I’ve been angered by the presumption of many that falling fertility represents a collective moral failure of our liberal society and an individual moral failure of those who are childless from choice or circumstance.
Women are more depressed than ever, especially the liberal ones who are getting married and having kids at lower rates. Immigrants are not assimilating and humans are not numbers on a spreadsheet model. This is not something to be celebrated. Neuroticism, nihilism, and narcissism are killing natalism: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/natalism-neuroticism-narcissism-nihilism-natalism
Is that not a policy that Putin, Orban and Hitler promoted? Nothing like having large families of smiling little obedient aryans running around the country until more lebensraum is needed.
You sure it's not the other way around? Neuroticism, nihilism, and narcissism sound to me like they would really destroy any motivation to have children.
Women are depressed because they are trying to do it all: be perfect mothers, perfect career women, etc.. It's too much. Some immigrants don't assimilate, especially the ones who are intent on taking over the world.
They polled young Koreans, where the fertility rate has really crashed, about why they aren’t having kids. The top answer was “Because I don’t want to.” Ok I get it.
On a podcast someone said that K-Pop stars had to agree not to have any romantic relationships. He mused whether their collective single status was an influence on SK demographics.
When they were out of power, some of these Catholic conservatives were talking about things like expanding the child tax credit. Now that they’re in power that’s all vanished - who’d a thunk it?
Not all conservatives think alike. I’m one, also a mother and grand… but I definitely don’t believe that all women are required to have children. I think it’s a choice but I do think many young people (not all) are afraid of the responsibility of having kids. Past generations were willing to sacrifice to have families. Their choice too. Let’s not paint with such a broad brush and we can communicate better.
When I mention conservatives, I’m referring to the political landscape. And if someone doesn’t want to make sacrifices to have kids, that’s okay. It’s not something to look down upon. If some young people are afraid of that responsibility, they should not have kids.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this subject. I think it’s cyclical, environmental, and related to this stage of our human and earth evolution. also, it is apparent that the way we consider the downsides of lower fertility rates is mostly through the lens of production: who will do the work, who will produce the energy, to keep the engine going as it does. but the engine is changing. we are not in charge here. the cosmic background frequencies are influencing everything, including the rate of baby making, the health of the womb (soil), women’s desire for autonomy, and the differences we are seeing arise in the new humans being born now. economy is evolving, and the way humans have served it like cogs in a machine is evolving as well.
Excellent essay, David. In our family, we’re just under the replacement rate (2 kids). So far no prospect of grandkids, for a lot of reasons.
I love it when Ross Douthat gets taken to the woodshed. He’s just a more polite version of Tucker Carlson. And I’m looking forward to your response to the (as of now) one comment disagreeing with you. I’m sure you’ll be more civil than I would be.
Ross Douthat is the absolute GOAT NYT columnist. Glad he’s a perceived as a moral scold. Someone has to do this work in our permissive laissez-faire culture. Thank you, Ross 🥳🇺🇸
A TFR below replacement level is indicative of a sickness in our societies. Healthy societies, like healthy families, don’t intentionally die off. They grow. Their vitalism protects them in times of conflict and hardship.
The answer to this cannot and should not be mass migration. Mass migration decreases social cohesion and hampers social networks which form the basis of relationship formation. Therefore, mass migration creates a fertility death spiral of sort, which then accelerates the calls for more migration. This has the effect of replacing the native population within a few generations. This doom loop is underway across the West, most notably in places like the UK, which is on track to become an Islamic state in a generation or two.
Johann Kurtz explains this phenomena in detail here:
One final point - our nation is not just an economic zone for foreigners. It is a home. Moreover, people are not interchangeable cogs which can be moved and replaced without consequence. I encourage you to read NS Lyons’ long but excellent article on this topic but I’ll leave you with one quote,
“ A nation is not a corporation. A nation is a particular people, with a distinct culture, permanently bound together by shared relationship with place, past, and each other. A house becomes a home through relationship with the family that lives in it, a connection forged out of time and memory between concrete particularity of place and the lives of a specific group of people present, past, and yet unborn. We can say this house is home because it is our home. In much the same way, a country becomes our homeland because it is ours – and the we of that “ours” is the nation, which transcends geography, government, and GDP.”
The Overton window has shifted. We can now recognize reality and debate hard topics honestly, largely without fear of being cancelled by the HR department apparatchiks.
I would put things quite differently: Trump made the worst people in our society feel comfortable revealing their most horrifying beliefs.
It’s been soul-destroying to realize how full of hate, racism, sexism etc about a third of humanity is. They used to feel obligated to pretend to be decent.
I don't buy the basket of deplorables argument. You need to go talk to more normal Americans. They aren't Nazis. They just aren't ok with importing 20-40M illegals and paying for them to be on SNAP. There's a big difference between that and Hitler.
Over my 70 years I've watched anti-immigration sentiment come and go. It's always seemed to wax and wane with the unemployment rate, which I would now amend to the lack of jobs that pay a family-supporting wage, since the government has decided to count those jobs the same as 20-hour-a-week grocery bagging jobs. In good times, this is a very generous and welcoming country and opposition to immigration is limited to an extreme fringe who are probably actual Nazis or Nazi-adjacent. When times are not so good, there's a whole other population whose attitude is "We need to divide the population up into categories, pick one or more categories that don't include me, and kick the people in those categories out of the economy to create an artificial labor shortage so my wages will rise and my job will be more secure."
America is different. We are a nation built by successive waves of immigrants. We are not like a European country with anything close to cultural homogeneity. So, no, we are not a "particular people." N.S. Lyons must be writing about a different country, real or in his imagination.
Just a friendly reminder that Canada, New Zealand and Australia are also countries built on immigration. Same kind of thing. And many European and Asian countries also have low fertility rates. It’s all about priorities. And expenses. The US actually has a higher fertility rate than many of these countries, likely because there’s more pressure from faith groups (immigrant families pressure as well, but it seems that the children of immigrant parents are more comfortable warding off the pressure).
My first comment! David I love your thoughtfulness. And it occurs to me: what if not having children IS the better moral choice? Environmental stress on the planet, ability to care for your elders, a more responsible economic choice so that you don’t have to pull on shared/government resources. I used to feel sad for people who said they didn’t want kids and now I think I respect the independence to break out of a ancient hierarchical structure that often puts women at the bottom of the power pyramid.
Thanks Anne. I appreciate your comment. I wouldn't go so far to say it is the better moral choice on a societal level but it could be for many people. And I agree that it is progress for it to reviewed as a choice.
I keep hearing this refrain 'our current administration is extremely hostile to immigrants and immigration and is seeking to deport people as fast as it can.'--but as far as I can see, only ILLEGALS are being deported, which as far as I'm concerned is a good thing. I live in MX and if I were here illegally, and were caught, MX would deport me. What is the problem with requiring immigrants to enter legally? It seems everyone just parrots this anti Trump sentiment but can't explain why deporting illegals is a bad policy. (and no, I'm not a fan of Trump, or of any politician for that matter)
"illegal" is an ambiguous term in many cases. There are people being detained and deported in defiance of established laws and in defiance of judges. I think it's hard to make the case that this administration is NOT showing hostility and cruelty in its pursuit of immigrants. And in shutting the door to legal immigration from many parts of the world. that's bigotry and that's Un-American. It's not what we should stand for.
Serious question, you do not think that the wide open border we had for the last 4 years had a negative effect that Trump is now trying to correct? Yes he may be over correcting in some cases, we can cherry-pick sob stories to make either case. But how is “illegal” ambiguous? There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.
People are being grabbed who are actual native-born citizens, as well as people who did everything right.
I am married to a man here completely legally and I live in terror. Being legal is little protection now. Please adjust your media diet if you think there are just a few "cherry-picked sob stories" out there. That's so very offensive to me. These are real peoples' lives being ruined.
Speaking as somebody who has spoken to actual border patrol agents who have told me they were not allowed to do their jobs. That is the definition of a wide open border.
Oh really? I’ll tell you an anecdote. I have a high school buddy who lives near Bisbee AZ. Retired military guy. Knows lots of border patrol guys on account of they’re like 10 miles from the border. A couple years ago he had a milestone party. Invited old friends and new. 100 people or so. I talked to a couple agents who told me with their own mouths, using their own words that they were not allowed to do their jobs. Maybe they were lying. Maybe not, but it ain’t bullshit, son.
Our borders weren’t any more open under Biden than any other president since Clinton, undocumented entries AND deportations have been relatively steady for the last 7 ish presidential terms. Obama’s admin actually deported the most.
Biden's border patrol was the same as Trump's. They were stopping nearly exactly the same percentage of people crossing. There were simply MANY more people crossing, mostly due to the end of Covid restrictions.
The majority of those being deported now have no criminal record. And many of them are being grabbed at the courts where they are attending their legal, by the book immigration hearings. They are doing it “the right way” and still being deported.
Honest question: how many white “illegals” have you seen ice deport? People overstaying visas represents about 40% of “illegals.” Many of them white Europeans. Somehow these people are invisible to ice. 🤔
Not exactly the same border patrol. That’s bullshit. Mayorkas ring a bell? And if you crossed the border illegally, that makes you a criminal. Not a hard concept. Hard to believe that people who have a legally scheduled hearing are really being deported. If that’s actually happening it seems like a correctable mistake. Our border policy has been a disaster for 50 years. Trump is ripping the band aid off. It ain’t pretty but it’s necessary.
What you allow you encourage. By allowing people to enter our country illegally we encourage others to do the same. That’s no way to run a sovereign nation. And no speeding tickets so far…
If you are not seeing the news coverage of COMPLETELY LEGAL immigrants being grabbed, adjust your media diet. It's a nightmare out there.
My husband is here legally, and we are scared. We absolutely will not get on a plane. I am terrified that when he next tries to renew his paperwork, they'll deport him.
So many people who have been here legally for years -- married to citizens, raising children, working hard etc. -- are being deported AT THEIR INTERVIEWS.
You would not believe the paperwork involved. You know how they say that if an expert went over anyone's taxes they could surely see something that, done in good faith, is possibly wrong? It's the same with immigration paperwork. We have stacks of it. What if we forgot to check a box 20 years ago or our interpretation of a question was incorrect? This keeps me awake at night.
They are NOT just nabbing the criminals. They are not even just nabbing people who knowingly broke the rules. They are nabbing good people who have been productive and law-abiding for decades. I cannot understand how you fail to know this. But a lot of people I talk to IRL are surprised, too. A teacher (so not an idiot) asked me recently if my husband had been able to visit his family in the Netherlands recently. I said, "Oh, of course not. It's not safe." She had no idea what I was talking about. She thought they're only deporting the criminals. That's not remotely true.
I believe this is happening, and that part is sad. Our immigration system has been broken for 50+ years. There shouldn’t be 86 different types of visas or whatever the number is for example. One of my Canadian buddies who lives in Canada and has legally worked in the US for 20 years got dinged and denied entry to Canada actually, because his visa said he lived in the US. big pain in the butt but it’s worked out now. The good I hope that comes from it is that we get a cohesive, streamlined policy out of it all at the end of the day. Dare to dream.
I have a Dutch co-worker and he’s going home over Christmas. He doesn’t seem too frightened of not getting back in to the US. He was home earlier this year too.
The administration is showing cruelty and is extremely hostile to people with skin any color but white, regardless of immigration status.
Please don’t call them ILLEGALS. They’re human beings and you have no idea what their stories are or how insane the immigration system is in this country.
Thanks, Mackenzie...I wish some people could hear themselves, take a moment and reflect and then be horrified by their point of view and the lazy, horrid (and hateful) things that come out of their mouths and pens. xo.
157 US citizens have been detained by Ice, a couple deported, several for days without warrant or due process
ICE is showing up at court houses and immigration centers and arresting immigrants at green card interviews, asylum interviews, doing it the “right way,” but still being thrown in cells and sometimes deported.
Ann, you need to stop watching Fox and expand your horizons
That sucks. But I’ll tell you a story with a happy ending. I have a Muslim /Moroccan friend who got caught in the sweep after 9/11. Good guy, white collar job, I forget the exact details but his immigration lawyer was shady and cut corners so he was here illegally. He spent 3 months in county jail before he finally got in front of an immigration judge. On that day we had 20+ people in the courtroom to show support; men, women, gay, straight, black, white, Christians, Muslims, Jews. It was a real multicultural stew. The judge had sympathy and fast tracked him for citizenship. We had a real party on that day a year later. Fast forward he’s been married for 20 years, has 2 kids and leads a productive life.
> The Penn Wharton demographic model measures a forty-year period. It’s only as good as its assumptions, which hold current trends constant. Recall that circa 1970, there were predictions of a massive population “bomb,” which would lead to mass starvation. Things change.
This critique gets brought up a lot in discussions about demographics. This line of thinking is wrong.
Fertility has consistently and universally declined. Especially in every society that has modernized, fertility decreases, and if it ever increases again for those societies, it’s always been temporary. Not temporary on the order of decades, but often less than a decade.
The problem is also quite sticky. If the fertility rate in Korea is 0.7, in 25 years there will be about 1/3 as many 25 year olds as there are now. Even if fertility went back up to replacement rate, you would now be locked in at that significantly lower population.
So fertility doesn’t really oscillate, it declines. Observing declining fertility is like observing declining health over a lifetime. Sure, sometimes it’s healthy and sometimes it’s sick, but the general trend has been consistently towards less healthy, and it doesn’t take a genius to project where that leads you.
The missing dimension is also social. Immigration is fine, but the primary way that cultures are preserved are through parents to children. If your society has less people, and another society has more, you’re risking yours declining in importance. To put in perspective:
The TFR in South Korea is ~0.7 with ~50 million people. The TFR in the Central African Republic is ~5 Million with a TFR of 6. In 4 generations:
Korea:
(0.7/2.1)^4 x 50 mil = 500,000
CAR:
6/2.1^4 x 5 mil = 400,000,000.
Obviously these numbers can’t possibly be true, they’re too extreme and shocking to be so. It’s a simplified model as South Korea’s numbers wouldn’t actually be this bad (but not too far off). But that’s rh numbers a projection of current fertility gives you. CAR’s TFR has been pretty steadily above 6 for all of modern history, whereas South Korea’s has been declining to almost nothing with zero indication it will increase.
So yeah, worrying about fertility, especially when we talk about individuals being depressed with modern life, isn’t a currently relevant problem. But when you compare the difference in societies (and some of these societies aren’t across the world like CAR and Korea), it’s clear that having 3x as many children as your neighbor, and persisting in that over the next century, will produce massive imbalances in which societies are important in the future. If you like your culture and society, then that should be a concern.
But fertility HAS oscillated in America. It's been below 2.0 in the past. And immigration to America has been a major historical driver of our success as a country. The longer we have politicians who appeal to nativism, the worse off our future will be.
There's always an "echo" of fertility from about~30 years prior. The above replacement rate from 1990-2008 is just now going to echo into our current fertility, and it probably would have started slightly sooner if not for Covid. We've been at ~1.8 for the past 2 years, and will likely stay above 1.6 for at least the next decade, maybe decade and a half.
The US is also a country really good at integrating immigrants. Maybe even the best in the world? Historically there's always been a strong reaction about immigrants, and a few generations later they're all just considered Americans. The Know-Nothings were explicitly anti-Catholic as well as the ethnicities that were primarily Catholic, and now anti-Catholicism seems almost laughable. It's such a non-issue that we just had a Catholic president, a Catholic VP, and an American Pope.
But that doesn't mean a falling TFR isn't a problem, at least for some countries and more broadly in the realm of ideas. TFR in Ukraine is below 1, and their population was already rapidly shrinking. S. Korea's is .7. China's is somewhat uncertain but also in the ~1 area. The first two have very hostile neighbors (and population does equate to military power), and the third is the most powerful nation in the world. All this will bring major changes, and for Ukraine and S. Korea may even threaten their sovereignty.
On the high fertility side; I just read an article that for the first time in modern history global poverty is expected to increase (https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/470491/extreme-poverty-sub-saharan-africa-world-bank-conflict-climate-change). That's almost exclusively because of Sub-Saharan Africa, where fertility and poverty is extremely high. It seems like there's an imbalance where wealthy countries that can provide a good life for children don't have as many, whereas those that have trouble providing a good life have quite a lot. I'd personally much prefer a world where industrialized nations are at or near replacement, and developing countries don't have such high fertility that it makes development difficult.
On a less analytic note I think it's a somewhat sad trend, since children are great. I'm of the opinion that there's just so many entertaining and enjoyable alternatives (travel, Instagram, pets, etc.) that a lot of people feel fulfilled without children.
TFR only tracks births, not the number of children who survive to adulthood. One thing to be considered with regard to sub-Saharan African fertility in particular is the historically enormous infant and child mortality rate. It wasn't so long ago that it took all the reproducing a couple could do just to have a reasonable expectation that two or three kids would survive to take care of the parents in their old age. The rise in population of the past 70-100 years is almost entirely due to the spread of basic sanitation knowledge, availability of mosquito nets, prenatal care, etc. And fertility has fallen in step. When <i>The Population Bomb</i> was in the best seller lists, there were countries (all in Africa) where the TFR was between 8 and 9 children per woman. Now there's not a country in the world that has a TFR above 6.
Adjusting for infant mortality, it reduces the effective TFR (if that's what you want to call it) by -0.25 in the highest fertility, highest infant mortality countries. Everywhere else the difference is negligible.
Which shows just how much progress has been made. I remember as a student in the 1970s watching a professor draw a diagram demonstrating how, for a couple who each have the normal cell gene from one side and the sickle cell gene (which gives some resistance against malaria), the odds are that any child they produce will have a 25% chance of getting two sickle cell genes (and dying from sickle cell anemia), a 25% chance of getting two normal cell genes (and dying from malaria) and a 50% chance of getting one of each and not dying of either. And that's just one transmissible disease in a region famous for being riddled with diseases. Back then malaria was described as "laughing at" the best efforts of medical science. Now we've broken through. Between mosquito control methods, post-infection treatments and, as of two years ago, the new vaccine, we may see the end of malaria in my lifetime.
Funny, I wrote about this a few months ago and just posted a column from the WSJ on the same topic. I agree with much of your commentary but would like to add that there seems to be another factor at play. Many young people are just not mature enough to become parents. Some seem to be afraid of the responsibility or believe they have to be making huge salaries to have children. They don’t see the great joy children can bring to life. It’s fear of responsibility. My parents had 8 children… they were not rich when they started out. Dad was an entrepreneur and ultimately became very successful. We all ended up with good lives, families of our own and good work ethic. I stopped at two children and currently have one grand - hoping for more! I worry that some will regret not taking that leap of faith and having children of their own. Yes there are struggles, it’s expensive and there are no guarantees and yes, some people really don’t want kids and that’s absolutely their choice. I never ask those rude questions or judge others… but there is something more at play than just freedom of choice… I think people don’t see the upside of becoming parents.
There could be regret for sure although it would really hard to construct a counterfactual of one's own life with different choices about children. I also know people who are very involved aunts and uncles and help their siblings with childcare. And as I said before the media tends to highlight the downsides. There's a fascination with children committing violence against their parents.
Something not discussed often is how student loans have prevented people from even being able to get their feet on the ground. This prolongs everything because you shouldn’t start a family if you can’t afford to pay for housing, etc. and makes it less likely they will have children because it takes so many years to get out of this debt.
Get rid of student loans and student loan debt. It will change everything. It has nothing to do with liberalism.
💯 great post, David. I will never understand why people believe that my having kids is their business. It took years of heartbreaking and medically invasive struggles with infertility before I finally learned the best response to such nosy questions. When someone asked when I’m having kids or why I don’t have kids yet, I asked, What is it about my not having kids that bothers you? That shuts ‘em up. We did have the joy of raising our son who came to us through adoption but that, too, was a personal choice. I.e., nobody’s business but ours.
Your points about immigration are spot-on. And about women working. Both of which are currently being flogged by MAGA as “anti-American.” To which I say, good luck with that. 🙄
As a single woman who has chosen to not have children, I love Laura Kennedy's handling of that question. (Although I'm at an age where no one asks anymore. 😁)
I want to be the first to comment!!! I’ll come back later with something clever and relevant to post (I can hope!).
Happiest holidays all. Really enjoy your thoughtful essays David and love love love hearing about joyous family moments and other revelations.
Thanks Sharon.
Women are more depressed than ever, especially the liberal ones who are getting married and having kids at lower rates. Immigrants are not assimilating and humans are not numbers on a spreadsheet model. This is not something to be celebrated. Neuroticism, nihilism, and narcissism are killing natalism: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/natalism-neuroticism-narcissism-nihilism-natalism
I bet your wife is depressed being married to you.. assuming you have one.. such shameless self promotion of your political subcrap post.
Is that not a policy that Putin, Orban and Hitler promoted? Nothing like having large families of smiling little obedient aryans running around the country until more lebensraum is needed.
By all means, have plenty of children but I reject preaching to others about their own choices. I
You sure it's not the other way around? Neuroticism, nihilism, and narcissism sound to me like they would really destroy any motivation to have children.
Women are depressed because they are trying to do it all: be perfect mothers, perfect career women, etc.. It's too much. Some immigrants don't assimilate, especially the ones who are intent on taking over the world.
Sorry to be really boring and sound like I don’t have any opinion, but you got everything right, succinctly and eloquently at that.
Thanks Elizabeth.
They polled young Koreans, where the fertility rate has really crashed, about why they aren’t having kids. The top answer was “Because I don’t want to.” Ok I get it.
On a podcast someone said that K-Pop stars had to agree not to have any romantic relationships. He mused whether their collective single status was an influence on SK demographics.
As always. Food for fertile thought. I’ll continue to embrace my 2 pregnancies (one didn’t ripen) and family my husband and I grew .
It is absolutely nobody’s business why someone does not have children. I have loved being a mom, but I also recognize it’s not for everyone.
As for the conservatives: they basically think women were put here to reproduce. People like J.D. Vance view it as our duty.
Conversely, there are plenty of people who shouldn’t be parents but have kids anyway—because they think that’s what they’re “supposed” to do.
Our government does very little to help working parents, especially mothers, but you never hear that part from people like Ross Douthat or Vance.
When they were out of power, some of these Catholic conservatives were talking about things like expanding the child tax credit. Now that they’re in power that’s all vanished - who’d a thunk it?
Exactly.
Not all conservatives think alike. I’m one, also a mother and grand… but I definitely don’t believe that all women are required to have children. I think it’s a choice but I do think many young people (not all) are afraid of the responsibility of having kids. Past generations were willing to sacrifice to have families. Their choice too. Let’s not paint with such a broad brush and we can communicate better.
Thanks Peggy. There may be more fear based on various media memes. We don't often see articles about happy families without any regrets.
When I mention conservatives, I’m referring to the political landscape. And if someone doesn’t want to make sacrifices to have kids, that’s okay. It’s not something to look down upon. If some young people are afraid of that responsibility, they should not have kids.
Agree. And if women want to be a stay at home mom, good for them!
Thanks Kathleen. It's an important point that having children shouldn't be automatic. It's a bigger decision than getting married.
It sure is.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this subject. I think it’s cyclical, environmental, and related to this stage of our human and earth evolution. also, it is apparent that the way we consider the downsides of lower fertility rates is mostly through the lens of production: who will do the work, who will produce the energy, to keep the engine going as it does. but the engine is changing. we are not in charge here. the cosmic background frequencies are influencing everything, including the rate of baby making, the health of the womb (soil), women’s desire for autonomy, and the differences we are seeing arise in the new humans being born now. economy is evolving, and the way humans have served it like cogs in a machine is evolving as well.
Thanks Nina.
Excellent essay, David. In our family, we’re just under the replacement rate (2 kids). So far no prospect of grandkids, for a lot of reasons.
I love it when Ross Douthat gets taken to the woodshed. He’s just a more polite version of Tucker Carlson. And I’m looking forward to your response to the (as of now) one comment disagreeing with you. I’m sure you’ll be more civil than I would be.
Thanks Larry. Ross D. is heavily influenced by his devotion to his Catholicism. Although he and the Pope differ on how to treat immigrants.
I wonder if he would say the progressive Catholics have no principles or ideals?
Ross Douthat is the absolute GOAT NYT columnist. Glad he’s a perceived as a moral scold. Someone has to do this work in our permissive laissez-faire culture. Thank you, Ross 🥳🇺🇸
I welcome the different veiwpoint!
A TFR below replacement level is indicative of a sickness in our societies. Healthy societies, like healthy families, don’t intentionally die off. They grow. Their vitalism protects them in times of conflict and hardship.
The answer to this cannot and should not be mass migration. Mass migration decreases social cohesion and hampers social networks which form the basis of relationship formation. Therefore, mass migration creates a fertility death spiral of sort, which then accelerates the calls for more migration. This has the effect of replacing the native population within a few generations. This doom loop is underway across the West, most notably in places like the UK, which is on track to become an Islamic state in a generation or two.
Johann Kurtz explains this phenomena in detail here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/becomingnoble/p/immigration-kills-birthrates?r=lo55s&utm_medium=ios
One final point - our nation is not just an economic zone for foreigners. It is a home. Moreover, people are not interchangeable cogs which can be moved and replaced without consequence. I encourage you to read NS Lyons’ long but excellent article on this topic but I’ll leave you with one quote,
“ A nation is not a corporation. A nation is a particular people, with a distinct culture, permanently bound together by shared relationship with place, past, and each other. A house becomes a home through relationship with the family that lives in it, a connection forged out of time and memory between concrete particularity of place and the lives of a specific group of people present, past, and yet unborn. We can say this house is home because it is our home. In much the same way, a country becomes our homeland because it is ours – and the we of that “ours” is the nation, which transcends geography, government, and GDP.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/love-of-a-nation?r=lo55s&utm_medium=ios
I agree, 100%. But that's not the politically correct viewpoint now.
The Overton window has shifted. We can now recognize reality and debate hard topics honestly, largely without fear of being cancelled by the HR department apparatchiks.
I would put things quite differently: Trump made the worst people in our society feel comfortable revealing their most horrifying beliefs.
It’s been soul-destroying to realize how full of hate, racism, sexism etc about a third of humanity is. They used to feel obligated to pretend to be decent.
I honestly thought better of people.
You’re going to have to find another argument. A third of the country is not Nazis. I don’t buy that.
How do you explain their support for Nazis, then?
I don't buy the basket of deplorables argument. You need to go talk to more normal Americans. They aren't Nazis. They just aren't ok with importing 20-40M illegals and paying for them to be on SNAP. There's a big difference between that and Hitler.
Over my 70 years I've watched anti-immigration sentiment come and go. It's always seemed to wax and wane with the unemployment rate, which I would now amend to the lack of jobs that pay a family-supporting wage, since the government has decided to count those jobs the same as 20-hour-a-week grocery bagging jobs. In good times, this is a very generous and welcoming country and opposition to immigration is limited to an extreme fringe who are probably actual Nazis or Nazi-adjacent. When times are not so good, there's a whole other population whose attitude is "We need to divide the population up into categories, pick one or more categories that don't include me, and kick the people in those categories out of the economy to create an artificial labor shortage so my wages will rise and my job will be more secure."
America is different. We are a nation built by successive waves of immigrants. We are not like a European country with anything close to cultural homogeneity. So, no, we are not a "particular people." N.S. Lyons must be writing about a different country, real or in his imagination.
Just a friendly reminder that Canada, New Zealand and Australia are also countries built on immigration. Same kind of thing. And many European and Asian countries also have low fertility rates. It’s all about priorities. And expenses. The US actually has a higher fertility rate than many of these countries, likely because there’s more pressure from faith groups (immigrant families pressure as well, but it seems that the children of immigrant parents are more comfortable warding off the pressure).
A lot more women would happily have children, you know, if we did not make it so risky for them.
The entire structure of our society is built to discourage motherhood. It's just unaffordable, and moms get little support.
I agree this needs to be fixed urgently.
My first comment! David I love your thoughtfulness. And it occurs to me: what if not having children IS the better moral choice? Environmental stress on the planet, ability to care for your elders, a more responsible economic choice so that you don’t have to pull on shared/government resources. I used to feel sad for people who said they didn’t want kids and now I think I respect the independence to break out of a ancient hierarchical structure that often puts women at the bottom of the power pyramid.
Thanks Anne. I appreciate your comment. I wouldn't go so far to say it is the better moral choice on a societal level but it could be for many people. And I agree that it is progress for it to reviewed as a choice.
I keep hearing this refrain 'our current administration is extremely hostile to immigrants and immigration and is seeking to deport people as fast as it can.'--but as far as I can see, only ILLEGALS are being deported, which as far as I'm concerned is a good thing. I live in MX and if I were here illegally, and were caught, MX would deport me. What is the problem with requiring immigrants to enter legally? It seems everyone just parrots this anti Trump sentiment but can't explain why deporting illegals is a bad policy. (and no, I'm not a fan of Trump, or of any politician for that matter)
Ann,
"illegal" is an ambiguous term in many cases. There are people being detained and deported in defiance of established laws and in defiance of judges. I think it's hard to make the case that this administration is NOT showing hostility and cruelty in its pursuit of immigrants. And in shutting the door to legal immigration from many parts of the world. that's bigotry and that's Un-American. It's not what we should stand for.
Serious question, you do not think that the wide open border we had for the last 4 years had a negative effect that Trump is now trying to correct? Yes he may be over correcting in some cases, we can cherry-pick sob stories to make either case. But how is “illegal” ambiguous? There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.
We never had a wide-open border.
People are being grabbed who are actual native-born citizens, as well as people who did everything right.
I am married to a man here completely legally and I live in terror. Being legal is little protection now. Please adjust your media diet if you think there are just a few "cherry-picked sob stories" out there. That's so very offensive to me. These are real peoples' lives being ruined.
Speaking as somebody who has spoken to actual border patrol agents who have told me they were not allowed to do their jobs. That is the definition of a wide open border.
Bullshit.
Oh really? I’ll tell you an anecdote. I have a high school buddy who lives near Bisbee AZ. Retired military guy. Knows lots of border patrol guys on account of they’re like 10 miles from the border. A couple years ago he had a milestone party. Invited old friends and new. 100 people or so. I talked to a couple agents who told me with their own mouths, using their own words that they were not allowed to do their jobs. Maybe they were lying. Maybe not, but it ain’t bullshit, son.
100% bullshit
Our borders weren’t any more open under Biden than any other president since Clinton, undocumented entries AND deportations have been relatively steady for the last 7 ish presidential terms. Obama’s admin actually deported the most.
Biden's border patrol was the same as Trump's. They were stopping nearly exactly the same percentage of people crossing. There were simply MANY more people crossing, mostly due to the end of Covid restrictions.
The majority of those being deported now have no criminal record. And many of them are being grabbed at the courts where they are attending their legal, by the book immigration hearings. They are doing it “the right way” and still being deported.
Honest question: how many white “illegals” have you seen ice deport? People overstaying visas represents about 40% of “illegals.” Many of them white Europeans. Somehow these people are invisible to ice. 🤔
Not exactly the same border patrol. That’s bullshit. Mayorkas ring a bell? And if you crossed the border illegally, that makes you a criminal. Not a hard concept. Hard to believe that people who have a legally scheduled hearing are really being deported. If that’s actually happening it seems like a correctable mistake. Our border policy has been a disaster for 50 years. Trump is ripping the band aid off. It ain’t pretty but it’s necessary.
Have you ever received a speeding ticket? That’s (usually) a misdemeanor arrest. Crossing the border is also a misdemeanor.
I have received speeding tickets, therefore by your definition I’m a criminal.
What you allow you encourage. By allowing people to enter our country illegally we encourage others to do the same. That’s no way to run a sovereign nation. And no speeding tickets so far…
And what do you think your misdemeanor speeding ticket would turn into if you just ignored it for months or years?
If you are not seeing the news coverage of COMPLETELY LEGAL immigrants being grabbed, adjust your media diet. It's a nightmare out there.
My husband is here legally, and we are scared. We absolutely will not get on a plane. I am terrified that when he next tries to renew his paperwork, they'll deport him.
So many people who have been here legally for years -- married to citizens, raising children, working hard etc. -- are being deported AT THEIR INTERVIEWS.
You would not believe the paperwork involved. You know how they say that if an expert went over anyone's taxes they could surely see something that, done in good faith, is possibly wrong? It's the same with immigration paperwork. We have stacks of it. What if we forgot to check a box 20 years ago or our interpretation of a question was incorrect? This keeps me awake at night.
They are NOT just nabbing the criminals. They are not even just nabbing people who knowingly broke the rules. They are nabbing good people who have been productive and law-abiding for decades. I cannot understand how you fail to know this. But a lot of people I talk to IRL are surprised, too. A teacher (so not an idiot) asked me recently if my husband had been able to visit his family in the Netherlands recently. I said, "Oh, of course not. It's not safe." She had no idea what I was talking about. She thought they're only deporting the criminals. That's not remotely true.
I believe this is happening, and that part is sad. Our immigration system has been broken for 50+ years. There shouldn’t be 86 different types of visas or whatever the number is for example. One of my Canadian buddies who lives in Canada and has legally worked in the US for 20 years got dinged and denied entry to Canada actually, because his visa said he lived in the US. big pain in the butt but it’s worked out now. The good I hope that comes from it is that we get a cohesive, streamlined policy out of it all at the end of the day. Dare to dream.
I have a Dutch co-worker and he’s going home over Christmas. He doesn’t seem too frightened of not getting back in to the US. He was home earlier this year too.
It’s a risk. I hope he remains safe.
He's Dutch, so he's white? Then he'll be fine. Thats exactly the point.
There have been plenty of white people banned. A German man, an Irish woman come to mind.
The administration is showing cruelty and is extremely hostile to people with skin any color but white, regardless of immigration status.
Please don’t call them ILLEGALS. They’re human beings and you have no idea what their stories are or how insane the immigration system is in this country.
Well said, and 100% true, Nan.
Thanks, Mackenzie...I wish some people could hear themselves, take a moment and reflect and then be horrified by their point of view and the lazy, horrid (and hateful) things that come out of their mouths and pens. xo.
I never thought I'd say this to anyone, but you need to spend MORE time on the internet.
157 US citizens have been detained by Ice, a couple deported, several for days without warrant or due process
ICE is showing up at court houses and immigration centers and arresting immigrants at green card interviews, asylum interviews, doing it the “right way,” but still being thrown in cells and sometimes deported.
Ann, you need to stop watching Fox and expand your horizons
That sucks. But I’ll tell you a story with a happy ending. I have a Muslim /Moroccan friend who got caught in the sweep after 9/11. Good guy, white collar job, I forget the exact details but his immigration lawyer was shady and cut corners so he was here illegally. He spent 3 months in county jail before he finally got in front of an immigration judge. On that day we had 20+ people in the courtroom to show support; men, women, gay, straight, black, white, Christians, Muslims, Jews. It was a real multicultural stew. The judge had sympathy and fast tracked him for citizenship. We had a real party on that day a year later. Fast forward he’s been married for 20 years, has 2 kids and leads a productive life.
That’s how it should work.
It should, but I doubt that would happen today.
I dunno, the time around 9/11 was pretty authoritarian. We’ve just forgotten with time.
> The Penn Wharton demographic model measures a forty-year period. It’s only as good as its assumptions, which hold current trends constant. Recall that circa 1970, there were predictions of a massive population “bomb,” which would lead to mass starvation. Things change.
This critique gets brought up a lot in discussions about demographics. This line of thinking is wrong.
Fertility has consistently and universally declined. Especially in every society that has modernized, fertility decreases, and if it ever increases again for those societies, it’s always been temporary. Not temporary on the order of decades, but often less than a decade.
The problem is also quite sticky. If the fertility rate in Korea is 0.7, in 25 years there will be about 1/3 as many 25 year olds as there are now. Even if fertility went back up to replacement rate, you would now be locked in at that significantly lower population.
So fertility doesn’t really oscillate, it declines. Observing declining fertility is like observing declining health over a lifetime. Sure, sometimes it’s healthy and sometimes it’s sick, but the general trend has been consistently towards less healthy, and it doesn’t take a genius to project where that leads you.
The missing dimension is also social. Immigration is fine, but the primary way that cultures are preserved are through parents to children. If your society has less people, and another society has more, you’re risking yours declining in importance. To put in perspective:
The TFR in South Korea is ~0.7 with ~50 million people. The TFR in the Central African Republic is ~5 Million with a TFR of 6. In 4 generations:
Korea:
(0.7/2.1)^4 x 50 mil = 500,000
CAR:
6/2.1^4 x 5 mil = 400,000,000.
Obviously these numbers can’t possibly be true, they’re too extreme and shocking to be so. It’s a simplified model as South Korea’s numbers wouldn’t actually be this bad (but not too far off). But that’s rh numbers a projection of current fertility gives you. CAR’s TFR has been pretty steadily above 6 for all of modern history, whereas South Korea’s has been declining to almost nothing with zero indication it will increase.
So yeah, worrying about fertility, especially when we talk about individuals being depressed with modern life, isn’t a currently relevant problem. But when you compare the difference in societies (and some of these societies aren’t across the world like CAR and Korea), it’s clear that having 3x as many children as your neighbor, and persisting in that over the next century, will produce massive imbalances in which societies are important in the future. If you like your culture and society, then that should be a concern.
But fertility HAS oscillated in America. It's been below 2.0 in the past. And immigration to America has been a major historical driver of our success as a country. The longer we have politicians who appeal to nativism, the worse off our future will be.
I actually agree that US TFR is really nothing to worry about. It's slightly lower than replacement right now, but not that much lower. (https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/fertility-rate)
There's always an "echo" of fertility from about~30 years prior. The above replacement rate from 1990-2008 is just now going to echo into our current fertility, and it probably would have started slightly sooner if not for Covid. We've been at ~1.8 for the past 2 years, and will likely stay above 1.6 for at least the next decade, maybe decade and a half.
The US is also a country really good at integrating immigrants. Maybe even the best in the world? Historically there's always been a strong reaction about immigrants, and a few generations later they're all just considered Americans. The Know-Nothings were explicitly anti-Catholic as well as the ethnicities that were primarily Catholic, and now anti-Catholicism seems almost laughable. It's such a non-issue that we just had a Catholic president, a Catholic VP, and an American Pope.
But that doesn't mean a falling TFR isn't a problem, at least for some countries and more broadly in the realm of ideas. TFR in Ukraine is below 1, and their population was already rapidly shrinking. S. Korea's is .7. China's is somewhat uncertain but also in the ~1 area. The first two have very hostile neighbors (and population does equate to military power), and the third is the most powerful nation in the world. All this will bring major changes, and for Ukraine and S. Korea may even threaten their sovereignty.
On the high fertility side; I just read an article that for the first time in modern history global poverty is expected to increase (https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/470491/extreme-poverty-sub-saharan-africa-world-bank-conflict-climate-change). That's almost exclusively because of Sub-Saharan Africa, where fertility and poverty is extremely high. It seems like there's an imbalance where wealthy countries that can provide a good life for children don't have as many, whereas those that have trouble providing a good life have quite a lot. I'd personally much prefer a world where industrialized nations are at or near replacement, and developing countries don't have such high fertility that it makes development difficult.
On a less analytic note I think it's a somewhat sad trend, since children are great. I'm of the opinion that there's just so many entertaining and enjoyable alternatives (travel, Instagram, pets, etc.) that a lot of people feel fulfilled without children.
TFR only tracks births, not the number of children who survive to adulthood. One thing to be considered with regard to sub-Saharan African fertility in particular is the historically enormous infant and child mortality rate. It wasn't so long ago that it took all the reproducing a couple could do just to have a reasonable expectation that two or three kids would survive to take care of the parents in their old age. The rise in population of the past 70-100 years is almost entirely due to the spread of basic sanitation knowledge, availability of mosquito nets, prenatal care, etc. And fertility has fallen in step. When <i>The Population Bomb</i> was in the best seller lists, there were countries (all in Africa) where the TFR was between 8 and 9 children per woman. Now there's not a country in the world that has a TFR above 6.
Adjusting for infant mortality, it reduces the effective TFR (if that's what you want to call it) by -0.25 in the highest fertility, highest infant mortality countries. Everywhere else the difference is negligible.
Which shows just how much progress has been made. I remember as a student in the 1970s watching a professor draw a diagram demonstrating how, for a couple who each have the normal cell gene from one side and the sickle cell gene (which gives some resistance against malaria), the odds are that any child they produce will have a 25% chance of getting two sickle cell genes (and dying from sickle cell anemia), a 25% chance of getting two normal cell genes (and dying from malaria) and a 50% chance of getting one of each and not dying of either. And that's just one transmissible disease in a region famous for being riddled with diseases. Back then malaria was described as "laughing at" the best efforts of medical science. Now we've broken through. Between mosquito control methods, post-infection treatments and, as of two years ago, the new vaccine, we may see the end of malaria in my lifetime.
Funny, I wrote about this a few months ago and just posted a column from the WSJ on the same topic. I agree with much of your commentary but would like to add that there seems to be another factor at play. Many young people are just not mature enough to become parents. Some seem to be afraid of the responsibility or believe they have to be making huge salaries to have children. They don’t see the great joy children can bring to life. It’s fear of responsibility. My parents had 8 children… they were not rich when they started out. Dad was an entrepreneur and ultimately became very successful. We all ended up with good lives, families of our own and good work ethic. I stopped at two children and currently have one grand - hoping for more! I worry that some will regret not taking that leap of faith and having children of their own. Yes there are struggles, it’s expensive and there are no guarantees and yes, some people really don’t want kids and that’s absolutely their choice. I never ask those rude questions or judge others… but there is something more at play than just freedom of choice… I think people don’t see the upside of becoming parents.
There could be regret for sure although it would really hard to construct a counterfactual of one's own life with different choices about children. I also know people who are very involved aunts and uncles and help their siblings with childcare. And as I said before the media tends to highlight the downsides. There's a fascination with children committing violence against their parents.
Something not discussed often is how student loans have prevented people from even being able to get their feet on the ground. This prolongs everything because you shouldn’t start a family if you can’t afford to pay for housing, etc. and makes it less likely they will have children because it takes so many years to get out of this debt.
Get rid of student loans and student loan debt. It will change everything. It has nothing to do with liberalism.
💯 great post, David. I will never understand why people believe that my having kids is their business. It took years of heartbreaking and medically invasive struggles with infertility before I finally learned the best response to such nosy questions. When someone asked when I’m having kids or why I don’t have kids yet, I asked, What is it about my not having kids that bothers you? That shuts ‘em up. We did have the joy of raising our son who came to us through adoption but that, too, was a personal choice. I.e., nobody’s business but ours.
Your points about immigration are spot-on. And about women working. Both of which are currently being flogged by MAGA as “anti-American.” To which I say, good luck with that. 🙄
Thanks Julie. That's a great response to those rude inquiries.
As a single woman who has chosen to not have children, I love Laura Kennedy's handling of that question. (Although I'm at an age where no one asks anymore. 😁)
Provocative (in a good way!) post.
Thanks Diana!