Over the years I have had four children, so I have been to a lot of playgrounds. I could write a book on the best and worst playgrounds in south east London. What I have noticed compared to when I had my first child about 13 years ago is that these days, I am often the only mother in the playground. When I had my eldest, there were lots of mums, dads and childminders with their little charges clambering up steps and zooming down slides, but now I am usually on my own. It’s just me and the little lad.
It can be eerie and it reminds me of the film ‘Children of Men’. That film (based on the book by the same name) contains a scene of a dilapidated, abandoned school and playground. The film portrays a world, a dystopia, after there is a global fertility crash caused by women being unable to have children for an unknown reason.
The West hasn’t been hit with a sudden illness causing total infertility and all the heartache that follows it. The West has instead freely chosen a baby bust. As explained earlier this year: “The world is ill-prepared for the global crash in children being born which is set to have a ‘jaw-dropping’ impact on societies, say researchers. Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century. And 23 nations – including Spain and Japan – are expected to see their populations halve by 2100. Countries will also age dramatically, with as many people turning 80 as there are being born.”
It is generally known that Japan for instance is staring into a baby-free abyss. Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida recently said that Japan was on the “brink of social dysfunction” if the current situation continued. Kishida emphasised the urgency. “The need to address the issue of children and child-rearing policies is a challenge that cannot be postponed,” he said. “We must create a children-first economic society and reverse the birth rate.”
The latest shock came from so-called Catholic Italy where “births dropped to a new historic low below 400,000 in 2022”, according to Reuters.
Every European country is the same, from the Catholic south to the liberal Nordic countries. All the fertility rates are below replacement level. But what is causing this decline in births and can it be reversed?
Some say it is economic factors that have caused the decline and that if there was more support for families they would have more children. Although economic factors are certainly an issue, I think it is really a cultural change. There has been a revolution in our value system and today the West no longer values children.
For instance Luxemburg has the most generous child-care policies according to a study carried out by the Economist, but still has a fertility rate of 1.38, leaving it in the bottom third of European countries.
I believe that no matter how much money a government throws at the problem of low fertility it is unlikely to cause long-term change. Usually in this scenario, there may be a slight increase in the number of babies born, which starts to fade after a few years. Parents may, for example, change the timing of births when “pro-natalist” policies emerge, but this does not have the effect of increasing the number of children overall.
To really understand the problem, it is necessary to look at the deep cultural change in the West over the last four decades. First, and most obvious, is that children became a choice with the advent of the Pill. This did not change fertility rates much at first, but over the decades, as societal values changed, the fertility rate started to drop. European cultures started to value the individual more and the family less and as a result change came in the form of fewer children.
Women were told that doing pretty much anything else with their lives other than having children was not only going to be more enjoyable but also more useful. Children were a drag on all your ambitions, not to mention your liberty, so it really makes more sense not to have them at all. There were also fewer expectations placed on men. In Europe children are viewed as an economic burden, a time drain and – the latest edition – harmful to the environment. A dramatic drop in the fertility rate should not surprise us. What should surprise us is that people have children at all.
To see the contrast in this approach you have to go to Israel, the only western type of nation that has above replacement fertility rates. It is not all down to ultra-orthodox Jewish families who do indeed have 5 or 6 children, but also due to the fact that secular Jews have the same number of children as Europeans used to have in the 60s and 70s.
In this piece comparing Israel to Canada, the author explains, “Israeli women work at almost the same rates as they do here, with 59 per cent workforce participation compared to 61 per cent in Canada. But they get far less time off when they have babies — around three months compared to 18 in Canada. Similar to us, they have a strong social safety net with subsidized day-care and public health care. But they also share some of Canada’s struggles — their housing and grocery prices are extremely high, for example.
“The real secret to Israel’s fertility rates appears to be cultural. The family is at the absolute centre of Israeli life. Getting married and having kids is the highest cultural value. (Any Jewish person in either Israel or the diaspora will attest to the immense pressure to marry — it’s as if a great tragedy has befallen you if you have the ‘misfortune’ of remaining single past 26).”
In fact, in Judaism most religious festivities are celebrated first and foremost in the home rather than the synagogue. Perhaps this also sends a message of just how important the family is in Jewish culture.
And then of course there is the Shoah. “Holocaust generational trauma is also part of the story. The global population of Jews is still lower than what it was before the Second World War and there is a sense among Israelis that they have a duty to replenish those numbers.”
The author concludes, “But most importantly, children are seen as a blessing instead of a burden.” Indeed, “to many Israelis, children represent life — and only life brings hope.”
Children used to be viewed as a blessing in Catholic Europe. But it is clear now that most Catholics in Spain and Italy, for instance, have absorbed the secular message, that although kids are cute sometimes, they are also a massive burden and hindrance to doing much more important things with your life. Unless the message is reversed, expect fewer children.
The baby bust is going to cause real problems such as unfunded pensions, health care and all sorts of other economic problems. But the real problem with having fewer children is that there will be fewer children. Not only that, but today’s children are the parents of the future. Without children today, there are no families tomorrow.
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