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Yes, yes, of course I know all men aren’t jerks, or even most of them, (and neither is that comment addressed at Musk) – and I also know that there are many factors behind the plummeting birth rates including radical cultural change and fracturing societies. But with all due respect to the Tesla founder, the Archbishop had a point.
I’m getting ahead of myself, mostly because I’m responding to my friend John McGuirk who wrote on this subject on Gript yesterday, so I realise that I may be fast losing a whole chunk of readers who think that Musk and a prince of the Church are having a stand-off about about space missions or something.
Rather, the Archbishop’s comments were about something both much more mundane than living on Mars, and at the same time far more important – about having and raising children: an unremarkable activity as old as time which has become unpopular, or perhaps unattainable, to the point of crisis.
The demographic crash is real, and is going to hit us like a train. Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the baby bust is what it appears to reveal about the gloomy state of the mindset of humanity, if such a collective position exists. In short, our outlook for the world seems less than positive. Despite being richer than we have ever been before, and enjoying advantages our grandparents couldn’t imagine, we are increasingly abstaining from providing humanity with a future.
But back to the Archbishop vs Musk.
The Archbishop, Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, was responding to a video shared by Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley which showed Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, with his son on his knee at a press event with the caption: “of anything in my life, I would say kids by far make me the happiest”.
It’s a lovely video. Elon Musk is obviously a besotted father, and his sentiments are evidently sincere and genuine. And he is right: children are a gift, and nothing enriches our lives more. Plus kudos to Musk for bringing the kids to work and revelling in that.
What’s more, Musk is a rare example of someone with enormous wealth and fame who is saying that being a father and having children is the most important thing in the world. We live in a society where avocado toast, personal development, endless naval-gazing and achieving bucket-lists of empty thrills have become life-goals.
The goal of getting married and having children seems to be overlooked by too many adults who, despite the career moves and the international travel, aren’t grown-up enough to embrace the challenge of having a family.
So its refreshing to see Elon Musk, who says that population collapse is the greatest threat to humanity, sing the praises of fatherhood and the happiness and fulfillment that comes from having children. In that, he is an infinitely better role model than the malignant, toxic online influencers who encourage young men to treat women as sex objects, and aggressively promote narcissism and low-brow self-absorption as the only worthwhile pursuits for the modern male.
But Musk’s concern about the baby bust should surely prompt him to wonder why ordinary people – the 99.9% who don’t have billions in the bank, private jets, and access to the White House inner sanctum – aren’t having children.
As I said above, there are many factors in the rapid and unprecedented decline of births, and demographic experts point to difficulties with housing, urbanisation, advances in women’s participation in education and the workforce, and pessimism about the future to explain why the number of babies being born is now far below replacement level in so many countries, including Ireland.
But Archbishop Cordileone put his finger on a key issue, in my opinion. Most women don’t want to raise children on their own, and as the likelihood of that happening has increased, they have simply voted with their feet and refused to engage in child-bearing.
Having a child is the closest thing you’ll ever get to witnessing a miracle – and for women its very up close and personal, since we carry that child inside our bodies. The biological and physical bonds are extraordinary. Dads don’t get to experience that, but they love their children, or they should, every bit as much and show it by protecting them, caring for them, and working with their children’s mother to build a secure and stable family unit for them.
Except too many men don’t. That’s just the truth of it. Too many walk away when an unexpected pregnancy arises, and too many destroy the stability of the family unit that’s needed for child-raising by leaving when the going gets tough or because someone else catches their eye.
Studies and statistics show that men are more likely to cheat on a romantic partner than women, and that infidelity is a major contributor to divorce.
Women can see this. They’ve witnessed their friends and family members struggle when they are effectively left to raise the children alone, and so many of them have just opted out. They have degrees and careers and homes and incomes and they don’t want to take the risk of being left with the unequal share of what was meant to be a shared task.
The decline of marriage is a major consequence of this cultural shift – and since woman are more likely to see marriage as a goal than men, they probably understand that a man who doesn’t want to get married is also less likely to be a lifelong partner for raising children. That has likely contributed to what’s called the fertility gap – where women are having fewer children than they’d like to.
In fact, in one of the very few government programmes which wrought a small, but noteworthy, improvement to the birth rate was rolled out in Hungary – and a key factor was the support for marriage. Incentivising marriage, and promoting cultural messages as to the desirability of same, brought about a doubling of marriage rates in a decade, while divorce fell by 37%.
Women don’t want to raise babies alone. Men can respond positively to cultural messages which ask them to embrace marriage and child-rearing as a positive and fulfilling goal, rather than presuming they are all dawgs, gym bros, or feckless idiots. Marriage, by the way, is good for men: they are more “financially secure, happier, and less prone to succumbing to deaths of despair”, the evidence suggests.
“This is lovely. But marry first and love your babies’ mom too,” Archbishop Cordileone said to Elon Musk. That shouldn’t be a remotely controversial statement. You can do your children no greater service as a father than to love and respect their mother. Parenting should ideally be an actual team.
In response to criticism, the Archbishop added that: “we can thank him [Musk] for his public service and still remind ourselves that marriage matters”. That’s exactly right.
Yesterday, John argued that Elon Musk disproves the point I’m making above because Musk “has fathered a dozen children with four women, despite a record that does not exactly suggest an eagerness to settle down and become a one-woman bloke. Indeed, they’re practically lining up to have his children, these women.”
Elon Musk is a billionaire. He’s not the norm. But a rapidly declining birth rate IS the norm, and the disastrous consequences that follow should concern everyone. Most women won’t be married to Elon Musk or be in some kind of partnership with him. And they are voting with their feet in walking away from having children because too many men are jerks.
In this regard, John’s point that we live in a post-Christian world, is true – but the most remarkable outcome that shift has produced, the drastic baby bust, may well mean that the culture produced by the sexual revolution and the radical different attitudes to marriage may not last much longer.
Most women don’t want to have children with men who won’t stick around. That should mean that the millions of ordinary men, not the billionaires and the influencers, who value marriage, family, fidelity, and decency are the ones who actually end up having children. Is it a case of demographics is destiny? Time will tell.
Musk has said that he’s a “big believer in the principles of Christianity” and “a cultural Christian”, and that he believes Christianity can boost both happiness and birthrates. But the rules given to the world by Christ matter in their entirety. Picking and choosing what we like doesn’t work. It’s why marriage and family go together. It’s easier, for a start. Life can be hard, no-one wants to take on the most difficult tasks alone.
I’m an admirer of Elon Musk’s support for free speech and his instinct that children are a blessing. The widely-shared photos and videos of his lovely and much-loved children are admirable. But the Archbishop is right.
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