An essay appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal under the headline “What Happens When a Whole Generation Never Grows Up?”
Behavior that has always been understood to define what it means to be an adult is disappearing among America’s younger generations.
Institutions always seen as the sinews that define and hold together a society – homeownership, marriage, children – no longer can be taken for granted.
Per the essay, median age for first-time homebuyers is at an all-time high: 38. In 1981, it was 29.
Around half of Americans between 30 and 40 are married, compared to two-thirds in 1990.
Fertility rates – the average number of children that each woman of childbearing age can be expected to bring forth – is at a level that guarantees an aging, shrinking society.
A fertility rate of an average of 2.1 children per woman will keep a population at steady state. Below this, the population shrinks.
The fertility rate stood at 1.62 in 2023. It only reached 2.1 once since 1971 – in 2007.
Per the Pew Research Center, as noted in the essay, “The share of childless adults under 50 who say they are unlikely to ever have kids” rose from 37% in 2018 to 47% in 2023.
If all of this doesn’t offend your moral sensibilities, it should for sure offend your practical sensibilities.
Absence of births means an aging population. Median age of the U.S. was 29.5 in 1960. In 2023, it was 39.2.
The aging population is one major reason for Social Security’s fiscal problems. Retiree benefits are paid by those working and paying payroll tax. The system breaks down when the number of retirees per worker grows.
An aging population means higher national health care costs. In 2021, the percent of the population 55 and above was 31%. But those 55 and above accounted for 56% of national health care expenditures.
If the disappearance of marriage, children, families and home ownership is a problem, is there a solution?
The Wall Street Journal essay has little to offer. To suggest this reflects that the financial pressure that our youth feel is no answer.
For the full decade of the Great Depression, from 1930 to 1940, fertility rates never dropped below the 2.1 replacement rate.
It is closer to the truth that our young people act this way because they have grown up in a culture that teaches them to act this way.
Marriage and monogamy are not natural. They are religious values that are taught. In a culture that has purged religious truth, egotism and secular humanism take its place. Why let a spouse or children impinge on your personal space?
A legacy of the now late President Jimmy Carter was the creation of two new federal Cabinet-level departments. He signed into law the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.
Apparently, Carter, who was very public about his Christian faith, did not see a conflict in growing government and his Christian values. But as is well-known, the Department of Education initiative was, at least in part, the result of his effort to ingratiate and get support from the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association.
A short visit to the websites of the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers – the major teachers unions – will show that the values being advanced there are the wokeism and secular humanism that drive the collapse of marriage, family and children. It is these values that are conveyed in America’s public schools.
Step one in our battle against this social and cultural destruction is to support President-elect Donald Trump’s effort to disband the Department of Education.
Step two should be a nationwide effort to change our education paradigm and create a new regime that gives parents control over where to educate and how to educate their children.
