The birth rate is dropping all over the world. In some places, like South Korea (0.72), it is so low people are starting to worry about a national extinction. In other places, including all of Europe (average 1.5, Spain 1.29), it's merely bad and alarming. And nobody seems to know exactly why.
Even in Denmark, it's now so low (1.5) that the government went from estimating a lack of 5,000 child care professionals to suddenly looking at a 2,000 person surplus by 2035. Plans for kindergartens and schools are being rewritten in anticipation of far fewer kids in the coming years. At 1.5, Denmark's population will shrink almost a fifth by 2050, and of course it'll then be a mix of much older people with far fewer working-age individuals to support them.
As a reminder, just to stay level, a country needs a birth rate of 2.1. But by continent, only Africa is consistently above that level. The UN keeps revising back the year they project that the world's population will peak at about 10 billion. In 2022, they said 2086. In 2023, that became 2084. And of course the demographic threat isn't just a shrinking globe, but that in the years leading up to that fact, the rate of old-to-young is going to be difficult for most countries to deal with.
That's all the relatively far future, though. And what we should have learned by now is just how hard that future is to predict. Denmark literally went from one year to the next predicting a massive shortage in child care professionals that needed political intervention to realizing they wouldn't need that after all.
But worse than being unable to predict the future, we don't even seem to understand the present. There's no comprehensive theory as to why this is happening all over the world and at the same time. There are a million theories, but the bulk of them seem mostly about advancing someone's political priors. And the vast majority of them fall apart when tested against the local facts of countries as different as Denmark from South Korea to Italy to Canada.
It's the lack of religion! It's the mental overload for women! It's contraception! It's not enough maternity leave! It's too high pressure to achieve at work! It's the rise of narcissism! It's low testosterone! It's hook-up culture!
There's no shortage of explanations (or accusations).
I don't know why this is happening either, but I do know this: Before having kids, I did not understand what it would be like. That might sound obvious, but I think it's actually not. I understood what it was like to be a kid myself, yes. I understood what other people's children were like, yes. And I understood all the reasons why parents might often be stressed. But I did not understand the core emotional and even spiritual transformation that actually having my own children would induce.
And what a transformation that was! Or was for me, I guess I should caveat. People react in a myriad of ways to becoming parents, and let's just say not everyone accepts the burden with equal grace. But to me, it's been perhaps the single biggest shift in perspective and probably the most rewarding life experience possible.
Yet sentences like that, with words like "rewarding" or "transformation", do not even begin to convey the reality, because it's not possible to transmit its essence in words! I imagine it's like explaining "green" to a person who can't see color. Or the smell of the ocean to someone who've never been near a shore. Words will be very crude representations that will ultimately do little to represent reality.
But that's all we have! Words. So let me try a few different approaches. One is that the trolley problem no longer becomes a problem let alone much of a moral dilemma. If that lever controls a train heading for my kids or a million strangers, it's not a hard choice at all. I don't even have to think about it for a second.
Same too if the lever is me versus them. No hesitation, no trepidation. I'll sacrifice myself with ease.
Maybe this is what some people experience being part of the military in an existential fight for a nation's survival. That they're ready to die for the greater cause. But even so, I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least a little bit of hesitation then!
And again, maybe this isn't how everyone feels about their children. In fact, clearly it's not. But I do think this is the most common feeling. An easy commitment to self sacrifice, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to keep them safe. That's a transcendental shift in experience.
Which may sound great, but shouldn't be mistaken for "happiness". Plenty of studies have shown that parents are actually the most "unhappy" in the prime child caring years, and it's not hard to imagine why. Starting with the lack of sleep, the ever-present degrees of worry, and the sudden, abrupt limits on "me time".
It illustrates the difference between "meaning" and "happiness" perfectly. In almost all cases, children bring a deep, profound meaning to the life of those who have them. Happiness comes and goes, but the meaning of being directly connected by DNA to a human you brought into this world is ever lasting.
Now there are a million good reasons for why having kids is great for the world (whatever the Malthusian #degrowth fanatics claim), but it's that selfish reason, the profound life experience and bond, that I think often slips out of the conversation, and thus consciousness of prospective parents. It's easy to describe in words how having less time, less money, less freedom sounds like a raw deal. It's very hard to describe the purpose granted by parenthood. That asymmetry clearly isn't helping the case!
So that's why I'm trying to make it. The case for having children. To not let the asymmetry of explainable cons tip the scale over unexplainable pros. Contributing with your own DNA to the continuation of the species, and watching your own flesh and blood grow up, is a sublime experience. And while not accessible to all due to medical issues or otherwise, it's accessible to most, and I think you'll deeply regret not partaking if able and capable. I know I would have.