Here's something I picked up at TheChristians.com Web Journal (An Alberta, Canada publication.)
For half a million years, children were a necessity, a duty and a pleasure – more or less in that order… Children were essential to replenish the tribe and contribute to the collective good. They were a source of labour and a guaranteed old-age plan. They were a way to honour God, to replicate your genes, and to perpetuate the family name.”
“But now, they are basically a lifestyle choice. And they compete with many other lifestyles, such as being a celebrated author. Children are not vessels for the altruistic investments of adults. They are means for the self-actualization of adults. Nor can you count on them as productive assets. They represent 25 years, or possibly a lifetime, of sunk costs, with an uncertain return. And now that women have found satisfying lives outside the home, the awful truth has begun to dawn: The maternal instinct can be overcome surprisingly easily.”
The results of this current rejection of motherhood are in themselves statistically shocking. “People used to think,” notes Ms. Wente, (the writer) “that fertility rates would bottom out once they reached replacement level, which is roughly 2.1 births for each woman. Instead, they just kept going down. Today, Canada’s fertility rate is a miserable 1.6. Italy is at 1.4, Brazil at 1.9, Denmark at 1.7, Germany at 1.4, while Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are below 1.4. Unless these countries can persuade women to have more children (or encourage massive immigration), they’ll go broke. And then they’ll go extinct.”
Ms. Wente does not exempt herself as an instance of the ultimate cause of this foreseeable disaster. She writes: “I took my sweet time to settle on a mate because I too was fond of my career. By the time I got around to contemplating my options, they were gone. Childlessness wasn’t a choice, really. It was more or less an accident, just as it was for millions of other women who had no idea they were creating what the scholars call a ‘demographic transition.’ ”
(Mrs Wente writes for the Globe and Mail)
For half a million years, children were a necessity, a duty and a pleasure – more or less in that order… Children were essential to replenish the tribe and contribute to the collective good. They were a source of labour and a guaranteed old-age plan. They were a way to honour God, to replicate your genes, and to perpetuate the family name.”
“But now, they are basically a lifestyle choice. And they compete with many other lifestyles, such as being a celebrated author. Children are not vessels for the altruistic investments of adults. They are means for the self-actualization of adults. Nor can you count on them as productive assets. They represent 25 years, or possibly a lifetime, of sunk costs, with an uncertain return. And now that women have found satisfying lives outside the home, the awful truth has begun to dawn: The maternal instinct can be overcome surprisingly easily.”
The results of this current rejection of motherhood are in themselves statistically shocking. “People used to think,” notes Ms. Wente, (the writer) “that fertility rates would bottom out once they reached replacement level, which is roughly 2.1 births for each woman. Instead, they just kept going down. Today, Canada’s fertility rate is a miserable 1.6. Italy is at 1.4, Brazil at 1.9, Denmark at 1.7, Germany at 1.4, while Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are below 1.4. Unless these countries can persuade women to have more children (or encourage massive immigration), they’ll go broke. And then they’ll go extinct.”
Ms. Wente does not exempt herself as an instance of the ultimate cause of this foreseeable disaster. She writes: “I took my sweet time to settle on a mate because I too was fond of my career. By the time I got around to contemplating my options, they were gone. Childlessness wasn’t a choice, really. It was more or less an accident, just as it was for millions of other women who had no idea they were creating what the scholars call a ‘demographic transition.’ ”
(Mrs Wente writes for the Globe and Mail)
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