The Gatestone Institute tweeted out a link to a long, depressing article on the fact the Germany is facing the disappearance of Christianity and the rise of Islam. That which Europeans fought to avoid, with the battles against Ottoman Turks in the Xth century, is now coming to pass with seeming indifference. Sure, Muslims are not compelling conversion; they’re just increasing their numbers by immigrating and reproducing, while the Germans are losing their interest in the latter — and that’s on top of dramatic drops in the number of Germans who are practicing or even self-identifying Christians.
And the tie between the two – birth rate and level of religiosity — is taken as a causal relationship: increasingly secular populations have less confidence or optimism about the future, and thus choose not to reproduce. I’ve never found this logic persuasive: after all, many none-ists have a great deal of optimism in a high-tech future. You might read political demands for a high minimum wage and a “basic income” as pessimism that the capitalist economy isn’t “working” but there’s also a great deal of optimism there, that the American economy can produce $15/hr unskilled labor jobs, and has the wherewithal to pay people a basic income, and, just like Star Trek or other futuristic societies, we’ll soon reach a point where technological advances mean we’ll be able to sit back and relax, or, rather, pursue personally fulfilling projects rather than punching a time card. None-ism also carries with it a strong faith, not in God but in humanity — in the ability of man to get along just fine without religion. It rejects the idea of following someone else’s moral code and says that each person is truly able to find for themselves a personal morality that is right and “true for them” (add snarky comment about the exception that we all need to be indoctrinated in how not to be microaggressively racist), and believes that each person is inherently good, so that repentance or even sinfulness is an outmoded concept.
But think about it: Why do people have children? Westerners no longer live in a world in which young people are heavily stigmatized if they don’t have children, nor do they personally feel the need to reproduce in order to have a caregiver or financial support in old age.
Instead, it’s a mix of reasons: some simply because they like children, and believe having children improves their lives, both in providing “fun” in a visible way and in a less-definable sense of enrichment. Some because they fell pregnant and for whatever reason (morality or simple inaction) didn’t get an abortion. And some because they believe it’s the right thing to do — either following Catholic teaching on marriage that a true marriage is one that intends to have children, or more generally because of a belief that having children (while being married) is simply part of being an adult, and, however deeper and more internalized, a belief that producing children is part of an obligation to society, so that the next generation can take their place (and care for the previous one). And, for many, a mix of reasons.
The intentionally child-free, those who take pride in that status, reject this: they reject the notion that children are enriching (or, at any rate, consider any possible enrichment a net loser compared to the “enrichment” of an adult life lived pursuing hobbies and relationships with friends), they reject the notion that marriage and children are paired, and they reject the notion that there is any sort of obligation to society, to have children. At the same time, there are others who don’t reject anything, in broader terms, but at any given time, feel unable to support children, and end up childless as young adulthood passes into middle age and menopause — witness the low birth rate in places like Greece, or the reports coming out of Venezuela of women turning to sterilization procedures at young ages in reaction to the economic crisis.
And, of course, those who chose a “one and done” approach to family life, and figure they get all the benefits of family life at a value price, likewise reject the idea that there is any greater social/religious meaning to having more than one child.
So does abandonment of religion produce low levels of fertility even in societies that aren’t undergoing economic crisis? Or is there some underlying cause to both of these?
True, you could argue that, insofar as they have abandoned religion, “nones” not only reject the notion that you should have kids because God says so, but also no longer feel the same kind of obligation to society, no longer have a belief that one should accept significant restrictions on one’s life, for the greater good or to conform to tradition. But it’s as likely that this underlying rejection is the impetus behind both religiouslessness and childlessness.
And, after all, not every highly-secular country in Europe has an exceedingly low birth rate. To be sure, this is pinned on the greater social welfare spending of a country like Sweden or France, alleviating the financial worries of parenthood and enabling both parents to go back to work, because it’s assumed that it’s the “natural” desire of every adult to have replacement-rate numbers of children, and getting fertility back on track is just a matter of removing barriers to that natural desire. As it happens, I’m rather skeptical of the idea that everyone has an innate desire for children (as opposed to a desire to have sex which, in premodern societies, pretty automatically produces children). And I think it could also be the case that these replacement-level fertility countries have successfully kept up the social pressure, the “indoctination,” if you will, that having children is the right thing to do, even in the absence of religion but in a country (and this applies to Scandinavia in particular) where social conformity is still very important.
Anyway, just a few sunny Thursday morning thoughts for discussion.
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