The new childless

A few years ago, when Matthew was a baby, the three of us went to Rome. Had a great time. The Italians made a fuss everywhere about Matthew, who was two and a half at the time. It was pretty much a cliche, actually, effusive Italians fussing over the bambino. It was unsettling, though, to see how few Italian babies there were on the street. You could see things like Prada babywear for sale, which sounds insane (and is insane), but hey, if you only have one child, you might well have the money for that sort of indulgence.

Well, Newsweek has a story out saying that this is a big global trend, and that even some Roman restaurants won't let you bring in children:

In Greece, as in much of the world, having kids is no longer a given among a growing swath of the population. "Never before has childlessness been a legitimate option for women and men in so many societies," says Catherine Hakim, who studies the phenomenon at the London School of Economics. In a rapid shift occurring in countries as disparate as Switzerland and Singapore, Canada and South Korea, young people are extending their child-free adulthood by postponing children until they are well into their 30s, or even 40s and beyond.
[snip]
The trend has spawned a new culture of childlessness. In Britain, there's a growing market for books such as "Child-Free and Loving It," which journalist Nicki Defago says she wrote "to let women deciding against children know that their feelings are perfectly normal."

But their feelings aren't perfectly normal. The overwhelming majority of people are still choosing to have children -- but only one child, or maybe two, lest it interfere with their lifestyle. This is what happens when "choice" becomes an absolute value, a development concomitant with a growing materialism and focus on the Self. As liberal thinker Philip Longman has pointed out so vividly -- like, here in "The Return of Patriarchy" and "The Liberal Baby Bust" -- when modern, progressive people choose not to have kids, or choose to have them at below replacement rates, the world of the future will belong to the religious conservatives -- Sacralists -- who still hold children to be a very great Good.

We can argue over and over about the morality of choosing childlessness, and I suspect we will. But in the long run, you can't wish away the fact that the choice not to have children is for most who make it a decision to sacrifice tomorrow for the sake of enjoying today. Get enough people who make that individual choice and you have the death of a nation. Of nations. For as the great German historian Oswald Spengler observed, when a people has to be persuaded that having children is a good idea, baby, it's over for them. As Mark Steyn observed, "A society that has no children has no future." And:

Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.