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Feminist Betty Friedan called for a second stage of feminism when she recognized that many women need to invest themselves in marriages and children (as well as in a career) in order to find fulfillment. Yet even Friedan may not be able to stop the forces unleashed by ideological feminism.
Because of abortion on demand and other social forces, Americans are now experiencing the “birth dearth.” Although it is not the sole cause for the dramatic drop in U.S. births, the 1.5 million abortions per year tremendously reduce the number of babies.
In the U.S., the average number of children per family has fallen below two. An average of 2.1 is needed for the present adult generation simply to reproduce itself. It is only because the older generation now passing from the scene has fewer members than the present crop of young adults that births still outnumber deaths.
Collective Suicide
The whole of the developed world faces the same problem. Noted French demographer Pierre Chaunu observes: “The rejection of [marriage and the family] is a recent phenomenon. For the moment, it is limited to the sixth of the world that constitutes the developed nations, the eight hundred million men and women who have decided to commit the strangest collective suicide of history.”
There are two dramatic social changes that contribute to this collective suicide: in France and Scandinavia, fewer people marry; in West Germany and the U.S., they marry but often remain childless.
While no Western nation now attains the average 2.1 children per family that is needed to maintain the population, the figures for West Germany are catastrophic: the average has dropped to 1.27 children per family. By the year 2020, if present trends continue, the population of West Germany will decline from over 60 million to 30 million.
The United States, France, and Switzerland remain comparatively better off. But, says Professor Chaunu, the difference between West Germany on the one hand and countries such as France, Switzerland, and the United States on the other, is the difference between imminent population collapse and slow death.
Facing The Future
The problems that the abandonment of reproduction will produce are certain to have an impact on us all within the next few years unless our social mores are transformed dramatically. (And over 50 percent of American families are now unable to work to reverse the trend because one or both partners are sterile.)
Within a few years it will become impossible for the shrinking U.S. work force to keep up social security payments for an increasing number of persons requiring retirement benefits. Pressure from the tax-paying young simply to do away with “useless eaters” (as Hitler called the aged and infirm) will become immense.
U.S. unemployment will be a continuing problem. Many naïvely suppose that a larger population would increase unemployment. But the 15 million babies aborted since 1972 would have created a vastly greater consumer demand. Schoolteachers, for example, would be highly sought after instead of being a low-paid surplus sector of the labor market. A shrinking population does not prevent unemployment; it creates new problems more difficult to handle.
More Christian Kids
Unfortunately, it is not only the activist proabortion minority that refuses to have enough children, but the nation as a whole. As a seminary teacher, I have often heard young Christian couples express the intention to have no children because of international uncertainty and the population explosion. But it is precisely Christians who should have the necessary confidence, based on trust in God, to reproduce and increase in number, while secular society despairingly commits collective suicide.
In a number of European nations, population experts have recognized the seriousness of the declining population trends. Only in France, as far as I can determine, has the alarm been sounded by a committed Christian, Professor Chaunu. In the United States, media attention still centers on the “population control” advocates—despite the obvious fact that the population is already too controlled.
American Christians should reread Genesis 1:28 and be fruitful and multiply. Multiplying Christians could only be salutary for society. And for once Christians could set a good trend, instead of complaining about bad ones.
HAROLD O. J. BROWN1Dr. Brown is interim pastor at the Evangelical Reformed Church of Klosters, Switzerland. He is on leave from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
