Babies are blessings

This Christmas season, the airwaves are filled with songs celebrating the birth of Christ more than 2,000 years ago. From classics like “Silent Night” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” we are invited to join with the Virgin Mary, who praised God at the news she would bear the Son of God, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” There is perhaps no better time to recognize the fundamental goodness of life in this time of the year when we celebrate the birth of the Lord of Life.

And this is a message that is sorely needed today. Birth rates throughout the developed world are cratering, even as governments in the United Kingdom and Canada are increasingly promoting suicide as a social good. While there are countries whose demographic trends are far worse than America’s, the situation in the land of the free and the home of the brave is not encouraging.

One measure of the birth rate is called the “total fertility rate” (TFR), which attempts to estimate the number of live births per woman over the course of her lifetime. A rate that would maintain the current population size at any given point is just over 2—one for the mother and one for the father. That is, given that some people do not reach adulthood or never procreate, it takes a bit more than two surviving children per woman to ensure the next generation will be the same size as the previous generation.

If a TFR of 2.1 is a baseline for a stable population, we can look at the rates in countries around the world and see what the future holds for those nations. The prospects are bleak. According to the Population Reference Bureau, global total fertility is at 2.2 for 2024, just above replacement level. But there are wide divergences around the globe. Higher fertility rates correspond to less economic development and less wealth, and the reverse is true for wealthier and more developed nations. More developed and high-income nations have a TFR of 1.4, with countries including Japan (1.2), South Korea (0.7), and Canada (1.3) below that average. The United States is also below replacement rates at a historic low of 1.6.

There are many causes for a decline in fertility, and wealth certainly is a factor. Several significant books, including Tim Carney’s Family Unfriendly and Catherine Pakaluk’s Hannah’s Children, have studied the phenomenon and examined some of the roles that government policy and social expectations play. The cultural assumptions and perceptions about having children are absolutely critical elements of the dilemma we now face. To some extent, these are new in the sense that our society is more affluent than any that has ever existed, and there are nearly inexhaustible options for engaging in “the pursuit of happiness.”

On another level, however, these dynamics are not new. The temptation to focus on one’s own happiness, often at the expense of others, is a perennial aspect of human sinfulness. In his insightful treatise on “The Estate of Marriage” in 1522, the Reformer Martin Luther diagnosed the faulty reasoning that leads many to eschew marriage and procreation. Babies are burdens and costs according to this natural reason: “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves?” The conclusion to such calculus is clear: It is better to remain single, unattached, and carefree.

The Bible teaches us something radically different. It teaches us that love involves sacrifice and we are fulfilled by bearing one another’s burdens. It teaches us that babies are blessings and life is a gift. After the fall into sin, amid the curse of pain in childbearing, God gives Eve this promise: “You shall bring forth children.” It will be painful and there will be grief amid the joy of childbearing and child-rearing. But as we see when God provides Seth to Eve to help assuage a mother’s grief, God keeps His promises to provide for humanity. And He does so not only through the generations of “begats” in the Bible, through the waiting, patience, and suffering of mothers like Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth, but especially through the birth of his son Jesus Christ.

Humanity is never more than one generation away from disappearing from the earth. It is only because of God’s continuing love and grace that He gives life anew each generation. And just as God has provided the blessing of existence through every person’s birth through the ages, He has provided the blessing of salvation of those throughout all the ages through the birth of Jesus Christ. This Christmas season, let us remember that babies are gifts, and especially the gift was given for us and our salvation in the baby of Bethlehem.