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I will declare an interest at the start of this article, in that as some of you will know, David Quinn of the Iona Institute is a dear friend with whom I speak regularly, and so when he sent me the Institute’s latest paper yesterday I was, obviously, pre-disposed to writing about it. That said, had it been some boring claptrap, I’d probably have let it slide.
Boring claptrap it is not. From the paper:
To put it bluntly; if levels of religious practice in Ireland and elsewhere continue to fall, so will rates of marriage and fertility. The consequences of the fall in fertility rates to well below replacement level are particularly drastic. To counter this, a society needs a minimum number of people whose values and beliefs highly motivate them to marry and have children. Those people are most likely to be religious believers, as we will see.
And:
A significant body of international evidence also finds a direct correlation between higher religious attendance and higher fertility rates. We can see from Table 1 above that those who attend religious services regularly in Ireland wish to have on average one child more than those who never attend, which is the difference between below and above replacement level fertility.
Now, to many readers – and indeed this writer – this might be counted as something we already knew instinctively to be true. But knowing that something is true and having data to confirm that is true are two different things. A decline in religion brings about a decline in fertility, and a decline in fertility brings about ultimate demographic collapse and a pensions crisis. Ireland has experienced the decline in religion, and is well on the way to experiencing the demographic consequences.
The problem is, of course, that the paper identifies a problem, but does not put forward a solution. In part because there is no real solution: You cannot make a person who is not religious into a person who is religious. For those of us, this writer included, who are doubting Thomases, little more than the cure for that apostle’s own doubts would suffice, and the Lord above hardly has either the time or the inclination to personally visit us all and show us his wounds.
What we could do, of course, is to be a little less societally scornful of religion. In this line of work, I come into contact with a lot of young christians, of all denominations. What strikes me every single time is how counter-cultural they are, and, meaning them no disrespect, how societally isolated they are as a result. They tend to mingle and socialise together, with other young christians, with their religious faith being something that so marks them out from the crowd that they appear to struggle to fit in with their “normie” peers.
What is interesting about the religion factor, as it relates to fertility in this study, is that it has an impact independent of other factors. That is to say, we talk a lot in Ireland about how the housing crisis impacts fertility, or how later marriage rates do, or how pornography and the sexual revolution might be at play. But a young religious person is more likely to have children even amidst all that. Religion is a factor that impacts this decision independently of all other factors, per Iona’s findings.
It is, however, something that even pro-natalists seem hesitant to discuss. In part, I think, because there now exists in the west a strong social stigma against publicly identifying as religious. You’ll hear pro-natalists talking all the time about how we need better tax structures for child-rearing, or more financial supports, or better childcare options. It’ll be a cold day in hell before you hear many of them saying “and what we really need to do is to get these youngsters into a church”.
This brings me back to the first point, and perhaps something more fundamental, which is this: Isn’t, therefore, the Church itself to blame for falling fertility?
The point of religion in societies, historically, has been moral formation. That is to say, Churches exist to give people pointers on how to live a good and moral life. Generally speaking, adherence to these values has been connected not only to happiness in the afterlife, but happiness and contentment in the earthly existence. If I have a criticism of many of the young Christians I encounter, with their counter-culturalism, it is this: Many of them will tell you that they are living a content and good life. Few of them will tell you what it is about that life that makes them happier than their peers – or even be able to convincingly demonstrate that they are happier than their peers. (In fairness, I am asking a lot – what are they supposed to do, dance for me?)
But my point is this: The Churches exist to sell religion to young people, and there ain’t enough people buying that product, for one reason or another. I’d be tempted to blame the salesmen.
That and, frankly: One wonders whether much of the birthrate difference between childbearing age religious people today and childbearing age “normies” cannot just be explained by differing attitudes to contraceptive use within marriage.
Of course, if I am right on this latter point, then it is not really about religion at all, but about the availability and use of contraceptives. We know that use of those products declines significantly, especially in marriage, the more religious you are. But of course, that’s a whole different, and probably entirely fruitless, conversation.
In any case, it’s there in black and white. More religion equates to more children. We are living in a society with less and less religion, and therefore fewer and fewer children. So my advice is this, dear reader who is also a parent: If you want grandkids some day, maybe start taking the kids to weekly mass and at least pretend to believe yourself. Your reward might not be heaven, but at least you’ll have someone to come visit you, in the nursing home, before the state gives you that nice last injection, to save on pension costs.
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