The Opinions - More Babies Aren’t the Only Solution to Falling Birthrates

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Despite growing concerns, the Opinion writer Jessica Grose doesn’t want you to panic about the falling birthrate. In this episode of “The Opinions,” she argues there’s a positive picture behind the decline in births and suggests there are creative solutions that could help us embrace a future below replacement rate.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I am Jessica Gross. I am an opinion writer at the New York Times. And I cover family, religion, and the way we live now. Well, the fertility rate in the United States has been trending downward for decades. And now a new report shows the rate is the lowest in more than a century. According to the CDC, 3.6 million babies were born in 2023 in the U.S. That's about 76,000 fewer than the previous year.

Well below the replacement rate of 2.1 that would allow a generation to completely replace itself. There is a lot of media coverage of the falling birth rate around the world. But the story is almost always framed negatively. More women than ever are choosing to be child free. The downward trend is, quote, a reflection of a society increasingly soaked in an anti-family ideology that views children as burdens. But modern feminists, working women,

and boss babe culture is taking over. Speaking of culture. Often this is framed as like, what's wrong with women? Why don't they want to have babies anymore? It's always like women, women, women, the problem here is feminism. Society has changed for women

more rapidly than it's changed for men. And I feel to see that as a problem. So the birth rate really fell lot after the introduction and growing use of the pill in the 60s. It started to level off a little bit by the mid-70s with some ups and downs until 2007. And since then, we've seen a pretty sharp decline. This is a result of a lot of positive trends. One of the positive trends is that people are more educated. And when people are more educated, they tend to delay child rearing. Part of that trend is also in the United States, a massive decline in teen pregnancies.

When we were way above replacement, it was because there was no reliable contraception. Marital rape barely existed as a concept. Women thought that their only purpose in the world was to be wives and mothers. And now we live in a society where you can plan your reproductive life. And that is why there are very few people. men or women who want to have five or six kids. There are definitely still people who do, and God bless them, but it is not a majority desire.

I should say we're also now seeing something new happening since 2007, and I think this trend has to do with more than just birth control and women getting education. What I think has changed is a deep feeling of financial instability, and it has to do in part with the fact that millennials entered the job market just as the recession was peaking. And that fundamental instability and job loss stuck with them. And then the pandemic hit.

And so some people who might have started having kids in 2020 either pushed it off or decided, you know what, it's not for me. My biggest advice if you're still really worried about the birth rate is don't be. I think there are some people who are genuinely worried about programs like Social Security and the solvency of the birth rate. American economic system, but I think there are some people who just want to control women in their bodies and think that they should be wives and mothers first and foremost. So, yes, it has been a global trend for the birth rate to fall, but there's just so many ways we can adapt to the

populations that we have rather than bemoan what we don't have. So I think instead of simply pressuring people to have children or have more children, it would be better if we started thinking more broadly about how to restructure society for a birth rate that may be slightly below replacement going forward. There's a well-established pattern than when both income and quality of life go up, societies go from lots of births and lots of deaths to fewer births and longer life expectancies. And that means for a while we are going to have more elderly people than children. In 2024, about 4.1 million Americans are expected to turn 65, and that's going to be every year through about 2027. So I think one thing we could do to adapt to an aging population is

rethinking the way we structure work. So I know it is politically, nightmarishly unpopular, but I do wonder if we also raise the retirement age a couple years. And thought about work as something you might dip in and out of throughout your lifespan. There's a lot of people for whom a 40-hour work week just is not the way they want to live and the best for whatever is their life circumstance. And, you know, if there was more opportunity for part-time work, that paid a decent salary and provided health insurance, I do think that that would ease a lot of the pressure on our people and our systems that we are all feeling. I think we also have this fantasy that if we just had 2.1 babies at the exact replacement,

everything would run smoothly and all the societal issues that we talk about would be solved. And that's just simply not true. The solution to our current challenges isn't just pressuring people to have more babies. We do not have to rewind the clock to 1990. We don't want to go backwards and we don't have to. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Veshaka, Fiby Lett, Christina Samuelski, and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Brusek, and Annie Rose Strasser.

Engineering, Mixing, and Original Music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat Kusker, Carol Sabarro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuiluski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.