Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D.  

History clearly shows us that the culture of a society determines whether that society will advance the quality of life of its citizens or lead to a deterioration and eventual downfall.  In most cases, cultural deterioration is not obvious to the members of a society until it may be too late to turn things around.  A declining birthrate to a level that is less than needed to maintain its population (usually about 2.3 children per woman) can be a significant warning sign. The U.S. birthrate has been declining for several years and now is at 1.6 births per woman for year 2022, which is considerably below replacement levels. The birthrate in 1960 was 3.5. What is true for the U.S. is also true for most, if not all, Western countries.

As a result of the declining birthrate, the percentage of the U.S. population over 65 has been steadily increasing and is now at 17.3%. That percentage is expected to increase to over 22% by the year 2040. This will put increasing demands on the Social Security system since there will be fewer workers paying into the system. It will also make it more difficult for the younger population to achieve their goals since they will have to pay higher taxes.

Now some people may argue that this is a reason to increase immigration to offset the declining birthrate. The difficulty with that solution is the impact of large numbers of immigrants who do not share our cultural values. Instead of a unified population, the result is a splintering of the population into subcultures that may be at odds with our values and beliefs. The idea of the United States as a “melting pot” has definite limitations. In fact, in the mid-1920s, Congress passed immigration restrictions that severely limited immigration into our country because of concern that the high number of immigrants would not be able to be assimilated smoothly into our culture. Those restrictions were in place until the late 1960s when Democrat Ted Kennedy led an effort to greatly expand the allowable number of immigrants and opened immigration to America up to countries from around the world. The recent flood of illegal immigrants encouraged by the Biden administration has created substantial problems with crime, economic dependency, and the public-school systems.

The question before us is how do we encourage our native-born women to have more children? This will be a challenge for not only the new Trump administration, but for subsequent administrations. Part of the problem comes from young people marrying later than they used to. In the 1960’s, the average age of first marriages was the early twenties. Now it is in the thirties, which of course leaves fewer years for child rearing. There was a time when being married was expected before two people lived together. Now it is commonplace for young people to live together without being married. This seems to be totally acceptable where previously it would have been highly frowned upon and disapproved of. Another issue is economic. In the 1960’s it was still expected that the man would be the sole support of the family; and generally, a man could find a job that would allow him to be the “bread winner.” The economic realities of increasing inflation have made it difficult for a young family to live comfortably with only one income.  Another factor, of course, is the increasing expectation that women should have a career, and motherhood is not valued as it once was in our society.

The solution to this problem may not be easy, but the problem is one that needs to be recognized and efforts made to solve it if we are not to lose our cultural heritage.