Birthrates are falling in the United States, following the trends in Japan and a handful of European countries – with only 1.6 children born per woman, we are well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Should this situation persist, the next generation of Americans will experience a shrinking society, with fewer people to innovate as well as maintain our current infrastructure. Society will also be older, obligating a smaller number of working-age taxpayers to fund healthcare and retirements. It’s likely we’ll see a policy shift whereby the concerns of parents, children, and young adults receive less political representation than those of an aging, increasingly childless adult population.
Tik Tok on the Biological Clock
In light of these issues, the UK women’s health ambassador Lesley Regan has suggested teaching teenagers to take charge of their fertility through Tik Tok. While warning teenagers over their preferred platform that they can expect their ovaries to “wear out” over time might seem like a winning strategy, it’s unlikely that this would move them to rethink their priorities. After all, they have been taught to be cautious about pregnancy and to equate sexuality with pleasure. A Tik Tok campaign would surely backfire because, as a society, we’ve reduced “responsible sex” to prophylactics and consent. We’ve divorced sex from marriage, and despite all biological evidence, from procreation as well. We’ve convinced women their happiness and success depend on downing a daily pill. We’ve let young men off the hook when it comes to sexual responsibility, where the virtues needed to love are interpreted as weakness by both sexes.
Education Requires Inspiration
If we were to treat fertility education in the same way that we’ve treated sex education – relativistically and with complete disregard for the moral consequences of biology – we would completely miss an opportunity to inspire the next generation to greatness. A truly beneficial education would deal not only with the mechanics of the topic, but the affections of the student. It would seek to touch students’ hearts as well as their minds, so that they could properly understand that there is no completely “safe” sex – there is always a consequence, but it need not be negative. Sexuality, when understood as a call upon the whole body, mind, and heart to fertility, is a joyful and life-giving thing. Babies, though formidable and challenging to every generation of parents, are more often than not a direct cause of such joy – but our society, in its age and alienation, has placed the independence of child-free life on a pedestal. We will need to do much more to convince teenagers that having babies is a positive good worthy of pursuit, rather than a joyless response to apocalyptic fear-mongering.
Foster Healthy Relationships First
Guardian columnist Sonia Sodha agrees that the “biological clock is ticking” strategy would fail to address the underlying reasons why young women are inclined to avoid pregnancy, particularly in light of economic and relational realities. In addition to the personal and career sacrifices women particularly are called upon to make in order to nurture young life, women sensibly prefer to raise children in the context of a healthy, supportive relationship. Sodha reasons that teenagers, especially young women, first need support “fostering healthy relationships from young adulthood onwards.” But, as Sodha herself suggests at the beginning of her column, answering complex “structural and social phenomena” with an educational curriculum seems glib. How is instructing teenagers about healthy relationships any less of an educational solution than dire warnings of doomed fertility? Sodha’s instinct is correct that people need real life material and spiritual support, not just one-and-done, out-of-context educational campaigns, in their effort to raise the next generation. Taking on the yoke of parenthood requires a mature outlook in the face of suffering, and this can’t simply be legislated or learnt through textbooks.
Education Should Be Positive and Ongoing
Education without moral values is like a noisy gong – it fails to inspire us or make us better, simply because it doesn’t speak truth to the heart. Fertility education, properly understood to be sex education, should affect a person to their core and make them take seriously the fact that sexuality is never about the individual alone. As our readers know, sexuality points to the realities of both union and procreation. We are not meant to be alone, neither peerless nor without successors. A culture which fails to acknowledge this simple fact is doomed to oblivion, and all people within it consigned to live lonelier lives. While the prospect of future loneliness might convince a teenager that having children is in their future, it certainly isn’t enough to excite them or form their will for the ongoing sacrifices required to cultivate healthy relationships and a thriving family. Positive examples and positive encouragement will go a long way toward inspiring teenagers to embrace a fuller vision of sexuality and reject the counterfeits which our culture so often presents. As Sodha writes, better to think about how we might support “healthy relationships” than to pretend that “a few hours of classroom instruction or a Tik Tok information campaign” can change the course of someone’s life. In our view, better to raise students’ eyes toward the moral horizons of family, marriage, and sexual integrity as deeply fulfilling paths open to each and every person.
