Birth rates are falling everywhere. Most analysts cite the material causes for the lack of babies. Economic hardship, insufficient childcare and political uncertainty are all cited as the reasons people don’t want to have children.
Those with a materialist mindset cannot conceive of any other reasons. Thus, they propose more government benefits, tax breaks and child support programs that they hope will turn the tide. While such programs might slightly increase birth rates, they usually do not have the major impact needed to avoid demographic meltdowns. They are also extremely expensive.
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Sadly, no one wants to consider the spiritual reasons or solutions that might help increase the birth rate.
Admitting the Religious Factor
A few analysts will admit that religion is a factor in increasing birth rates. The facts show very clearly that the more secular a society, the lower the birth rate. A growing body of evidence is surfacing that leaves no doubt that those who go to Church regularly, especially Catholics, have more babies.
However, those secular analysts who admit these facts insist upon seeing them through the materialist prism. They conclude that the Church’s religious parishes and communities provide families with the material needs that are lacking.
Parishes are reduced to safety nets and support networks that make it easier for parents to cope with more children. In other words, the Church does what the government should be doing, and it does it cheaply.
The Church’s Social Benefits
The Catholic Church, for example, used to supply nuns who ran schools and hospitals. Family Economist Kasey Backles told Newsweek magazine that “When the number of nuns declined dramatically in Europe in the latter half of the twentieth century, the hospitals, schools and family support services that those nuns provided disappeared, and this led to a big decrease in fertility among European Catholics.”
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The materialist perspective also recognizes the social benefits of religion as a factor for increased fertility among churchgoers.
Demographer Lyman Stone, director of the Institute of Family Studies’s Pronatalism Initiative, affirmed that “Religious community is very helpful for parents, reducing the burden of parenting, providing role models of large families and helping parents exchange ideas and practices.”
For the materialist analysts, the solution lies in creating “enabling environments” where people feel secure in having children. It is all about financial security, not parental love.
Spiritual Considerations Neglected
No one wants to consider that spiritual considerations might be the only way to increase fertility and birth rates. Raising a child has always been expensive and is becoming ever more so. However, parenting is never a purely financial decision.
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The Catholic Church has always provided the greatest incentive for having children that far outshines anything that modern materialism can propose.
The Church holds that each child has a soul with an eternal destiny. Every human being is made in God’s image and likeness. Each child exists to know, love and serve God in this life and be happy with Him in the next.
Parents who love God realize that their children can give glory to God if raised well. For this reason, they endeavor to have many children and provide meaning and purpose to those given to their care. They trust in God’s Providence to provide for the family. Their aim is not only to provide for their material needs but to aid in their children’s sanctification—and their own. The goal is heaven, not earth.
The Church Values Children to Advance God’s Glory
For this reason, the Church supplies all the magnificent material resources admired by the secularists. Its safety nets and networks are oriented toward securing this spiritual goal of giving God glory. She supplies role models in the saints. All this takes place in an atmosphere of charity where everyone gives freely to obtain this common goal. In such an atmosphere, everything becomes possible.
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The Church has always valued children because she is solicitous for their souls. Pagan cultures (like postmodern society) do not believe in souls, and give children no value and thus promote abortion and infanticide.
To increase the birth rate, the solution is to look upward, toward these spiritual truths. Then, people will overcome the obstacles that bring birth rates down.
First published on TFP.org.
Photo Credit: © Yakobchuk Olena – stock.adobe.com