Oddly, many people, particularly on what passes for the progressive left, consider fewer children precisely what this society and the planet needs. The desire to limit the size of families has been the central mantra of the green movement from the time of Paul Ehrlich’s misguided predictions. He suggested, among other proposals, adding sterilant into the water supply. Similar conclusions were drawn four years later in the corporate-sponsored Club of Rome report, which sought to reduce consumption, economic expansion, and population growth to stave off mass starvation and social chaos.
The present-day recipe for reducing family size centers on the widely promoted notion of de-growth—a purposely listless economy that represses consumption and upward mobility. Some even have seen the pandemic as a role model for future action, with lockdowns and draconian powers given to unelected bureaucracies, which have set conditions for slower population growth. Permanent renters, gig workers, and those without assets are not as likely to start families as a young family with bright prospects.
This shift will be felt most by millennials and generation Z successors as well as groups like immigrants, who tend more toward child-bearing and stable families than the native born. Poor economic prospects can already be seen in the growing numbers of young adults who remain outside the labor force and increasingly live with their parents into their thirties. Some may also be persuaded by the radical and feminist agenda espoused by Black Lives Matter which seeks to oppose the nuclear family. The idea that having children might be good for the future of the nation proposed by Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance was too much for ultra-woke Salon, which connected the promotion of fertility to “dog whistles for white nationalism and misogyny.”
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