Pro-Natalism Is Not Enough

My husband and I have one little girl and we are expecting our second child at the end of this year, six weeks before our third wedding anniversary. We represent a growing minority among Generation Z. In 1965, five in six adults between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four were, or had been, married. Since 1970, however, the marriage rate has fallen by sixty percent. Today, approximately one-third of Gen Z is on track never to marry, with many preferring to remain in unstable cohabitating arrangements. 

What began as a marriage recession has turned into a full-blown birth dearth. In 2023, the birthrate fell to its lowest point of 1.62 births per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. The future of the United States, along with that of every developed nation except Israel, is threatened by demographic decline. Our economy, Social Security, military readiness, eldercare, education, and more depend on new generations of children. On an individual level, this decline reflects a much darker reality. Happy, hopeful people have babies. If we are not having babies, what does that say about the health of our nation? 

The causes of this birth dearth are varied: rising infertility among men and women, the atomizing force of technology, the high cost of living and raising children, and the decline in marriage and church attendance. Abortions have increased since the Dobbs ruling—perhaps due to the increased availability of medical abortion—as have intentional sterilizations, especially among younger men and women. Each of these factors, individually and in concert, has resulted in what Tim Carney calls a “family unfriendly” culture where children are seen as impositions or, at best, luxury goods. 

Pro-natalism, a movement against the decline in births, is making headlines as it draws prominent champions like Elon Musk. While we should be pleased by this development, we should distinguish between “mere pro-natalists,” who simply want to see more babies born, and those who prioritize family formation as the basis for increasing birth rates. Mere pro-natalists can serve as excellent allies against our anti-child culture, but the lack of concern for family formation risks perpetuating the very social pathologies that gave rise to the birth dearth in the first place. 

By overlooking the prior decline in mother-father marriage rates, the fertility crisis is reduced to a national collective action problem for someone else to solve. Mere pro-natalism also tends to view children, and their mothers, as means to a greater end: saving the world, the nation, the economy, or finding meaning in one’s life. As the failure of China’s efforts to increase births shows, instrumentalizing motherhood in this way can actually discourage women from childbearing. Such instrumentalization even bolsters anti-natalist arguments that childbearing treats children like a product for one’s own designs and cannot gain consent to bring them into being. 

Technocratic pro-natalists often desire to create a certain kind of a child: a healthy child, a smart child, or a “wanted” child. Indeed, with the expansion of embryonic genetic selection technology and the potential of artificial wombs or in vitro gametogenesis—an experimental procedure that genetically modifies anyone’s DNA into viable gametes—parents may use technology to customize their future children. This “Silicon Valley” style of pro-natalism exploits a parent’s desire to raise healthy and happy children by offering them a false promise of control. As Anglican ethicist Oliver O’Donovan warns in Begotten or Made?, “a being who is the ‘maker’ of any other being is alienated from that which he has made, transcending it by his will and acting as the law of its being.” Children who are “made” are no longer viewed by their “maker” as gifts, ends in themselves, but as luxury goods.  

Reducing babies to one among various competing goods—a child, a yacht, or a house—reinforces our society’s disinclination to value them as ends. As far as consumer goods go, children are risky, difficult, and time-consuming. Studies find that the biggest reason that women delay or forgo childbearing is their desire for leisure, such as travel, or their preference for personal independence, such as the freedom to focus on hobbies or careers. When Americans view childbearing as just another pet project, it’s unsurprising that fewer adults decide that children are not worth the trouble. 

My own daughter is fifteen months old. As I delight in her growth from a newborn to a happy, walking toddler, I am struck by how easy it is for this mindset to influence my own parenting. I am tempted to view her as a precious accessory that should fit neatly within my own life, schedule, and goals. Then, I am surprised or frustrated when her needs conflict with my preferences. 

Civilization depends on individuals recognizing that building a family and nurturing children is an essential part of the human journey. Promoting marriage, which is consistently the best predictor of birthrates, is the surest long-term strategy to reverse declining fertility. The marriage recession—occurring as divorce, cohabitation, single parenthood, and hookup culture became the norm—preceded the fertility crisis in the United States. As fewer families formed stable, long-term relationships, the number of children born among the middle and upper classes began to decline. Today, the birthrate among married men and women has remained steady since the 1990s, save for a modest decrease from 2016–2020. The overall decrease in children is the result of more adults delaying or forgoing marriage altogether. To solve the fertility crisis, we should not simply focus on creating more children, we must focus on creating more healthy marriages between men and women. 

Additionally, children do best in married mother-father families where they are biologically related to both parents. Such children are far less likely to be poor, to commit crimes, to drop out of school, and to suffer from depression and other psychological problems. As we protect the “package deal” of marriage, sex, and procreation, children enjoy more opportunities to flourish as the natural, and celebrated, extensions of marriage. 

It is true that more babies helps solve many of the problems related to the economy, Social Security, military readiness, education, and happiness. Nonetheless, these outcomes must not be the main reason we encourage people to have children. As C. S. Lewis said, “Put first things first and second things are thrown in. Put second things first and you lose both first and second things.” 

To rightly view and encourage childbearing, we must honor and receive children as gifts, regardless of their abilities or health. Not only does this ensure a posture of humility in childbearing, but it protects against a cultural mindset where adults may act upon children as objects or solutions to some other problem. 

Emma Waters is a research associate for the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family at the Heritage Foundation.

First Things depends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.

Click here to make a donation.

Click here to subscribe to First Things.

Image by David Foster, provided by Flickr, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.