This is a special three-part series on six leading family trends that every friend of the family should be mindful of. We give a brief explanation of the importance of each for the family and the future. (See Part 2 / Part 3)
- Loss of Objectivity of Male and Female
The most fundamental natural truth of family is that it exists and is generated at the intersection of male and female. But the objective meaning of male and female is being gutted in mainstream culture and the minds of young people today.
This is not a fringe development. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson refusing to answer the basic question of what a woman is in her confirmation hearings is THE touchstone of this dramatic loss.
If we cannot define male and female, we cannot define the family. Thus, the loss of the objectivity of male and female is the greatest foundational threat to the truth and integrity of family … and it is happening on our watch.
Those who’ve deliberately orchestrated this loss understand the full implications for their work. Christians must as well.
- Anti-Natalism as Global Responsibility
It is common knowledge that birth rates are falling in the U.S. and globally. Most people do not appreciate how dramatic this decline is though. Nor do they appreciate how dreadfully fearful young people around the world are to have children due to “climate anxiety.”
First, let’s examine this climate fear contagion.
A major global survey published in Lancet (Dec. 2021) examining 10,000 children from ten representative countries found that nearly 40% of children confessed “I am hesitant to have children” because of climate anxiety. This is understandable when 56% of these youth also agree “humanity is doomed” because of climate issues.
Second, let us look at the actual fertility rate in the U.S. and globally.
A recent study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by scholars at the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research explain that of late, the U.S. birth rate has declined 20 percent over that last 13 years “with no signs of reversing.” That is serious, for children are the only road to tomorrow.
They add, “The decline is generally widespread across demographic subgroups” with the trendline since 2007 looking like a black-diamond ski slope.
These scholars explain economics are not driving this decline, but changing attitudes. Specifically, they explain,
The relationship between state-level student debt and the birth rate is generally flat, giving no indication that increases in student debt are related to the aggregate reductions in birth rates.
These scholars cite “shifting priorities” of couples in their most fertile years demonstrated by “a greater emphasis on individual autonomy, with a corresponding de-emphasis on marriage and parenthood.”
Children are simply falling out of fashion.
Research funded by the Gates Foundation and conducted by 24 leading demographers was published in the Lancet in 2020 revealing the projected fertility rates in 183 of 195 countries and territories is not only declining, but will not be high enough to maintain current populations by the century’s end. This is called negative population growth and once it starts, it likely won’t stop.
In fact, this screenshot from the study literally describes, if current trends continue, the end of humanity by 2100. (p. 1297)
In fact, two Canadian experts write in Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline,
The great defining event of the twenty-first century – one of the great defining events in human history – will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population starts to decline. Once that decline begins, it will never end. We do not face a population bomb, but a population bust – a relentless, generation-after-generation culling of the human herd. Nothing like this has ever happened before. (emphasis added)
The great irony is it happened by us choosing to stop having babies because we think it will save the future. Anti-natalism is the documented death of our future.
And Focus on the Family is the one global organization strategically situated to help ensure this self-erasure of humanity reverses itself because we are all about the singular solution: babies born to and raised by married moms and dads.
Photo from Shutterstock.
