Take a look at your family photos going back to your grandparents and great-grandparents, if you happen to have them. I have a nice one of my late father’s family when he was a little boy of three, circa 1939, taken on the family farm in North Dakota. A serious, hardscrabble Friesian family stares back at me: eight siblings; one father; no mother, as she had recently passed. Ten. I look at photos of my family of origin: Mom, dad, me, sister. Four. A photo of my own family: Me, my wife, son, daughter. Currently four. A photo of my sister and her husband. Two. Photos of friends: Many singles, many childless couples.
These photos tell the story, I think, of the transformation of the family over the past three generations. My grandparents’ generation took larger families for granted, while my parents’ generation, the Boomers, had ready access to the technology of chemical contraception, and then abortion. My own generation—X? I forget—delays or forswears marriage and children yet more.
The consequences are upon us. Economically, the great welfare states of Europe are set to collapse, as is Social Security in the U.S., as there are not enough younger people working to pay for them. Whole nations are set to disappear in coming generations, as birth rates in many European countries hover around 1.3 children per woman, about half of the stable replacement rate of 2.1. Demographer Nicholas Eberstadt claims that by 2040 “there could almost be one centenarian on hand to welcome each Japanese newborn.” The breakdown of the family tracks with increased social pathologies.
J.S. Mill’s idea of “experiments of living” has failed. Why? Human beings are meant to live in community, and the first community is the family. Saint Augustine, explaining to Christians wary of marriage that it was indeed a good, claimed that “the first natural bond of human society is man and wife.” The East has seen this as well, captured nicely in a statement attributed to Confucius: “To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.” More recently, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts in Article 16 that “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”
What are we to do? Government cannot save the family and thus the nation—Scandinavian and other European initiatives to reward childbearing through financial compensation and time off have so far failed. Perhaps cultural and political pressures on the family will subside in a couple generations as more fertile communities—whether Christian, Muslim, or (in Israel) Haredi—gain ground and cultures are reordered to habits of life focused on family.
Just as the state must worry about the breakdown of the family, so must the church. For the family is not just an essential social support, it is above all a vehicle for evangelism. Pope Benedict, in Milan a couple weeks ago for the seventh World Meeting of Families, recognized the challenges facing the contemporary family while stressing its continuing social and evangelical function. At the closing Mass in Milan, Benedict pointed to the dangers posted to the family by our current cultural and economic values:
In modern economic theories, there is often a utilitarian concept of work, production and the market. Yet God’s plan, as well as experience, show that the one-sided logic of sheer utility and maximum profit are not conducive to harmonious development, to the good of the family or to building a just society, because it brings in its wake ferocious competition, strong inequalities, degradation of the environment, the race for consumer goods, family tensions. Indeed, the utilitarian mentality tends to take its toll on personal and family relationships, reducing them to a fragile convergence of individual interests and undermining the solidity of the social fabric.
Benedict’s remedy is holy resistance through the family as “a living Gospel, a domestic Church.” Benedict echoed historic Christian teaching in stating, “It is in the family that one experiences for the first time how the human person is not created to live enclosed in himself, but in relationship with others; it is in the family that one understands how one’s fulfillment does not lie in putting oneself at the center, led by egoism, but in self-giving; it is in the family that the light of peace begins to shine to illumine our world.”
As regards the family’s evangelical function, Benedict pointed out how the human family itself is an image of the Trinity: “[W]e have been given the task of building church communities that are more and more like families, able to reflect the beauty of the Trinity and to evangelize not only by word, but I would say by ‘radiation,’ in the strength of living love. . . . It is not only the Church that is called to be the image of One God in Three Persons, but also the family, based on marriage between man and woman.”
For the renewal of culture and Church, then, the family abides as an indispensable resource, ordained by God and Nature. May our families’ photographs find us faithful.
Leroy Huizenga is Director of the Christian Leadership Center at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota.
RESOURCES
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Vatican Information Service: World Meeting in Milan: An Epiphany of the Family
Benedict: Papal Address at La Scala Theater in Milan
Benedict: Pope’s Homily at Closing Mass at VII World Meeting of Families
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Comments:
But now for the beyond part: Of my four sets of great-grandparents, I know that three of them at least some of the time cared for other children in their household while rearing their own biological children. In most cases these were blood relatives, but in one, it was neighbor boy who had been orphaned. My maternal grandmother was reared most of her childhood with her mother's three half-siblings who were orphaned early in life. I other words, my great-grandparents were not only generous enough to have 10 children of their own (nine of whom survived childbirth), but to also rear three orphaned children as well. Of course, they never had much money, no fancy homes, no exotic vacations and no new luxury automobiles every couple of years, but they did love their children and the orphans whom they reared as their own. I think that's the difference between their generation and ours, what they valued.
Let me say, that I believe that those of us who have more secure and higher paying employment and significant assets are the ones most to blame for this situation. Many couples find the financial commitments necessary to rear larger families impossible to meet. That's because so many of us who could afford to have more children decided instead to forego children for ephemeral things, driving up the cost for everyone, not just ourselves, thus making it even more difficult for the average couple to have larger families.
Plus, many people are just not bothering to marry anymore.
But could the fact that lifespans have lengthened also contribute to the collapse of those societies? Retirement ages are rising. Young people are unable to find work since jobs are available for only the most experienced workers.
If a career expands from 30 years to 45 years, we will require high economic growth rates to accomodate the influx of young people into the system. But then again, the goal isn't to accomodate them. The goal is to make money.
Experienced workers cost more, but they reduce risk through their experience. Younger worker produce less, are less loyal, and cost more in training and attrition. I don't know the answer but I suppose the market will sort it out.
The divorce statistic is commonly misunderstood. While 50% of marriages end in divorce, it is NOT the case that 50% of married people will end in divorce or that 50% of first marriages end in divorce. In fact, even today between 75% and 80% of first marriages stick--which is to say, far fewer Americans get divorced than say ancient Romans or Greeks (at least on the best estimates we have). The 50% statistic is driven entirely by 20-25% of married people and by the fact that these folks repeatedly marry and divorce. The vast majority of marriages in America don't fail. And so I'm not sure the extent to which we can use the rather misleading divorce statistic to reflect upon the condition of family in this country. Moreover, religious affiliation, so long as we control for church attendance, has a significant impact upon the likelihood of divorce (if we simply rely on self-reporting and use no statistical controls, then of course it appears as if those who are religious divorce at the same rate--but self-reporting and statistics without controls are, again, misleading). And yet, the demographic decline--i.e., the rate at which couples have children--seems to hold not only for those who divorce but also for those who remain married, who are religiously affiliated, who attend church frequently, and across denominational and confessional lines. It's true that there is variation--Catholics who regularly go to Mass and certain Evangelicals have children at higher rates than others, for instance. Yet, even here the rate of child bearing seems to have declined.
"far fewer Americans get divorced than say ancient Romans or Greeks (at least on the best estimates we have...."
If one sets the bar low enough, one can always take comfort from comparisons. What cannot be denied is that the American rate of divorce is up by scads since the 1950s and the rate of illegitimacy is up by scads in the same period. What can also not be denied is that the Government has injected all kinds of programs that work against the old taboos of divorce and out of wedlock births. As a result family formation is down substantially and many people today don't see any necessary connection between sex, marriage and childbirth.
Divorce contributes to the deconnexion of birth from sex because the old ideal was that two people had to stick together not just for their own sakes but for the sakes of the children born from their union. Today, any issues stemming from the union can be dealt with in the divorce decree by the Solomonic (or not so Solomonic) Family Court Judge. IOW, politicians have sought to get in the middle of the most complex and consequential human relationship and substitute man-made compromises for the natural order of things (as in: most women would not offer up their bodies without some assurance that the fruit of their union would be taken care of).
How else to explain gay marriage in which two people who could not conceive a child between them are said to be the equivalent of two that can? In popular discourse, "parentage" is now less an issue revolving around the contribution of genetic material by two people brought together by that most natural of acts and by the weding ceremony that makes such natural acts less explosive in their consequences than around membership in a "family" that legally becomes "the parents" of children even if neither "partner" contributed anything but an adoption fee to the genetic production of the child. As though such "legal" parents could never have an ulterior motive for "adoption" other than "love" and must conclusively be assumed to have as altruistic motives about the child as parents who share their blood, a love for the other blood parent and a blood descended family name with that child. (And before anyone accuses me of being against that American secular saint group--adoptive parents--I acknowledge that many adoptive parents come to the table with good motives. The fact remains, though, that they aren't "flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood").
To cut to the chase: love, sex, marriage, contraception and divorce all relate to the bigger issue that our politicians are involving themselves in the evolved Christian Marriage bequeathed to us where their ideas are likely to make things worse, not better.
In the period from 1815 to 1914, (99 years) the French population grew from 30m to 41m, a 33% increase and France had one of the lowest rates of outward migration in Europe.
In the period 1941 to 1873, (32 years) the population increased from 38m to 57.5m, an increase of over 50%. It now stands at 60m
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html
I say to anyone who will listen, "marry (make a decision to devote yourself to the true well-being of your betrothed, in sickness and in health) young (during or soon after college)," and "have more kids and fewer ephemeral possessions," and "don't look at anyone but your spouse with desire—literally close your eyes if/when necessary."
As in all aspects of life, obedience to God's will is the secret to true happiness.
†
France is very unusual in this respect. Why such low fertility in an ostensibly Catholic country?
How was this low fertility achieved?.
Also weren't French worried about low population vis-a-vis Germany from late 19C onwards?
Your observations on adoption are very suggestive
In his seminal work, “Ancient Law,” Sir Herbert Maine observed that the movement of progressive societies is from status to contract. No wonder then, that it was a fundamental principle of the Enlightenment that the nature of the human person can be adequately described without mention of social relationships. A person's relations with others, even if important, are not essential and describe nothing that is, strictly speaking, necessary to one’s being what one is. This principle underlies all their talk about the “state of nature” and the “social contract,” and from it is derived the notion that the only obligations are those voluntarily assumed. To Bentham, the idea of "relation" is but a "fictitious entity,” though necessary for 'convenience of discourse.’ The individual is like one of the atoms of Democritus, self-enclosed and impenetrable.
Thus, the very notion of rights and duties grounded in birth and inheritance is becoming unintelligible to many people.
"In most of the Islamic world it's amazing, the decline in fertility that has happened,'' Hania Zlotnik, head of the United Nations' population research branch, told the New York Times in 2009. As early as 2008, a study by the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis concluded, "A first analysis of the Iran 2006 census results shows a sensationally low fertility level of 1.9 for the whole country and only 1.5 for the Tehran area (which has about 8 million people) ... A decline in the TFR [total fertility rate] of more than 5.0 in roughly two decades is a world record in fertility decline."
I didn't say divorce was good or that it wasn't bad but only that your employment of the divorce statistic was misleading and that given a complete view of the family, divorce is arguably not a significant cause of declining birth rates--namely because 80% of first marriages stick. You utterly fail to address my main point. In the U.S., 80% of people who marry DON'T divorce. And yet birth rates have been declining steeply for these folks as well. Clearly then the birth rate isn't so deeply correlated to birthrates as you imply. Again--the vast majority of people who marry, stay married. A small minority divorce--however, they tend to marry and divorce repeatedly, which results in the deeply misleading 50% figure. It looks like, in replying to my post, you strained out a nat only to swallow a camel.
"divorce is arguably not a significant cause of declining birth rates--namely because 80% of first marriages stick. You utterly fail to address my main point. In the U.S., 80% of people who marry DON'T divorce...."
Hmmm...in his earlier post Paul figured that between 75 and 80% of first marriages did not end in divorcel. Now, he figures it is 80%. Other sources, though, disagree and support the 50% commonplace that I had had repeated. See: http://www.divorcerate.org/
The Forest institute and Enrichment Journal cited in the URL I cite claimed far higher rates of divorce in first marriages than Paul figured: 41-50%.
In all events, I never claimed any relationship between divorce and lower birth rates. Rather, I claimed that Divorce is a great destroyer of families. That, I respectfully submit, is ipso facto, if not tautologically, true.
"the very notion of rights and duties grounded in birth and inheritance is becoming unintelligible to many people. "
My point exactly.
Until WWI, France was a predominantly rural society of small peasant proprietors. Most men did not marry until their father died and they inherited their share of the family holding, usually in their 30s or 40s
Similarly, at least one daughter, usually the youngest, stayed at home to look after an elderly parent and a great many female domestics never married, preferring the security of their employment
Why the total change on divorce? Politicians believe in one thing: "Choice." Choice means the politicians have something to sell, something to trade. If the issue is marriage, offer the right to divorce on any or no grounds. Then all kinds of other deals can be made to acquire the vote of particular "demographics" for the party. For example: which woman is going to be sold on the value of "free" day care more easily: the woman with a working husband or the divorced woman who has to get out to work even though she has two little ones at home? Simply put, intact families are a threat to those who would use the state's power to raise money as a means of crafting packets of social welfare "benefits" as a means of gathering sufficient votes to stay in power.