When People Are Not Optimistic, They Don’t Have Children

Breitbart.com posted an article today about the declining birthrate in America.

The article reports:

The birth rate among that group dropped 15 percent between 2007 and 2012. The study postulated that the reason for the decline in births was the recession. Nan Marie Astone, one of the report’s authors, said, “It’s hard to think that [the economic decline] wasn’t the reason.”

The period in question saw a “dramatic decline in birth rates among unmarried” black and Latino women and a concomitant drop in the number of white married women. Latino women’s births plummeted 26 percent, black women’s 14 percent, and white women’s 11 percent.

The report stated, “We calculate that in 2012, women in their twenties had births at a pace that would lead to 948 births per 1,000 women, by far the slowest pace of any generation of young women in U.S. history… If these low birth rates to women in their twenties continue, the U.S. might eventually face the type of generational imbalance that currently characterizes Japan and some European countries, but it is too early to predict or worry about that eventuality.”

People who are not optimistic about the future tend to put off having children.

Another aspect of this story:

Of course, the study ignores one salient fact. According to the Guttmacher Institute, over 5.6 million abortions were performed between 2007 and 2011.

There is another aspect of the decline in the birthright that should be mentioned. Since the 1960’s women have told that they need to work outside the home to be ‘fulfilled.’ Motherhood has been devalued. At the same time, the tax burden on the American family has risen sharply due to the War on Poverty (which we seem to have lost) and the Great Society. As a society, we have been dealing with this mindset and these economic forces for fifty years. I believe that the drop in the birthrate is a reflection of this mindset and those forces. Until we begin to see the value of the two parent family in a traditional marriage, we will continue to see the building blocks of our society weakened. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and right now our government is that hand. Parents need to be aware of who is raising their children and begin to take back the responsibility of having and raising their children. We can restore the family by shrinking the role of government and cutting taxes. Look at the percentage of people’s income that went to taxes before we declared war on poverty. Look at the number of intact poor families before we declared war on poverty.  Our values need to change so that women have the option of staying home if they choose to (without it being a financial strain on the family). At that point, we will see the birthrate come back to a level that is healthy for our society.