In the book of Genesis, God gives the humans He just created certain tasks to perform. Among them, He says to “be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.” The contemporary West, once the center of Christendom, has failed to
adhere to this mandate. The average fertility rate needed merely to keep
population levels steady is 2.1 children per woman. In 2021, the fertility rate among European women
was 1.61. America used to defy these low rates but joined its European
compatriots beginning in 2007, a product, at least in part, of the Great
Recession. We now regularly receive dire reports about the fertility
rate among American women as well. With low fertility rates come the
threat of depopulation, a shrinking workforce, less proactive
communities, and decreases in productivity as well as economic dynamism.
On that front, we received a small amount of good news recently. 2021 marked the first year since 2014 that the number of births in the United States increased. The fertility rate went up from 1.64 to 1.66 children per woman, despite fears the pandemic would drive numbers down further. That still means fertility rates remain at a historical low, well
short of mere replacement levels. Perhaps this slight uptick portends a
broader and deeper rebound in Americans having children. Unfortunately,
however, there is more reason to doubt this seemingly positive
development. The opposite trend seems too longstanding, and thus, too
fixed on the path of decline. We need to ask what options America
possesses to reverse this general trend. What political options exist to
spur childbirth in our culture and the economy? In essence, can public
policy make America fertile again?
Montesquieu, the 17th-century French political thinker, provides an
under-studied but worthwhile discussion of this subject. The American
Founders leaned heavily on his seminal treatise The Spirit of the Laws
for our systems of federalism and separation of powers. Yet, that same
work dedicated an entire section to the issue of how a country’s laws
related to the size of its population.
Montesquieu doesn’t paint a rosy picture for America. He begins with
the particular difficulties involved in human reproduction. It comes
from our reason combined with our freedom. Montesquieu points to “the
way of thinking, character, passions, fantasies, caprices, the idea of
preserving one’s beauty, the encumbrance of pregnancy, that of a too
numerous family, disturb propagation in a thousand ways.” Animals
reproduce from instinct. Humans can decide to try and avoid pregnancy.
Their reason and passions give them various excuses to avoid
reproducing.
But problems particular to time and place can dissuade further the
desire to have children. Thus, Montesquieu admits that “Regulations
concerning the number of inhabitants depend greatly on circumstances.”
He then mentions differences in circumstances. Some population
decreases, for instance, come from the combination of “internal vice and
a bad government.” This internal origin presents a much harder problem
to address than, say, an invader’s acts of destruction. Such acts are
obvious and how to address them, namely by military victory, is clear.
But regarding internal reasons for population decline, Montesquieu goes
on to say that “Men there have perished from an imperceptible and
habitual illness.” They suffer from bad habits whose culpability in
depopulation we struggle to pinpoint. Such a situation describes our
own.
First, we do too much to discourage marriage. Our government regularly has penalized marriage in filing taxes, especially for low-income earners.
Our cities build and zone housing to make it hard, if not impossible,
for larger families to reside there. Moreover, our culture’s
long-running sexual revolution also discourages wedlock by normalizing
cohabitation as well as sex outside of marriage. One could argue
marriage inhibits population, tying men to reproducing with one female
partner. Montesquieu, however, writes that “public continence is joined
naturally to the propagation of the species.” In general, marriage comes
about “wherever there is a place for two persons to live comfortably.”
Marriage both arises from comfort and creates comfort in living, especially for raising children.
Marriage creates comfort because rearing human beings takes much
longer and more effort than rearing animals. Because humans possess
reason as well as passions, they must receive instruction, not just
nourishment, in order to learn both to “sustain their lives” and to
“govern themselves.” Thus, while female animals may alone take on the
nourishment of young, the greater requirements for human offspring
dissuade single mothers from having additional children.
Marriages, moreover, should see the wife as joining the husband’s
family. Doing so, Montesquieu argues, makes the family a sort of
“property” for the man, one that drives him to have male offspring in
order to maintain the family line. The same proves true for last names.
Sharing a name creates pride in its status and interest in its
continuance. Thus, Montesquieu also supports the intimidating
proposition that men should ask the father for his daughter’s hand in
marriage. He argues that fathers, not the other potential option—the
state—should have a say over getting the children married, since they
will look out best for the benefit of their families. This attitude of
family as property, legally supported, “contributes much to the
propagation of the human species.” (Read more.)
