Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The heart of demographic decline: Why ‘pro-family’ policies won’t save us
The heart of demographic decline: Why ‘pro-family’ policies won’t save us
Aug 29, 2025 3:25 AM

In his 2013 book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, Jonathan V. Last warned of the ing demographic disaster,” pointing to America’s recent dip below replacement-level fertility. Today, the rate of decline still shows little sign of slowing, driven by plex “constellation of factors” that range from genuine blessings, to “problems of plenty,” to idols of choice and convenience.

No matter how we parse the patchwork of potential causes, Last concludes that “there is something about modernity itself that tends toward fewer children.” With little help from the state, America has “created its very own One-Child Policy,” he writes. “It is soft and unintentional, the result of accidents of history and thousands of little choices.”

In a recent study, “Car Seats as Contraception,” economists Jordan Nickerson and David H. Solomon confirm such phenomena. Estimating that modern car-seat requirements have prevented “57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017,” the authors note that these requirements have simultaneously deterred many two-child households from growing their families – due to needed vehicle upgrades. According to the study, such laws “led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.”

“Thousands of little choices,” indeed.

Amid the mounting evidence, Ross Douthat has also drawn attention to the issue, contextualizing demographic decline as part of a broader story of Western stagnation and sclerosis. In his latest book, The Decadent Society, he argues that falling birthrates accelerate “the closing of the frontier,” leading to significant moral, social, spiritual, and economic consequences. In a chapter titled “Sterility,” Douthat writes that “as much as individualism is the fruit of growth, wealth, prosperity, and achievement, in our own era it also seems to be the seedbed of stagnation.” Alas, “amid all of our society’s material plenty, one resource is conspicuously scarce. That resource is babies.”

In an essayat Plough, Douthat expands on this argument, making a more consolidated case for why “large families will save humanity” and how we ought to realign our cultural attitudes accordingly. This is not some “eccentric question,” he explains – a concern that is confined to religious radicals and end-times alarmists. Whether a society can continue reproducing is “entangled with any social or economic challenge that you care to name”:

As social scientists have lately begun “discovering,” a low-birthrate society will enjoy lower economic growth; it will e less entrepreneurial, more resistant to innovation, with sclerosis in public and private institutions. It will even e more unequal, as great fortunes are divided between ever smaller sets of heirs.

These are just the immediately measurable effects of a dwindling population. They don’t include the other likely effects: the attenuation of social ties in a world with ever fewer siblings, uncles, cousins; the brittleness of a society where intergenerational bonds can be severed by a single feud or death; the unhappiness of young people in a society slouching toward gerontocracy; the growing isolation of the old.

Families can be over-sentimentalized, imprisoning, exhausting. But they supply goods that few alternative arrangements can hope to match. No public program could have replaced the network of relatives that helped my grandfather live independently until his death – even if, yes, his five children, my mother and aunts and uncles, had often feuded with him and each other over the years. No classroom is likely to supply the education in living intimately with other human beings that my children gain from growing up together – even if the virtue of forbearance is not always perfectly manifest in their interactions.

We now take the human family for granted, either passively neglecting or actively denigrating the blessings of children and childrearing. The allure of individualism-as-actualization is strong, and it manifests across society with supreme subtlety.

As for the causes, Douthat echoes many of Last’s earlier suspicions, pointing to three key drivers of the shift, each of which is a monster of modernity in its own unique way:

First, romantic failure – not just in breakdowns like divorce, but in the alienation of the sexes from one another, the decline of the preliminary steps that lead to children, including not just marriage but sexual intercourse itself. bination of wider forces, the postindustrial economy and the sexual revolution and the identity-deforming aspects of the internet, are pushing the sexes ever more apart.

Second, prosperity, in two ways. One, because a rich society offers more everyday pleasures that are hard to cast aside in the way that parenthood requires. (Nothing gave me more sympathy for the childless voluptuaries of a decadent Europe than the first six months of caring for our firstborn.) Two, because prosperity creates petitive hierarchies, new standards for the “good life,” that status-conscious people respond to by delaying parenthood and having fewer kids.

Finally, secularization – because even if it’s possible e up with a utilitarian case for having kids, the older admonitions of Genesis appear to have the more powerful effect. The mass exceptions to low birthrates are almost always found among the devout, and the big fertility drop-offs in the United States correlate clearly with dips in religious identification.

Yet each is better understood together, representing a “feedback loop” that is profoundly pernicious and self-reinforcing. “The rich society creates incentives to set aside faith’s admonitions,” Douthat explains, “which orients its culture more toward immediate material pleasures, which makes its inhabitants less likely to have children, which weakens munal transmission belt for religious traditions, which pushes the society further along the materialist-individualist path.”

To interrupt such a cycle, Douthat suggests a rather modest proposal, encouraging us to politely persuade other parents to have “just one more” child. This wouldn’t mean arguing for “six or eight or ten, but just one more – the kid who requires a new car seat and maybe a new SUV, the kid they feel like they might be able to afford, the kid you can feel pretty sure they won’t regret.” By starting here – challenging “families on the fence” toward “plausible goals” – we might nudge society back to a minimally sustainable replacement rate.

We could also reinforce these nudges, refreshing our cultural arguments about the blessings of children plementing our rhetoric with any number of “pro-family” policy perks. In doing so, we could provide a proactive push against modern utilitarian impulses, using weapons from a similarly suited armory. “The hope would be that the car-seat economists are right,” Douthat writes, “and that simply by making family more affordable – reducing the cost of childcare or of a parent staying home, reducing the cost of education, reducing the cost of home buying, and so on – you can change both the immediate incentives and the cultural expectations around having kids.”

But while it’s tempting to think about these problems in terms of “tips and tricks” – pairing each with moderating moral ambivalence – Douthat rightly suspects that any real and lasting solution will require far more than shrugging utilitarianism. Wherever tried, our top-down efforts to boost population have largely failed. Many countries have already enacted a series of well-funded, “pro-natalist” and “pro-family” programs. Even where they have succeeded, they have led to results that Douthat admits “are not overwhelming,” with marginal gains that “are fragile and easily swamped.”

Last’s book concludes with much of the same. After surveying the ineffectiveness of a wide range of such approaches – Vladimir Putin’s “Family Contact Day” is my personal favorite – Last concludes that the underlying problems may be tied to something even more insidious than mere consumerist self-interest: the corresponding pull of secularization. Whereas many governments have failed by appealing to the selfishness of adults, those who have succeeded have relied on outward-oriented religious devotion. By offering to personally baptize infants, for example, Patriarch Ilia II managed to increase Georgia’s birth rate by 20%. (Fully 84% of Georgians are part of the Georgian Orthodox Church.)

“There are many perfectly good reasons to have a baby,” Last writes. “(Curiosity, vanity, and naiveté e to mind.) But at the end of the day, there’s only one good reason to go through the trouble a second time: Because you believe, in some sense, that God wants you to.”

Douthat has a similar hunch. For real and lasting change to occur, he writes, we “would need our society to e dramatically unlike itself, ordered to sacrifice rather than consumption, and to eternity rather than what remains of the American Dream. You would need not change on the margins, but transformation – probably religious transformation – at the heart.”

When facing the monsters of modernity, pressed between those “thousands of little choices,” we will need far more than the designs of man. This will require a renewed appreciation for the family, yes. But it will also require a renewed rejection of ourselves, reimagining “vocation” from being an idol of self-actualization to a means of crucifixion. No matter how much we tinker with the material calculus, we still won’t scratch the surface of the underlying allegiances.

For even if and when we see the light – feeling that burning bullseye of truth around the brittle shell of our “hardened modern hearts” – we’ll need an otherworldly obedience, too.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Samuel Gregg: Think twice before you condemn bankers
In the May 20 issue of the London-based Catholic Herald, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg has a new piece that draws on his book For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good. “Rather than simply engaging in blanket condemnations that occasionally verge on moralism and which reflect little actual knowledge of the financial sector, we should follow our forebears’ example by first seeking to understand modern financial practices,” Gregg writes. The article is not currently...
Audio: Michael Matheson Miller Talks Poverty, Inc. in Adelaide, Australia
The Poverty, Inc. documentary continues to make waves around the world, including the land down under. Acton Institute Research Fellow and director of Poverty, Inc. Michael Matheson Miller was featured last week on Radio Adelaide in Adelaide, Austrailia in advance of a showing of the film there. You can listen to the interview via the audio player below. ...
Religion & Liberty: Is there a cure for America’s discontent?
“2016 Presidential elections in Pittsburgh” by Gene J. Puskar, April 13, 2016. AP The snow has finally melted in West Michigan, which means it’s time for the year’s second issue of Religion & Liberty. Recent news cycles have been plagued with images of angry Americans, students protesting and populist discontent. The 2016 presidential election has really brought to light that the American people are angry—specifically with American leadership. Here at the Acton Institute, we’re interested in looking more deeply at...
5 Facts About Genetically Modified Crops
In a massive new 420-page report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee on Genetically Engineered Crops summarizes their findings on the effects and future genetically engineered (GE) crops. Here are five facts you should know from the report: 1. Biologists have used genetic engineering of crop plants to express novel traits since the 1980s. But to date, genetic engineering has only been used widely in a few crops for only two traits — insect resistance and herbicide...
5 facts about China’s Cultural Revolution
This month mark the fiftieth anniversary of the China’s Cultural Revolution. Here are five factsyou should know about one of the darkest times in modern human history: 1. The Cultural Revolution — officially known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution — was a social and political movement within China that attempted to eradicate all traces of traditional cultural elements and replace them with Mao Zedong Thought (or Maoism), a form of Marxist political theory based on the teachings of the...
Lessons on Christian Vocation from ‘Chewbacca Mom’
“It doesn’t matter how talented, how anointed, how gifted, how passionate, or how willing you are if you’re not fit to do the things that God has called you to do.” –Candace Payne Candace Payne, now widely known as “Chewbacca Mom,” became an internet sensation thanksto a spontaneous video in which she joyfully donned a toy mask of the beloved Wookiee. Having now broken multiple records for online views, Candace is now appearing ontalk shows and at media venuesacross the...
Samuel Gregg: Pope Francis, Populism, and the Agony of Latin America
At the Catholic Workd Report, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg observes that, as populist regimes implode across Latin America, it’s unclear that the Catholic Church in the age of Francis is well-equipped to cope with es next. Since Pope Francis often states that realities are more important than ideas, let’s recall some basic realities about presidents Correa and Morales. Both are professed admirers of Chávez mitted to what Correa calls “socialism of the 21st century” or what Morales describes as...
Attorneys General line up to attack free speech
By now, readers should be aware of the campaign waged against the Competitive Enterprise Institute led by Al Gore and a cadre of attorneys generals with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman at the top of the rogues’ gallery. The subpoena goes so far as to demand CEI produce “all documents munications concerning research, advocacy, strategy, reports, studies, reviews or public opinions regarding Climate Change sent or received from” such specifically named think tanks as the Acton Institute, The Heartland...
Explainer: What is Brexit, and Why Should You Care?
What is Brexit? British, Irish, and Commonwealth citizens will vote next month on the question “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” Brexit is merely the shorthand abbreviation for “British exit,” which refers to the UK leaving the European Union. What is the European Union? After two World Wars devastated the continent, Europe realized that increasing ties between nations through trade mightincrease stability and lead to peace. In 1958, this led...
Wendell Berry: Great Poet, Cranky Luddite on Ag Tech
Image credit: Guy Mendes A new documentary, The Seer: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, misses the real story on U.S. farming productivity, says Bruce Edward Walker in this week’s Acton Commentary. Perhaps it’s the fact that the bulk of the film’s running time ignores two-thirds of what, for me, makes Berry so special – his fiction and poetry – in favor of what renders him more of a curmudgeon, which is his activism against industrial agriculture. Somebody cue up the...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved