Ripening Trends #2; Post-Familialism: Raging Against the Creator – Part 1
Declining Population Growth
Why are children no longer prized? Today’s generations now plan much smaller families … if any family at all. Yes, matters such as these are personal decisions, and people are free to make them. However, while these represent private choices, they nonetheless contribute to unprecedented worldwide trends of declining fertility, births, and aging populations. After all, there are consequences for everything.
In fact, the collective impact of slowing population growth and aging is leading to a serious crisis. Already, its shape and form can easily be foreseen. Why? As is often claimed, “demography is destiny.” Therefore, we can conclude that some of the consequences we discuss here can be known in advance … actually, quite far ahead.
Never before has such a voluntary change in population dynamics taken place in peacetime … and on such a worldwide scale. A rapidly accelerating Post-Familialism has infiltrated the world. The prognosis? The worst of the demographic crises is yet to come.
As this article series focuses on “ripening times,” we will probe into the question of whether these demographic developments are a “significant trend.” In the previous parts of this series, we proposed a set of diagnostics with which to determine whether a development is of prophetic significance. We therefore ask, is the world’s demographic bust a marker of the end times? Crucially, does this massive development line up with Bible prophecy?
We believe that the answer is a resounding “yes.” We will set out our case.
Monumental Trend Underway
This author had the occasion recently to give a speech to a pension and employment benefits conference. My topic centered on the presently unfolding pension crisis—what I have called the “global income crisis” in various publications over the last several decades. This is just one aspect of the overall global demographic problem.
The attendees were interested to learn why the demographic challenges were yet to worsen … and what would be the likely future outcome. My answer, in short, was that the underlying factors contributing to this pension crisis were still accelerating. Most pension professionals were not aware of the social preferences and human values changes that were the factors driving this crisis. In contrast, pension professionals tend to try to explain things with math and economic models. No doubt, such approaches have their uses. However, they are not attuned to the related rapid changes in human values—namely, trends in social preferences and family dynamics.
As it is, it is not likely that pension professionals would even comment on such issues. Why? Because being outspoken with the truth infringes on people’s rights and freedom of choice. To do so would clash with the general trend toward “inclusivity”—everyone’s choices, values and lifestyle are equally acceptable no matter the facts or science … or consequences.
However, as already intimated, the unfolding crisis should come as no surprise. The current situation could have been discerned quite some time ago. Instead, policymakers have been kicking the proverbial can down the road for decades.
To gain a sense of the scale of today’s Post-Familial trends, consider the decline in the number of new births in China, the most populous country in the world. New births fell by two million last year (2018) to only 15.2 million. As such, China’s population growth has fallen to 0.38% per annum. That is very low. A nation requires a fertility rate of 2.1 children per household in order for its population growth rate to stay stable.
The reader may be surprised to learn that population growth has also become a potential problem in the United States. Statistics for 2017 show that around 3.8 million babies were born. That may sound like a lot; however, it represents a drop in the U.S. fertility rate to only 1.76 births per woman. This is the lowest rate ever recorded in the U.S. … a pace that does not maintain the current population.
Similarly, this phenomenon of declining births is now being experienced nearly everywhere in the world. Fertility is declining virtually everywhere. It is simply unprecedented in the history of mankind and is playing out over a very short period of time. Why?
Declining Population Growth Explained
Why the emergence of these rapid demographic shifts?
Some say it is because women are better educated today. However, that would be nonsensical. Are we to believe that better education must lead to a shrinking planet of humans? Apparently, yes, according to some. However, a recent survey shows that it is less-educated women that have had the biggest drop in fertility in the US. And, believe it or not, birth rate declines among minority groups are among the fastest recorded. Something else then must be the root cause of the fertility downturn.
The reasons are lamentable.
For example, surveys today show that parents consider raising children too expensive. This is a growing perspective around the globe … from developed nations to emerging countries. As such, economic issues are becoming the deciding determinative of family size. Birth rates now go up and down with short-term economic trends.
According to various studies, having children sharply increases the likelihood of personal bankruptcy (most certainly so for single-parent families).
There are yet other reasons why population growth is falling. Notably, the world today is smitten with “self-love.” Many people simply choose to live for themselves. They no longer commit to long-term relationships … and children. Remarkably, single-member households are expanding faster than any other sub-group in the US.
Contrastingly, we point to the Word of the Bible on this matter: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own […]” (1 Corinthians 6:19).
Others refuse to have children, as they argue that population curtailment is absolutely necessary to “save the planet.” Scientist now think that the earth has entered the Anthropocene era (meaning, a new age where human activity is now the major destructive force upon earth). This is speculative, of course, but nevertheless is a prevailing view these days. Apparently, the evil being perpetrated upon earth is due to the births of new humans!
The Perverse Wisdom of the Age
The United States’ birth rate has continued to fall, as millennials increasingly believe that everything is bad; the world is going to end; and to bring kids into this nightmarish hellscape would be tantamount to child abuse.
This opinion, quoting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on an Instagram Live broadcast, is typical. She says: “The world is going to end in twelve years. If you have kids, it will end in probably like six years or something because they’ll just breathe more.” A similar view is exemplified by a high-profile blogger, Martina Bridges, who says: “The most progressive thing we can do is abort as many of the next generation as possible so they don’t have to be brought into this apocalyptic nightmare.”
It is amazing that such people do not see the conflict between their humanist wants and the foundation that the Lord, the Creator, has set. Such an “animalistic” view of humanity that is promoted today, of course, would lead to human extinction.
And, biology and morphology (the physical design of creatures and humans that God has made) are mocked. Feminists are angry at “evolution” for having given them child-bearing organs. Raising children is something that is now looked down upon as a lower caste career. Families are considered to be fluid arrangements.
Crises are the consequence of the choices in “human” values that mankind has made. There we find the ultimate causes, and not in movements of the stars, mathematics or economics. The consequences of “human choices” cannot be escaped. “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7).
The dispositions and values implicit in the aforementioned trends play a causal role in the world’s current demographic challenges. At least in part, they give rise to it. While it is wonderful that longevity is increasing and that the quality of life is generally improving for the aged, the plunging birth rates have severe consequences that cannot be avoided.
Rather than raising productive children, financial markets are now expected to deliver secure retirement benefits. But with shrinking families and fertility, this is most certainly impossible.
Thoughts to Ponder
We now live in an era of Post-Familialism … even Anti-Familialism. God allows humanity (and each of us individually) to make choices. We can choose good or evil, and define morality as we wish. But God has the last say. As we already have identified, demography is destiny. That destiny is near. Judgment and consequences will come.
Oswald Spengler, the German historian and philosopher, once observed, “When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard ‘having children’ as a question of pro’s and con’s, the great turning point has come.” That point has most certainly arrived for most nations. The trend will not reverse, as the point of return has passed.
Patriarchal societies (which have provided societal stability for millennia) are under attack. Fertility rates are difficult to change, as many governments have discovered. The social trends that produced this change—such as new contraceptives, feminism, materialism, narcissism (self-love), humanism … etc.—continue to grow worse. Male contraceptives (a male pill) is another development that will further depress birth rates.
Looking ahead, few economists give proper attribution to the role of lengthening lifespans in the boom of prosperity and material/financial wealth that has been generated in the past two centuries. Now that past demographic trends are reversing, they are dumbfounded and frustrated. Policymakers strive to boost birth rates with money and incentives. However, birth rates are not responsive, proving that low fertility is a “value choice,” not just an economic one alone.
What is the solution? To date, supposed answers offered by the collective wealth management establishment around the world are misleading … even fraudulent. In so doing, they may succeed in deferring the ultimate reckoning day. But what a day that will be when it comes! The longer consequences are deferred, the more perversions increase and the more cataclysmic the final outcome.
God intervened in the days of Noah and Abram. He will do so again in the future, as the Bible clearly outlines.
In the next part of this series, we will examine the question of whether the momentous demographic trends that we are discussing are prophetically significant.
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Wilfred J. Hahn is a global economist/strategist. Formerly a top-ranked global analyst, research director for a major Wall Street investment bank, and head of Canada’s largest global investment operation, his writings focus on the endtime roles of money, economics and globalization. He has been quoted around the world and his writings reproduced in numerous other publications and languages. His 2002 book The Endtime Money Snare: How to live free accurately anticipated and prepared its readers for the Global Financial Crisis. A following book, Global Financial Apocalypse Prophesied: Preserving true riches in an age of deception and trouble, looks further into the prophetic future.
You can contact Wilfred at: staff@eternalvalue.com