All over the world, birthrates are down. In the developed world, birthrates are falling well below replacement level. Even in the developing world, due to increased access to contraception and improved infant mortality, birthrates have fallen substantially. In some ways this should be good news. The world is overpopulated; as the Dalai Lama says, “The world has too many precious human beings.” Lower birthrates do partly reflect the empowerment of women who choose work or career outside of traditional child-rearing roles—a positive sign. And a recent headline story in the New York Times reported that 30-40% of the birthrate decline in the U.S. can be attributed to less births among teenagers and other groups less able to care for a child. The story quotes experts in the field who think of this as a positive development.
However, there is a shadow side to this trend, one that is not mentioned as often in the news, and that is a sense of foreboding or depression about the future that young people feel. Having a family and raising children is a huge commitment of time and energy, and psychologically, couples who wish to raise children (including LGBT couples) need to have some vision and optimism about the future—a sense that a sane, rational, supportive world will continue to exist for children to grow up in. Increasingly that sense is getting harder to find.
People of child-rearing age (some surveys say up to 70%) are also quite worried about their job prospects, especially with AI and workplace robots looming. There are other troubling signs; for example in Japan two-thirds of marriages or partnerships are sexless or nearly so. Why? Articles on this subject mention the long, exhausting hours people work, the lack of social support such as childcare for women with children, and the fact that when a Japanese woman becomes pregnant she often faces forces preventing her from returning to her previous career. And the problem is becoming extreme. Both Japan and Korea have such low fertility rates (1.15 and 0.68 respectively, far below the replacement level of 2.1) that in those countries there is serious concern that at some point their societies and countries might actually disappear.
In a related dimension of concern, there is a world-wide decline in male fertility—a 60-70% decline since 1970. No-one is quite sure what is causing this, but theories include environmental pollution, poor lifestyle habits such as alcoholism and drug addiction, and even climate change. Will this decline in fertility continue to drop? No-one knows, but in a reproductive doomsday scenario male fertility could drop to near zero, threatening the survival of the species.
We are living in the world of unbelievably rapid political, social, and technological change—undoubtedly the most rapid in all our history. It is nearly impossible to keep up with all the news; stories about birthrates, male fertility, anxiety about the future among young people and similar issues don’t often make the headlines, but my intuition tells me that these issues are among the most consequential and important. Children are the future. If there are fewer and fewer children, does that mean that at some subconscious level humanity as a whole is coming to doubt it has a meaningful future? Individuals who conclude that they have no meaningful future are frequently driven to take their own lives, seeing no point in continuing. Is something like that beginning to happen at a collective, planetary level?
Once, after a lecture, Shunryu Suzuki, my Buddhist teacher, was asked, “If war or disease destroys all of humanity, what will happen to Buddhism?”
Without hesitating he replied, “It will continue.”
I have puzzled over that reply for many years. Did he mean that even though human beings would be gone, other forms of life would continue? Did he mean that the ultimate truths that Buddhism teaches will endure regardless of our presence or absence? Was he expressing his deep, personal abiding faith and optimism in Buddhism and its teachings come what may? I still don’t know, but his clear, quiet voice as he answered the question still inspires me.
There was a time during the last ice age when the human population of planet earth was reduced to a few scattered bands. That is one reason that scientists can say that based on DNA analysis all people today are descended from the same few blood lines, or even a single Ur-mother like the fossil Lucy. Humanity could have easily become extinct during that time, but it didn’t. It appears that we were lucky. Maybe in today’s world we might be lucky again. What seems true today—that birthrates are down, that young people are frightened and confused, that pollution or plastic is driving male fertility down—may not be true tomorrow.
What is clear is that the old ways are dying, intact communities are breaking apart, civility is crumbling, and rapid technological and societal change is making our heads spin. The overarching planetary threat of climate change trumps everything, and a feeling of helplessness about that engulfs all our thinking. Even for couples who forge a marriage bond and aspire to have children, how can they focus on raising a family when there may not be a world for children to grow up in?
In the face of all that is happening I choose to be an optimist because, I think, it is a better and more satisfying way to live. Maybe that’s what my teacher meant when he said, “It will continue.” Perhaps he said it because in some small way to say that something will continue helps that possibility to come into being—even more so if thousands or millions say it.
As long as we can speak, we should speak. As long as we can believe, we should believe. As long as we can breathe, and can love, we should breathe and love. That is what children are, in essence, the outcome of our breathing and loving together.
I read the news, but I don’t read it too much. I want, after all, to be able to breathe.
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