Anomalies: Some Lessons From Large Families in a Small Family World

Governments that are serious about reversing the birth dearth might start by embracing the reverence for family, motherhood, and children.

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Commentary

In the past 60 years, America has traveled from Baby Boom to Birth Dearth. As Catherine Ruth Pakaluk tells us in her recent book “Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth,” the United States and many other countries are well below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman.

America, for instance, is under 1.7 births and still trending downward. The European Union is at 1.53, while Korea is at 0.81. Even countries with recent high birth rates are now below replacement level, such as China, Mexico, and India.

Years ago, demographers hoisted the red flag to warn of the consequences of this phenomenon. In many countries, an aging population has already become a burden to the dwindling pool of young people responsible for their care. Fewer workers will also mean reduced tax revenues, which will affect programs from the military to schools. Demand for goods from machinery to automobiles to housing will eventually decrease, with unknown consequences for markets.

Governments around the globe are attempting to reverse this situation and encourage women to bear more children. Some countries offer families and single moms tax breaks or bonuses to bring children into the world. To build back its shrinking workforce, China ditched its one-child policy in 2016 and now allows three children per family, but the population continues to decline, with deaths outnumbering births in 2022. Confronting record low marriage and birth rates, this year the Japanese government will open a special dating site in an effort to reverse this trend, which the Japanese prime minister has called “the gravest crisis our country faces.”

None of these proposed solutions are meeting with any great success. And little wonder: For 50 years, Western culture has touted females in the workplace while at the same time either denigrating or ignoring women who are mothers and homemakers. The volcano of outrage that erupted this spring when Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs praised traditional motherhood during a college commencement ceremony was just one more sign confirming this cultural shift in values.

And yet, there are wives and husbands here in the United States who buck this cultural tide and have one, two, three, and more children.

In “Hannah’s Children,” Ms. Pakaluk, who earned a doctorate in economics from Harvard, who teaches and writes, and who is also the mother of eight, brings to the page what she learned from her study of 55 college-educated women who along with their husbands chose to raise five or more children. Many of these women had careers, and some chose to continue working while others became stay-at-home moms. All are quite different personalities, but they share at least one commonality.

“Such women face the same trade-offs as all other women—but they value children more,” Ms. Pakaluk concludes near the end of this fascinating study.

All of these women speak frankly about the sacrifices demanded by parenthood: the lack of sleep brought by a newborn, the financial costs of raising children, and the countless, never-ending demands on their time and energy. Yet when they balance what some might regard as their losses against their gains, these women and their husbands feel blessed. Angela, a college professor and mother of five, says, “I have found that I’m most myself with my family—more than I ever even knew I could be, with my family, than I would be apart from them.”

These parents don’t have children to win a bonus or a tax break. They’re not making babies to boost the state or reverse a demographic trend. They have children because they want them, because they love them. Governments that are serious about reversing the birth dearth might start by embracing this reverence for family, motherhood, and children.

We might also keep in mind that these parents, and for that matter, all good parents, are sculpting a work of art in each child they raise. They’re gifting the world in ways that can’t be measured. And whether we realize it or not, they’re sending those gifts to the rest of us. The children will grow into adults who one day, we must hope, will change the world, even their small corner of it, for the better.

The other day, I met my youngest son in a park to take his older boys, ages 7 and 5, out to lunch. When the boys saw me, they shouted in unison, “GRANDPA!” and sprinted toward me, smiles as big as the moon, eyes shining like stars.

That’s it. Those are just two of the gifts. And nothing else in my life comes close to matching them.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.