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One thing that is sort of unappreciated about us here at Gript is how culturally and sexually diverse and representative the staff is. Indeed, when freelance contributors are taken into account, a clear majority of our writers are female. As a result, there was some lively internal debate yesterday over what I will refer to as the parable of Musk and the Bishop.
Elon Musk needs no introduction, but the Bishop in question is San Franciso’s Salvatore J. Cordileone, who had this to say for himself in relation to Musk’s world-famous fecundity (the X owner is parent to twelve children, eleven living):
We’ll use no names here, but some of my colleagues were determinedly on the Archbishop’s side, being as they are of the view that one reason for declining fertility is that a lot of men are jackasses who want the sex and the fun, but have zero interest in settling down or paying child support for the consequences of said sex and fun.
In other words, “if men were better, more women would want to have children”.
Except of course, Elon sort of disproves that point, no? He 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.
He’s not alone: Boris Johnson has at least eight children by three different women. Donald Trump has five, also by three women. You could contrast this with some very faithful and publicly devoted spouses who have contributed many fewer children to the great cause of demographic sustainability: Barack Obama has two children. Theresa May and her husband none. Emmanuel Macron, zero. Look around the globe and find me happily married men who have been faithful husbands for years, and also have loads of children, and you’re left with…. Sir Jacob Rees Mogg?
I appreciate that there is always a counter-example to disprove every thesis. But it seems to me that the Musk example is a bad one, if your idea is that being a good bloke and settling down and being loyal to one woman forever is the basis for a demographic explosion.
But of course, while my colleagues might have been thinking about all of this in terms of demographics and the ideal conditions for baby production, it is unfair and wrong I think to assume that this was the Archbishop’s point. The Archbishop is in the business of saving souls, not producing them. And his argument, I venture, is essentially that to spread the love and the children around is inherently indecent.
On that, I think, he is right. Not that it much matters.
We live, essentially, in a post-christian world. The old christian order still exists, replete with Bishops and churches and religious occasions like Christmas and Easter, but the main cultural relevance of Christianity these days to most of western society is to remind us what we have moved on from. The church is almost like a living museum – a thing we visit and occasionally indulge for nostalgia purposes, much in the same way that some people in Ireland still make regular weekend treks to vintage farm machinery shows, to marvel at threshers and horse-drawn ploughs.
The primary consequence of this is that we live in a society that understands christian morality but no longer feels bound by it. In days of yore – relatively recent yore – Elon Musk and Boris Johnson would have stood condemned for the number of women they have fathered children upon, and their record would have been almost universally regarded as something to be ashamed of. Evidence that they were not good, or decent men. Today? Society just regards their virility as – at the very worst – something vaguely comical, if not admirable.
And so, what my colleagues desire is something that is no longer culturally obtainable. It might be obtainable in the abstract, or in individual cases. You might certainly be a woman who wants lots of children by a single father, who meets a man who is willing to live that life. The problem is it must now be his choice, as our social and religious mores no longer demand it of him. We no longer demand that men be faithful husbands, so we have fewer faithful husbands. That is a cultural choice, and the result is a predictable result of the law of supply and demand. The Archbishop’s tweet might therefore be worthy and praiseworthy, but it no longer carries any moral weight.
He’s just another guy with an opinion, these days. Unless you happen to be religious.
Indeed, the culture has almost flipped entirely. What we have actually done – via contraception, abortion, IVF, egg-freezing and a whole host of other moral and scientific innovations – is to make decisions about childbearing almost entirely the woman’s choice. I am not here to tell you that this is a good thing or a bad thing. But I am here to tell you that there’s a reason women are lining up to produce children for very wealthy and successful men, and are not doing so in similar numbers for your average chud.
I will also note that these changes – which I suspect remain overwhelmingly popular with women, especially those of childbearing age – are the result of years of feminist campaigning. This is not particularly hard to explain either. Feminism has long essentially been about the journey of womankind from the kitchen to the boardroom, emancipating them from a role where they were seen primarily as the producers and feeders of children. Having fewer children and doing other things with their lives was the whole point.
So women are now only really lining up to have children when doing so comes with not much cost – like when their father is a centi-billionaire. Quad Est Demonstrandum.
Moralilty and religion, I’m afraid, has little to do with it. Nor, in reality, do us men, ladies.
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