By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet
A recent Pew Research Center report found that the percentage of U.S. adults younger than 50 that say they are very unlikely to ever have children has increased. Compared to the same survey in 2018, the percentage rose from 37% to 47% in 2023.
Since the baby boom (1946-1964), changing societal norms and other key factors (such as the normalization of contraception, no-fault divorce, delaying of marriage, anti-natalist programs, radical feminism, the legalization of same-sex unions, etc.) have reshaped recent generations of American families, resulting in the steady decline in birth rates with each passing year, leading to a current total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.6.
Fertility rates measure the average number of live births per woman. The “replacement level” is the rate at which population size remains constant from generation to generation, which is 2.1 births per woman. When the TFR is greater than 2.1, the population will increase, and when it is less than 2.1, the population will eventually decrease.
As a CDC report details, “the general fertility rate in the United States decreased by 3% from 2022, reaching a historic low,” adding that “from 2014 to 2020, the rate consistently decreased by 2% annually.” Showing no signs of change, the Pew Research Center’s survey reported that 57% of those adults surveyed said they simply did not want children. And in a spring 2024 survey, 47% of adults believed that welcoming children would have a negative impact on the country.
These statistics ought to raise grave concern. By not replacing its population, the U.S. is jeopardizing its future, its very existence.
The U.S. Is Not Alone
Depopulation is not merely an American problem. Oceania, Asia, Latin America, and Europe are also well below the replacement level, with Africa being the only continent with a growing population with a TFR of 4.12.
In its annual report, World Population Prospects 2024, the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division notes that “currently, the global fertility rate stands at 2.3 live births per woman, down from 3.3 births in 1990. More than half of all countries and areas globally have fertility below 2.1 births per woman.” This means that about two-thirds of the global population lives in a country or area where lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman. In other words, “one in four people globally lives in a country whose population has already peaked in size.”
According to the same UN report,
In 63 countries and areas, containing 28 percent of the world’s population in 2024, the size of the population peaked before 2024. In 48 countries and areas, with 10 per cent of the world’s population in 2024, population size is projected to peak between 2025 and 2054. In the remaining 126 countries and areas, the population is likely to continue growing through 2054, potentially reaching a peak later in the century or beyond 2100.
To place things in greater perspective, in 1950, the average woman gave birth to 4.7 children. Today, that number for the world is hovering at 2.3 – and it is steadily falling. With 2.1 needed to replace the current population, possibly in the next 20 to 25 years, most countries will enter a demographic winter. This means that the number of elderly people will soon (and in some cases already does) significantly outstrip the number of young people and children.
In China, for instance, where the government brutally enforced a one-child policy for decades, the population is shrinking. A BBC article reports that there was a 2.08 million decrease in population from 2022 to the end of 2023. “China’s population has declined for a second consecutive year,” the article states, “underscoring concerns about the future growth of the world’s second-largest economy.” Despite efforts by the Chinese government in the past few years to encourage couples to welcome more children, very few are doing so. The one-child family has become the cultural norm.
The United Kingdom provides another example of historically low birth rates. A recent report highlighting this came from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which is a non-ministerial department responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the economy, population, and society. It reported that the number of children born to British mothers has fallen to a record low, collapsing by 25% over the past 15 years. According to the report, the British fertility rate in 2023 fell to just 1.44 children per woman, far below the 2.1 needed for population replacement. It is the lowest rate recorded since the government began tracking figures in 1938.
Nations have begun reacting to the falling fertility rates and the dire social and economic consequences that will ensue. The UN reports more than a quarter of countries around the world have implemented pro-natalist policies, offering incentives to couples to welcome children such as “baby bonus” cash payments, paid parental leave, child benefits, subsidized childcare, and funding fertility treatments (including, unfortunately, highly morally problematic procedures such as in vitro fertilization).
For example, Russia has attempted to increase birth rates by giving couples a day off work with the expressly stated goal of encouraging them to use the time to try to conceive. Countries like France, Greece, Italy, and Finland have offered tax credits and increased social welfare benefits. With Europe’s fertility rate at 1.5, Asia’s at 1.9, Oceania’s at 2.1 and Latin America’s at 1.8, one can see why there is reason for concern. It is understandable why many governments are reconsidering their tactics to increase birth rates and why they are spending billions to fund pro-child measures. But as I have written previously, none of these pro-natal policies have really worked. Fertility rates continue to fall in each of these respective regions with no foreseeable change.
Pro-natal policies are, without a doubt, an important part of encouraging couples to welcome children in a world fraught with uncertainty. But it will never be enough.
The Trend Toward Fewer Children
Ever since the introduction of contraception, legalized abortion, and no-fault divorce, we have witnessed the steady collapse of marriage and family life. This has been reinforced by the proliferation of an attitude towards human sexuality that places greater emphasis upon personal pleasure, romance, and gratification. This attitude and its accompanying behavior falsify human sexuality and divorce the marital act, an act meant to be exclusive to spouses, from its two-fold and inseparable ends, unitive and procreative. The modern understanding of the marital act is contrary to God’s design for it to be unique and complementary between spouses. The falsification of the inherent goods of marriage and the conjugal act has dire consequences, which impacts one’s view of self, others, marriage, and the family.
While some would have us believe that the government can resolve the situation, governmental policies and programs alone can’t make people value these great goods, especially since the government and its agencies for decades have been the main culprit in creating the problems we currently face through their anti-life and anti-family worldview.
Global governments have spent billions of dollars promoting contraception, abortion, and sterilization, as well as a false feminism and an ideology of radical “freedom,” unmoored from truth and responsibility. Government can make it easier to marry and raise a family by promoting policies and programs that support marriage and family life. But it can’t make people, who are abandoning marriage for casual relationships and choosing sterility, want to get married and welcome children.
As outlined above, this mindset is not isolated to the U.S. or only to Western nations; it is a global problem. Sadly, when thinking about married life and the welcoming of children, many young couples around the world can only see the innumerable “risks” of financial hardship, lifestyle changes, missed vacations, sleepless nights, and a lifetime of worry about a child’s welfare. They find no fulfillment or meaning in a life-giving love that welcomes children, the fruit of their love, into the family and society.
Consider that in the U.S. in 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married. In 1978, 59% of 18- to-29-year-olds were married. Today, only 20% of those in this age group are married, with more couples choosing to cohabit. Single-person households and single parenthood have also grown more prevalent. We see the same trend in most developed countries, and sadly it is becoming a reality in the developing world, as well.
Inevitably, fewer marriages mean fewer children.
How Can We Reverse the Population Plunge?
Look what naysayers and their intentional assault on the goods of marriage, procreation, and family life have created for us. We have a hopeless, aimless, gloomy, joyless world, in which young couples lack the courage and hope to do the most normal thing in the world: get married and start a family.
What most don’t seem to realize or even accept is just how devastating the collapse of marriage and family life has been upon the health of society. I am amazed, for instance, at how much conversation there is about poverty, violence, poor education, and homelessness. But little is ever said of the systemic reasons behind these things and where the remedy is to be found.
For generations, our culture has bombarded parents and would-be parents with messages that devalue the idea of raising children, emphasizing the harmful aspects of child-rearing. And the more people focused on purely temporal concerns, such as getting a good job and buying nice homes, cars, clothes, and vacations, the less they became interested in the forgotten goods of marriage and family. The only thing that matters is their own individual satisfaction.
Moreover, fed by fear-mongering population controllers and their propaganda, this pervasive view asserts that welcoming more than one or two children is a selfish choice, with negative consequences that will also cause children to suffer. According to this view, the “healthy” response is for married couples to welcome few children (1-2) or to have no children at all. This choice supposedly demonstrates that the couple cares about themselves, the good of others, and the well-being of the planet.
Confronted by this self-centered view of life, marriage, and family, and potentially catastrophic birth declines, how do we promote a different vision of marriage and family life? How do we reshape the societal and cultural mindset that has embraced contraception and sterility? How do we erase the prevailing view of procreation, one where children and family life are perceived as something burdensome, to one that understands their intrinsic value and celebrates them? What kind of family policy would work in this new situation to promote family life and procreation?
The current crisis is not simply an economic or social problem. It is a spiritual problem. Hence, we must reintroduce the Christian view of marriage, procreation, and family life, which can be understood from the natural law and that has been for millennia the foundation stone for civil society.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:
The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society (no. 2207).
How beautiful is marriage and family! Imagine all that it entails: the experience of sharing a lifetime of love; the wonder of co-creating, bringing into being an immortal human being; the joy of watching one’s children share life with their brothers and sisters and cousins; the countless experiences and memories; the potential of nurturing the life of a priest, doctor, carpenter, engineer, artist, mother, father, or saint; the wonder of grandchildren and great grandchildren; and on and on. An inexhaustible list of potentialities.
Welcoming children can and does bring immense happiness and satisfaction. It requires having a selfless and hopeful heart to take the deep plunge. It requires husbands and wives, welcoming the gift of life, to be willing to accept that for the rest of their lives, they will be committed to another person; will feel their child’s sufferings and joys as one’s own; and will be responsible for the other’s well-being. It requires them to recognize that all this responsibility is not a burden but is in fact the only path to true freedom, and to believe and to live the truth that freedom is found in responsibility. To recognize that, in fact, responsibility and love go hand in hand.
The failure of government intervention clearly shows that we cannot depend upon technocratic solutions to this problem. We must counteract this anti-life bias by creating a Culture of Life within our own families. We must foster an enthusiasm for married life that is infectious and that spreads to one’s own children, and by their example to our neighbors, communities, and so on outwards.
Without strong marriages and families as its foundation, society will continue to disintegrate. Getting married and starting a family, more than anything else, requires immense courage and hope. Children are the bearers of our values, traditions, and aspirations. To welcome a new life into the world is as much to say that one believes with all one’s heart that life is good and that the future looks bright.
Cultural renewal is not the work of a year, or a decade, but rather of generations. This giant ship – “The Anti-Natalist” – will take decades to turn around, and we may not see significant results in our lifetimes. The solution will have to be years and years of intense Church catechesis and evangelization and government-sponsored pro-natalist policies and programs to counter the half-century of anti-natalist propaganda.
Only by defending marriage and strengthening the family can society be revitalized. So, let us put our hands to the plow and nurture a brighter future for our children and their children’s children.
This article has been reprinted with permission and can be found at hli.org/2024/11/demographic-winter-follows-decline-of-family.