Almost without missing a beat, the world has gone from a supposed emergency of overpopulation to an emergency of population decline. Nobody seems to have stopped to point out that all the experts were wrong. Calamitous population decline projections are the justification for all the mass migration. But even if it is a good idea, it is not a long-term solution. Populations are due to collapse everywhere: we will run out of immigrants in the rich countries.
Governments like that of France and Hungary are trying to reverse the trend with cash payments and tax breaks for women who have children. This is expensive, and not likely to be enough.
The underlying problem, I believe, is feminism. The entire idea of feminism was that women were to abandon their traditional role as mothers and go out and make money instead. This was always a matter of robbing the future for the present. It was always going to hurt us a generation or two down the line, as child-bearing and child-raising was devalued.
But what non-draconian practical measures could be taken now?
First, the current immigration policies are insane. Most of those flooding in, legally or illegally, are young men. We do not need men if we are to keep our population up: men do not bear children. We need young women.
In the immortal words of Bob Dylan:
Well, my telephone rang it would not stop,
It's President Kennedy callin' me up.
He said, "My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?"
I said, "My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot,
Anita Ekberg,
Sophia Loren."
Country'll grow.
Second, instead of demanding equal pay for equal work, we need to encourage extra pay for sole breadwinners with children. This was the old system: it was why men were paid more than women. It made it possible for mothers to stay home and have babies. It was also more profitable for the employer: a sole breadwinner is more stable, less likely to leave for another job, and can devote more time and energy to his work.
We might also do something about the need for and high cost of post-secondary education. This is intuitively a big incentive not to have children: they are too expensive. Trump has proposed a national on-line free university with degrees certified by the federal government. This may help. We could do the same in Canada.
On the other hand, free post-secondary education has done nothing to prevent birth rates from plummeting in Germany or Scandinavia.
We must do something about no-fault divorce and child support. The current system is a major disincentive for men to marry and have children. Do so, and they have put a financial noose around their necks. Any woman can pull out at any time, and take all the children, half his income and assets with no responsibilities on her part.
It is perhaps to prevent such situations that, in Islam, a wife cannot divorce a husband; only the husband can initiate a divorce.
We might cap child support, and give whoever makes the larger income in the marriage, sole discretion whether to pay it, or take custody of the children. Otherwise we have slavery.
Unless both parties consent, we should require proof of abuse, adultery, or abandonment in order to get a divorce. Without this, marriage is a uniquely unenforceable contract. Either party can leave the moment it is to their advantage to do so. This is not an atmosphere in which it is safe to raise children.
A no-brainer: abortion should be illegal.
We must also go back to respecting the family as a self-governing unit. We have also overburdened parents by not allowing them to discipline their children—for example, anti-spanking laws—while at the same time holding them legally responsible for the actions of their children. Parents have lost custody for not agreeing to having their child transition to a different sex. Schools ask kids to spy on their parents; and reserve the right not to advise parents of what their children do at school. A woman was recently arrested for allowing her ten-year-old to walk to the store alone.
This is a tough one: I know only too well that families can be abusive.
But there is a solution to this, which does not discourage adults from having children. Bring back the orphanages. Bring back the residential schools. End child labour laws. End minimum wage laws. Open the monasteries and convents. All of these were paths for children to escape from abusive families; and for adults, too, who wanted to escape parenthood. They have been systematically closed off. We need to open them again. This would dramatically lower the risk of bearing children.
Are orphanages or residential schools cruel? Is child labour for low pay cruel? What if we compare them to the alternative: an abusive family, never being born, or resorting to crime or child prostitution?
No doubt many children suffered in orphanages and residential schools: but when one trained economist did a comparative study, he actually found that life outcomes for kids raised in orphanages in the US were actually better on just about all measures than for the general population.
Of course, doing all this will require about a 180 degree pivot in our thinking. We are always too slow to change our course. But then, look how quickly we pivoted from alarm at overpopulation to alarm at underpopulation. Look how quickly we pivoted from mass immigration being beyond criticism to alarm at mass immigration. Or from alarm at global cooling to alarm at global warming.
So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
