Suddenly, a demographic winter is upon us. We have seen it coming for decades. However, the effects of this population implosion are now starting to unfold. Nation after nation reports low birth rates and aging populations.
No country is exempt from its devastation. The lack of children is starting to have grave economic and political consequences. Soon, nations will no longer be able to maintain their governing structures, keep their economies going or provide for the common defense. Some countries even face extinction.
It is a frightening perspective because the crisis seems to have reached a tipping point. This sudden predicament has caught us unaware. We thought there was time to take measures against it. Now, the problem evades resolution and definition.
The situation is especially catastrophic because attempts to slow down the process have been ineffective. No amount of monetary incentives seems to be enough to change people’s minds about having children, even in more traditional societies. Efforts to highlight the joys of family life have fallen flat. This crisis is also voluntary and self-imposed. Countless women and couples seem intent on remaining childless.1
The universality of the crisis points to something beyond economic systems, ethnic identity or other socio-political factors. It points to a universal element affecting all humanity that causes this willed sterility that runs so contrary to our human nature.
Looking for Causes
Of course, scholars cite many reasons for the crisis. Many young people, for example, point to the financial challenges they face, such as student debt, inflation or high barriers to home ownership. These financial obstacles do exist and can be quite formidable. No one denies this reality.
However, many who choose childlessness are actually in better financial shape than their parents were at the same age. Historically, the poorest, not the richest, sectors of the population often have the most children. Indeed, some poorer nations still have birthrates above replacement levels. Lack of money alone cannot explain the dearth of children.
Others cite climate change and political instability as their reasons. They claim they do not wish to bring children into a world of uncertainty and suffering. However, past generations have never let the danger of catastrophes stop them from having families. Indeed, many children born under the most hostile circumstances later flourish and lead successful lives. Adversity often serves to build character and make children better.
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Still others look inward and reflect upon the brokenness of their childhoods, fraught with abuse, divorce and trauma.2 They do not wish to impose existence upon their possible children without some guarantee that the same experiences would not repeat themselves. Fear and uncertainty weigh heavily on this sector, which is often disconnected from traditional anchors of certainty, such as family, community and religion.
Then there is also pure selfishness by which individuals decide not to have children because it interrupts their careers or lives of pleasure. They live inside subcultures of similar individuals. They prefer not to be troubled by this interruption in their lives and readily admit their desire to be not childless but intentionally child-free.
Common Characteristics
No single reason entirely explains the population crisis. However, all the non-parents cited above have some common characteristics stemming from a radical individualist mentality.
These people look to the family as something to opt into, not a default from which they might opt out. They have turned the decision of having a child into a choice like any other. They feel they have no social or moral obligations to the past or future. They no longer want or consider children as blessings that extend their existence and legacy into the future.
That is to say, a major paradigm shift has occurred that questions our fundamental premises about childbearing held from time immemorial.
The Modern Individualist Outlook
This reluctance to reproduce differs from the beginning of the modern epoch, when some people avoided or limited the number of children to indulge in material selfishness or an inordinate desire to enjoy life.
These individuals might be called “modern individualists.” They focused more on themselves than on the community. However, they still participated in a social community that recognized a need for perpetuation since population growth makes material prosperity possible. These modernists still benefited from a society with children.
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However, they are also responsible for our crisis. These individualists rallied under the banner of liberalism, undermining the society in which they lived. The acids of modern individualism and liberalism gradually corroded the external structures of tradition, custom, family and community that stood in the way of those pursuing their self-interest.
In terms of the family, this liberal mentality diminished the desire for childbearing, made parenthood something that was “planned” and minimized family commitments.
Transitioning to a Postmodern Individualism
The postmodern individualism that emerged from the Sixties Revolution offers a different perspective toward life and its reproduction.
This postmodern revolution cannot be understood in modern terms. It refuses to allow itself to be defined by rationalist standards. Thus, we are bewildered when seeking to understand its role in our population crisis.
This new postmodern individualism is an extension and radicalization of what came before. Not content with attacking external structures, it destroys those internal structures—logic, identity or unity—that impede instant gratification. It calls into question the fundamentals of being and existence.3
This mentality disconnects with everything that is most basic. It replaces our rationalism with surface sentiments. If modernity atomized society, postmodernity split the atom.
A Shallowness, Full of Emotions and Feelings
Thus, people try in vain to look for deep philosophical or psychological reasons that might give us some clue as to how to interpret our population dilemma.
Our postmodernity resists all efforts to delve deeply into problems. It stays on the surface of things, dwelling in simulacra rather than actual reality. It hides in a pastiche of many, even contradictory, expressions without adopting a specific style. Those who search long and hard for meaning only find shallowness.
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This shallowness immerses us in a world of emotions, impressions and feelings that trumps any profound considerations beyond ourselves. We throw ourselves passionately into these surface sentiments that consume, absorb and refuse to extend beyond our subjectivity.
The Destruction of Narratives
Without logic, identity and unity as a guide, everything falls apart. Consistent with postmodernity’s attack on the most basic qualities of the self is its destruction of the narratives we use to explain ourselves. Traditionally, we defined ourselves within the framework of a story, even a family story, to give meaning and purpose to our lives. This narrative relies upon a past and calls forth a future.
These narratives extend outward to other institutions, communities and nations. These links propose something greater than self and impose obligations.
The Postmodern Disconnection
French postmodernist Jean-François Lyotard, in his 1979 book The Postmodern Condition, declared an end to the concepts of eighteenth-century scientific rationalism that made possible today’s industrial and capitalist society.4
Above all, he targeted the “grand narratives” or metanarratives that speak of historical progress and affirm concepts of universal moral value and objective truth within a rationalist and Western framework.
A metanarrative is defined as “a grand, overarching story or framework that claims to provide a comprehensive, universal explanation for various aspects of human experience, history, and knowledge.”5
Historical metanarratives—like those of the Catholic Church, Christianity, the Enlightenment or the West—deal with broad and fulfilling notions of the meaning and purpose of life. These grand stories incite in us the desire to prolong our existence in others.
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These metanarratives all require much effort to maintain, promote and strengthen. They call for the constant work of generations to construct the canons of learning, manners, customs and laws. Within this framework, the arduous duty of prolonging ourselves is a logical conclusion, a continual challenge and even a sacred duty.
The Acids of Postmodernity
The acids of postmodernity are destroying the notions of self and our narratives. Today, only fragments of our narratives remain, and they lack sufficient context to ensure continuity. They appear as meaningless, oppressive structures that the postmodern faithful resent and abandon.
Social media further shatters these narratives, presenting a shallow micro-vision of reality. These idealized micro-narratives do not include children, as everything is centered on the self and on the here and now. These autonomous micro-narratives do not allow non-autonomous beings to emerge from them. Those few children born inside these micro-narratives survive without context; they are lost and forsaken. There is no framework of a grand metanarrative to collect and give them context and meaning.
A Revolution of Little Dynamism
We might expect a radical change of this magnitude to be the work of impassioned revolutionaries intent on overthrowing the system. Thus, it may be easier to identify and combat them.
This revolution did have its radicals, who appeared in the sixties and served as catalysts for cultural change. However, these figures faded away without descendants.
In general, the methodology of this cultural revolution of fragments is to spread slowly, imperceptibly and contagiously by decay, inertia and torpor. To use a metaphor of Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, it “conquers and overthrows everything with all the nonchalance of a smiling Buddha.”6
Thus, those who refuse childbearing do not organize as radicals in large ecological or social movements. They have no rational framework, which is consistent with their postmodern roots.
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This revolution against civilization is the least dynamic yet most pervasive of all modern revolutions. It has no great rebels or imagined heroes that perpetuate its myths, as it hates the very idea of heroes and myths. Its attitudes are defined negatively by its lack of desire, aversion to risk, indifference to existence and fear of failure. It only finds satisfaction in its fleeting experience of what lies on the surface.
The Human Extinction Movement
Such attitudes naturally lead to nihilism. In the population field, we note the human extinction movement. These anti-humanists hold that the only real solution for the Earth is the eventual elimination of humanity.
It can show no passion because it seeks to rid itself of all passions. It can record no memory of great deeds since it deems all human actions toxic and harmful. Its activism consists of random acts of destruction and obstruction. Its adherents reduce humanity to soulless beings that are nothing but organized data, and life is the interactions of natural algorithms.7
One prominent anti-humanist author is David Benatar, who wrote a book expressively titled Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. He claims giving birth is morally wrong and thus calls for abortion, suicide and euthanasia. He takes the postmodern urge to emptiness to its most radical consequences.
A Passion for the Trivial
Inside the narrow confines of soulless existence, the only passions left to the postmodernists are for those shallow, intense yet fleeting feelings and emotions that cause sensation.
Gone are the times of the grand or luxurious passions that required fortunes, commitment…and narratives.
In their place are delights for the trivial and insignificant, accessible to everyone. The shallowness of postmodernity does not diminish the intensity of its fleeting emotions on the most trivial objects; it concentrates them. It is a world of dopamine fixes, drug-addled mystical worlds or equivalent stimulants to keep people returning for more shallowness and away from any commitment to the future.
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This shallowness participates in a spirit of frenetic intemperance that seeks to remove the few restraints that keep us from liberating our emotions.8
Indeed, the shallower the emotion, the more passionate the attachment. The more trivial the target, the more intense the focus on obtaining it.
Rousseau’s Confession
We can quote Jean-Jacques Rousseau commenting on his all-consuming yet shallow life. The eighteenth-century philosopher was known for his celebration of the atomistic, autonomous self, immersed in emotions without commitments.
This quote helps us understand what happens to those who give themselves over to this shallow world, especially in our day, when culture and technology magnify this shallowness. This attitude helps explain the mystery of our population crisis.
Commenting on his life of pleasures and intemperance, he claims:
“The sword wears out its sheath, as is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possession of Helen, or of the throne of the Universe, had been at stake.”9
A Culture of Self Without Commitment
Our postmodern culture carries this subtle Rousseauian message of self-absorption. It tells youth: Live your passions without sacrifice or effort. There is no need for great pleasures. Seek rather the “trifles” from the mediocrity that surrounds you. However, make these “childish things” the objects of existential desire. Let nothing, not even a small child, come between you and them.
This call to triviality is reflected in generations that fail to grow up and lack ambition. Significant numbers from among the younger generations live with their parents or friends. They avoid the marriage commitment, play video games, post on social media, harbor addictions and put off the responsibilities of adulthood and parenthood to later or never.
Contributing Factors
This flight from meaning is not exclusively the fault of young people. After all, they were handed down fragments of culture without context or meaning. They no longer find support in their families, now broken, or their Faith, which is seldom taught. They have no roots to anchor themselves amid the shredded confetti of meta-narratives that our postmodernity provides.
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They are further mired in the habits of immaturity prevalent in modern education, which make it harder for them to have the will and discipline to move toward goals. Thus, they are stuck, unable to move forward, afraid to make commitments, and willing to bypass what was once taken as a given—children.
Indeed, our once-vibrant secular and liberal society lies exhausted with little more to offer. It has reached the extremes of its intemperance. Having no grandiose designs to offer, it now offers what little remains in a post-liberal world.10 Today’s generations have become Facebook and TikTok trivial, enmeshed in an anti-narrative that is difficult to escape.
A Lack of Narrative or History
Postmodernity produces societies without narratives, individuals without histories and existence without meaning.
In his masterly work, Revolution and Counterrevolution, Catholic thinker and man of action Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira writes: “Contemporary man does not know what he is, where he comes from, or where he is going; he does not know how to orient himself, neither to command nor to obey, to pray, to suffer, or to die.”11
Within this general picture of listlessness, childbearing loses its purpose. There is little to be perpetuated, nothing to be remembered and everything to be forgotten.
A Tipping Point
Such observations do not mean that all society follows this horrendous anti-narrative. However, we have reached a tipping point where significant numbers worldwide have entered this dark Rousseauian descent into passionate shallowness.
It has reached a point of critical mass, changing the entire culture and dominating key areas of human activity. Even those who reject postmodernity are forced to acknowledge its powerful influence.
For example, once people accept the postmodern notion of a family by defining it as a union of whatever, the family and its fruits are destroyed. In its place is a mere coupling of individuals without goals or purpose. This gives rise to the death spiral of today’s abysmal birthrates, and no amount of money can reverse the trend.
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Thus, postmodernity is the default choice for so many things. It insinuates itself at all levels and in all modes of society. Inside its message lies the will to break with the past and look to the future. Hence comes the tragic reluctance to reproduce.
Reasons for Hope
Such generalizations might seem excessive and without nuance. Thus, we must qualify these conclusions with some clarifications.
Not all youth follow this sorrowful path. Some have managed to break free from the bonds of shallow mediocrity by embracing the remnants of stability found in family, community, and faith. They continue to procreate, although in such reduced numbers that their efforts cannot reverse the overall downward trend. These brave souls suffer from the pressure of a liberal establishment and a postmodern culture that ridicules their commitments and undermines their values.
We might also mention another trend that mitigates the effects of the postmodern denial of reality. When properly exposed to tradition’s beauty and meaning, an increasing number of youths are expressing yearnings for a past narrative that they knew. They will follow it with a passion.
The evidence is overwhelmingly reflected in the number of conversions to the Catholic Faith among young people, especially young men, worldwide. Their testimonies tell of a longing for transcendence and authenticity that leads away from postmodern shallowness. This opening to tradition and religion fills the existential void and banishes the acedia that haunts the newer generations.12
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All of these developments are occasions for hope, not discouragement. They are points of light amid the darkness. They reflect our unchanging human nature that is attracted to the good, true and beautiful despite attempts of those who vainly hope to change that nature with their unnatural and demonic ideologies.
They give testimony to the action of God’s grace. These attractions affirm our connection to a transcendent God Who desires our sanctification and salvation more than we do.
Looking Outside the Postmodern Box
We cannot view postmodernity as a purely natural phenomenon without any connection to supernatural causes. Today’s refusal to procreate is so contrary to human nature that it presupposes forces at work that employ powerful means to overcome the strong instincts and drives that have assured the survival of humanity throughout history. The goal of human extinction cannot be more contrary to what it means to be human.
Thus, this offensive cannot be ascribed to the momentum of Rousseauian trifles and unbridled yet shallow passions. To have such a universal and simultaneous impact upon such diverse nations, there must be a superior and intelligent cause to orchestrate this offensive against fertility.
We must see a religious dimension to the problem that extends beyond our human nature. The nihilistic will to non-being reflects a revolt against the Creator by those who hate Christianity and its ennobling influence on humanity. Inside this perspective can be discerned the Satanic cry of “non serviam” that echoed in the heavens during the revolt of the fallen angels against God.
We must think, therefore, outside the postmodern box if we are to oppose this distorted demonic vision of humanity.
A Catholic Concept of What It Means to Be Human
The only way to fight this vision effectively is to promote the Catholic conception of humanity, which holds that each individual has an immortal soul, created in God’s image and likeness, and an eternal destiny. When this concept of man is upheld, every human life is precious and must be defended. Each new human being gives a unique and special glory to God and is, therefore, a blessing. We exalt in the happiness of giving birth since it represents a new addition to God’s plan.
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The debate around the population implosion cannot be oblivious to the fight between these two conflicting visions of humanity—one heavenly and supernatural, the other hellish and demonic. We cannot assume a neutral or liberal position in the face of adversaries who clearly oppose the Divine Plan for humanity. Such an attitude will only end in defeat since we will be fighting on the turf of a sinister adversary who will have all the advantages.
The Catholic Church Has Solutions
The need to have recourse to supernatural aid is made more urgent because the rejection of childbearing has reached the tipping point. Naturally speaking, many nations are reaching the point of no return, calling to mind the annihilation of many nations prophesied by Our Lady at Fatima in 1917.13 The situation will not be reversed unless a superior force of disproportional strength intervenes.
The Catholic Church is uniquely suited to deal with this postmodern crisis, which is, above all, an existential crisis questioning our most basic premises.
The Church’s rich Magisterium is filled with doctrinal treasures that address the existential doubts of our times. She gives certainty to those who are suffocating in doubt. She radiates beauty to fill the postmodern void. She proposes moral goodness to give meaning to our actions.
To overcome the weakness of our human nature and Rousseauian passions, the Church brings grace, which is the created participation in the uncreated life of God. This grace enlightens our intellect, strengthens our will and tempers our passions so that we become capable of doing things that go beyond our human nature.
Reconstructing Narratives
Throughout her history, the Church has taken pagan peoples without narratives and appended them onto a Divine narrative. By this action, assisted by grace, the Church elevated these peoples to be part of her Mystical Body, enabling them to do all things in Him Who strengthens them (see Phil. 4:13).
Thus, the Divine Redeemer invited the diverse peoples to overcome their inertia and the torpor of their defeated wills. Against all expectations, Christ rescued them from the ravages of sin and elevated them to become children of God and joint heirs with Him of the Heavenly Kingdom.
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We face a similar impasse today with the population implosion catastrophe. It is not caused by economic obstacles or political fears. It will only be resolved when we address the religious and moral issues that give meaning and purpose to life and reason for begetting children.
Alas, the ideal of the mother must be restored. The will to sterility will be changed by the Virgin Mother who gave birth to the Word Incarnate. She became the archetype for all mothers and our mother as well. She will overcome this great danger if we place our trust in her.
First published on TFP.org.
Photo Credit: © Stewart – stock.adobe.com
Footnotes
- See Eduardo Porter, “Why Solving the Baby Bust Is So Difficult,” The Washington Post, June 10, 2025.
- See Michal Leibowitz, “There’s a Link Between Therapy Culture and Childlessness,” The New York Times, May 30, 2025.
- See Chapter 12, “Postmodern Individualism: Splitting the Atom,” in John Horvat II, Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society—Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here and Where We Need to Go, (York, Pa.: York Press, 2013), 83–86.
- See Jean-François Lyotard, La condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (Paris: Minuit, 1979).
- Becky Bahr, ed., “Metanarrative—Intro to Philosophy,” Fiveable.me, 2024, accessed June 24, 2025, https://fiveable.me/key-terms/intro-philosophy/metanarrative.
- Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Medical Commission meeting, May 12, 1991, Corrêa de Oliveira Documents.
- In his 2023 book, Adam Kirsch summarizes the human extinction movement’s nihilistic foundations. A most important premise is the denial of the soul. He states:
First, we know that the human mind has a completely material basis. There is no intangible soul or spirit that occupies our bodies; the experience of being an “I” is produced by chemical-electrical processes in the brain.
This thoroughgoing materialism is still resisted by most religious believers, but science has known it for a long time. . . . There is no metaphysical gulf between human and animal, or between animate and inanimate matter; the only difference has to do with how matter is organized. (Adam Kirsch, The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us [New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2023], accessed June 24, 2025, https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/adam-kirsch-the-revolt-against-humanity.)
- See Horvat, Return to Order, 15–21.
- J. M. Cohen, trans., The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd, 1953), 209, accessed June 24, 2025, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.507435/mode/2up.
- Many now recognize the failure of liberalism to satisfy our eternal desires. Books like Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed triggered a flood of post-liberal literature that explores alternatives.
- Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 2nd ed. (New Rochelle, N.Y.: The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, 1980), 25.
- See Madeleine Kearns, “How Catholicism Got Cool,” The Free Press, June 4, 2025.
- See Luiz Sérgio Solimeo, Fatima: A Message More Urgent Than Ever (Spring Grove, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, 2008), 50.