“We’ve stopped having sex!” former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse pointed out in a recent interview.
“It is very weird. I don’t have a phone on me, but that we carry around these super devices in our pockets that have distracted us from some of the most fundamental human activities and aspirations: having a baby is a bet on the future,” he continued.
It’s not a new observation; in fact, it’s not merely an observation, it’s a warning of a civilization emergency. An emergency that has plagued the United States and other civilizations throughout history.
Teddy Roosevelt warned in 1901 that “All the problems before us in this country … are as nothing compared with the problem of the diminishing birth rate and all that it implies.” He saw low fertility among Americans as an existential threat to the continuity of the country itself.
Before Roosevelt it was Polybius, who wrote in his book Histories that Greece was suffering a self-inflicted birth rate crisis. Polybius diagnosed the cause as a cultural and moral shift.
“In our own time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth-rate and a general decrease of the population. … For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew.”
Sasse himself made the same observation about the cause, that is, prosperity is seemingly breeding selfishness, which is leading to a decline in birth rates.
“Almost everywhere in the world — and the world is richer and richer and richer statistically than it’s ever been — people have decided, ‘Eh, actually babies are kind of an inconvenience.’ Babies have always been an inconvenience and the most glorious thing you can do to enrich your family and to make a bet on the future,” Sasse said. “How weird that we’ve stopped having sex, we’ve stopped making babies, we’ve decided being distracted by a dopamine hit around Candy Crush might be a good way to spend your time — not if you’re a full human.”
Data shows such diagnoses are accurate.
A 2026 study by the Institute for Family Studies found that only about 31 percent of young adults said they were actively dating, while 74 percent of young women and 64 percent of young men “had not dated or dated only a few times in the last year.” And, to Sasse’s point, adults ages 18-64 simply aren’t having as much sex as they were. The General Social Survey shows weekly sex among adults 18-64 plunged to 37 percent in 2024, down by nearly 20 percentage points from 1990.
Marriage rates hit a 140-year low around 2019 and have remained near historic lows since, with 25 percent of 40-year-olds having never married in 2021 compared to just 6 percent in 1980. The New York Times reported that Gen Z and young Millennials show high rates of having never dated or had relationships at all.
And Pew Research polling shows that the top reason for not having children is as simple as “I just don’t want to” and “I want to focus on other things,” like career and personal interests. In fact, childless adults report that not having kids has made career success easier and social life better. To Sasse’s point, people are treating children as an “inconvenience” not worth taking on because the short-term gratification from career success and personal hobbies feels more rewarding — despite the decision robbing a civilization of long-term prosperity.
But as Roosevelt warned in 1901 — and as remains true today — this decline is among the greatest problems our country faces. So what did he mean by that? Well, as Pat Buchanan wrote in Death of the West, “First world nations are dying. They face a mortal crisis, not because of something happening in the Third World, but because of what is not happening at home and in the homes of the First World.”
And what’s happening in the Third World is they’re having sex and children at far higher rates than in the United States (though Third World countries have also seen fertility rates decline). They’re doing what Americans aren’t doing. A country that does not reproduce cannot sustain itself, Buchanan continued. Employment needs in particular demand workers, and as Americans become a dying breed, such shortages must be filled.
It’s a point made by The Heritage Foundation’s Jonathan Abbamonte, who wrote that “without a substantial increase in fertility, the United States will continue to be increasingly dependent on immigration to slow down population ageing and prevent population contraction.”
While Americans delay or entirely avoid marriage and children, Third-World foreigners, many of whom have entered this country illegally, are having babies. Efforts to slow mass migration and preserve American culture — such as those taken by the Trump administration to limit the admission of foreigners into the country (and therefore stemming their ability to reproduce here) — are fragile. Democrats have promised to reverse Trump’s immigration policies, and it’s likely Americans will see waves of mass Third-World migration if Democrats return to office.
Americans are choosing wealth, comfort, and personal freedom over the responsibility of building families and repopulating the country. The tradeoff in the short term may feel good: more money and time and fewer obligations. But nations are not sustained on short-term gratification. As Buchanan warned, a nation that does not reproduce cannot sustain itself. And if that void is filled by Third-World foreigners with vastly different customs, cultures, histories, languages, and religions, America will not remain America.
Over time, America will begin to resemble the places those populations came from. In fact, the very conditions that allow Americans to choose affluent living and money and individual “prosperity” over children and family are ironically the product of a particular culture, people, and set of values — or in short: Americans and American babies filling those shoes with each generation cycle.
If Americans do not have children, America will not remain American, and none of the extra money or time that Americans have gained by putting off children will count for much.
