“Don’t turn a blind eye to kids.” – Goldie Hawn
Before I get to my real point…
It’s already hot in the kitchen, and we’ve got three months to go. Ah, how the past comes to haunt us.
JD Vance is defiantly fending off political and media attacks concerning a Tucker Carlson interview in 2021 during which he characterized Democratic Party leaders as “childless cat ladies” and depicted Democrats as a party whose “entire future … is controlled by people without children.” Needless to say, these comments set off a firestorm, prompting actress Jennifer Aniston, among many others, to rightfully take offense. Vance insists his comments are being taken out of context.
His detractors disparage his life story (don’t forget, he was once once their darling) and are quick to remind that Mr. Vance has transitioned from a “never-trumper” — he reportedly once called Trump “America’s Hitler” — to the former-President’s running mate.
Regarding the Vance’s cat-lady comments, I think the Editorial Board of the Chicago Tribune was fair in its analysis. Here’s the headline, followed by the Google search if you’d like to read the text: JD Vance’s approach to reversing US birth trends is the wrong one. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.
But fingers can point in both directions.
Vice-President Kamela Harris’s presidential running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is being assailed for past comments like “One man’s socialism is another man’s neighborliness,” and for sitting idly by as Minneapolis was torch for four days by BLM rioters post George Floyd. Among other things.
And as a 2019 Presidential candidate and co-sponsor of the Green New Deal in the Senate, Harris pledged to ban fracking. Now, with Pennsylvania a must-win for her to ascend to the presidency, she pledges she won’t.
According to the New York Times, the Harris campaign, but not Harris herself, said she also no longer supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, no longer supports mandatory gun buybacks, and no longer supports banning private health insurance. But not so long ago, she did.
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ANYWAY…I’m mostly interested in the problem of birth rates as it impacts our nation, not the political gamesmanship.
So I decided to look into Vance’s central point. Full disclosure: my son and his wife decided not to have children for a host of reasons, so Karen and I will never have grandkids. A disappointment for us, but this is their life and we respect their decision.
According to the CDC, the U.S. birth rate has dropped 3% since 2022, when the fertility rate was around 1.64 children per woman. This is both the lowest recorded rate since the government began tracking these stats in the 1930s, according to ABC, and well-below the rate that social scientists and policymakers consider necessary to maintain stable population numbers. And that, according to many demographers, spells trouble.
Why the steady decline in birth rates? (A 50% drop between 1950 and 2021.) In part, changing gender roles, employment shifts, and advances in reproductive freedom. Starting with the “Baby Boomers” — 1946 to 1964 — women in greater numbers went back to school. In 1950, just 5.2% of women completed four years of college, compared to 38.3% by 2020. This increase in college education and rising employment among women put motherhood on the back burner.
Add to this…federal approval of the pill, and Americans are having fewer children than are needed to keep the population numbers stable. This issue stretches far beyond our national borders. Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institutes for Health Metrics and Evaluation say the global fertility rate will drop below 1.7 by the end of this century. Countries like Italy, Spain, and South Korea will lose more than half their population within the lifetimes of children being born this year.
An opinion piece in USA Today, based on research conducted by the authors, states other reasons for the declining birth rate in the U.S. — the threat of climate change, the affordability of housing, the political situation, safety concerns, and finances among them.
But the biggest factor cited for not having kids is personal freedom. Americans don’t want to give up their independence.
So what’s at stake? What’s the cultural impact?
When the fertility rate (currently 1.64) falls below “replacement-level fertility” (2.1), long considered by social scientists and policymakers as the rate to keep things stable, the population ages and shrinks. This slows economic growth and strains government budgets. Our babies today will grow to become tomorrow’s workers and taxpayers, required to sustain the economy by funding pensions, paying taxes that keep Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs afloat.
What’s to be done to reverse this trend? When asked what makes life more meaningful, survey respondents indicate family is the most common factor. Parents also report higher levels of meaning than adults without kids, according to Clay Routledge, vice president of research and director of the Human Flourishing lab at the Archbridge Institute; and Will Johnson, CEO of the Harris Poll, a global public opinion, market research, and strategy firm.
They maintain, “For much of our history, most humans lived far more perilous lives than we live today. Our challenge is less about our material conditions and more about our mindset.”
I think this was JD Vance’s main point…his pointless observation about “childless cat ladies” not withstanding.
It’s a public policy issue we ought not to ignore.
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