Go back far enough all single people are in the religous life and all other adults are married. Being single is a new idea.
I’m not sure that’s true. In going back into my own family history, there were single people in almost every generation. Some entered the religious life, some didn’t. The big difference, it seems to me, is that single people decades ago tended to remain within their original “family unit”, rather than going off somewhere to a single, unitary life. Generally speaking, they were also wage-earners, men and women both, and contributed significantly to the overall extended family economy.
A truly strange thing I have noticed. It’s odd how many families, large families, simply “died out” without descendants. I frequently have occasion to review chains of title in real estate, which often necessarily includes accounting for heirs. I have seen families which, in this century or the last, had perhaps eight or nine children, but are now down to perhaps one or two aged, childless people and no other descendants at all.
Even more frequently, I see families that were once large but which are now down to perhaps one or two people that have one to three children, and that’s it.
On the other hand, one sometimes runs across families that have expanded exponentially. I suppose those make up for the ones that die out totally, and also supplied those who went into the religious life. But it does give one pause to think how fragile human populations actually are. If you think about it, fifty years of universal female childlessness and the human race would disappear. Now, that’s an entirely improbable scenario, but we are going to see very significant population collapses very soon; some catastrophic for the nations in which it is happening.
One has to wonder how all of that is going to affect “living wages” in the next several decades. In Europe, for example, the die off ratio is going to mimic that of past plagues like the Black Death. Only immigration preserves the U.S. from that same future. One really has to wonder about the consequences of China’s “one child policy” as well. After the Black Death, wages skyrocketed simply because there were not enough people to do the work necessary. Prices plummeted initially because the demand for goods declined markedly. But then, because the same amount of money was around as was the case before the plague, inflation took off. More money per capita and fewer goods once the initial stock of goods was exhausted. A difference now, of course, is that it is politically expedient to “spread the wealth” by government force. Even so, it is entirely possible that during the lifetime of people now posting on CAF, we will see the able producers rebel against supporting the more numerous non-producers (except perhaps within families). In truth, if I was, say, 21 right now, I would be at least thinking of rebellion in some form or other, particularly if I wanted to have a family. Of course, people age 21 are idealistic and don’t always understand what it is to struggle. If I was age 35 today, there is no question I would be furious about the future that is being laid out for me and my children by political forces.
