Family (which is prioritized before government) and religion (which lies above it) are the two great obstacles to an all-encompassing State. For more than a century, ruling regimes have implemented policies that undermine both.
Contraception, abortion, no-fault divorce, same-sex “marriage”, and an alphabet soup of aggrieved deviants are among the relentless brigades suppressing births.
From central banks, diluted dollars diminish future-orientation. Flabby with the empty calories of fiat money, few in the West plan beyond next Wednesday. Insecurity rises as savings suffer and wealth erodes. Reduced purchasing power delays marriage and defers maternity, perhaps permanently.
Potential parents are urged to “wait till they’re ready”, as if that moment ever really arrives. There’s almost always some reason to postpone having kids. As often as not, the best time is “now”.
Additionally, under the warped influences of our narcissistic age, couples are discouraged from (or chastised for) wanting to bring children into this “rotten world”… as if we weren’t living in the easiest era to ever be alive.
Much of the phenomenon of fruitlessness derives from our high time-preference society. Family and faith, Church and children, are intrinsically long-term, low time-preference endeavors reaching beyond the realm of our earthly lives.
Multi-generational families were once required not only to help raise infants, but to care for elders. With the advent of state-run medical “insurance” and Ponzi “pension” schemes, children are perceived as less necessary to prospective parents who now expect to be supported by frayed nets until they die.
For decades, women have been subtly coaxed to have fewer kids. And many men are urged to avoid marriage as a pointless endeavor doomed to fail.
Artificial contraception…once broadly considered abhorrent…is now taken for granted, and actively encouraged. The pill, initially lauded as a capsule of “liberation”, has become the suicide tablet of a decadent West.
Abortion, universally reviled till late last century, is widely accepted as a licit way to “terminate a pregnancy.” Meanwhile, most countries that once comprised Christendom have legitimized relationships from which conception is impossible.