Don't Call Me Baby
Earth's Depopulation Trend
In this column, we try to find wisdom from an unflinching look at death. Until recently, conversations about death always occurred in an expanding theater of human life. Each generation more young people than in the generation before would explore, make art, write books, make discoveries, form rich relationships and have their own tragedies and comedies. Now the theater of human life is shrinking. Unless this trend changes, not all of us will be replaced when we die. It’s been that way since 2023.
If you’d like an in-depth interview with an economist about where birth rates are declining and some of the likely macro-economic consequences, head over to Plain English.
Humanity’s procreative drive has remained strong for 50,000 years. It’s the reason there are billions of us here on earth. It’s a dubious feat that people today have succeeded in discouraging something as fundamental as the drive to have children. Even the World Wars of the 20th century with all their horrors didn’t make people lose their desire for children.
I’ll talk about three trends that I believe are driving the depopulation of the planet. And then I’ll provide some ideas on how one can live a good life in the midst of these hard trends.
Gilded Age 2.0
It wasn’t that long ago that a high school degree was enough for a dignified middle class life. You could get a job at a factory. You could afford a home. The middle class life was as easy as a union job, a trade or spot in a factory. In the 1960s the average age for buying a first home was 24. Today it is 40.
Americans have been working a lot harder for less. In the 1960s only 7% of adults had a college degree. Today that number is nearly 40%. Despite working harder and greater educational attainment, a stable life amenable to having kids doesn’t happen for most people until after their most fertile years. If you are a woman who would prefer to wait to have kids until you own a home, well, having a kid at 40 is more difficult. And having three kids starting at 40 is out of the question for most women.
The pernicious influence of massive wealth inequality has created an age of competition so brutal, the rational choice is to either delay having kids or not have them at all. The risk of having a kid in the early twenties is falling behind in forging a career. The consequences of falling behind in this Gilded Age 2.0 economy may include housing insecurity, healthcare insecurity and loss of status.
And so people wait to realize any dreams they have of raising a family. The ironic thing is that Americans are more productive than ever. But the value of what they are creating is getting funnelled up to the top one percent in much greater percentages than in the 1960s. Fierce competition and the fear of falling behind put people under the kind of pressure that undermines families. One sees this trend in the data in that affluent white Americans have higher birth rates than the less affluent.
It turns out that a home to call one’s own and financial security is good for growing families. Who would have thought?
Dark Futurism
Deciding to have a baby is a profound act of optimism. It is an affirmation that one believes there will be a world worth living in for that child. It is saying that joy, dignity are possible.
We are in a moment where a great number of people lack that optimism. Instead, people hold a vision of dark futurism.
Climate change is a big culprit. People have seen the hurricanes, the wildfires, the droughts and the floods. They know that unless society forges drastic changes soon, that these already terrifying natural disasters are only the beginning. Few see governments making those changes.
Another culprit is technology. AI, drone warfare and nuclear weapons have people spooked. People fear AI will take their jobs, or power drones that unleash new destructive powers in new wars. And of course, nuclear weapons are still with us with the added complication that some of the biggest stockpiles belong to unstable failing states like Russia.
And in this dark futurism lurks a grim cynicism about human nature. Cooperation on climate change combined with new technologies could also turn the world into the most wonderful place people have ever lived just as easily as wrecking destruction. But more people are cynical right now about what humanity will do.
Masculinism
Reactionary anger at women is a growing trend among men. These resentments have hardened into social and political ideologies that seek to disempower women. In The United States masculinist arguments masquerading as religion have already taken away a national right to women’s freedom of choice. And masculinist influencers want to take away women’s right to vote, control their own finances, pursue careers outside the home and more. These voices have already moved from the fringes into powerful places of political influence.
It’s worth noting that many of these voices are obsessed with falling birth rates and blame feminism. If women had no control over their bodies and could no longer pursue careers, they would go back to having tons of kids. The masculinists have it backwards.
As proof, the number of abortions in America has risen since Roe fell. Women in both red and blue states decide faster to end pregnancies when they worry their access to reproductive procedures and medications might disappear.
Anti-feminist ideologies are also a reason women wait to have kids. If working women had access to equal pay and felt that taking time off to have kids would not hinder their careers they might see the option to have another kid in another light.
In addition, a lot of workplaces have initiated mandatory returns to the office and moved to end the flexibility new parents need to thrive at work. Not all the men in leadership making these decisions (and they were mostly men) are avowed masculinists. But I’d say they weren’t thinking about how to continue to support and invest in the careers of young mothers when they made their workplace policies more hostile to working parents.
My point is, masculinists want to control women. But there is no going back. Women know they have the skills and education to create the lives they want. They aren’t going to forget about the last 106 years since the ratification of the Nineteenth amendment because a few men want them to. Instead of trying to control women, ask what they need to make having a kid soon a rational option to even consider. Affordable childcare, housing, flexible career paths with real potential, access to full reproductive care for any pregnancy might be good starting places. But I’d still ask a statistically relevant number of young women. They will be the ones to choose to start families, to delay, or have no kids at all.
Masculinists are driving down the birth rate. Besides making themselves extremely unattractive potential mates to women, they are also discouraging women from starting families with every one of their policy goals.
What to Do
The choice to have kids is personal. Choosing not to have kids is a great option for many people for a thousand reasons starting with not wanting kids. But I think some of the trends above are artificially driving down the birth rate by giving people who would like to have kids very good reasons to wait. And whether you have kids or not, we all have to design a life in the world as it is now that includes these troubling trends.
First in a moment characterized by brutal competition and decreasing financial rewards from educational attainment and hard work, the options at first don’t look great. The first thing most people will think of to do is compete with everything they have. Work the extra hours, sacrifice more and win at all costs. And while we all have to live in the system as it is now, the problem with a life built on competition alone is layoffs are happening right now no matter how good a yearly review someone got. Part of it is this recessionary labor moment. Some of it is AI. But the problem is that one can do everything right in the competition and still come up with a result that threatens financial security.
So to find balance, I recommend leaning into the opposite value of cooperation. If you are lucky enough to have a loving family, think twice about moving far from them for a job. Invest in friendships. Join that proverbial bowling league. Volunteer at local causes aligned with your values. The more you invest in relationships outside of the workplace, the more support your life will have in everything from someone who could watch a kid in a pinch to people who can help you strategize on what to do when you hit a career obstacle.
It’s worth noting that the 1960s world where middle class people could buy first homes in their early twenties was built not on competition but cooperation. The laws at the time set limits on executive pay in proportion to what the companies paid their employees. Unions were much stronger. People enjoyed the economic protections hard forged by working people coming out of the last Gilded Age and its abuses.
When you start building cooperation back into your life, you’ll find a few reasons to have optimism again about human nature. People have their dark side for sure. Brutal competitions also tend to bring out both excellence in achievement and the worst ethical lapses.
Bring people back into a social setting characterized by cooperation and you’ll start to see more consideration, compassion and codes of ethics again. It’s amazing what neighbors will do for another neighbor in need when they’ve sat on each other’s stoops and gotten to know each other. When people come together for a common cause, you’ll see the more of the best in people. You’ll be able to imagine possible futures that are better than the worst dark futures you may fear.
That’s not to say that we will get the best. Most likely the world will be a mix of the best and worst from people as it always has been. But to borrow a useful frame from great essayist Rebecca Solnit, the future is always dark. None of us know what will happen next. Being able to imagine a few positive futures can give one the audacity to hope and to try to be part of making the world a little better too.
I like to hope that communities that focus more on the old values of cooperation will push masculinism back to the fringes of society. When more men get a break from brutal competition, these urges to dominate everyone and everything will lessen. They won’t be so afraid all the time.They will be more likely to see potential life partners as people to respect and partner with rather than control.
A system of too much brutal competition is characterized by fear. Everyone is worried that at any moment they will lose their job, their home, and their status. In fear, people try to control. They rationalize actions their own code of ethics would forbid.
To conclude, depopulation will likely transform the planet in the next fifty years. A lot of places will look like Detroit which suffered severe depopulation in the last few decades. Houses will rot and attract crime. City services will be strained by figuring out how to scale back. Social security, the stock market and a lot of other systems based on an assumption of human population growth will break.
It will be the communities and nations who figure out how to cooperate again and support young mothers that will inherit the earth. Their values, languages and culture will prevail simply because all the ones that choose not to have kids will depopulate themselves into obscurity. In a way, that’s good news. In the future, the people who can make life good enough for women to want to share the world with a new generation will win the competition for the future of the planet.
The Croak Section
Ask Death a Question! Death didn’t get a question this week so I just wrote a column myself. But Death still wants to answer your questions from their unique perspective of oblivion. Send your questions to askdeath@wecroak.com
Work with me. My coaching is about achievement but also designing a life based on your values using practical philosophy tools as a guide. If you want to think about how to thrive and create more balance in your life, get in touch. www.tidepathcoach.com
Hansa
A falling birth rate does not automatically mean decline or that communities will become the next Detroit; healthy communities are built through strong economies, good planning, immigration, innovation, and quality of life—not endless population growth. In a world facing environmental strain and limited resources, stable or slower population growth can actually create opportunities for more sustainable, resilient communities while still maintaining vibrant cities through thoughtful policy and welcoming new residents.