever known were society obligation children, if we stop having them a lot of problems go away. And when we get a generation that’s almost entirely born from desire and raised that way a higher percentage of them will want kids.
“The trouble is, the low impulse controls are the ones with the most children these days. Every gangbanger has sired about a dozen by the time he’s 20, not one of whom is provided for.”
You are correct, those LIC’s and the upcoming hoard of illegals with LIC are breeding at high rates. They and their broods will live in ghettos and kill each other until they are killed.
The ones I’m presenting are the so called elite left wingers, who line up for days to buy the latest Apple product. They spend more money on their pets each year than most average people do with their children.
Look at the tv ads for the high end pet food. After a recent barrage of these tv ads, my wife noted, for decades, we were told not to feed our pets table scraps. Now they market basically table scraps and sell what is processed as a high end premium pet food. There is even a so called grilled pet food.
Hey, whatever keeps them happy and off the streets protesting something. Besides it is their money now, until we get taxed to feed someone’s pets.
"I think in the long run it has very good implications for society. Birthrate will eventually level out, and only people who actually want kids, and will put the effort necessary into raising them properly, will have kids. Some of the biggest messes Ive ever known were society obligation children, if we stop having them a lot of problems go away. And when we get a generation thats almost entirely born from desire and raised that way a higher percentage of them will want kids."
From what we see, #5 is a big problem with the pet owners, whose pets are their kids.
They spend a lot of time and effort finding the right person to take care of their pets when they are on vacation.
One of our childless neighbors with pets lost her regular pet sitter and paid good money for someone else. When they returned from the vacation, I noticed their dog was very shy and hangdown around my wife and I. That was not his normal behavior.
I asked them if their dog had a different sitter, and they said yes. To make a long story short the pet sitter’s son was an abusive drunk sob, and scared the pets his Mother watched.
One of our widow church ladies makes good money watching homes and the pets of the home owners. She is in high demand.
We either take the dog with us or she stays with my Mom or my sister. Our dog was dumped out as a 6 month old puppy on the street in our neighborhood. If we take her anywhere unknown to her she thinks we are abandoning her and she won’t eat.
Two of the lesbian threesome are named "Doll" and "Kitten"? You can't make that kind of stuff up.
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