Where Have All the Children Gone?

Everyone talks about Wokeness, but few discuss this crucial question

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In the 1960s, 44% of all households were married couples with children. Four percent were single parents, eight percent were some other form of parenting situation, and only about 43% of all households didn't have children.

Fast forward to 2023, and those numbers have drastically changed. Married parents make up only 18% of US households, while nearly 60% live alone or have childless marriages.

Starting in 2021, due to the Biden/Harris border policies, American children were replaced by illegal immigrants as the primary source of new residents. This does not take into account the legal immigrants who enter the United States every year, many of whom are economic migrants rather than America-loving patriots.

However, this trend of low births is not new. Birthrates have been declining since the late 1950s, going into steep decline around the same time as numerous communist-inspired policies took effect in the mid-1960s.

Picture source: CDC

This long-standing trend has an effect. Across the West, colleges are closing due to demographic challenges. Government programs like Social Security and Medicare are obvious concerns, as well. But, one of the most pressing concerns is that the lack of children will not only drastically undermine the economy of the nation, but will end the culture of the nation entirely.

There is a lot of buzz in conservative circles over the effects of wokeness. Drag queens, the LGBT agenda, the attack on the family, demonic and communist capture of the institutions.

There is also a lot of buzz around the fact that the West has had declining birth rates, and has had this issue for almost 70 years. To address this, governments have introduced programs of mass migration with the hope that importing the burgeoning third world would help address the rapid decline in populations across the developed world.

US population growth

Image courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office

Of course, as the Oxford economist Paul Collier found in his inquiry into the effects of mass immigration, replacing a population with outsiders en masse leads to additional problems.

For one, as foreign diasporas grow, their incentive to assimilate into the host culture declines and eventually inverts, forcing locals to instead assimilate with the foreign culture. In addition, as those diaspora increase, they become what is called a "pull factor" (something that attracts and draws in greater numbers), leading to an increasing dominance both culturally and demographically of that people group.

Canada and the UK are currently facing this issue with large and increasing Muslim, Sikh nationalist, Indian, Chinese and Pakistani diasporas; increasingly influencing national politics in favor of their people group over others and their home countries. As a consequence, immigration as the main source of population growth is not just unsustainable, but dangerous to national security.

But there is very little buzz, if any, about why. Why aren't people having children?

Of course, there are theories thrown out if ever this question is asked. "kids these days are just spoiled and self-centered," suggest some. "They can't afford families because of the economy," say others. "Who cares," say still many others. "The globe is overpopulated," or "White people are the cause of all evil in the world, so they shouldn't have kids," or "Women should be chasing higher education and career," say more (as if to suggest, if children and family have to take a back seat to "girlbossery," then that is a good thing to "stick it to the patriarchy.")

One of the most popular answers, and likely one of the most genuine, though pernicious (as we will see), is the long-standing, "How can I bring children into such a horrible or evil world?"

The reason for declining birth rates may be partially all of the above, but there is one under-noted factor that may have a significant influence — demoralization.

Women had children during poorer times. Considering we live in the most advanced and prosperous nations in history, one can argue they had more children during less prosperous times.

Women had children during worse eras in history, as well. Take your pick of war, famine, plague, or even genocide, and you will see the birth rates mostly continued upward.

But, two forces struck the Western world in the mid-1960s that seem to have managed to do what war, famine, depressions and disease could not. Selfishness in prosperity, and demoralization.

Yuri Bezmenov warned the West in the 1970s about the communist effort to demoralize generations of Americans. Many thought he was speaking about Soviet efforts at the time; after all, they were the opposing, communist power for which he had worked. But he was referring to something much bigger, that ran much deeper and was far more pernicious than even the KGB could muster.

This something, touched on by Diana West in her brilliant book, American Betrayal, was the global communist influence that has been at work in the world since before it was even called communism. These forces were seen in the French Revolution, as well as the Russian. More importantly, these forces were at play in the United States (as in the rest of the West) long before Bezmenov's time.

It was this message that somehow gained dominance of the culture of the 1960s that I believe so greatly affected birth rates. As can be seen in the data, that is when the birth rates began to decline, and they have yet to recover.

When speaking with women of the Baby Boom generation, one quickly becomes aware that even then, there was a message circulating in the culture. It was partially the feminist messaging of how children and families hold women back and are "tools of the patriarchy" used to "oppress women." It was also a message of throwing off responsibility ("Why have kids when you can enjoy life?"), of fighting against the "system," and one of demoralization, as well ("Why bring kids into this awful world?").

A friend told me recently about the show, "It's All in the Family," and how it pushed this exact message in a brilliant and comedic way. It was partially through evil genius like this that the message spread.

You may notice today that in movies and shows aimed at women, this messaging is even stronger. Every woman is shown that the ideal feminine is actually to be hyper-masculine. A woman's measure of success – rather than motherhood – is how well she can climb the corporate ladder and create shareholder profits. The most ironic part of it all is that the women who buy this paradigm genuinely believe they are fighting capitalism, even while they forgo their natural desires in order to make wealthy corporations even richer.

Another crucial aspect in the continued decline in families and birth rates has to do with the culture of divorce that also grew out of the "sexual liberation" and new culture of the 60s. Even as birth rates decreased, the number of single-parent households increased. Children increasingly grew up estranged from one or both parents, without the guiding example of mother and father, much less an example of what a good marriage looks like.

Is it any wonder then that those generations have grown up with excessive anxiety disorders (a problem common among children separated from parents during critical developmental stages)? Is it any wonder that children who never experienced examples of proper relationships struggle now to pair-bond, much less raise families of their own?

It should come as no surprise that it is the children who suffer from the combination of these evil influences. After all, it is children who are the future, and children who most closely represent the goodness and innocence that the evil one so hates. So, of course, he has made it his mission to use all means at his disposal (selfishness, despair, greed, etc.) to ensure those innocents are not born, one way or the other.

The danger of a future in which Western children are not born, much less raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and the tenets of Western civilization, is immense.

The future of not only the West, but likely the whole World, depends heavily on American mothers and American families. And that is why the enemy, both temporal and spiritual, fights so hard to keep children from entering this world, and corrupting the few that do.

So while we continue to fight against the corrupting influences attacking our children – we must also fight to make sure they have a chance to come into this world to begin with.

The fight is on, oh Christian soldier.

Arthur is a former editor and consultant. Born in India to missionary parents, he spent his early career working in development for NGOs in Asia, Central America, and Africa.

Arthur has an educational background in history and psychology, with certifications from the University of Oxford and Leiden in the economics, politics, and ethics of mass migration and comparative theories in terrorism and counterterrorism. He is currently launching CivWest, a company focused on building capital to fund restorative projects and create resilient systems across the Western world.

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