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To the childless West, I say: You don’t know what you’re missing

The capacity of Americans to produce babies crashed to a record low in 2025.

Just in time for Mother’s Day, the CDC has published a report showing the total US fertility rate falling below 1.6 births per woman of reproductive age.

That’s a 1% decline from 2024 and a 23% drop since 2007 — and far below the 2.1 births per woman needed just to keep our population stable.

As with so many other aspects of contemporary life, we seem to have offshored the manufacture of human beings.

There should be nothing startling or unusual about this trend. It’s in line with the expressed opinions of large swaths of the great American public.

According to a 2024 poll, the share of American adults under 50 who have sworn off the messy business of reproduction increased from 37% in 2018 to 47% in 2023.

‘Anchor babies’ reach nearly 10% of all US births: new data

Young American homebuyers are snatching up this thriving area of the US

China is facing a demographic bomb— and it could handcuff Beijing’s ambitions

In an even more remarkable finding, only 48% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 think raising a family is a particularly important life goal.

A majority of young people, it would appear, have discovered more important things to do than bring children into the world.

Yet the revolt against making babies isn’t a uniquely American development. It’s global, and has had the most radical effect in the wealthiest countries.

South Korea’s fertility rate, for example, is 0.8 children per woman.

That’s a statistic, a mere number — but the implications are large and troubling.

Capitalist economies are predicated on continued growth driven by growing populations.

Will the economy collapse along with the population?

Retirement pensions depend on a large number of young workers paying for a much smaller number of retirees. In South Korea, that demographic pyramid has now inverted.

A war of the generations, with the old always outnumbering the young, may be fought over diminishing resources.

The most unpredictable consequences of infertility, however, are human rather than economic.

Toxic media treat kids as luxury goods — and are destroying us

Consider: children born under South Korean conditions will lack not just siblings but cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Each child will feel like a thin thread of life groping through the spreading darkness of........

© New York Post