Can the World Handle Having Fewer Moms?

(Bloomberg view) -- Demographers at the United Nations promise that the list of humans on ground testament begin shrinking as soon as 2080 — the culmination of a global decline in birthrates that began two generations ago. I keep thinking about what this shift means for moms.

Fewer women are having children. Those who do are having smaller families than previous generations. This trend transcends the norms of any one culture or place. 

The shift away from motherhood is happening slowly — but surely. It’s a source of growing bipartisan concern. New Pew Research polling finds that over half of Americans (53%) now say fewer people choosing to have children in the future would negatively impact the United States, a six-point increase from last year.  

In Foreign Affairs, social scientist and my former American Enterprise Institute colleague Nicholas Eberstadt charts the UN Population Division data, going country by county to the places where deaths are already exceeding births. Already, every major population in East Asia — in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — is shrinking. The same goes for India, Latin America and the Caribbean. Iran and Russia have long been sub-replacement societies. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the birthrate of 4.3 significantly exceeds the replacement rate of 2.1, although even there the birthrate is dropping.

There have been other times and places of falling fertility due to famine, plague or war. But this depopulation is unique in the experience of humanity because (1) it appears to be what we are self-selecting into, and (2) it’s worldwide.

It can be argued that to the extent this shift better reflects preferences and choice, it’s a good thing. I, for one, am relieved to have three children, not twelve. But politicians and academics are worried about the sociodemographic implications. After all, birthrates below replacement eventually result in human extinction. 

We don’t know how this will play out over the long run. Maybe a world with fewer children means a greater level of investment in each of them. Or maybe it shrinks the share of the population interested in helping kids. Maybe technology alleviates any shortages in the workforce or the taxpayer base. Or maybe even AI can’t counteract the looming labor slump. Maybe there will be more resources for us to share, with a greater dignity and respect for life. Or maybe the whole thing will get more callous and gene-edited and selective. 

But I can’t help thinking about how this will turn up the anxiety American moms already are feeling. Because declining birthrates not only mean fewer babies — declining birthrates also mean fewer moms.

I grew up in a neighborhood where each house seemed to have three or four kids, and evenings were filled with kids running around and playing games on the street. In my current neighborhood, fewer kids run around outside. Most families seem to have two children, both parents are working, and the kids are signed up for more activities. That makes life more isolating, frankly, as a mom.

There’s also more pressure on parents to keep children entertained. Children are not around other children as much socially as they used to be; even within families, there are fewer siblings. So kids look to mom and dad for playtime — or to screens. 

I think of how much security and companionship I derived from having pregnant and postpartum friends walk alongside me in my own journey into motherhood. How much help I derived from a text chain of experienced moms when I had my first child. How those text chains will become smaller and smaller as fewer people opt into motherhood. 

I think about all of the anxiety on mothers’ shoulders about whether they are feeding their kids the right things, whether their school is teaching children what they need to know, the significant financial investment in college, and how much that this pressure to “do parenting right” will only increase if you only have one or maybe two children. 

I keep thinking about Brad Wilcox’s research. The senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Family Studies has found that married mothers are among the happiest demographics of women; single mothers, too, find more purpose in their lives than women without children. Might declining rates of parenthood be contributing to modern society’s broader anomie?

Fewer parents around means that support for public investments — better schools, paid parental leave, more child care options — might dwindle as society focuses her resources elsewhere. The same goes for community investments in playgrounds and sidewalks and parks. This, of course, would only exacerbate the decline in childrearing as prospective parents look out to a landscape that, in Tim Carney’s words, is family-unfriendly.  

With this on the horizon, our generation owes it to those who come after to make the necessary structural and cultural changes to support motherhood. Because going forward, there might not be as many of us around.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Abby McCloskey is a columnist, podcast host, and consultant. She directed domestic policy on two presidential campaigns and was director of economic policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

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