OPINION: Bread is plentiful without the need for 'buns in the oven'

When employed at a local hospice, I overheard a nurse tell a joke: “Why do husbands usually die before their wives?” she posed. “Because they want to.”

Pity me for sharing, but it serves as a fitting segue to the topic of fertility rates, a subject that portends big changes (and more one-liners). How do Gen Z’ers respond when asked why they don’t want to have children? “We just don’t want to.”

That’s no joke though. That response was typical in a recent survey; family photos for this generation do not require wide-angle lenses. Relative to population size, the U.S. had its all-time lowest number of births in 2023 — 3.6 million bundles of joy. For many though, women in particular, “joy” is not the operative word in describing anticipated parenthood. Propelled by that sentiment, family size has shrunk. Nowadays, 97% of U.S. families have no more than three children.

Are we in the throes of an anti-family movement?

For certain subcultures, large families are viewed as divine decrees as much as blessings, and the anti-family symbol can be found on the flip-side of the same pro-life coin. Take your pick. American mainstream colonial culture in the early 1800s considered having many children a civic duty. More babies were not only more hands on the farm, but more American citizens to build a budding republic. Women could be expected to have 7-10 live births (with 3 or more of them not expected to survive infancy).

We can only imagine the bewilderment of a “we just don’t want to” 20-something female if she could time travel and hear Teddy Roosevelt insist in 1905 that “mothers who don’t have kids are like soldiers who run away from battle ... about as useful to society as unleavened bread.”

My mom was 20 years young when she had me in a relatively average brood of five. Even she, though, would have rejected the narrow, subjugated female role of the time, a misfortune of perception shared by their narrow-minded male overlords.

Perhaps it was the birth of the birth control pill in 1960 that provided women the radical notion that they were something more than breeding stock, that there was a world beyond PTA meetings and Tupperware parties. Whatever the impetus, fertility could be managed — unheard of. Unimaginable questions could now be entertained, such as: How can I create a fulfilled life without the laughter of those little munchkins in our breakfast nook? Or even better, without those screaming brats in the backseat?

And there was a potent precursor to the pill and female empowerment movement that lay muzzled in our collective memories: During the Great Depression, 30% to 50% of pregnancies were aborted. Aside from the illegality and moral trespass, that passage signaled the individual psychological and physical trauma each woman must have faced when trying to square poverty and hunger within the American patriarchal family model. In response, women have been educated and fertility rates have dropped globally.

By 2050, 155 countries will have birth rates below the replacement level of 2.1. On the low end of the spectrum is South Korea at 0.7. The U.S. stands at 1.6. Some will point to the lack of government support for day care and other family social supports as reasons for the precipitous drop, but France, which spends a whopping 4% of GDP on social services and tax breaks for parents, is at 1.89. That figure falls short of the replacement rate.

Economists are sounding the alarm bells; with fewer workers and a smaller tax base, how will we ever fund social services for the largest population segment — those over 65? How are we to grow the economy and maintain our military superiority? How will we colonize Mars?

For those embedded in a growth-at-all-cost mindset, there is cause for concern. I’m not so worried. (Barring a medical miracle, I won’t be around to watch the great plunge off the cliff’s edge). Am I supposed to play tug-of-war with the better half who are pulling society’s reset lever and reshaping the quality-of-life mold? No way. You’ll find me on their side helping to pull.

After years of globetrotting, Broadman finds himself writing from his perch on the Palouse and loving the view. His policy briefs can be found at US Resist News: https://www.usresistnews.org