#485: The End of Children
The birth dearth, the pronatalism movement, and lavish allowances for adult children
Dear Readers,
First off, thank you for your interest in our new feature at Article Club, Melinda’s Grief Corner, which launched on Sunday. It was great to see so many people engaging, sharing hearts, and writing comments. If you missed it, I hope you take a look. Melinda will be back in two Sundays with her next installment, which will include a grief-y reflection plus a resource.
Now let’s shift to this week’s issue. If you asked me before last Saturday, “Hey Mark, do you care about the worldwide birth dearth and its potential doomsday impact on human civilization?” I would have likely replied with a quick “not-so-much.” While I understand that pronatalists like J.D. Vance and Elon Musk are obsessed with this topic (for example, “childless cat ladies”), I didn’t put it on the top of my list.
But then I read this week’s lead article, “The End of Children.” Although the article didn’t convince me to shift my position — I still consider climate change as the biggest existential threat to our planet — writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus captivated me from beginning to end. In fact, after finishing the piece, I was so enthralled that I began looking for other articles on the pronatalism movement, rather than waiting for articles to come to me. For that reason, this week’s issue is dedicated to the imminent decline of our world’s population and why so many people are freaking out about it.
If you have time for just one article, definitely read “The End of Children.” It’ll offer an outstanding overview. But if your week or weekend is free and expansive, I recommend all three additional articles. They are about:
how late-stage capitalism is to blame for the “end of babies”
how pronatalists take seriously Shakespeare’s mantra, “The world must be peopled!”
My hope is that you get something out of one (or more) of the articles and then leave a comment, or tell me about it. All you need to do is hit reply or email me at mark@articleclub.org. Hope you have a good weekend ahead!
🎙️ This month, we’re reading and discussing “Radicalized,” a 2019 novella by Cory Doctorow about the injustices of the health care insurance industry. You are warmly invited to join our discussion on Sunday, March 23, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. As always, we’ll meet on Zoom. Everyone is welcome. Let me know if you have any questions, too.
☀️ If you like what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. (Be like Briana! Thank you, Briana.)
1️⃣ The End of Children
Growing up, I worried about many things. One source of worry was my family’s evacuation plan in case of fire; it wasn’t robust enough. Another source was the world’s exponential population increase, which would inevitably doom us.
Turns out, at the time, my concern was not unfounded. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote in The Population Bomb that millions of people would die of starvation unless governments aggressively curtailed the fertility rate. But instead of population rising without bound, the opposite has happened. In 2023, for the first time ever, because on average each woman had fewer than 2.1 children (the “replacement rate”), the world’s population shrank. All projections say this trend will continue, until one day, there won’t be enough people for us to sustain as a species.
In Seoul, where author Gideon Lewis-Kraus focuses this article, “children are largely phantom presences.” There are more dogs than children. Ask anyone on the street, a Korean demographer said, and they’ll know the country’s fertility rate. (It is 0.7, the lowest in the world.) Kids bring ick. Many businesses are “no-kids zones.”
The United States (fertility rate: 1.6) is headed in a similar direction, Mr. Lewis-Kraus argues. The truth is, for whatever reason (and there are many), younger Americans no longer think having children is an inevitability. As immigration declines, and climate concerns rise, and structural inequities worsen, our country may face the same problem as Korea. And that could lead to catastrophe.
By Gideon Lewis-Kraus • The New Yorker • 42 min • Gift Link
➕ Bonus: Here’s the article with my handwritten highlights and annotations.
2️⃣ The End of Babies
Why are we having fewer kids? According to Anna Louie Sussman, the reason is part economic, part cultural. Most prominently, she blames late-stage capitalism, which not only has exacerbated the gap between the rich and the poor, but also has caused us to optimize every conceivably marketable commodity, including our children. Ms. Sussman writes:
Our current version of global capitalism has generated shocking wealth for some, and precarity for many more. These economic conditions generate social conditions inimical to starting families: Our workweeks are longer and our wages lower, leaving us less time and money to meet, court and fall in love. Our increasingly winner-take-all economies require that children get intensive parenting and costly educations, creating rising anxiety around what sort of life a would-be parent might provide. A lifetime of messaging directs us toward other pursuits instead: education, work, travel.
But Ms. Sussman also follows the research that the culture has shifted away from believing that having children is the primary way to find meaning and fulfillment in our lives. Religion is down. Workism is up. We send “little moral signals” to our friends, she writes, that promote individualism and independence. Having kids can get in the way of all the other things we want to do in life.
By Anna Louie Sussman • The New York Times Magazine • 19 min • Gift Link
3️⃣ Having Tons Of Kids To Save The World
So what should be done to curb this population drop? For pronatalists, the answer is simple: It’s time to have more kids — and plenty of them. Malcolm and Simone Collins are on a mission to save humanity by having as many babies as possible. The Collinses are atheists and do not subscribe to the precepts of tradlife. Believers in data and science, they embrace the hyper-rational effective altruism movement, which makes plain and clear that having more children is what’s best for life on Earth.
At first glance, yes, the Collinses are a bit kooky. But this article by Jenny Kleeman does a great job challenging the reader to stay curious and practice empathy. As much as I don’t think having 10-plus kids is the answer, I did appreciate parts of the Collinses’ parenting philosophy. For instance: “Humanity will survive if we all decide to be a little less precious about our children; if we are prepared to take a financial hit and change our lifestyles to accommodate more of them; if we all adjust our expectations and attitudes.”
By Jenny Kleeman • The Guardian • 22 min • Gift Link
4️⃣ Adults Lavishly Subsidized By Their Parents
If one approach to the birth dearth is to have more children, I suppose another path forward is the total opposite: to spoil rotten the kid(s) you already have — and continue to do so, even after they have become full-grown adults.
This article — about how rich parents in New York subsidize their adult children’s New York lifestyles — is entirely over the top. Yes, I know: New York is expensive. And being a Millennial or a Gen Z is not easy. But these stories are wild. We’re not just talking down payments here. We’re talking home purchases, kids’ private school tuitions, keratin treatments, and my favorite, $500,000-per-year allowances.
One 34-year-old (who has received only $335,000 from her parents) writes: “I sometimes think to myself, Am I a trust-fund baby, or are we middle class? I can’t even tell what middle class means in Manhattan. I know parents who bought their kids $4 million apartments in Tribeca or Hamptons homes. My parents are not giving me anything like that, so I’m conditioned to think this is kind of the bare minimum.”
➕ Want a few doozies? Here are 14 short personal accounts of people with parents with money, and the decisions they made. (So much for the level playing field.)
By Madeline Leung Coleman • Intelligencer • 9 min • Gift Link
✏️ It’s time to hear from you.
Last week, the great majority of you said you’d love it if we wrote more comments, shared our thoughts more, and built this reading community. So let’s do it!
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In many poor countries, birth rates are much higher compared to developed nations. Something's wrong with "developed" culture.