...The family, then, is the social unit that makes us the most successful mammal ever created. To it we owe our primacy in stable, coherent communities and in larger units such as tribes and nations.
Why then are we allowing it to collapse?
Throughout the civilized world human populations are decreasing. The replacement rate for almost all developed societies is inadequate. The world birth rate has decreased dramatically from 37.8 per 1,000 women to 32.6 in 1970 and then 17.5 in 2020, 17.3 in 2025. In America the birth rate has declined from 24.8 in1950 to 18.4 in 1970 and 10.9 in 2020 and 10.7 in 2025. Most people do not want families, or any but small families. Add to this the decline in people who are even getting married, which has declined worldwide for the last 50 years and is down to under 5 marriages per 1000 people in developed countries; in the U.S. from 8.2 per thousand in 2000 to 6.8 in 2010 and 6.1 in 2023, the lowest ever recorded.
The family, in short, is disappearing.
Obviously without fathers children can easily drift to crime, and the correlation between fatherless boys and illegality is nearly absolute. But the effect on many other aspects of society is also palpable and deplorable, and there is no sign that this is going to change with a Trumpian anti-crime government in charge.
I’ve said for some time that Western civilization is collapsing. The dolorous status of the family nowadays, that most basic unit in primate superiority, is proof of its immediacy.
