Christians and the ‘Birth Dearth’

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.

There are many so-called strategies for redeeming the culture. For instance, there’s electing pro-family representatives at the state and federal levels, nominating and confirming the right kind of judges, and, of course, there’s evangelism and the ability to articulate a Christian worldview in a way that our non-Christian neighbors can understand.

And while all of these are important, there’s something else that is more likely to succeed than any of these: frequenting your local maternity ward.

Regular “BreakPoint” listeners and readers have heard about the “birth dearth” in Europe and Japan. Low birthrates have put the future of both of these societies in doubt. Europe faces the prospect of cultural extinction by an increasingly unassimilated Muslim population. Japan, which has not only rejected large-scale immigration, but also having children, has a shrinking and aging population whose “national future” is very much in doubt.

These aren’t the only significant effects of falling birthrates. There are political and cultural consequences as well.

Phillip Longman of the New American Foundation described these effects in an USA Today op-ed titled “The Liberal Baby Bust.” In it, Longman argued that demographic trends predict “a far more conservative future.” That’s because fertility “correlates strongly with a wide range of political, cultural, and religious attitudes.”

While nearly half of Americans who attend church weekly say that they want three or more children, barely a quarter of those who seldom attend church say the same. As Longman put it, among liberals and “progressive secularists,” “childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm.” Thus, in Seattle there’s nearly 45 percent more dogs than children.

The result of these attitudes toward kids and culture is that “an increasing share of all children born in the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.”

The result will be a “dramatic, demographically driven transformation” of American culture. “Traditional values” will “make a comeback,” if for no other reason than the alternatives are self-annihilating. The “secularists and counter-culturalists” of the future will have never been born.

And that says a lot about the sterility of the secular worldview. But while it’s gratifying to see one’s beliefs vindicated in unexpected ways, we do need to keep a few things in mind.

First, family size isn’t all that matters. After all, many of the people in prison come from larger-than-average families. The key is to replace one generation of faithful Christians with another generation of faithful Christians. Helping you do that is the very mission of “BreakPoint.”

The other thing is that our children are not a cultural strategy. Christians, on average, have bigger families because we believe that children are gifts from God—good things in themselves—and because we believe that God intended our good when He said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” That’s certainly what this father of six believes.

Still, the fact that large families have unexpected, but positive, consequences for our values and culture is a reminder that, in all of life, obeying God’s commands is always the best strategy.

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Phillip Longman, “The Liberal Baby Bust,” USA Today, 13 March 2006.

Phillip Longman, “The Return of Patriarchy,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2006.

Phillip Longman, “The Global Baby Bust,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004.

Phillip Longman, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It (Basic Books, 2004).

Madeline Bunting, “Behind the Baby Gap Lies a Culture of Contempt for Parenthood,” Guardian (London), 7 March 2006.

Gina Piccalo, “The Mother Lode,” Los Angeles Times, 12 April 2006.

Sam Roberts, “Come October, Baby Will Make 300 Million or So,” New York Times, 13 January 2006. (Times Select subscription required.)

Matt Mitchell, “Going to the Dogs in Seattle: Cities without Kids,” Mamazine.com, 25 February 2006.

Ian Bremmer, “China’s Underpopulation Crisis,” Slate, 7 March 2006.

“South Korea Offers Baby Bonuses to Bolster Economic Growth,” Bloomberg, 3 April 2006.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 050314, “Toys without Children: Demographic Suicide.” (Free registration required.)

BreakPoint Commentary No. 050711, “Wolves in Berlin: Europe’s Demographic Crisis.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 060210, “That’s Not Funny: Eurabia.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 060119, “Fighting the Future: ‘Choice’ and the Family.”

Charles Colson and Harold Fickett, The Good Life (Tyndale, 2005).