Christian Family—Giftand Hope

by Rosa Linda G. Valenzona

The world appears to be bent on the destruction of marriage and the family. This attack was spearheaded by the globalization of contraception and abortion promoted by the anti-natalist propaganda and justified by doomsday predictions of population explosion. The world is in for a rude awakening. The dominant demographic problem is not going to be population explosion. Ageing and population implosion will dominate the social, economic, political and demographic horizon of this century. The UN has openly admitted that population ageing is due to the drastic fall in fertility. Sub-replacement fertility has persisted in spite of the subsidies and incentives devised by European governments. UN projections also forecast that even in Less Developed Countries fertility will also fall below replacement levels by the middle of this century.

Sub-replacement fertility will probably be the most important global problem of the 22nd century. This paper will attempt to shed some light on understanding the real cause of sub-replacement fertilityby looking at the impact of contraception and abortion on marriage and the family. The long term impact of sub-replacement fertility on the demographic structure will also be examined.

Sub-replacement Fertility

Anti-natalist propaganda promoted fertility reduction in developed countries as a means to stabilize population growth—a condition reached by reducing fertility at the 2.1 replacement level. The noble justification of saving the world’s resources from overpopulation was a convenient cover-up for venting the libertarian rejection of the repressive sexual discipline demanded by marriage as well as gratifying hedonistic ideologies that shunned the burdensome demands of child rearing. The end result was the speedy and widespread acceptance of contraception and legalization of abortion. Europe whose fertility rate was already a low 2.66 in 1950 took the plunge down to 2.13 by 1970 and has been on sub-replacement fertility since them. But sub-replacement fertility is not limited to Europe; Nicolas Eberstadt claims that sub-replacement fertility has come amazingly close to describing the norm for childbearing the world over. [1] The phenomenon of the persistence of sub-replacement fertility is now considered the second demographic transition (the first having been the transition from high mortality-high fertility to low mortality-low fertility). For some unexplained reason UN projects a rise of Europe’s fertility back to replacement level by mid-century although there is not the slightest sign of a baby boom.

Demographers now agree that the so-called population explosion of the Less Developed Countries was really due to reduction in infant mortality rates when fertility rates were still high. Anti-natalist propaganda insisted that family planning is a condition sine qua non to developmentalthough some economists argue that in fact a modicum of development was in fact this sine qua non before fertility fall could take place.[2] Poor families are really making rational decisions when they match fertility with survival rates to achieve the number of children they would like to have. In any case anti-natalist groups wielding political power for the widespread promotion of family planning through contraception and abortion eventually achieved the legalization of these practices in many poor countries.

Intuitively one concludes that a race that fails to reproduce is committing racial suicide. History attests to the disappearance of ancient civilizations whose citizens refuse to have babies. The advanced countries appear bent on disappearing as a race. Peter Drucker affirms this: “The developed world is in the process of committing collective national suicide. Its citizens are not producing enough babies to reproduce themselves…”[3]In spite of UN projections of population implosion as imminent for many countries it is perplexing how sub-replacement fertility continues to persist and the UN itself continues to promote family planning.

Impact of Fertility Fall on Marriage

A variety of reasons for the persistence of sub-replacement fertility have been advanced and some of them are worth mentioning at this point. First are the increasing opportunities for women. Children have come to be viewed as an impediment to self-fulfillment and therefore pregnancy is delayed or even foregone altogether in favor of the pursuit of fulfilling ones’ possibilities. There is the widespread negative attitude against the of the high opportunity cost for child bearing. It is also claimed that as the economy becomes more complex investing in children has become more expensive and returnsto parents are low.

Be that as it may, these are not satisfactory reasons for explaining why societies are bent on racially suicidal behavior. Other more weighty explanations are needed to justify this behavior. This is where the closer consideration of the impact fertility fall on marriage itself could shed more light on the issue. It was Pope John Paul II who gave a deeply theological and anthropological explanation of how contraception violates the truth of the language of the body in the marital union.[4] However, sociological arguments are needed to reinforce these natural law arguments.

Reproduction and parenting are biological functions that equally exist among humans and animals and therefore are not distinctively human. But animal behavior is always a consequence of natural programming and therefore instinctual.In contrast human beings socialize these biological functions in a stable relationship. At the spiritual level the children are an extension of the love between spouses, making the family an image of Trinitarian communion. At the human level reproductive and parenting behavior is reasoned rather than instinctual behavior, with reason collaborating and affirming the instinctual purpose. With parental instincts reinforced by reason the vulnerability and helplessness of the human baby elicits from parents a well-spring of generosity far exceeding what spousal love would. Thus parental instincts are one of the strongest bonds that tie spouses together. Moreover, since human survival is essentially cultural rather than instinctual the education of young children in the family likewise demands the collaboration of both parents. This is the basis justifying marriage and family as natural institutions whose primordial origin precedes culture itself.

Beyond this natural law argument marriage as an institution deserves further examination.Christopher Dawson in his essay on the Patriarchal Family is a good starting point: “Marriage is a social consecration of the biological functions, by which the instinctive activities of sex and parenthood are socialized and a new synthesis of cultural and natural elements is created in the shape of the family. This synthesis differs from anything that exists in the animal world in that it no longer leaves man free to follow his own sexual instincts; he is forced to conform them to a certain social pattern.”[5]The patriarchal family underlying the Western civilization looked at marriage as the bond that holds the father to the mother-child ties, sharply contrasting with contemporary culture’s definition limiting marriage to the relationship between spouses. To consecrate is to hold something as sacred, treating it with reverence and protecting it from abuse or violation. Marriage is thusa deliberate constructive repression of the sexual instinct where spouses commit to forsake all others for specific purpose of protecting of children. The universal postulate of legitimacy affirms that the consequences of giving free reign to the sexual instinctis anti-social—a crime against the family.[6] This capacity to subordinate one’s sexual impulses for a social purpose is the primordial root of social life and the beginning of culture because it safeguards what is so elemental to human existence—the transmission of life itself.[7]

Contraception and abortion therefore strikes at the very heart of marriage because elimination of procreation deprives marriage of its social purpose. Marriage is the social consecration of the child-bearing function. When sexual gratification of spouses becomes its only purpose marriage this social consecration becomes meaningless and the family forms resulting from this watered down marriage also loses its capacity for child-bearing. The loss of the child-centeredness of marriage is in fact the cause of the fragility of the family—easily broken apart. This loss of child-centeredness also caused the gradual dismantling of the civil, social and religious protection that marriage enjoyed and the creeping social decadence of our contemporary culture.This gives truth to Dawson’s observation that it is the fundamental error of the modern hedonist to believe that man can abandon the moral effort and throw off every repression and spiritual discipline and yet preserve all the achievements of culture.[8] The case for the social function of marriage was recently argued by 60 prominent scholars under the auspices of the Witherspoon Institute. [9]

Statistical Evidence

% children under 18 Living with 2 parents / % of Live Births to Unmarried Women / No. of Cohabiting couples living with 1 child under age of 15
1960 / 88 / 5.3 / .197
1965 / 7.7
1970 / 85 / 10.7 / .196
1975 / 14.2
1980 / 77 / 18.4 / .431
1985 / 22.0
1990 / 73 / 28.0 / .891
1995 / 33.2
2000 / 69 / 34 / 1.675

Due to fertility decline in the UShouseholds with children under the age of 18 has decreased. This reduction in the child centeredness has been associated to the weakening of the institution of marriage.[10] The rise in out-of-wedlock births as well as children born to cohabiting couples is indicative of the loss of prestige of childbearing.Children have ceased to be the main purpose of marriage and the rise in divorce rate is evidence of how the even the presence of children in marriage has become a very minor inhibitor of divorce. [11]

The fall in the percentage of children living with two parents, the rise in single parenthood, and the rise of cohabitation took place very soon after the introduction of contraception and abortion in the US. Both served to relax the moral restraints so essential to the social vitality of the institution of marriage. This loss of prestige for marriage gradually led to the dismantling of civil, social and religious safeguards protecting it and what was behaviorally deviant ceased to be exceptional. The slippery downhill slope which started with widespread practice of contraception and abortion led to rise in divorce rates, single parenthood and unmarried cohabitation. The move to legalize same sex marriage is merely a logically continuum in this chain.

Fragile Families

The natural result of the weakening of marriage was the emergence of the phenomenon of fragile families. These families which were typically fatherless were emerging family forms due to the increase of divorce, out-of-wedlock births and unmarried cohabitations. US statistics from the National Marriage Project show that:[12]

  • In 1960 only 9% of children lived in single parent families; by 2003 this percentage had jumped to 27%.
  • The number of children under 18 affected by parental divorce went from 500,000 in 1960 to well over a million in 1975;
  • Since 1960 the percentage of babies born to unwed mothers had increased more than 6 times.
  • An estimate of 40% of all children was expected to spend some time in a cohabiting household during their growing up years.

A recent demographic study looks at sub-replacement fall of fertility in Europe as the second demographic transition (SDT) and statistically associates it with new types of household formation: prolonged single living, premarital cohabitation, and progression to parenthood within cohabiting unions.[13] For the sake of simplicity two separate sets of variables were used to characterize the cultural divide – conformism[14] (for those who were adherents of the Judeo-Christian culture) and non-conformism[15] (for those of the secularist orthodoxy persuasion). This cultural divide is also described by Robert P. George.[16]Types of family formation were related with varying degrees of conformism and non-conformism.

Childless cohabitants were found to be on the highest end of non-conformism while married parents who never cohabited scored lowest in non-conformism. The child who leaves parental home to get married and have children also scores high in conformism. Cohabitants with children who get married move towards conformism but are always more non-conformist than those who never cohabited.[17] This conclusion is valid for populations in the Iberian Peninsula as well as for Scandinavian populations. This statistical evidence supports the conclusion that marriage and a child-oriented family are somehow getting more closely associated with religious belief or simply said only believers are having children.

Phillip Longman also strongly correlates fertility with religious convictions: In the United States fully 47% of people who attend church weekly say that their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast only 27% of those who seldom attend church want to have any kids. [18]

These facts provide a very interesting explanation to the persistence of sub-replacement fertility in advanced countries. The promotion of contraception and abortion to bring down fertility relaxed sexual discipline imposed by marriage. This alteration of this essentially vital aspect weakened the institution of marriage and gave rise to the formation of fragile family forms prone to childlessness. This is why the subsidies and incentives to encourage child-bearing do not have the desired effect.

Population Ageing

The natural consequence of sub-replacement fertility is ageing. The ageing looming in the horizon of the 21st century will be unprecedented, pervasive, enduring and full of profound implications.[19] It is without parallel in the human history and will affect every man woman and child even though different countries will go through different stages and at different paces. The world population will not be able to return to the young populations that our ancestors knew—at least not in our lifetimes.

Ageing is measured in terms of the relative size of the population age 65 and over. Since 1950 the elderly population has increased by more than threefold (from 130 million or 4% of total to Europe’s population is the oldest and growing older over time. Italy is the world’s “oldest” nation with more than 18% of its population aged 65 and over. Finally the UN has admitted that the ageing process is directly related to the dramatic fall in fertility although it is partly caused by the rise in life expectancy.[20]

Both falling fertility and rise in life expectancy impact heavily on the dependency rate. Since at both extremes of the life cycle human beings are unable to independently support themselves there are two types of dependents – children and the elderly. The fall in total dependents until 2030 is due to the decrease in the number of children but its eventual rise soon after is due to the increase in the elderly population.

In Europe this reversal which took place in 2005 is especially dramatic. From then on there are more elderly dependents than children. Cutting back on the financial burden of raising children by reducing fertility has the unexpected result of taking on the heavier burden of ballooning health care requirements for the elderly—exchanging investment in society’s future for the irrecoverable cost of supporting the elderly. Longman calculates that even after considering the cost of education, a typical child in the US consumes 28 per cent less than the typical working-age adult, while elders consume 27% more, mostly in health related expenses. [21] Drucker states that the offsetting the burden of supporting the older nonworking population by cutting back on spending on children also serves as a disincentive to child-bearing.[22]

Even more surprising is the fact that the Less Developed Countries, with younger populations than Europe, have not been exempted from ageing. The same reversal is still predicted to happen later in this century. Many economists predict a bleak future for the elderly in poor countries, majority of who will be low productivity workers. These trends reinforce the conclusion that fertility reduction is the main cause of ageing. In the case of LDC’s anti-natalist propaganda had its own contribution towards bringing about fertility decline.

Population Implosion

Population Change (In Thousands)
France / Italy / Germany / Spain
2010-2015 / -72 / -38
2015-2020 / -137 / -46
2020-2025 / -165 / -63 / -35
2025-2030 / -177 / -91 / -47
2030-2035 / -188 / -125 / -42
2035-2040 / -12 / -208 / -145 / -47
2040-2045 / -53 / -237 / -141 / -75
2045-2050 / -81 / -269 / -138 / -129

The idea of falling population growth must look odd to a world that has been saturated with apocalyptic population explosion propaganda. The slowness and graduality of change in demography breeds complacency over a false sense of status quo. It is inevitable that falling birth rates and shrinking family sizes will eventually translate to negative population change.[23] Here also Europe leads in the negative population change starting in the 2005. The turning point for Spain is 2020, for Italy it is 2010, for France it is 2035 and Germany started losing population as early as 1975.It could easily lose the equivalent of the current population of East Germany in the next half-century. Russia’s population is already contracting by three-quarters of a million a year.

The Past, Present and Future—Population Structures