On the whole, I enjoyed your article; however, you put the onus of decline on women without consideration of how many men are also delaying marriage by design and want fewer or no children. Anecdotally, I believe those rates to be roughly equal. As a young woman whose first marriage ended in divorce around 30 yrs old without children, I ended many subsequent relationships because the men already had children with their previous spouse and didn’t want any more. I eventually had one child purposefully as a single parent because of an unavailability of mates who could fit my requirements for family building; though as usual there were plenty who wanted the pleasure without the responsibility. I only had one child because I could only afford one child as a single parent both economically and time wise. You’d be tempted to say, “well, okay, but you’re an unusual case” but that’s not been my experience. And listening to younger women discussing family planning today that trend seems to be expanding somewhat. Have fewer children because sooner or later you’re going to end up with the full responsibility for them. So don’t bite off more than you can chew. I’m hearing that a lot. Younger men, as usual, don’t think about it till after the fact or think kids will ruin their lives. Their attitude starts to shift as they get older.
My second critique was the one sided analysis as to whether population replacement is a bad scenario or not. My own analysis is yes and no, depending. Economies shrink and grow with the population naturally and bigger is not always better. Yes, it will be problematic for older people who are depending on the young to fund their retirement - all things being equal. However, social security was in trouble when I was in high school and that was 30 years ago. Poor legislation did not secure and manage those funds properly. I left high school and college knowing that social security was doomed to bankruptcy without some kind of intervention and with no expectation of ever receiving social security no matter how much I paid into it and that I would work until I dropped dead or figure out a way to set aside for my own elder years. I’m not alone in that either. There has been some intervention, but it’s been primarily to borrow against the future rather than fix the problems. For people younger than me though, worried about climate, environmental/ economic collapse, and a deficit bill so large it’s practically beyond comprehension, a declining population is a good thing. Less pressure, fewer to care for as those bills get paid. A balancing, and less burden. One could criticize the young for ‘kicking the can' down the road. When they get older, they’ll be on the other side of the issue and want a replacement population to care for them. But before they get there they have to survive, raise their own families, and attempt to fix all the lingering problems. The 'can' can only be kicked uphill for so long before it rolls back downhill. At that point considerations for today must take precedence over considerations for tomorrow. Once balance is restored, population demographics will increase again. I’m just glad that this time around it’s by choice and birth control rather than disease and starvation.
