I think our society has been anti-child for quite some time. The generation after mine will probably be the first to find a balance between career and family; or maybe not. The birth rate is 1.89 per women, which in the context of married couples is below the replacement rate. However, that’s not always in the context of married couples; it is noteworthy that among segments of our society, the illegitimacy rate is so high that having a single mother is the norm for a child.
Part of this is career; that’s not to say that women shouldn’t have a career, but rather that we haven’t culturally figured out a comfortable balance between family and career, and I’d argue that pressure is on young men as well as young women. Mine is a traditional household, I work and my wife stays home with our two children. She intends to return to work when the youngest is in school, but it is a financial struggle for us right now. I hold a master’s degree, and work at a senior level. But we shop at Aldi’s, the thrift store, and give homemade gifts. If we travel it’s because someone helped cover the costs, either by giving us a place to stay, a gift certificate for a hotel, or buying the plane tickets (mostly my parents, who live across country).
So I could see another young adult looking at their 20’s, thinking about the cost, whether in day care or in career time lost, and postponing a family indefinitely. That says so many things about our work culture - that more than half a century after women’s lib, women are still afraid to have kids because of repercussions from their employer; that the burden of student loan debt creates a dichotomy between wanting education for all but limiting choices in life; that the cost of day care continues to skyrocket (my wife was taking home less than $200 a month after paying day care); and that the aspiration to material wealth trumps the desire for a family.
When a society gets to the point where having children is “optional,” it is only a matter of time until it collapses.
I agree. The fastest-growing segment of our population is that consisting of new immigrants. We want families to be able to grow and provide quality health care, education, and a good upbringing and have that taken care of within the family. I worry very much that our young people are increasingly the children of broken and impoverished homes, where English is not the first language and the skills of the parents are very limited. That spells out a future with a heavy financial burden on the government, and an increasingly unequal and polarized populace.
My son recently completed a pre-cana program and the first topic was “how to use NFP to avoid pregnancy” so apparently, even among young Catholics, the trend is to not want/accept children - at least "till they get established.
NFP is a topic in every pre-cana. I gathered the intent of its presence in ours was to present it as a viable alternative to artificial contraception. That support helped us in our determination to use NFP to space the births of our children, but it was openly mocked by other attendees. It is sad to note that we know more couples who are struggling with infertility than couples who have decided they are done having children, and I think that the artificial birth control has much to do with this.
