Fewer Existential Crises, More Babies

For quite some time, I’ve been dabbler in what is broadly called “the bioanthropology blogosphere.” It’s one of the Internet’s strangest most provocative corners—abounding with intellectual polymaths, ideological singletons, and, very disconcertingly, more than a few unreconstructed racists. Its cast of characters, endowed with a flair for the interdisciplinary, have supplied me with both an obsession with historical population genetics and a thesis topic in intellectual history.

What binds together a good majority of bioanthro writers, from the sloppiest to the most precise, is a cultural-political identification with the secular Right. Their atheism and belief in evolution sets them apart from their fellow conservatives (only 37 percent of whom admitted in 2005 to believing in evolution); their wariness of universalistic humanism and persistent consideration of evolution as an explanatory variable in human behavior sets them apart from secular liberals.

Despite certain sympathies, I don’t identify as a member of this camp. Nonetheless, I very much value many of its critiques of baseless liberal globalist conventional wisdom—such as the claim, advanced decade after decade, that the world is becoming overpopulated. By now, mainstream outlets yielded to complicating the myth: if you read, you now know that Italy, Russia, and the Ukraine are on the verge of shrinking. In Japan, well-heeled “herbivorous” men and women are dragging the population growth rate into negative territory. But breathe easy, they write: by first-world standards, America is as fecund as you’d want it to be.

What they haven’t told you, and what you need to know, is that secular liberal American families are going the way of the Ukrainian too, if the trend lines are to be trusted.

When fellow culturally liberal male friends admit that they’re not sure they want to have children at all, I shudder, scarcely able to relate. I want three or four or five, and strong ones. “How could I give them what they need?” they despair. As long as you’re not raising them in a state of utter deprivation, the science is clear: Your children will not want for anything essential.

Secular liberals, male and female, I urge you: fewer existential crises, more babies.

You will probably dismiss my preference for a large family as selfish: He wants more of of himself in the world—what a selfish egomaniac! (This, by the way, is the default drive state of premodern people around the world. We are creatures, remember.) But is there not something decadently selfish about not wanting children in the way? (And if it’s about overpopulation, you’re empirically wrong.) Religious conservatives, best typified by the Duggars and Haredi Jews, are held back from such vicious patterns of self-imposed infertility by leaning on celestial ideologies that ban birth control, place a divine mandate on maximum fertility, and chasten against excessive individual indulgence.

In case you’ve forgotten my cultural liberalism, I remind you that I don’t recommend a backslide into religious atavism. Where I’m impressed with my ultra-Orthodox brethren’s reproductive ends, I’m not seduced by their means for a second. Put another way, we need a 21st-century reproductive ideology that makes room for birth control, gender egalitarianism, and cultural flexibility, while placing a premium on purposeful child-rearing and family happiness. In other words, there’s no reason in our century why two moms can’t have four kids, or why Mr. Jones can’t raise a roost of half a dozen while Mrs. Jones does mergers and acquisitions.

And no, it’s not economically impossible to defy the demographic transition into oblivion. Consider Israel:through a decades’ long program encouraging reproduction and a positivistic cultural proclivity, the East Mediterranean country has pulled ahead of the entire OECD and many of its regional neighbors in terms of fertility. With secular, religious, and Arab Israelis all on average fertile above the replacement level, Israel—its per capita GDP circa $30,000—boasts a total fertility rate of 3 per woman, as opposed to comparably wealthy Italy’s 1.41 and Spain’s 1.36.

This is not to say that the Israeli model is purely transferrable: we have neither the specter of genocide hanging over our heads nor a government insensitive enough to phrase policy in terms of “demographic threats.” But more than most out there, we have the resources, the space, and the cultural pride to alter the course—even if New York’s comfortable 30-somethings never manage to fully close the gap with Utah’s modest barely-legals. If you’re still not convinced, lie back and think of a post-Tea Party Congress. And then do something about it. America will be a more tolerant, creative place thanks to your efforts.

Joshua B. Lipson ’14, a Crimson editorial writer, is a Near Eastern languages and civilizations concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Mondays. Follow him on Twitter @Josh_Lipson.