The United States is facing a population crisis. While many try to explain away our rapidly dropping fertility rate with economic factors or fears of political instability, the trend’s correspondence with other social movements, like declining marriage rates, an increase in urban loneliness, and a growing aversion towards getting old, appears to tell a different story.
Are Americans ill-equipped to raise children, or are they scared?
Since 2007, the United States’ fertility rate has decreased by 14.7% (since 1957, 68.3%), landing the United States, as of 2023, at a rate of 0.45 live births per 1,000 women below the U.S. replacement rate of 2.1. Several theories have been raised in the online public square about possible reasons for this decline, most prevalently political uncertainty, economic volatility, and the ever-rising cost of living (see “Why it Matters”). There does, however, seem to be a larger cultural problem afoot. According to the CDC, in 1990, the birth rates of women aged 20-24 were nearly the same as those aged 25-29 at around 115 births per 1,000 women, and these were two brackets being the most popular ages for child rearing. But, as of 2023, the most popular age bracket for having kids is 30-34 at 95.4, followed by 25-29 at 91.4 and 20-24 at a shocking 56.7. Americans aren’t simply having fewer kids, they’re also having them much later.
While conventional economic theories may explain part of the declining birth rate, as working adults now may need more time to feel economically secure, it would be a grave oversight to disregard the larger cultural shifts at play. In the CNN article “Why more women are choosing not to have kids” and the ABC article “More women are choosing not to have kids, and society can’t cope,” of the many reasons given as to why a woman would want to stay child-free, economic uncertainty is only listed once, in lieu of reasons like “ruining your body” or that its “too great of a responsibility.” With the reasons given, it becomes clear that the motivating factor in the modern lack of reproduction is not lack of money or structure, but rather a great fear of moving forward.
St. Pope John Paul II, in his “Evangelium Vitae,” writes of the “Culture of Death,” a culture ruled by the “economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency.” This observation still rings true today. Children are inconvenient, time-consuming, and require us to change. In a culture ruled by maximizing profit, a child is largely seen as dead weight (unless you’re a family blogger).
There is a new psyche emerging, however, one that not only chooses efficiency over life but one that is also paralyzed by the mere notion of mortality. Unfortunately, while many choose to live child-free to save their bodies, their lifestyles, or the planet from destruction, they end up destroying what is most fundamental to humanity: one another. And in doing so, they disrupt humanity as its very foundation.
The modern trend of refusing conception is marked by a fear of two kinds of death. First, the mortal death of our bodies, and second, the death of the individual. Marriage is ordered toward conception and is inextricably linked to our physical demise, and charity — which is most properly the act of giving yourself fully to another. It requires, in some way, a loss of sovereignty in the individual, and thus, the death of the self. Both of these surrenders are morally necessary for childbirth (even one cited reason for not having children here is fear of being a single mother), and until we learn to give to one another, knowing that we have one foot in the grave, birth rates will continue to decline.
Regarding the first kind of death our society fears — mortal death — St. John Chrysostom writes, “Where death is, there is marriage; and where there is no marriage, there is no death either.” This echoes the teachings of other early Greek Fathers, such as St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximus the Confessor, that reproduction or even sex was unthinkable before the fall of man. Nyssa even suggests that the duality of humanity — the division into male and female — was instituted by God preemptively, to accommodate humanity’s eventual need to preserve life after the fall. This doctrine was based upon the idea that Adam and Eve were immortal within the garden, and that physical intercourse involved lust — a sinful desire that intrinsically causes death. This theory would later be reconsidered by theologians such as St. Augustine, who claimed that the purpose of reproduction is not only to provide successors for those nearing death, but also to ensure companionship for the living. For Augustine, intercourse did not require lust; rather, it functioned in a different moral and spiritual mode than we understand today (read more here). Yet the link between generation and death is still ever-present in his writing. He famously writes, “Were sons born to you to live with you on the earth? Will they not rather eject you and be your successors?”
A more accessible vision of prelapsarian communion appears in St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body,” where he imagines a sinless alternative to modern intercourse — one marked by the restraint of the self, not the domination of the other, and characterized by full mutual self-gift. However, this interpretation includes a contemporary theological nuance: that Adam and Eve were not inherently immortal, but were sustained by eating from the Tree of Life — perhaps a metaphor for communion with Christ, which was lost in the first sin.
Famous philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel offers one of the clearest postlapsarian frameworks for understanding the link between generation and death in “Natural Philosophy,” identifying three ways in which death is embedded in the generative process:
“First, reproduction looks toward the dying of the individual; second, the division of the species into mutually alien types acts as a stimulus to violent death; and finally and generally, the self-preservation of the species requires the disappearance of the individual in natural death.”
So, even if theological disagreements persist over whether reproduction is inherently destructive, death remains a necessary — and even generative — component of reproductive systems. Though opinions on this issue are as numerous as the authors who address it, the final takeaway of the issue is this: that sex, which presupposes and morally necessitates marriage, cannot exist apart from death, whether that means sex existed wholly without lust or that there was no sex at all. As Hans Urs von Balthasar writes,
We must leave the question open, even if it gapes like a wound. The center of what is human cannot be constructed out of itself. Man acts out his role between earth and heaven, and in heaven there is no marriage: there the marriage of the lamb is celebrated.
Even outside theological discourse, this connection between generation and death remains visible in the world around us. Just a few weeks ago, a friend told me that she would never get pregnant because she has “seen what it does to your body.” That single decision carries a clear philosophical claim: the body of my youth is preferable to the body of my adulthood. The desire to maintain a youthful body reflects the desire to remain untouched by life’s irreversible processes, such as childbirth, aging, illness, and death. Aging has acquired a negative connotation in modern society, evident by the sudden spike in usage of the term “anti-aging” in the 21st century, and the sheer number of anti-aging products marketed to fight it. Childbirth, it seems, has been caught in the crossfire.
But our fear of growing old isn’t merely physical, it’s a fear of facing the passage of time, running from reminders of mortality, whether that be wrinkles or the responsibilities of adulthood. Among the reasons given for remaining child-free, one recurring theme was the desire to travel, work, or maintain expensive hobbies. Today’s adults fear not only physical aging, but also the gradual weight of responsibilities, especially the responsibility of caring for others. Increasingly, that burden is avoided, even when it extends to one’s aging parents.
Getting married and having kids has long marked the transition out of adolescence — but only recently has that milestone become something to avoid, or even scorn. And, because aging is a natural movement towards death — each year bringing us closer to the grave — it follows that the deeper fear at work is not aging itself, but the passing of life.
Concerning the second kind of death our society fears, death to self, St. John Paul II writes of the Second Vatican Council: “It then added that man ‘can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.’” This articulates that true personhood is inseparable from community — that we come to know ourselves only in relation to another, mirroring the likeness of God, who exists in Trinitarian communion. Balthasar writes, “free self-awareness experiences an ‘I’ only when it knows it is addressed and treated as a ‘thou.’”
We recognize our own identity only when we are treated as a self — through a smile, a gesture, and above all, through love. This radical definition of personhood — this enrollment into selfhood — occurs through self-gift: the free giving of oneself to another, or, in this case, the reception of another into the identity of the self. As an isolated individual, a person cannot grasp the meaning of humanity or personhood, just as Adam, alone in the garden, could not. In Genesis 3, God brought the animals before Adam in search of a suitable companion, but it was only with the creation of Eve that Adam came to understand himself. Just as Eve was named ishah (woman) in recognition of her relation to Adam, so too Adam was named ish (man) only after realizing his belonging with her.
Embedded within this life of self-gift, which sustains humanity, is the concept of death to self. To receive another person as a gift, one must take their whole person, not the parts that appeal. In doing so, one allows the self to be defined with the other, not merely as a person, but as a person defined with and through the other. This means that anyone with friends, family, or community is never simply an individual, but always an individual-in-relation, shared by and inseparable from those ties. This dynamic shapes identity not only by definition, but by formation. As social beings, we naturally become more like those we spend time with. In this phenomenon lies a partial surrender of self-sovereignty — and, with it, a partial loss of the isolated individual.
In contemporary society, many adults seem increasingly averse to the idea of community. A study published in the American Sociological Review found that the average American has just one close friend, one in four have no confidants at all, and 75% report dissatisfaction with the friendships they do have. While many blame modern loneliness on urban living, the reasons they cite often reveal a deeper interpersonal anxiety. What’s more, in 2020, around one in four adults became estranged from their families, with one of the most cited reasons for this being “lack of shared values.” This reflects both dimensions of modern isolation: a refusal to let others shape our identity, followed by a refusal of the other altogether.
This same dynamic extends to our declining willingness to bear and raise children. The motivations behind many adults’ decisions to remain child-free may reveal the deeper root of society’s growing anti-social tendencies. In a questionnaire from NPR, one child-free adult recently said, “Children deserve someone who loves them and enjoys taking care of them, no matter the physical, mental, or financial toll — and that’s why I will never have them.” Another listener answered, “I love my husband, free time, and privacy too much to share them.” Many Americans seem unwilling to give their love to another, to share themselves, or to sacrifice what they perceive as solely their own. In other words, they do not want to surrender their individuality — they don’t want to die to themselves.
This resistance to self-gift is visible in many areas of modern life, but perhaps nowhere more clearly than in today’s political climate. While many Americans remain isolated from their neighbors, they take sides in global conflicts from the comfort of their living rooms, often dehumanizing their fellow citizens in the process. This gaining trend of political tribalism offers participants identity without the inherent risk of communion. What’s more, the increasing privatization of political beliefs (that they are an inherently personal thing) stunts the ability of the average American to form meaningful relationships with their neighbor in the process. Even the issues Americans choose to engage with reflect this trend. Rather than engaging meaningfully with the problems facing their communities, Americans keep even their closest social groups at arm’s length — choosing instead to champion distant causes involving people they will never meet, and whose lives have little impact on their own (as evidence, only 13% of Americans are undecided about the Israel-Palestine conflict).
This should come as no surprise. Individualism has been steadily rising for years, as evidenced by the surge in online narcissism and growing divorce rates. In turn, Americans have contributed their own interpersonal misery and may be driving the world toward demographic decline. Even Elon Musk — one of the most outspoken advocates for increasing the birth rate — falls into this trap, having fathered fourteen children with four different women, none of whom he is currently married to.
The modern world has become paralyzed by fear. Not only is the global population fleeing old age, prioritizing youth in a culture that prizes efficiency and convenience, but people are also fleeing from one another, encouraged by a system that rewards self-interest. This has contributed not only to population decline but also to a deeper human misery.
The only way to truly live is to die. Not merely to accept death at the end of life, but to die at each moment — offering one’s time, energy, and being to others in generosity: to children, spouses, and friends alike.
To live is to die: not only at the end of life, but every day, in the small acts of self-gift that bind us to others — whether in friendship, marriage, or parenthood. Perhaps the only life worth living is the one given away.
