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Will America become a majority-childless society? A new Pew Research Center survey suggest that sadly may be the case. Such a direction would have alarming consequences for not just individuals but also for our nation.
When Pew asked Americans younger than 50 if they ever plan to have children, 47 percent—one-half of those polled—said “no.” That’s up 10 percent from just five years before. In fact, of those younger than 50, 57 percent said they never wanted to have children, even if they ended up doing so.
The reasons why? Pew writes: “Not having kids has made it easier for them to afford the things they want, have time for hobbies and interests, and save for the future.” But what kind of future are they saving for? It will quite likely be a lonely one. //
The Social Security Administration saw this coming in 2010, noting trouble ahead in its financial report because “birth rates dropped from three to two children per woman.” Previously, there had been a 4 or 5 to 1 ratio between workers paying into the system and retirees taking money out. That ratio has already dropped to almost two-to-one. With even fewer children in the future, the ratio will decrease further.
Leor Sapir, PhD, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute whose areas of research include pediatric gender medicine, shared that anywhere from 5,288 to 6,294 double mastectomies were performed on girls under age 18 between 2017 and 2023 — and that 50 to 179 of those girls were just 12 years old or younger. //
This was based on analysis of an "all-payer national insurance database," including patients who were previously diagnosed with gender dysphoria and had the treatment covered by insurance, Sapir wrote in an article revealing the findings.
The actual numbers could be higher, the Manhattan Institute claims, because researchers did not include patients who paid for the procedure themselves without submitting an insurance claim. //
Thousands — thousands — of children are subjected to invasive, irreversible surgeries. These girls will never be able to breastfeed a child; if they are also being subjected to hormone treatments, they may never be able to have children.
To call this medical malpractice is to indulge in a gross understatement. //
adults, presumably able to give informed consent. Children are not; that's why we don't allow them to sign contracts, buy booze or guns, get married, or join the military. And to see these numbers — thousands of young girls, surgically mutilated because of a social contagion that they would have grown out of, that should have been treated at most with therapy and counseling — this is nothing short of horrifying.
Ever since my little boy came into the world, I've steadily become a different person than I was before he was around. The more he grows, the more I do, or at the very least, the more I notice my perspectives change. //
Angela Belcamino @AngelaBelcamino
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Imagine being 42, child-free, stress-free, and being this happy.
The right hates this.
0:20 / 0:20
6:58 PM · Jul 28, 2024
Is being child-free less stressful? Absolutely. At nearly two, my son is a gremlin who has two modes; asleep or going wild. When he's not in the house, I feel my muscles relax and my focus return.
But ease does not make for happiness. The question isn't whether your life is easier, the question is whether your life is filled with joy. That little gremlin is a joy to have. He gives my life far more purpose than something beyond myself and represents something much larger than me. Watching him grow is like watching a slow miracle unfold right before my eyes. My life is harder with him in it, but far better overall.
I don't need to use the "when you're on your deathbed, you'll want to be surrounded by your children and not your cats" argument. I can tell you that the joy is in the present, turning these little gremlins into proper people.
But the grandest of childless takes are the ones I see in positions of power. I'm amazed at how often school boards are made up of childless bureaucrats.
How could America shift so babies were more welcomed, less dreaded?
Tim Carney, author of the new book “Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be,” has a few ideas. He’d like to see corporations offer parents their child’s birthday off every year. He wants parents to not work so hard at parenting—and to never, ever, sign up their kids for a travel sports team. He’d like to see local governments prioritize sidewalks and denser housing, which would make neighborhoods safer for kids.
But he also wants us to think about why we have a falling birth rate—and what it says about us. After World War II, America had a baby boom, while Germany experienced a baby bust. Now, we’re struggling with our own baby bust, even as we are hammered by relentless discussions of America’s failures, the threat of climate change, and more. “The spirit of the age now is what I call civilizational sadness,” says Carney. “And the sadness is a belief that we’re just not good or that humans were a mistake.” //
"Kids make us be better people. They make us aspire to be better people, both our kids and other people's kids around us," says author Tim Carney.
In the small town of Calhoun, Georgia, the Timms family has found itself embroiled in a heart-wrenching legal battle that further exposes the profound flaws within the state’s child welfare agency. The ordeal began when Brady and Carrie Timms’ three-month-old son Jameson was forcibly removed from their care following medical visits that quickly spiraled into a misdiagnosis and false accusations that brought about their current nightmare. //
The couple later petitioned the court to have Jameson examined at Boston Children’s Hospital by an expert. The court agreed, provided that two case workers with DFCS were also allowed to be present. The doctor diagnosed both Carrie and Jameson with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), a genetic condition that could explain the child’s symptoms and injuries. //
The family believed the diagnosis, which occurred with the DFCS agents present, would vindicate them. Unfortunately, the agency disregarded this critical evidence and refused to move toward reunifying the family.
We all think we know the story of pregnancy. Sperm meets egg, followed by nine months of nurturing, nesting, and quiet incubation. But this story isn’t the nursery rhyme we think it is. In a way, it’s a struggle, almost like a tiny war. And right on the front lines of that battle is another major player on the stage of pregnancy that not a single person on the planet would be here without. An entirely new organ: the placenta.
Demographers and pundits have been blaring alarm bells about declining birth rates for decades, and that future is finally here. //
What used to be fodder for ’80s comedies about clueless single men or frigid career women is now the lived experience of the few children who escape the infertility-spreading medical establishment. These kids face an uphill battle: life with fewer friends, fewer siblings, and fewer child-friendly spaces. And that’s just the half of it: If current birth rate trends hold up, they might be facing the end of civilization as we know it. //
There, in the first blessing God speaks to the first man and the first woman — “be fruitful and multiply” — lies the answer to Berenson’s question of why so many wealthy, privileged couples worldwide are refusing to have children. It is not that humanity is losing faith in itself. It’s that we have faith only in ourselves.
As Dennis Prager puts it in his invaluable commentary on Genesis, secularism is the most important explanation for the modern world’s low birth rates. The poem “Epithalamion,” Edmund Spenser’s famous ode to his bride, ends with a fervent prayer that the Heavens bless their marriage, “that we may raise a large posterity” and increase the count of the blessed saints. //
The future, Steyn likes to say, belongs to those who show up. I do not know who, if anyone, will end up living in the lands our society increasingly has no children of our own to bequeath to. But I bet they’ll know how to change diapers.