If there ever there was a season for children, it is surely Christmas. We are not one of those families that winds the children up about Father Christmas to such a degree that they are unable to sleep come Christmas Eve. But we enjoy the usual traditions. I adore watching some movies with the children and giving them Christmas jumpers. (My youngest is now on day 5 with his Christmas jumper complete with penguin.) It is the simple things, is it not, that make the season? So, if you are lucky enough to have children around you this season I tell you one thing; enjoy it. Because in 50 years’ time, there will be far few children around at all.
In a piece The Age of Depopulation, Surviving a World Gone Gray about the crashing fertility rates (which unless you have been living under a rock will be aware of) in Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt, states the mathematical certainty that many on the left and right fail to understand. Namely: It’s over. They were not his words exactly, but he does set out that the fertility crash is permanent and there is nothing governments can do to turn this ship around. Instead, they will have to formulate policies so the greying population can live with below replacement fertility.
Eberstadt, “Human beings have no collective memory of depopulation. Overall global numbers last declined about 700 years ago, in the wake of the bubonic plague that tore through much of Eurasia. In the following seven centuries, the world’s population surged almost 20-fold. And just over the past century, the human population has quadrupled.”
And “So far, government attempts to incentivize childbearing have failed to bring fertility rates back to replacement levels. Future government policy, regardless of its ambition, will not stave off depopulation. The shrinking of the world’s population is all but inevitable.”
Mark Steyn explained at least 10 years ago in America Alone, the West has built a welfare system on the value system of cultural Christianity. It was assumed that the babies would keep coming. That culture has crumbled so it follows, as surely as night follows day, that the welfare system will crumble also. Governments should start preparing for this grey tsunami.
Eberstadt is more hopeful than Steyn, whose subtitle of his book America Alone, is the end of the world as we know it (!). Eberstadt states, “depopulation is not a grave sentence; rather, it is a difficult new context, one in which countries can still find ways to thrive. Governments must prepare their societies now to meet the social and economic challenges of an aging and depopulating world.”
Eberstadt explains the future reality. “Depopulation will upend familiar social and economic rhythms. Societies will have to adjust their expectations to comport with the new realities of fewer workers, savers, taxpayers, renters, home buyers, entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, and, eventually, consumers and voters. The pervasive greying of the population and protracted population decline will hobble economic growth and cripple social welfare systems in rich countries, threatening their very prospects for continued prosperity.” Honestly, I nearly laughed out loud when I read this paragraph.
It is obviously true that we will have to live without future renters and home buyers and youthful ideas. It is obvious that the childfree should be paying more into the social welfare system as they will be living off other people’s children (children that parents have gone to great time and expensive to raise) in their old age.
But it is telling that Eberstadt fails to mention one thing, perhaps the most important thing we will have to live with in the future; fewer children. If I have said it once, Dear Lord above, I have said it quite a few times; the problem with fewer children, is that there are fewer children.
You know that ceasefire scene in Children of Men, the long take, where Theo rescues Kee and her newborn baby from the building. This is the only baby on planet earth and she starts to cry?
The soldiers hear the infant crying and are ordered to cease fire. No one can believe there is a baby, they haven’t heard a baby cry maybe ever. Grandmothers reach out to touch the infant; soldiers drop to their knees and cross themselves. Well, I’m not being too dramatic in saying, this is what society will look like in 50 years’ time. The sound of a crying infant will become rare (you may be happy with that, I’m not). You just will not see a toddler throwing a tantrum in the supermarket as there will not be any. I can hear you saying, fine by me, but I reckon, you will miss it when it’s gone.
Perhaps I am an outlier but I like children. I like my own and when I am out and about, I enjoy seeing other people’s. Sure, they can be annoying and I don’t appreciate it if parents let their kids run wild in an unsuitable restaurant. But if I see a newborn baby, my children have to hold me back from going over (no more baby’s mum.). I love their chubby faces and adore watching their mother interact with them (please put down your phone). I quite like toddlers and the older children who say hilarious things in a deadpan fashion not realising how funny it is. I even like the sulky teenagers who have an entirely different language. (What does slay the day away actually mean?)
You might only focus on the negative but I would sell a limb to be around younger people instead of the old folks. Sweet Suffering Jehovah save me from a greying world. With the chat about what part of their body is falling off them, the number of pills they must take, when their next doctor’s appointment is, and who has annoyed them recently. No, it wasn’t better in your day. No, the youth are not any ruder than you are. Please put a sock in it.
If I’m honest I think one of the key motivators to me having four children was that I wanted to be surrounded by younger people as I grew older. When I play doubles tennis I’ll need younger legs running around behind me to cover the baseline (I have 2 sets each one for ladies’ doubles, one for mixed – what genius is that?) I like listening to my daughter’s teenage girlfriends yapping on in the car when I drop them to a party. I can’t understand half of what they are saying, but it keeps me young. And already my eldest son is helping me with the technology and stocks and shares.
So, I say to the childfree and lovin’ it out there; good luck. Good luck discussing your hip replacements and pills and the trouble with the dwindling youth of today. I will be with the dwindling youth of the day, preferably holding a grandchild. And I’m pretty sure I know who will be happier even if said grandchild is throwing a tantrum.