Free Republic

This year, the birthrate in the United States has fallen yet again, to 1.7 children per woman—well below the 2.1 replacement rate. With the exception of Hungarian President Viktor Orban, most leaders in the developed world seem to shrug at this news and focus on other matters.Part of the collective indifference to this otherwise-alarming statistic is the way it’s treated. Most often, a low birthrate is framed as a long-term economic problem that might affect the labor market, pensions, productivity, and the like. Occasionally, it’s seen as an environmental issue and not really a problem since each new human...

Merriam-Webster has just announced its “word of the year” for 2017. Drum roll, please…it’s feminism! The word peaked as an online search after various events occurred this past year, beginning with the Women’s March in January, then again when the film “Wonder Woman” was released, and now it has spiked yet again as a result of the #MeToo movement, which Time magazine has recognized as its “Person of the Year.” The word feminism was simply “in the air” this year, notes Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large. Except it kind of wasn’t. For instance, nobody marched in the Feminist March...

“I don't know what the affluent families are doing,” Brown said. “They're not producing or something, because half the kids in schools are from low-income families.” At the conference, held in San Diego, Calif., in late June, Brown said California had addressed the fact that millions of children in the state’s school do not speak English. You have to do more to be able to create that opportunity and that pathway for those families that are not having that same skill of speaking English as others,” Brown said. “It’s pretty amazing,” Brown said. “I don't know what the affluent families...

A new study from the Pew Research Center shows that childlessness is at a record high in America. One in five women aged 40 to 44 reported that they've never had children. Meanwhile, just 41 percent of Americans say having children is necessary to a good marriage, compared to 65 percent in 1990. The study suggests that the two trends may well arise form relaxed social pressure about having kids. In a striking shift, women with advanced degrees are bucking the no-babies trend, with a higher percentage of them having children than in years past. Though childlessness as a whole...

WASHINGTON -- Anne Hare and her husband made a momentous decision three years ago: They would not have children. It's not that they don't like kids, she says. They simply don't want to alter the lifestyle they enjoy. "With kids, especially young kids, infants and toddlers, you really can't do the active stuff we like to do," said Hare, 43, a fitness program coordinator from Gainesville, Ga. Hare is among 26.7 million women aged 15 to 44 who are childless, a record number, according to new Census Bureau data from a June 2002 survey. They represent nearly 44 percent of...