The Cultural Impacts Of Growing Singlehood And Childlessness

Pat Buchanan wrote The Death of the West in 2001. Chapter Two was titled “Where Have All the Children Gone?”

Five years later, Mark Steyn wrote “America Alone,” which also examined falling birthrates in the West. This year, Ross Douthat wrote in the New York Times about America’s falling birthrates.

Buchanan worried about the erosion of Western, Christian culture. Steyn worried mostly about our public pension systems, which depend on every generation being bigger than the one before. Douthat worried about the moral character, the “decadence” that is a cause and a result of widespread childlessness. All of arguments have points I agree with and ones I disagree with. It’s an important topic that much of our media avoids delving deeply into.
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