The Dearth Of Birthing People

There’s a population explosion among the ranks of senior citizens in South Korea! The United Nations recently announced that South Korea has joined Japan in the ranks of Super-Aged Nations.

What that means is that more than 20% of the population is 65 or older. Actually, the UN has a three-tier system with 7-14% geezers/gaffers/duffers/codgers qualifying a nation as “aging,” 15-20% as “aged,” and the aforementioned Super-Aged” at 20%+. And given South Korea’s astonishingly low birth rate of less than one child per woman, the UN might have to come up with another category beyond Super-Aged. May I suggest Super-Duper Aged to cover percentages above 25%.

One might think the intelligentsia would be trilling hosannas to the healthy lifestyles and modern medicine and sanitation that prolong life. Unfortunately, given the economic realities of the modern welfare/warfare state, it is not good news. The welfare state is basically a Ponzi scheme. The system depends on adding more and more people paying into it to keep it going. As for the warfare state…well, invading countries and building military bases overseas is expensive, and since there are 193 countries in the world, there is a limit to what even the most imperialistic taxpayer will cough up.

Some countries have attempted financial incentives to encourage larger families but only marginal changes in birth rates have resulted. Perhaps a different approach is warranted. Given the female herd instinct, perhaps we need a PR campaign to make motherhood sexy again. How about recruiting the best and the brightest on Madison Avenue to Market American Motherhood Again, or MAMA.

Consider these slogans:

A womb is a terrible thing to waste.

Have It Your Way – Natural or Cesarean

Got Milk? (the California Milk Processor Board would likely object)

The Best a Woman Can Get

Betcha can’t bear just one

Hav Mor Chillun

The Ultimate Birthing Machine

Think Inside the Bun

Double your birth rate, double your fun

If the PR approach (the carrot) doesn’t work, then we must turn to the stick. The question is which stick? Let’s start with those least likely to be effective:

  1. End the welfare/warfare state. Not going to happen, just thought I’d mention it for the record. Only a rogue politician (come to think of it, that might be a redundancy) who doesn’t care about being reelected or reviled would broach it as a possibility.
  2. Curtail the welfare/warfare state. Also not going to happen. People like “free” stuff and the Pentagon needs a massive budget to keep up with its penchant for mission creep.
  3. Just let the system collapse. This is the most likely result, albeit the most painful. There will be plenty of blame to go around and no shortage of scapegoats. Finger-pointing with your thumb up your ass is a nifty parlor trick, but armies of contortionist politicians and bureaucrats will do just that after a collapse. In the long run no one will go to jail. You can incarcerate individuals but not government bureaus or policies. In truth, many of the architects of flawed and/or failed policies are long dead.

But we have other options, some more realistic than others:

  1. Bring back polygamy. Let the alpha males impregnate multiple wives. This would be a tough sell, even for men who could afford to support large numbers of offspring. In the 21st Century, most alphas appear to be satisfied with one respectable wife for reproductive purposes and a frisky young mistress for recreation. Over time such a man may shed one wife and/or mistress for another, but I can’t envision harems in the USA, though harem pants might make a comeback.
  2. Kill the old people. If you listen to any podcasts by younger content creators, you know there is a lot of anti-Boomer sentiment out there. I think a lot of them would be on board with the mass murder of that demographic. You might recall the 1976 science fiction film Logan’s Run, portraying a futuristic society with a compulsory death age of 30. I don’t think we need to be that draconian. 70 – the Biblical three score and ten – would be a good place to start. And we’re not locked into that figure. If it proves insufficient, we can always ratchet it down. Of course, we’re not talking public hangings or firing squads. The euphoric death of Sol (Edward G. Robinson) in Soylent Green, yet another 70s SF movie, is the humane option. If you’re one of those anti-death penalty people, then we could limit the oldsters to so many years of Medicare or Social Security. Let’s give them, say, five years of each…no, let’s be generous…ten years of each. After which, no mandatory deaths, but we leave them unfunded and on their own and let nature take its course. If you’re religious, you can wash your hands of the whole thing by acknowledging it’s in God’s hands.
  3. Raise the birth rate. Now this is a tricky proposition. Young folk enjoying a protracted adolescence might approve execution of the aged but they would never approve of compulsory reproduction. Of course, you can’t assure reproduction will take place no matter how often you introduce semen into a woman’s privates. But you can make it more likely. That would mean a ban on abortion and birth control, which would be perceived as a civil rights violation. Of course, civil rights go on the back burner, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently in times of war, and one might argue that low birth rates are as much a threat to the nation as any foreign enemy. Sorry, ladies, but your “my body, my choice” ideology has to go if the nation is to survive. Having said all that, banning abortion and birth control could be even more politically unfeasible than Nos. 1 and 2 above, at least in some states. I suppose a national emergency could be declared and the Constitution could be suspended, but there is a better way. That leads us to Suggestion No. 7.
  4. Take suffrage away from women, which would make bans on abortion and birth control more feasible. As with the 18th Amendment (Prohibition), a repeal of the 19th Amendment would require a new amendment, which would require a two-thirds majority in the US House and Senate; even worse, three-fourths of the states would have to ratify it. Of course, politicians dependent on the female electorate for their jobs would never sanction such a thing. Actually, they could get away with it if they timed it right. Ram it through after one election and make it effective with the following election. Voila! Prohibiting women from voting would no longer be a civil rights violation! Oh, women would tear out tufts of purple hair and bare their nipple-ringed breasts at demonstrations. Pro bono shysters would flood the courts with amicus curiae briefs. Female talking heads would crank up their screeching to record decibel levels. All to no avail. Once female disenfranchisement is embedded in the Constitution, turning women away at the polls will no longer be a civil rights violation.
  1. Yet even Nos. 6 and 7 are not the most radical proposals. Ironically, all those Handmaid’s Tale women who stage demonstrations wearing those flying nun costumes may have unwittingly hit upon the solution: Dragoon them into bearing children! Of course, it wouldn’t be a lifetime thing. It would operate much like the draft. The younger, more nubile girls would be 1-A. As Dr. Strangelove put it, “the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.” The more mature women would be, say, 1-B, and only called up if there were a shortage of 1-As. The infertile would be 4-F. Above all, no student deferments! As a side benefit, the student loan crisis would slowly deflate. As for conscientious objectors…a woman with a conscience? Are you kidding me?

The fact that there is no easy way out of the birth rate crisis invites the question of how we got into this mess. I have distinct memories of days when reproducing was like voting in big cities: do it early and often. Of course, in those days one could also assume that every young woman was in the market for a husband and family. No normal girl wanted to end up an old maid any more than a card player wanted to be left holding the (old) bag, i.e., the Old Maid card. Also, old maid is a slang term for an unpopped kernel of corn. Now there’s a metaphor to ponder the next time you’re watching a movie and chowing down on a bucket of popcorn.

Better a young maiden than an old maid when it comes to reproduction. After all, doesn’t it make sense to start when girls are at their most fertile and a young man is a boner waiting to happen? Getting a late start on reproducing makes about as much sense as putting off becoming a tennis pro till your mid-30s. The efficiency of the human body deteriorates over time. Physical activities (and intercourse and giving birth certainly qualify) are best attempted when one is full of piss and vinegar, as opposed to laxatives and antidepressants.

That was pretty much a given when the welfare state was just a gleam in Franklin Roosevelt’s eye. Consider that when Social Security was enacted in 1935, the birth rate had plummeted to 18.78 per 1,000 people. Also the infant mortality rate was 6%. But the life expectancy for men was 59.9 and 63.9 for women, so with a retirement age of 65, the program was bound to “succeed.” Obviously, this setup had more losers than winners, in other words, more people paying in and collecting nothing than people getting something back. The losers finance the winners – just like a casino! But without the free drinks and the cheap buffets.

After 1935, however, the birth rate rose, peaking during the Baby Boom years. Of course, life expectancy was going up also but with all those young people paying into the system, Social Security was still on solid ground. Ah, but then came the birth dearth – the pill, abortion, feminism – to the point where the birth rate in 2024 had declined to 12.009 births per 1,000 people, well below the 1935 total. Meanwhile, the 2024 life expectancy was 76.1 for men and 81.1 for women, far above what it was in 1935. Well, you don’t have to be a whiz at math to see that if these trends continue, Social Security, as we know it, has no future. You could probably say the same for Medicare. Does that mean the nation is doomed?

Consider Europe during the first half of the 14th century. Thanks to the Great Famine and the Black Death (the Hundred Years War didn’t help any), mortality rates skyrocketed and populations nosedived. Yet life went on for the survivors. France, Spain, England, et al did not cease to exist – but they did not have welfare states to support in those days. It was every man/woman/family for himself/herself/itself. In fact, if you were a survivor, you might have found solace for lost loved ones in the realization that the subsequent labor shortage resulted in higher wages! Basically, the nations of Europe downsized. Europe’s women responded to the challenge and after a couple of centuries of giving birth early and often, the population recovered.

Throughout history, fecundity has been a prized feature of womanhood. A barren woman was to be pitied. A woman childless by choice was not exactly shunned but considered suspect. One of those career girls – or worse…you know, the comfortable shoes crew. Today the career girls (girl bosses) and the comfortable shoes crew (choose your favorite slang term) are legion. One might assume the feminists have triumphed, yet they assert there’s still a long way to go. One wonders if a birth rate of zero would satisfy the feminist fatales.

There was a time before feminism when all women were birthing machines. This wasn’t a result of the patriarchy. It was the sad reality of life expectancy. It was said that if you wanted five children you would have to bear ten. Of course, more mouths to feed are a burden, but that same mouth was attached to a body that could be put to work on the family farm. Having children was the way of the world. As the saying goes, the rich get richer and the poor get children – but even the rich wanted an heir, preferably a son, to carry on the bloodline. Consider the case of Henry VIII, who pioneered the concept of female disposability. Needless to say, it didn’t catch on.

As the founder of the Church of England, Henry VIII could not have foreseen that one day a rift in the birth rates according to denominations would occur. When I was a lad, any time one came across a large family, the assumption was they were Catholic. The exception, of course, was Utah, where one would likely conclude that such families were Mormon. Otherwise, white Protestants, the descendants of America’s founding stock, backed away from big families. At some point, having more than, say, three children was considered bad form. And this was long before anyone heard of a carbon footprint.

Actually, it was more a class than a religious thing. My grandmother used to say of Catholics, “They’re more interested in quantity than quality.” I couldn’t help but notice that in larger families the head of the house usually had a blue collar job. And his family didn’t live in a bigger house – often they lived in smaller quarters. Think of it! One bathroom for all those people! I remember once hearing the sire of such a brood boasting that he’d never once suffered the shock of a cold toilet seat in his home.

The theory behind the superiority of small families is that parents can devote more attention and resources to one or two children than four or five. Hence, those one or two “quality” children will be of greater benefit to society than a flock of poorly parented ruffians. Theoretically, anyway. Given parental limitations of time and resources, the theory seems sound. Let’s play the devil’s advocate, and in this case, the devil is an unlikely source, a pious fellow named Branch Rickey, who is enshrined in the baseball Hall of Fame.

Branch Rickey is widely known as the front office executive who integrated major league baseball by signing Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Actually, Rickey’s career entailed much more than that. One of his other achievements was inventing the farm system, an affiliation of a major league team with minor league teams at various levels of competence to serve as a pipeline for players. In doing so, Rickey created a vast network of teams for the St. Luis Cardinals, in some cases having more than one team in a league, leading to accusations of “syndicate baseball,” that he was monopolizing young baseball talent to the detriment of other teams. His explanation was also a theory: “Out of quantity comes quality.” In other words, the more players you have under contract, the greater the likelihood that big leaguers will result. Extrapolate that to a society, and you could make the argument that the higher the birth rate – in other words, the more you roll the genetic dice – the better your chances of producing all sorts of individuals of various aptitudes. In a rigid caste system, this probably wouldn’t make much difference, as the more talented individuals would be thwarted from rising in the ranks. But in a more mobile society it would be a good thing.

This is not to say the “quantity” theory is not without its drawbacks. For one thing, there would be more people born on the dumbbell side of the bell curve, and no society needs that. But the “quality” argument is hardly above reproach.

In generations past, an only child was often pitied. It was not a desirable status. Supposedly, the child would grow up lonely without siblings. For sure, one’s ability to play well with others may be a function of having brothers and sisters. Yet with today’s lower birth rates, the only-child syndrome is more common than ever. Middle-aged people who lament the lack of grandchildren might want to ponder the role they played in their plight. If they limited their family to one or two kids, their chances of having grandchildren are now slim to dubious.

The only-child stigma today is much less because one-and-done motherhood has become so popular. Supposedly, with all of the family’s attention and finances fixated on an only child, a high-quality child and eventually adult should be assured. On the other hand, have you noticed that we hear more and more people described as narcissists today? Maybe the inevitable effect of being an only child?

It is amusing to listen to podcast pundits enumerate the reasons for collapsing birth rates. Typically, they mention feminism, but never fail to pledge their fealty to women’s rights and equality. It’s the land whale in the room. It’s like the old saw, “I’m not a racist, but…” or “I’m not a prude but…” You know the drill. Often mentioned is the fact that the countries in the world with the highest birth rates are also deficient in human rights. I mean, we could take away women’s rights and increase the birth rate…but what would the neighbors think? What neighbors? You know, all those other countries going down the tubes even faster than the USA.

But there’s no use touting the benefits of a large family in a world where human beings are demonized as destroyers of the planet. In some deep green circles birth control is not just an option but a commandment. In truth, if given a choice of living in a world with more trees and fewer people, I’d opt for…well, I’d have to give it some thought.

Of course, all of the above may be moot if there is a breakthrough in artificial wombs and ectogenesis becomes the norm. Childless women will be neither an object of pity nor an object of veneration. They will still be unhappy, however – I mean, aside from the fact that they will never have to fret over stretch marks again.

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