There is a baby gap in the developed world.
Here is where babies come from:
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| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-the-number-of-babies-born-every-hour-by-country/ |
Women in countries with boundaries many Americans would struggle to find on a map are producing more new babies than is the USA.
Something is happening all over the developed world. Women as a whole are choosing to have fewer children, if any at all. Replacement rate -- the number of babies woman on average need to have to maintain a stable population, is 2.1 per woman. Women in the U.S are having on average 1.62 babies per woman.
Fertility rates in Europe are in the range of 1.5 per women in Germany, Poland, Switzerland, to 1.3 in Italy and Spain. Being a Catholic country doesn't matter. Japan is famous for its low birthrate, 1.3 per women, but the rest of east Asia is similar. Bhutan's is 1.4, Thailand's is 1.3, Singapore's is 1.1, and South Korea's is 0.9.
Countries worried about their birth rates have put in place "pro-natalist" policies. Nordic countries with a strong social safety net use incentives to make childbirth and childrearing more affordable. This includes cash payments, universal childcare, and paid parental leave. It hasn't changed the birthrate.
South Korea considers its birth rate a national emergency. It has cash and parental leave incentives, plus a propaganda campaign urging young people to have sex and make babies -- to no avail. In South Korea the social norm of reproduction and childrearing is less powerful than the social norm of hard work, long hours, and men not helping out with household duties. South Korean women have organized a Four-No program that has received international attention: No dating men, no sex with men, no marrying men, no children with men.
The baby-gap is emerging as a political issue in the U.S. JD Vance raised the issue with his "cat lady" remark and his praise for baby-making by native-born American women. He is part of the backlash against current feminism that has focused on women's autonomy in career and the sphere of life outside the home. The modern feminist young woman competes with boys and men, graduates from college, gets professional training, is self-supporting, has body autonomy, uses contraception, and has babies if and when she wants. The trans issue adds an element of backlash to wokeness, in the Republican critique of de-feminized autonomous woman. As Democrats struggle to define the boundaries of female, detaching it from childbearing, Republicans think it is obvious who women are. They are the ones who make babies.Democratic orthodoxy -- for now -- deals with population decline by saying that women have autonomy and they make the rules, so if there are fewer babies, so be it. Democrats support immigration, and if we really need more Americans, we can get them from Latin America and Asia. Immigrants are good and necessary. They are more law-abiding than are native born people. They are better workers. They fit into a Democratic multicultural "American tapestry" ethic.
Republicans voice a different notion of real Americans. Immigrants are better defined as outsiders, not on-deck Americans, suitable for the melting pot. Mormons and Orthodox Jewish couples are still having large families, although the tradition of large Roman Catholic families has eroded. People with traditional values are more open to the presumption that women operate in a different, parallel arena from men: the hearth and home sphere. Republicans are validating traditional gender roles. Home-makers are okay. (Democrats give them a sneering name, "trad wives," a political mistake. A party does not win votes by belittling a choice some families choose to make.)
The trend line of the past half century in developed countries is that most women -- now that they have access to reliable contraception -- are choosing the Democratic model, whether or not it is good for the country they are in. The birth rate numbers tell that story. Women are impervious to government incentives to have larger families. They have choices, and are saying "no thanks."
The culture isn't baby-positive the way it was in my youth. I see lifestyle shows about home remodels, about extraordinary food, about gracious living. But not babies. Eight is Enough went off the air in 1981.
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9 comments:
It's expensive having one child, let alone three. In the 50's and 60's, people had larger families. They can't afford that now. In fact, most women have to work nowadays in order to survive. There were many more homemakers in the 50's and 60's. Poor, third-world people have more children because they are uneducated, and they can't afford birth control. They have less control over their futures than American women have.
“The culture isn't baby-positive the way it had been in my youth.”
In my youth, the world population was about 3 billion people. Now it’s over 8 billion and many are starving. I can’t imagine why we’d want people to produce more, but I’m sure that part of making America great again will be keeping women barefoot and pregnant…except for the ones from shithole countries.
Maybe it’s just my sphere of life, but I seem to experience worker shortages. Wait for dental hygienist until a woman from India was hired, wait to have a mole removed, 2 weeks or more to schedule a doctor visit, 1 hour wait to get oil change with we are hiring signs there and everywhere. Can’t find a carpenter handyman after the one we had in the neighborhood is now making more money building decks for new houses being built. I think it will get worse unless an immigration policy can be established. At least my grandchildren who are Americans should be in demand for whatever employment they seek.
Falling birth rates is a GOOD thing. In the science of ecology there is a concept called "Carrying Capacity". What it describes is the maximum population of a given species group that the ecosystem lives in can sustainably support. If/when a species overshoots their carrying capacity the initial population explosion is inevitably followed by a tremendous population crash in which the population is often reduced to 10% or less of what the population was prior to exceeding their carrying capacity.
This is an ironclad rule that all living organisms who have ever existed have to deal with. The best estimates for the carrying capacity for Earth of the human species is between 5-6 billion at absolute most.
We are rapidly approaching 9 billion people. Either we voluntarily lower our population, and declining birth rates is the easiest way to do that, OR it will be done for us whether we like it or not. Right now we are solidly on track for the second outcome between human induced climate change, and habitat/ecological destruction caused by humans.
We will be very lucky as a species if there's even a few hundred million humans alive by the year 2100 if we continue on the current trajectory.
Many government leaders believed that a shrinking population as a disaster waiting to happen. Me? I think it’s an opportunity waiting to happen. Imagine how affordable housing would be with a smaller population and a steady supply of houses. That’s just one example can you think of more?
The future belongs to those who decide to inhabit it. Liberal feminist culture may be a self-limiting phenomenon.
Sounds like the Great Replacement Theory at work. MAGA White Nationalists have their work cut out for them.
Please explain self limiting phenomenon. I don’t follow you thanks.
Exponents of the culture generally disfavor or even disdain propagation.
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