U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has identified a true major crisis in America, and then suggested the most absurd solution. In a recent speech, Schumer said:

“Now more than ever we’re short of workers.”

This statement is true. Why is that?

First, we need to consider that Progressives have cultivated in Generation Z (youth born from approximately 1997-2012) an entitlement mentality. Gen Z is more likely than any previous generation to believe it is the responsibility of government to take care of them and meet their needs from cradle to grave. They have had access to many socialist-leaning policies that have de-incentivized them to work. Others have found ways to develop a lifestyle as a perpetual student, thus delaying getting an actual job. Many have found they make more money from the government by not working rather than working.

But there is another problem Schumer also correctly identified:

“We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to.”

Schumer’s Solution? (Imagine All the People)

“The only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants—the DREAMers and all of them—because our ultimate goal is to help the DREAMers—but get a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented, there are here.”

Who Are the DREAMers?

Allow me to give a quick definition of “DREAMers.” “The DREAM Act” was a bill presented in 2001 by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). It never gained traction, even though it popped up in Congress several times (never being approved). The goal was to create a law that allowed anyone who arrived in America under the age of sixteen (and had been a resident for five years or more as well as a few other criteria), to obtain legal citizenship. The bill went nowhere until Barack Obama created an executive order, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals act (DACA), making the concepts contained in The DREAM Act an informal policy in 2012. Many have argued that this executive order was unconstitutional.

The Crisis of Declining Birth

In a previous article for IFI in 2018, I wrote about the “New Demographic Winter,” coming economically to America. I discussed the history of the over-population myth and the perils that occur when a national fertility rate dips below 2.1 births per (hopefully married!) woman. According to the World Economic Forum in 2021: “The United States has seen a 50% decline in birth rates between 1950 and 2021, from 25 births per 1,000 people to 12.” More specifically, in May of 2021, America reached a record low of 55.8 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

Why Fewer Babies?

There are many reasons for this phenomenon.

First, having children is strongly discouraged in our culture as women are told they are “wasting their education” if they do have children. More women than ever are obtaining college degrees, and they are taught that having children means they are throwing away everything they invested their time and money in achieving.

Second, in 1950 women were having babies at 20 years of age. Today, many women are delaying marriage, and thus childbearing, until their early 30s (shortening their birthing years).

Third, contraceptives have been nearly universally utilized, for even married women, making it easier for them to avoid pregnancy.

Fourth, government-created inflation has created a scenario where many couples feel they simply can’t afford to have children (especially considering the massive college debt many bring into their marriage). Parents are told by the media that a family will spend on average $233,610 per child before they are 18 years old. This scares many off from the idea of having more than one or two children.

Fifth, Progressives have championed the growth of homosexual relationships that, of course, cannot produce children.

There are other factors, of course, but the one that is completely ignored by Schumer and the media is the most troubling.

Mass Genocide of the Unborn

Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, over 60,000,000 babies have been brutally murdered in their mothers’ wombs.  Most of these babies, had they lived, would be working in today’s economy. Whose party has been the champion of this horrendous policy? Schumer’s democratic party of course. They created the very problem they now lament. However, rather than turning to the natural solution of encouraging men and women to marry and have their own children, Schumer has turned to a “solution” that is also fraught with problems that we will experience down the road.

Mass Amnesty

Schumer wants to make 11,000,000 illegal immigrants (or however many there are) naturalized citizens. America has always been a nation that welcomes immigrants. Both Republicans and Democrats want there to be legal pathways for people from other countries to come to America and create a new home.

Even the Trump administration suggested policies that would find a pathway of citizenship for those who were brought to America by their parents as children. No one is advocating for being unsympathetic to the plight of young children, or to those who were moved here through no choice of their own. The Democrats like to highlight undocumented children, because we are all sympathetic to their plight, but they are only a small fraction of the millions Schumer is suggesting we admit to citizenship.

If a child is deported along with his or her parents, the Democrats say we are uncaring. But let’s suppose we allow the DREAMer children to stay in the country, but deport their illegal parents. What kind of life is that for a child? What child wants to be separated from his or her parents? That’s way more cruel than deporting the entire family. Not to mention children left alone in this country will likely be raise by the government, costing tax-payers billions of dollars for their care. So Democrats say we should just let the whole family stay.

The problem is, mass amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, coupled with no strategic border control, will only entice millions more to flood across the border illegally, using resources that should belong to American citizens.

A mass integration of millions of undocumented aliens does not allow for the careful analysis and background checks necessary to ensure that we are not white-listing millions of people with criminal records from other countries who have been hiding here within our borders. We know many have come to America smuggling drugs, contraband or even participating in human trafficking. These are not the kinds of citizens America needs.

At a time when our health care system and many government agencies are already overwhelmed, and when current housing is in short supply, documenting that many illegal immigrants will make the cost of living for current citizens skyrocket, and will make resources scarcer. This isn’t true with babies because they aren’t all born on the same day. For current citizens who have been trying to find work, this will make their search more difficult.

It is generally agreed that the primary goal of Democrats in promoting this kind of legislation is to buy votes from these illegals who will feel obligated to vote for the party who welcomed them in, even though they didn’t go through proper legal channels. This is part of the Democrats’ strategy, along with election redistricting, relaxing voting requirements and other such initiatives to wrest future national elections away from the Republican party for good.

Immigration Reform

In the end, we definitely need a much more efficient immigration process that allows for a faster legal documentation for law-abiding applicants to become a part of our American way of life. Our current bureaucracy is terribly inefficient (as is the process of parents seeking to adopt needy children through foreign and domestic adoption). We can achieve our goals of a safe and diverse population through a balanced, common-sense approach to both reasonable immigration and encouraging domestic birth.

The one thing we should not continue to do is to kill off our own offspring and try to compensate for it by throwing our borders open to any criminal who wants to invade our country without going through proper screening and vetting.

Embracing the blessings of children in a culture that doesn’t

It was reported recently that the number of births in the U.S. fell in 2018 for the fourth consecutive year, marking the lowest number of births in more than three decades. The fertility rate also hit a record low of 1.7 births per woman, which means, as a nation, we’re not even on track to replace our current population. (If it weren’t for immigration, the population would already be declining.)

Some experts were surprised at the decline. Traditional wisdom suggests that the number of babies decreases during times of economic hardship, and increases again during times of prosperity. But the economy has been improving, yet the number of births is still declining.

“The birthrate is a barometer of despair,” states Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, as quoted by NPR.

Explaining that idea, he says young people won’t make plans to have babies unless they’re optimistic about the future.

“At first, we thought it was the recession,” Myers says of the recent downturn in births. But after a slight rise in 2012, the rate took another nosedive. He adds that by nearly all economic standards — except for high housing costs — birthrates should now be rising.

As for what’s behind the negative sentiment among people of childbearing age, Myers cites the current political turmoil and a gloomy outlook for America’s future.

“Not a whole lot of things are going good,” he says, “and that’s haunting young people in particular, more than old people.”¹

Maybe. But I can’t help thinking there are other reasons for the falling birthrate as well. Namely, our culture continues to drift away from a Biblical worldview, and that includes a Biblical perspective on family and childbirth. The Bible teaches that children are a blessing and that we have a responsibility to populate the earth and raise up godly children. That’s not the viewpoint of most of our culture.

If we reject that Biblical view of family, we’re left with no overriding reason to give birth and raise children. If the world feels too uncertain, or we’re not as prosperous as we’d like, or there are other obstacles in the way, why bother?

I’m not saying that practical considerations can never influence decisions regarding how many children to have. What I am saying is that the lower our commitment to a Biblical view of children, the less of a consideration it will take to cause us to give up on starting or growing a family. And I believe that’s where our society is today. It’s not hard to believe that economic or political uncertainty influence the American birthrate. But I don’t believe it would have the size of impact it currently does if we didn’t have a secularized worldview that fails to prioritize children.

The Bible calls us to prioritize eternal considerations over temporal ones, and this perspective should inform our decisions regarding family size.

Now, that said, the Bible doesn’t command us to have a certain number of children. There’s no perfect number as far as Scripture is concerned. But the Bible does tell us that children are a blessing. Not only that, it tells us that children in quantity are a blessing (Psalm 127:3-5). The idea that the perfect family consists of Mom and Dad and two kids isn’t drawn from the Bible.

I’m not condemning anyone who has two children. That’s between you, your spouse, and God. What I am saying is that the modern ideas about family size are rooted more in temporal conveniences rather than eternal considerations. I’m also not saying we’re required to have as many children as physically possible. What I will say is this: as God’s people, informed by Scripture and seeking to live a life in accordance with Biblical values and an eternal perspective, we ought to at least be open to the possibility that God may want to bless us with more than 1.7 children.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know it’s hard work raising children, and having a large family doesn’t always feel like the blessing God says it is. My wife and I had our first baby the day before our first anniversary, then added three more in the six years after that. Our youngest just turned one, and at this point, I don’t know how many children we’ll end up with—that’s something we’re still praying about! Suffice it to say, we’re very much in the thick of things and will be for some time to come.

When things get tough, we would do well to keep in mind what God says in Malachi 2. In that passage, God tells the Israelites that the reason He joins a husband and wife together as one is so they can raise godly children. That’s the eternal significance of our parental responsibilities. God wants us to raise up children who can serve and worship Him and make an impact on the world around them for His glory.

Raising a family—yes, even a larger-than-average family—is holy work. It can get crazy, hectic, exhausting, and overwhelming. But it’s God’s work. It matters. At a time when the world is abandoning God’s perspective on children, let’s embrace the blessings and commit ourselves to raising up a generation who can make a difference in God’s name. 

¹Bill Chappell, NPR, U.S. Births Fell To A 32-Year Low In 2018; CDC Says Birthrate Is In Record Slump; https://www.npr.org/2019/05/15/723518379/u-s-births-fell-to-a-32-year-low-in-2018-cdc-says-birthrate-is-at-record-level, accessed on 5-16-19

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Written by Taylor Lewis

Back in college, I participated in one of those summer-long, Koch-funded libertarian internship programs. During the final week of the program, clusters of us interns, fresh off working in the “real world” for two total months, were tasked with arguing an esoteric philosophical point of our choosing.

One group of impish participants decided to argue against having children.  The argument was fiendishly simple: the very act of existing invites pain, so it’s morally questionable to bring young ones into a world guaranteed to harm them.  With toothy grins, wrinkled slacks, and tousled hair, these students made their nihilistic argument, finely exercising their ability to, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

At the time, the arguers didn’t believe their own position.  The no-harm logic, while sound on the surface, meant human extinction when taken to its logical conclusion.

A mélange of college students hopped up on Leonard Read essays and overpriced beer understood the implications of eschewing childbirth.  But what’s Democrats’ excuse?

It turns out my puckish colleagues may have been prophets for the most visible newcomer in America’s liberal party.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist and de facto Democratic leader, questions the wisdom of having kids.  During an Instagram livestream, the 29-year-old congresswoman explains, in her termagant, ditzo manner, that Millennials like her don’t want to bring children into a world where China and India are pushing the global temperature a jot or tittle higher.

“There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult.  And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?” she asked her legions of followers from her kitchen, wearing a beige turtleneck sweater to warm her body against one of the coldest winters in years.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez posits the same ethical challenge my fellow interns did years ago: is it morally kosher to have children if they will, someday, possibly suffer harm?

If you apply Ocasio-Cortez’s thinking to any time in human history absent the short time period of post-World War II to the present, it doesn’t stand up.  Until the mid-twentieth century, many children had to contend with high infant mortality rates, slavery, sexual exploitation, hard labor, and a myriad of untreatable diseases like polio and hemophilia.  What we think of as the relatively harmless lifestyle fit for children today — mandatory schooling through 18 years of age, widespread immunizations, Sesame Street — is so new to human existence that some grandparents alive today never experienced it.

You wouldn’t be reading this column in the year 2019 had earlier generations become conditioned to Ocasio-Cortez’s paralyzing fear.  Yet the longue durée of human survival is increasingly forgotten by liberals who share a skeptical view of the future.  A duo of fretting Cassandras recently appeared on a BBC program touting something called “Birthstrike,” a movement to withhold the gift of life in service to apocalyptic prediction.

“The natural world is collapsing around us, and that’s actually happening right now.  And I’m so disappointed by the response by authorities to this crisis, and so freaked out by everything I’ve read that I’ve — I’ve basically last year I came to the decision that I couldn’t bring a child into that,” Blythe Pepino, founder of Birthstrike, explained to an audience currently experiencing a record-low birth rate.  Her partner in petrification, Alice Brown, concurs, ratcheting up the fear a notch: “We are destroying biodiversity so quickly that it threatens our food … the U.N. have said that can lead to the risk of our own extinction.”  Brown explains that her decision not to have children “has come from not wanting to pass that fear on to someone else.”

Petrifying everyone else with world-ending divinations is perfectly fine, apparently.

There’s a name for this swearing off procreation: anti-natalism.  The philosophy — if self-imposed genocide can be called a philosophy — is, at its core, a deadening of everything it means to be human.  It is both anti-life and misanthropic.  “Homo sapiens is the most destructive species, and vast amounts of this destruction are wreaked on other humans,” writes anti-natalist philosopher David Benatar.

How Benatar maintains the will to live with such a bleak view of himself isn’t addressed.  Like climate alarmists who pay thousands of dollars to travel around in carbon-emitting machines, Benatar doesn’t seem to take his own philosophy seriously.

The divide between anti-natalist liberals and conservatives is, as Russell Kirk said of all political problems, spiritual at heart.  Conservatives view life as intrinsically valuable — that all children are formed in the image of a loving God.  Even if a baby will one day grow to harm someone else, he is still not denied his inner worth.

Along with neoliberal types concerned that Africa’s high birth rate puts too much of a strain on economic resources, anti-natalists commit the dangerous fallacy of putting sublunary concerns above higher values.  The road to despotism is paved with such intentions.

Then again, maybe that was the point all along.

This article was originally published at AmericanThinker.com