Why the choice to be childless is bad for America
The global causes of postfamilialism are diverse, and many, on their own, are socially favorable or at least benign. The rush of people worldwide into cities, for example, has ushered in prosperity for hundreds of millions, allowing families to be both smaller and more prosperous. Improvements in contraception and increased access to it have given women far greater control of their reproductive options, which has coincided with a decline in religion in most advanced countries. With women’s rights largely secured in the First World and their seats in the classroom, the statehouse, and the boardroom no longer tokens or novelties, children have ceased being an economic or cultural necessity for many or an eventual outcome of sex. …
Crudely put, the lack of productive screwing could further be screwing the screwed generation. …
The results haven’t been pretty. In some places in Japan, particularly in the countryside, there are already too few working adults remaining to take care of the elderly, and kodokushi, or “lonely death,” among the aged, the unmarried, and the childless, is on the rise. Long a model of frugality, the demographically declining nation now has by far the high-income world’s highest rate of public indebtedness as spending on the elderly has shot past what the state can extract from its remaining productive workers. Last month, the nation’s new finance minister, Taro Aso, outright said that the elderly should be given grace to “hurry up and die.” This situation will not be made better by a desexualized younger Japanese generation: one in three young men ages 16 to 19 express “no interest” in sex—and that may be a good thing, given that 60 percent of young women of the same age share their indifference.
Blowback
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Why of course it’s bad for America.
But people don’t marry and have kids because it’s good for the country, now do they.
Nor should they. Not in these times.
petefrt on February 19, 2013 at 8:16 PM
You can force people to have children. However, if we had a policy to promote the value of marriage and family, it might help. Instead, our government and culture promotes out of wedlock births.
Blake on February 19, 2013 at 8:26 PM
Dude?
How does something like that happen?
Count to 10 on February 19, 2013 at 8:29 PM
This.
The Obama administration is more interested in promoting hedonism, abortions, wrecking marriage through redefining it, and controlling our lives.
In Liberal Fascism Jonah Goldberg wrote, “the institution most resistant to political indoctrination.” (p. 327)
That’s why progressives and totalitarians work to harm and destroy it.
INC on February 19, 2013 at 8:32 PM
s/b
“The family is the institution most resistant to political indoctrination.”
INC on February 19, 2013 at 8:33 PM
Truly Dunn’s conundrum……..I choose not to bring children into this progressive wasteland, and progressives choose abortion as birth control…….the hitch is, however I may feel about abortion, do I really WANT progressives to procreate? Therein lies the problem. Help. How about progressives choose adoption into a conservative family with values over abortion?
I know, that’d be like holy water on a vampire, but one can dream.
waterytart on February 19, 2013 at 8:35 PM
articles like this always annoy me. people aren’t “selfish” if they choose to not have kids or delay having kids. or, not get married and “settle down.” i hate this idea that everyone MUST get married soon and MUST have several kids or else it’s “bad for society.”
if someone doesn’t want to get married and/or have kids then fine. (as long as they don’t resort to abortion) not everyone loves children. and even people who do love children may not want to have one of their own, because they feel like it’s not right for them at the time. same with marriage- some people delay it for years and that’s okay. i really do not care.
yeah and you know what? there are plenty of people who are the opposite- they see having more children, and not living in big cities, as superior choices. so many people think their choice is superior and everyone else should agree with them. again, it’s annoying.
and this article seems to imply that everyone who wants to live in a big city, or everyone who wants to delay marriage and children, is automatically a liberal. there is so much generalization in this article. and i’ve seen many other articles (that are written by conservatives) that make the same generalizations, sadly.
how this affects me personally: me being 21 and not wanting marriage and children right now is pretty normal… but what if i don’t change my mind for several more years? is something bad about that? does that make me liberal? no. and i LOVE big cities much more than small towns or even suburban areas (where i live now). but that doesn’t mean i’m liberal. and yet, i keep seeing these generalizations.
i hope more people choose adoption instead of abortion. and i want to adopt kids someday! and of course i will teach them conservative values. so that’s my dream too lol
Sachiko on February 19, 2013 at 8:41 PM
I follow Sachiko. She seems fair-minded and I suspect she has things for me to learn.
petefrt on February 19, 2013 at 8:51 PM
?!
besser tot als rot on February 19, 2013 at 8:51 PM
It doesn’t matter if you get rid of the welfare state. Low skill immigration also doesn’t really matter if you get rid of the welfare state. Unfortunately we have a massive welfare state, so they both matter.
besser tot als rot on February 19, 2013 at 8:54 PM
Sachiko on February 19, 2013 at 8:41 PM
Good on ya!! I was not blessed with children, God had a different plan for me…..suicidal brother in law, bipolar sister, sad as that all was, I got to raise 3 little girls, now adults with their own children, who love their Mother, but think of Aunt Tart as their Mom.
The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways.
waterytart on February 19, 2013 at 9:00 PM
Priorities:
1. Secure the border
2. Replace low skill immigration with high skill immigration. Model immigration policy after New Zealand, Australia, and such.
petefrt on February 19, 2013 at 9:02 PM
What an a$$clown. I don’t do anything specifically because its “good for America”. I do what is good for me and my family. We aren’t slaves to America. The Idea behind America is so that we could have have individual liberty, not some strange devotion to the collective.
MoreLiberty on February 19, 2013 at 9:04 PM
A lack of kids is the only thing that can kill the socialist ponzi scheme. Starve the beast of workers (taxpayers) and the thing collapses.
I think it’s great that the birth rate is so low. Try sustaining American-style big government when you have a small population. This is why the European countries are paying people to pop out babies. They are giving away tax money in the hopes of generating more tax revenue in order to give away more tax money.
keep the change on February 19, 2013 at 9:10 PM
Well said. I’ll also add that it’s equally annoying the presumption that anybody can settle down and have children whenever they do please. As if you are to just grab the first fertile person you come across and haul them in to get a marriage license or to a hotel room, whichever is closer. Why doesn’t everybody?
It goes along with what Blake said above. We haven’t fostered a culture where marriage is regarded. As a man, I’d bear ridicule openly admitting to avoiding sex outside of marriage, let alone even considering “virgin” as a favorable trait in a wife. Meanwhile filth like Lena Dunham and Sandra Fluke are people who are treated seriously. When this is the culture, even when my personal economic situation and desires are moving in the right direction, simply finding somebody is nigh impossible.
But then again, such is the desire of the left. Fewer children is a side effect, because it represents those of us who can’t afford, or can’t find a way to have the stable family that would create well raised children. Instead the next generation relies on the Flukes of the world eventually deciding, biological clock ticking, not to abort one of their “accidents.” Fewer kids overall, and those that are there increasingly in fatherless families. Greater economic distress. Greater reliance on government for economic and social support. Rise, repeat, and raise the red banner.
Gingotts on February 19, 2013 at 9:10 PM
*Gasp!* Japan went from Alpha, to Beta, to… Omega.
Punchenko on February 19, 2013 at 9:28 PM
The reason people are freer to be childless is because the government has replaced the security that children offer with welfare, social security and medicare.
End those programs, and you will see many more 3 child households.
astonerii on February 19, 2013 at 10:03 PM
Enlightenment.
When you wake up from the retarded notion that sex is somehow amazing or sacred, but is in fact just a foul biological function that every species on the planet, including the grossest ones of the gross engage in, sex isn’t so appealing.
You might as well be passionate about bowel movements.
Daikokuco on February 19, 2013 at 10:48 PM
Some bodily functions are worth being passionate about, though. I mean, you don’t need to have sex.
On the other hand, perhaps it is time someone goes proudly before Congress and demand taxpayer funding of laxatives and toilet paper!
Gingotts on February 19, 2013 at 10:54 PM
You don’t suppose it could have something to do with Japan having a super-massive welfare state?
nobar on February 19, 2013 at 10:58 PM
Japan’s welfare state is minarchy compared to the US. Less than 1% of them collect “welfare” as its understood in the US. And the Japanese health system is a marvel of low cost compared to what the US already spends (and Robamneycare is only just beginning).
I don’t know about you but when I hear “super massive welfare state” I think of cradle to grave “free” food (WIC), “free” housing (Section 8, among others), “free” education including college, and of course “free” unemployment and retirement benefits.
Japan has NONE of these, employment related benefits are provided by the employers and must be earned, they aren’t unconditional BS like in the US. Japanese pay for their university same as Americans but unlike Europeans with their “free” college. And “free” housing and food are basically unheard of in Japan while the programs in the US are ENORMOUS.
So does it have something to with a figment of your imagination? No.
Daikokuco on February 19, 2013 at 11:29 PM
One word: tentacles
lol – what a boring way to live life. I don’t get huge endorphin rushes after taking a piss. If the only thing you’re getting out of sex is an exchange of body fluids, you’re (sadly) doing it wrong. And I’m not talking about hooking up with some random drunk dude/dudette.
But I guess you’ll think I’m just “retarded”. I don’t care. It’s your loss. You really are missing out.
strictnein on February 20, 2013 at 12:49 AM
Perhaps a new category of Darwin Award is needed.
farsighted on February 20, 2013 at 7:09 AM