According to many Republicans, America’s low birth rate and the resulting civilization crisis with its disastrous consequences for the country can squarely be blamed on America’s women in the child-bearing ages.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 7 2024 (IPS)

Countries around the world are experiencing low birth rates. In 2022, more than one hundred countries, representing two-thirds of world’s population, experienced fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman.

Fertility rates below the replacement level were relatively uncommon in the distant past. But today, many of the countries with sustained rates of fertility below the replacement level are facing demographic decline accompanied by population aging.

Many countries are attempting to reverse their low fertility levels. Their pro-natalist policies include paid parental leave, flexible work schedules, affordable childcare, cash incentives, support to families, subsidized assisted reproductive treatments and encouraging gender equality in housework and caregiving.

In 2023, the fertility rate of the United States fell to a record low of 1.6 births per woman. That level is two births per woman below the 1960 rate and a half child below the replacement level (Figure 1).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Some, especially wealthy men in the private sector and U.S. Republican officials, have been ringing alarm bells for years about America’s population heading towards extinction and have urged women to give birth to more children.

Population collapse due to low birth rates, some of them have warned, is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.

In contrast to the pronatalist measures adopted by many other countries, women choosing to have few or no children in the United States, according to many Republicans, is the reason for the country’s low birth rate.

Why are Republicans blaming America’s women for the country’s low birth rate, which they claim has created a civilization crisis with catastrophic consequences?

The answer, according to many in America’s Republican party, is because across the country women in their prime childbearing ages are increasingly rejecting the sanctity of marriage, the foundational role of families and motherhood, and avoiding the blessings and emotional satisfaction of giving birth and raising several children at home.

Despite their emphasis on the rewards of staying home and raising children, Republicans continue to delegate more of the responsibility of child-rearing to their wives than Democratic fathers.

It’s also important to recognize the indisputable fact, which some in the Democratic party are reported to frequently ignore or choose to minimize, that men cannot get pregnant and deliver babies. Only women have the capacity to become pregnant, give birth to babies and breastfeed them.

Republicans have stressed that increasing numbers of young women across the country are simply choosing not to have several children.

Many women are avoiding getting pregnant, giving birth and staying at home to raise children to adulthood. For example, among U.S. adults under age 50 years without kids in 2023, the proportion saying they are unlikely to have children was 47 percent, up 10 percentage points from 2018 (Figure 2).

Source: Pew Research Center.

Instead of having children, Republicans claim that growing numbers of young women in America are choosing to remain single and are becoming childless cat ladies or dog ladies, which are a threat to American democracy.

Reportedly, among the notable benefits of having a cat or a dog rather than a husband are cats and dogs are nonjudgmental, relatively easy to train and they don’t come with in-laws.

In the U.S., women are less likely than men to want kids. As a result of women’s decisions about childbearing, America’s fertility rate fell below the replacement level in the early 1970s and the rate has been headed largely downward ever since.

Having children, many women maintain, provides them neither economic compensation nor retirement savings for their time and labor. In contrast to fatherhood, women pay a motherhood penalty for having children and raising them. Working mothers encounter disadvantages in pay and benefits relative to childless working women.

Also importantly, women like men in America want to be compensated financially for their work. They do not want to be simply patted on the back for giving birth to several children and raising them until they are able to have children of their own.

Rather than having children early in life, women are increasingly choosing to become educated, join the labor force, seek rewarding careers, earn their own income and consequently postpone childbearing.

Many women in America say that they want to be able to make their own personal decisions regarding having children. And they definitely don’t want to be told by Republicans to give birth to several children for the well-being of the nation.

The emergence of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s coupled with the introduction of modern birth control methods, especially the oral contraceptive pill, contributed considerably to the decline of America’s birth rate to far below the replacement level.

In addition, women in the U.S. have been increasingly demanding equal rights and opportunities, especially in education, employment and political participation, as well as control over their bodies and reproduction.

Republicans in the United States Senate, however, continue to block passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). And Republicans were instrumental in overturning women’s right to abortion as well as supporting extreme abortion bans, including those that criminalize the procedure for rape victims and pregnant children.

Women want to enjoy their personal freedoms and make their own decisions regarding childbearing rather than having others, in particular men, tell them what to do and when to do it.

Moreover, growing numbers of women in America are choosing later marriage or avoiding that traditional institution altogether. Some women are also postponing childbearing to later ages, deciding to have few or no children and rejecting the patriarchal family household structure.

Due to America’s low birth rate, the resulting level of natural increase (births minus deaths) has been declining for decades. The current level of natural increase for the U.S. population is approximately one-quarter of the level experienced at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Moreover, immigration is expected to drive America’s population growth for the remainder of the 21st century.

According to many U.S business leaders and Republican party officials, the sustained low birth rate and the decline in the rate of natural increase are adversely impacting the country’s continued prosperity. Low rates of fertility and population decline are considered catastrophic, seriously threatening America’s economic growth and national strength.

A low birth rate absent high levels of immigration typically leads to depopulation, which many Republicans consider to be a demographic disaster.

Despite their anti-immigration rhetoric, efforts to build a wall along the country’s southern border and explicit calls for a mass deportation of all illegal aliens, Republicans are aware that America’s population and its labor force are projected to decline without immigration. Without international migration, America’s current population of 337 millions is projected to decline to 299 million by 2060 (Figure 3).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Instead of relying on international migration for the country’s population growth, the Republican party and those on the far right are urging women across America to fulfill their traditional obligations to their homeland, namely, by giving birth to no less than several children and raising them at home.

By doing so, they expect America’s fertility rate to return to the replacement level or perhaps even go higher, thereby ensuring sustained economic growth for the country and reducing the need for immigrants.

To encourage childbearing, some Republican officials have offered a number of suggestions. Those suggestions include giving parents the ability to cast votes on behalf of their children, looking to grandparents, aunts and uncles for those who have them and having a higher tax rate on childless Americans.

However, such suggestions and blaming women for America’s low birth rate are unlikely to raise the country’s fertility rate back to the replacement level.

In sum, according to many Republicans, America’s low birth rate and the resulting civilization crisis with its disastrous consequences for the country can squarely be blamed on America’s women in the child-bearing ages.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.