The most important story of the next 30 years will be the Baby Bust, which began in the United States in 2008. A future historian trying to understand this period, when amid unprecedented wealth and health, we decided to depopulate, would do well to peruse the pages of the New York Times.
The outlet has led the way in publishing the doom stories that inculcated the millennials and Generation Z with self-loathing and despair.
“A rise in political extremism, at home and abroad. A pandemic that has killed more than five million. Thousand-year floods that wiped out Western European towns. West Coast wildfires,” says the litany in the typical doom piece headlined “To Breed or Not to Breed?”
However, the same outlet has also led the way in documenting our falling birth rates and laying out the consequences, pointing to depopulation in Japan and Korea and the downsides of an aging population.
Just as noteworthy as the outlet’s coverage of this matter — in a time when pronatalism is considered a far-right concern — is the readership’s anger at it for even suggesting there is anything wrong with a culture where fewer and fewer people get married and have children.
The latest artifact in this historical record is an A-1 story headlined “Sunset Years in Silent Houses: The Despair of No Grandchildren.”
Women in their 60s told the outlet they respect and understand their children’s decision not to have their own children, but “though that decision is ‘right for them,’” one “grandma” put it, “it still breaks her heart.”
Millions of 20 to 30-year-olds in the United States do not want children or have given up hope of having children. As a result, many 50 to 60-year-olds are facing the end of their line — the realization that they will not have grandchildren to spoil or heirs long after they die.
This makes these older parents sad. However, these days, being sad about someone else’s choices is an unfair burden.
“Your daughters aren’t here to pass on your legacy,” barked one angry reader. “Neither are your son’s wives.”
“Do we really need so many articles guilting/shaming/blaming women for not being baby makers,” another reader asked, “especially in this current political and social climate?”
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“My only son died 27 years ago,” a third reader explained. “I have been grappling with the reality of no grandchildren since then. With the impending collapse of [our] climate and the MAGA insanity, I’m glad to not have grandchildren facing a ‘Mad Max’ future.”
This is the worldview that has given us a Baby Bust. What sort of world will the Baby Bust give us?