{"id":1719,"date":"2015-04-10T09:22:16","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T15:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2015-04-10T09:22:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-10T15:22:16","slug":"just-how-many-babies-do-the-danes-want-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/04\/just-how-many-babies-do-the-danes-want-anyway.html","title":{"rendered":"Just how many babies do the Danes want, anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yeah, I know, I do a lousy job of coming up with intriguing titles. \u00a0Suggestions, anyone?<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the\u00a0news report du jour<\/em>, from the New York Times, \u201cSex Education in Europe Turns to Urging More Births<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Europe, and Scandinavia in particular, is known for low teen pregnancy rates achieved by means of sex ed classes that normalize premarital sex and drill contraceptive use, Brave New World<\/em>-style. \u00a0And this particular article, after a snippet of such a sex-ed class, goes on to say,<\/p>\n

\n

Recently, Sex and Society, a nonprofit group that provides much of Denmark\u2019s sex education, adjusted its curriculum. The group no longer has a sole emphasis on how to prevent getting pregnant but now also talks about\u00a0pregnancy<\/a>\u00a0in a more positive light.<\/p>\n

It is all part of a not-so-subtle push in Europe to encourage people to have more babies. Denmark, like a number of European countries, is growing increasingly anxious about low birthrates.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The article continues by discussing worries in Europe about low birthrates, and profiling\u00a0efforts at boosting fertility in countries with sub-replacement rates, including an ad campaign by a travel agency in Denmark, and\u00a0concludes with a final quote from the Danes,<\/p>\n

Christine Antorini, the Danish education minister, said in a statement that the government was now seeking \u201ca stronger focus on a broad and positive approach to health and sexuality, where sexual health covers both joys and risks associated with sexual behavior.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, ultimately, there\u2019s not much content there \u2014 but it does hint at a bigger issue. \u00a0American progressives are keen on re-creating the European approach to teen sex and sex ed here, and there\u2019s a particular push towards inserting IUDs in teen girls routinely. \u00a0The assumption is that, by and large, this\u2019ll reduce the number of teen pregnancies, and the number of unplanned pregnancies in general, but won\u2019t impact the overall fertility rate, as these girls, as well as the twenty-somethings who also fall unplannedly pregnant, will eventually have the same number of kids, just later in life when they\u2019re able to financially support them. \u00a0(Except, of course, for the stereotypical \u201cwelfare queens\u201d with a brood of kids, whose fertility would presumably drop substantially in this idealized situation.)<\/p>\n

But what if the reverse is true?<\/p>\n

The Danes are fretting that they\u2019ve convinced their kids not just to wait until adulthood before pregnancy and parenting, but have convinced them that kids are not worth the effort at any age. \u00a0If Baby-Think-It-Over is hard work at age 16, after all, why would interrupted sleep be any more welcome at age 26? \u00a0But have their lessons, instead, been so well-received because these teenagers see that the adults around them already think exactly that: \u00a0that babies aren\u2019t something they\u2019re particularly interested in?<\/p>\n

And, of course, the Danish birthrate, while low (1.73), is not rock-bottom. \u00a0(See the CIA Factbook<\/a>.) \u00a0Germany\u2019s worse, at 1.43 \u2014 in fact, I\u2019d label them as the lowest birth rate of any developed country with a \u201cWestern\u201dculture and a healthy economy.<\/p>\n

Are high teen (and, generally speaking, unplanned) birthrates in wealthy countries simply a by-product of a high overall birthrate? \u00a0And, if so, is that for Bad Reasons (that is, they\u2019re propping up a birth rate that would otherwise \u201cnaturally\u201d be lower) or Good Reasons (that is, they speak to the generally greater openness to children in a given society, which teens absorb as much as anyone else)?<\/p>\n

There are a lot of issues to untangle in terms of birthrates. \u00a0Yes, they are higher among various \u201cundesirables\u201d \u2014 Turks in Germany, Arabs in France, Mexicans in the U.S., and the poor on the front page of the Daily Mail, generally speaking. \u00a0And\u00a0we can come up with a pretty long list of reasons why parenting is made more difficult in a given society or easier in another. \u00a0But \u2013 in countries were parenting is purely \u201cvoluntary,\u201d where there\u2019s no expectation socially, and contraception is plentiful, is the desire to have children (and that, in the plural) at all \u201cnatural\u201d?<\/p>\n

Or will these low birthrate countries learn that, even if they remedy the material costs\u00a0of parenting, they still can\u2019t get enough people to sign on, because it\u2019s become viewed as a hobby that people just generally aren\u2019t interested in pursuing?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yeah, I know, I do a lousy job of coming up with intriguing titles. \u00a0Suggestions, anyone? But here\u2019s the\u00a0news report du jour, from the New York Times, \u201cSex Education in Europe Turns to Urging More Births.\u201d Europe, and Scandinavia in particular, is known for low teen pregnancy rates achieved by means of sex ed classes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nJust how many babies do the Danes want, anyway?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yeah, I know, I do a lousy job of coming up with intriguing titles. \u00a0Suggestions, anyone? 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