Faith and fecundity: Religion predicts baby-making more than economics do
Timothy P. Carney
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When major newspaper columnists set out to explain our baby bust, America’s low and falling birthrates since 2008, they typically begin with economics and government policy, which is fine. The problem is they typically end there, too.
Take one column explaining our falling birthrates:
“I did not have children because day care where I live costs an average of $24,000 per year, and renting a two-bedroom apartment can cost upward of $30,000, and in my childbearing prime my salary ranged from $37,000 to $45,000.”
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The column argues that governments “investing in child care — making it free or inexpensive — is the easiest way to encourage motherhood.”
And all of the “support” the writer seeks for mothers is in the form of cash, goods, or child care and comes from the state.
It’s certainly true that parenting in America is harder than it should be or could be or has been. I also agree that this added difficulty drives down the birthrate. But economics and policy are not the most important parts of our national aversion to parenting. Culture is.
I mean this in a thousand ways. For one thing, our culture needs to support parents more. We need fewer child-free zones, less hyperindividualism, fewer smartphone mandates, and generally a culture more like that of Utah or Israel.
That was my argument on the Salt Lake-based radio show Inside Sources on Monday. We need a culture that declares, “Have babies, and we’ll support you.” How do we get such a culture? A look at my two examples points the way: Utah and Israel are much more religious than most of the Western world.
So I would modify the standard newspaper columnist’s argument this way: America is having fewer children each year because we are becoming less religious each year.
Religiosity, roughly speaking, correlates with birthrates.
https://twitter.com/LucasDorminy/status/1670790350061858817
The mechanism, how religiosity leads to more babies, is complicated and nuanced, and I discussed it in a Deseret Magazine piece this month.
I lay out an image of how I think of religion’s impact on family formation. Mostly, religiosity creates a pro-family culture.
“Picture a garden at the center of which is a large tree called religion. That tree not only feeds those who eat its fruit, but it also creates shade and habitat for small animals. The soil is altered by the effects of this tree and other plants spring up, which brings in more animals in the air, on the ground, and beneath the soil.”
“Eventually, you have a lush garden, and even those who never touch the tree of religion, or who eat the fruit of a different tree, benefit from the ecosystem created by that first tree.”
“This is how we can think of religion’s effects on families and babies. Some of its effects are direct, but many are indirect, acting through culture.”
I think more government support for families is probably good. But unless that government support helps make the culture more pro-family (as religion does), don’t expect more adults to have more babies.