Thursday, July 07, 2022

Are these Americans disappearing?

Victor Davis Hanson writes,
In just 14 years the fertility rate has crashed from 2.12 to 1.64—meaning that both citizens and resident aliens in America are not replacing themselves.
Historically, as Westernized cultures become more affluent and leisured, whether it’s ancient Rome or modern America and Europe, they birth fewer children—even as their appetites for more household and personal help spike.
Life apparently is seen as too enjoyable to invest years in raising children. Americans are certainly marrying later. They are having fewer children—and in their 30s rather than 20s.
Women now make up nearly 60 percent of undergraduate college students. Female professional careers and delaying or avoiding birth are seen as essential to future family incomes.
Given that men who pass on college now account for 70 percent of enrollment declines in undergraduate education, there are far too few college-educated males for the new majority cohort of college-educated women.
The real gender crisis in America are these listless and stalled 20-something men. Too many are still living at home, not fully employed, often in debt, hooked on social media, video games, or satisfying their appetites—and with scant interest in marrying, much less raising children.
Figures on annual abortions remain hotly disputed. But the number of annual reported abortions still ranges between somewhere from more than 600,000 to just under 900,000.
There are historical downsides—economic, cultural, social, and military—to nations that shun child-raising.
They shrink in size, age, no longer believe in transcendence, become mostly agnostic or atheistic, and obsess on the self.

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