Low birth rate – does anyone get it?

Low birth rate – does anyone get it?
By Terry A. Hurlbut
With another year comes word that another country has had a low birth rate for years. But with rare exception, no one has recognized the real issue with a low birth rate. Modern societies have devalued the unique thing that women can do that men can’t. They also have devalued the idea of living as a family with small children. Those societies (or subgroups) who rediscover these things (or always had them) will thrive and replace those who don’t.
Latest low birth rate stories: Vietnam and South Korea
The search engines are full of this report from NDTV, concerning Vietnam. Their total fertility rate now stands at 1.91, a record low. Total fertility rate is the number of children the average woman will have during her life. For a “developed” country the replacement level is 2.1 – and for “less developed” countries, it’s higher. (War-torn and disease-ridden countries always have higher TFR replacement rates – because they do not protect their children.)
Incredibly, Vietnam has always penalized its families for having a third child. This year, that ridiculous law might change – begging the question of why Vietnam didn’t abandon that law sooner. But the Vietnam National Assembly also is studying incentives to encourage women to have children before the age of 35. Why do women even need such incentives? Because in Vietnam, as in many other “developed” societies, a woman considers herself a second-class citizen if she has children to raise. (Vietnam also has a deficit in females, with 112 boys born for every 100 girls. Aside from boys fighting over the girls, it’s the girls who drive natural population growth.)
Vietnam will become a “super-aged society” with 20 percent of its people 65 years old or older, by 2049. South Korea has already come to that pass. South Korea has tried economic incentives, but they’re not addressing the philosophical problem. South Korea’s women are bitter, anti-male, and wouldn’t care if the whole South Korean nation died out. No society can bribe its way out of that kind of funk.
Similar low birth rate stories around the world
The problem is worst of all in Asia but doesn’t limit itself there. Last year on Christmas Eve, the Archbishop of Malta warned of a low birth rate problem on that island. He made one statement that came close to addressing the real problem:
Rather than despairing that our nation currently holds the lowest birth rate in Europe, we must respond with concrete action. Each of us bears a responsibility to contribute to creating a supportive and nurturing environment—one that inspires young couples to embrace the future with hope, build loving homes, and welcome the gift of children.
But Monsignor Charles Scicluna didn’t address the things that make an unsupportive and non-nurturing environment. Those things, again, are philosophical.
Earlier in December, Elon Musk said Singapore was headed for extinction with its low birth rate. According to Business Times, economists are asking whether automation will replace a shrinking workforce.
🇸🇬 SINGAPORE’S BABY CRISIS: WILL ROBOTS SAVE THE DAY?
Singapore’s birth rate has hit rock bottom—just 0.97 kids per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to sustain a population. Translation? More seniors, fewer workers, and a shrinking labor force. From factories to food delivery, robots are stepping in where manpower is falling short.
By 2030, nearly 1 in 4 Singaporeans will be over 65, and the support ratio has plummeted to 4 working adults per senior. In 2014, it was 6. The government is urging more hiring of older workers and turning to robots—Singapore has the world’s second-highest robot density—to plug the gaps.
Source: Newsweek
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1864489078206484729
Again, that’s ignoring the problem. Now the problem might be that people instinctively consider themselves hemmed in and crowded. Could they be avoiding children for that reason? Could this even be a psychosomatic problem, overriding any conscious desire? Perhaps – but why isn’t anyone looking to solve the problem?
Throwing government money at the problem
Fifteen years ago, an article appeared in the journal Facts, Views and Visions in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Author Geeta Nargund listed some of the differences between fertile and less-fertile societies. Fertile societies have “lack of access to contraceptives and generally lower levels of female education,” she wrote. But she also said that, in the developing world, children are future workers. In “developed” societies, children are a net drain. She also cited:
lifestyle factors, an increase in sexually transmitted diseases, rise in obesity and environmental factors involved in urbanisation and urban lifestyle that are affecting fertility and have led to rise in male and female subfertility. In addition there are socio-economic factors that have led to women and couples delaying having children. Lack of affordable housing, flexible and part-time career posts for women and affordable and publicly funded (free) child care have contributed to the current low fertility/birth rates. Couples/women are delaying starting a family which has led to a true decline in their fertility levels due to ovarian ageing and related reasons leading to reduced chance of conception.
She recommended government funding of “reproductive health and social care” and an unspecified “international initiative for the prevention of infertility and protection of fertility.” But this paragraph gives the strongest clue to her thinking:
The most important project will have to address raising awareness at an individual, family, community and social level as well as at primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare level regarding factors affecting male and female fertility. A regular and open education programme for women and men would empower them with knowledge required to protect their fertility. Furthermore, recent surveys suggest that prevention of reproductive and sexual health problems would be best achieved through education in secondary schools. It is important to plan a practical and a meaningful initial and follow-up programme for reproductive and sexual health education in secondary schools, with an aim to prevent future infertility. In developing countries it would be necessary to provide this education to women and men at grass roots level in their homes and communities. This is aimed at increasing natural conception rates.
Again, she continues to prescribe throwing government money at the problem. Lay aside where this money will come from. What kind of lessons does she propose to teach in secondary schools? Her plan doesn’t say. And maybe she doesn’t even know. The smartest teachers government can hire and pay, can’t teach why to have more children, to students who have swallowed an ideology that says that children are a burden, not a joy. For that matter, she mentions “abortion rates” but never considers whether or how a sound society should tolerate the practice.
The Alphabet Soup ideology
Nor did she address – even once – the influence of the Alphabet Soup movement. Last Friday (January 3), an Ohio teacher won a $450,000 settlement from a school district who fired her for refusing to address two students by names they chose at variance with their gender. (Or to refer to them by gender-inappropriate third-person singular personal pronouns.) Someone needs to ask: who gave the mixed signals to those students, that they would think of pressing such demands? Why doesn’t our society consider such demands absurd on their face?
Nearly three years ago, three economists addressed the “mystery” of low birth rate in the United States. The “mystery” is why the birth rate, after declining sharply in 2007 (when the economy tanked), has never rebounded. CNAV sees no mystery! Birth rates declined because women bought into a philosophy that said a mother is a drudge – or worse, a slave. They rediscovered Margaret Atwood’s bitter screed, The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel depicting “Christian nationalists” conscripting the relative handful of fertile women to “service” the “Commanders of the Faith” who ran a society that totally replaced the United States as we know it today. Beginning with the 2016 election of Donald Trump, many women put on costumes from that novel and marched in protest.
The authors of this article don’t address that. Though, to their credit, they did say that a smaller population wouldn’t make any difference to the planet’s climate.
The United Nations tips its hand
The United Nations Population Fund produced at least one dynamic-graphic piece saying flatly that those who worry about “too few” people have a misplaced concern. They state that life expectancy is rising, so the population is already excessive and ought to decline. And there you see the brazen declaration of the one-worlders. They look for a future in which they make themselves long-lived – or even immortal – and have the planet to themselves.
The details of this graphic piece contain their boasts. Only Europe is losing people; every other part of the world is gaining. (They ignore Russia – conveniently so.) They assert that TFR worldwide will settle at 2.1 by 2050. But they don’t discuss how replacement level will likely be more than 2.1 in, for instance, war-torn Africa. (To say nothing of the Middle East.)
Furthermore they assert that only the men are worried about natural population increase or decrease. Again, observe the ideological legerdemain. They have enlisted the feminists, whom they have convinced to abandon marriage and childbirth. In fact they contradict themselves, suggesting women would like to have more children, but face “gender discrimination” that prevents this. False! They have convinced women that any suggesting that they have more children constitutes gender discrimination.
And, as mentioned, they say that longer lifespans will more than compensate for lower fertility.
These developments are an indication of the increasing control that individuals, particularly women, are able to exercise over their reproductive lives – and how quality of life improves with access to rights and choices.
Translation: stop having children; they are no longer necessary. Reality: the elites hope to make themselves immortal, and see the rest of humanity die out.
How low birth rate will play out
As CNAV mentioned two and one-third years ago, fertile societies do exist. In the United States, the Old Order Amish are the prize example. They realize what’s important. Their societies feature wide-open spaces, a lifestyle close to the land, and a celebration of marriage, childbirth, and family life. As a result, their settlements are thriving – and their population doubled over 25 years. They, and others who follow their philosophical example, will out-seed the affluent but decadent leftist societies.
But the rhetoric of the United Nations, as that dynamic-graphic piece shows, clearly reveals they are the enemy of humanity. They’re peddling snake oil, and fewer people are buying it. What happens, therefore, when successive populations grow more conservative, because they reject the Infertile Struldbrug model? (Apologies to Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, for that last term.)
What might happen, is open war. Perhaps we saw a warning of that on New Year’s Eve and Day. Perhaps the only reason we aren’t seeing it today, the Certification Day for the Election of 2024, is that a snowstorm has paralyzed the Washington, D.C. television market. In any event, time is not on the side of the Struldbrugs and their feminist and Alphabet Soup dupes. They know it – and might get desperate.
But Supreme Court precedent is already yielding to a pro-natalist system. Thus we can Make America Thrive Again.
Link to:
The article:
https://cnav.news/2025/01/06/editorial/talk/low-birth-rate-anyone-get/

Low birth rate reports:
Vietnam:
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/vietnams-birth-rate-hits-record-low-in-2024-despite-propaganda-push-7384356
South Korea:
https://www.premiumbeautynews.com/en/low-birth-rate-makes-south-korea-a,24975
Malta:
https://newsbook.com.mt/en/malta-needs-to-respond-with-concrete-action-archbishop-scicluna-on-low-birth-rate/
Singapore:
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/economists-weigh-after-tesla-ceo-elon-musk-says-singapore-going-extinct-amid-low-birth-rate
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1864489078206484729

Low birth rate scholarly article:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4255510/
https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate
https://www.unfpa.org/swp2023/too-few

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https://x.com/DecTruth

Declarations of Truth Locals Community:
https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/

Conservative News and Views:
https://cnav.news/

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