Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘The future has never been assured, but it feels as though we are living in a time of spectacular uncertainty. In the United States, job tenures have contracted and income volatility has risen. Life expectancy, once on an inexorable march upward, has fallen for less-educated women and men. Many of the forces our economy is built on — A.I., immigration, global trade — feel distressingly volatile; disruption, once a byword for a disturbance or problem, is the governing ethos of a terrifyingly powerful sector of our economy. The rise of prediction markets has turned the world into one large casino. The climate crisis is spiraling, as are the costs of everything that could enable parenthood, whether that’s a roof over one’s head or child care. The past half-century has brought us breathtaking inequality, accompanied by a sharp decline in social mobility. The two generations currently of childbearing age bear the psychological and financial scars of coming of age amid world-scale catastrophes: Older millennials entered the labor market during the Great Recession; many watched their parents lose their jobs or homes. Members of Gen Z, whose lives were upturned by the Covid-19 pandemic, now find themselves competing against A.I. for entry-level jobs and even prospective partners. The man running America seems single-mindedly devoted to chaos at home and abroad…

No existing demographic theory could explain the near uniformity of this decline across the continent, which continued irrespective of how deeply a country was affected by the recession or how swiftly it recovered. It became clear to Mr. Vignoli that structural factors such as employment status or the housing market, while important context, do not tell the whole story of where people see themselves in the future. Raising children is an inherently forward-looking project, and in Professor Vignoli’s analysis, increasing exposure to a volatile global economy and accelerating technological change make it hard for young people to project a path forward with even a modest degree of confidence…

Solving the problem with one-off pronatalist gestures such as a tax break for having children has proved futile time and time again. To truly make a change, policymakers must take a “holistic approach to making lives and systems that are more conducive to having and raising children, and more conducive to living a happy and secure and healthy life as a person,” said Sarah Hayford, who directs the Institute for Population Research at Ohio State University. “You can’t address the parenting part without addressing the secure life part.” That takes structural change…

There is, however, one low-cost fertility policy that actually seems to work: faith, perhaps the original uncertainty reduction strategy.

Religion has long been associated with big families; groups such as the Amish, Mormons, ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Hutterites are known for their higher than average fertility rates. In a 2024 book, “Hannah’s Children,” the Catholic University of America economist Catherine Pakaluk and a colleague interviewed 55 American women who had five or more children. All were religious. Faith offers multiple levels of assurance, teaching that humans are part of a cosmic chain, having children is a moral virtue, and God will provide for them. On a practical level, faith offers a ready-made community that affirms and supports family life.

But while certain denominations such as Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism are seeing an increase in converts, overall, more Americans are identifying as “nones,” or having no particular religion. Of particular relevance is the rate at which women are fleeing the fold. The Heritage Foundation’s January report on the future of the American family refers to religion dozens of times and paid family leave just a couple of times, even though a bipartisan majority of Americans have said the policy is important to them.’ (from the New York Times)