Emma Waters: The gift of children

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 16th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next…WORLD Opinions commentator Emma Waters on America’s falling birthrate and the misguided approaches to fixing it.

EMMA WATERS: The United States is now in demographic decline. As of 2023, its birth rate reached a new low: 1.62 births on average per woman—well below the 2.1 replacement rate. This is a major problem for national health, as the economy, Social Security, military readiness, and eldercare depend on new generations of children.

In response to the birth shortage, a new movement has arisen in response to the birth shortage—pro-natalists…those who want to see more children born. Their solutions range from the generous financial benefits to artificial wombs. For some, the end goal is an increase in the economy or native-born population growth. For others, it’s personal self-fulfillment as they pursue a certain kind of child.

Still others, who perhaps fall in a middle category, react against the pro-natalist call to have children for one reason or another. As Monica Hesse opines in The Washington Post: “A lot of women don’t want 2.1 kids. We need an economic model in which that’s okay.”

Her point is that when children, and their mothers, are treated like a means to an end, childbearing becomes a collective action problem for someone to solve. It also tends to leave a bad taste in the mouth of women, who often decide to not bear children.

China’s demographic woes serve as a case in point. After decades of its one-child policy—with forced contraceptives, abortions, and adoptions—the Chinese Communist Party reversed course in 2016. It has since lifted restrictions and now incentivizes having children. But it’s not working.

In either scenario, women and their children are treated as a means to China’s national agenda. And now The Wall Street Journal reports many women are “putting themselves ahead of what Beijing and their families want.”

Hesse makes a similar point when she calls for a solution that does not involve an individual woman’s “reproductive system.” After decades of Roe v. Wade and girl-boss feminism that made women feel inferior for prioritizing marriage and children over a formal career, it is no surprise that mainstream women are skeptical.

It is true that having more children would solve many of the looming crises facing our society. But this is not the reason we should have or encourage others to have children.

For many women, the answer is far simpler. They need to trust that the losses and changes of parenthood they might fear—of their bodies, lifestyles, sense of self, and current relationship dynamics—will be worth it. They need to believe that having children is a good that is worth the sacrifice. Jesus’s words about the Christian life in John chapter 12 help illustrate the call of motherhood and fatherhood: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

We need a generation that encourages people, despite the unknowns, to embrace this self-sacrificial call of Christ. It is only then that marriage and children will be celebrated rightly, as a gift received rather than a mere act of the will.

I’m Emma Waters.

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