The total fertility rate in the U.S. went down from a fairly robust 2.12 in 2007 to an anemic 1.64 in 2020. Remember, the minimum viable replacement rate is 2.1 kids per woman, which gets you just enough people to outweigh the number we lose naturally.
“Over 38% of households have at least one dog. [Only] 30% of households have at least one child,” according to the American Veterinary Medical Foundation. The replacement rate is now too low to sustain the population in every Western country, and it’s dropping fast everywhere. By 2100, the fertility rate of nearly every nation on Earth is projected to fall below the replacement rate, even below 1.5 children per woman.
Why is it happening? Microplastics? Pollution? Lower sperm counts? Wearing tight pants?
“It has nothing to do with sperm counts or the usual things that come to mind when discussing fertility. Instead, it is being driven by more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children,” the BBC says. If the history books told the truth, feminism would beat out Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler as the most successful genocider.
Fanatics like Jill Filipovic are girlbossing themselves straight into swift genetic suicide, and they’re taking all of us down with them. Her powers have grown so great that she has transcended labels like “wine aunt” and “girl boss.” She now bestrides the Earth as the Final Wine Boss.
A terrifying 2020 study in The Lancet projects that the global number of children under 5 will fall from 681 million in 2017 to just 401 million by 2100. Meanwhile, the number of people over 80 will increase from 141 million in 2017 to 866 million by 2100. Social Security and Medicare solvency? That’s so 1990. Brace yourself, Grandpa!
The study concludes with this:
Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth. A sustained TFR [total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman will have] lower than the replacement level in many countries, including China and India, would have economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences. Policy options to adapt to continued low fertility, while sustaining and enhancing female reproductive health, will be crucial in the years to come.
The study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where it was probably received with cheers. No wonder Bill is buying up American farmland: One might suspect he knows we’re going to need thousands of acres of packed graveyards that no one will ever visit.
In the United States, things are just as dire. “Birth certificate data for 2020 show wide-ranging declines in childbearing in the United States. … [B]irth rates fell among women of all age groups from age 15 to 44; the decline in the birth rate for women aged 40 to 44 was the first since 1981,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Census Bureau estimated that “the U.S. population grew by just 0.1% in the year ended July 1, 2021, the lowest rate since the founding of the nation.” In other words, the last time the population growth rate was this low was… never. It’s never been this low.
It turns out that telling girls to delay motherhood in favor of work may have some extremely unpleasant side effects.
But don’t worry, it’s probably nothing.
I concede that not everyone needs to have kids. Most of the people on the kid-free diet are dug in too deep to be helped. They are well beyond even my power to rebuild them into plausible maternal figures. Enjoy the cats, and have fun Instagramming your vacations — Godspeed. You, your genes, everything you ever did, and everything you ever were will vanish like a fart in the wind, and there’s nothing I can do to help you avoid that tragic fate.
Don’t Ignore the Voice Calling You
The corollary is this: Everyone who does feel that tug on their heart must listen to it. Do not ignore the voice calling you to become a parent! I am saving you a load of deathbed regret here.
Just look at the heartbreaking results of this Pew Research survey from 2021 indicating that many people want children but can’t make it happen: “A growing share of childless Americans say it is unlikely they will ever have children. Some 44% of non-parents ages 18 to 49 say it is not too or not at all likely that they will have children someday, an increase from the 37% who said the same in 2018.”
Of the 44 percent who say they probably won’t have children, 56 percent of them say it’s because they don’t want to. But almost 30 percent said it was because of financial reasons or not having a partner. In other words, they wanted kids but couldn’t make it happen.
Someone should start a dating service so this 30 percent of adults who want children can pool their resources and start getting busy!
This is a real crisis eating away at the fleeting fertility of young women — and men. The inability of young-ish Americans to build financial security is a key reason they aren’t reproducing. Dating apps and porn are cheap and immediate, and kids cost money, so the urgency of waning fertility dissipates. The death of despair is real, only it’s not just the adults’ death; it is the death of future generations who die with them.
This article is an excerpt from Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War.
