We face a growing and imminently devastating crisis.
Two data points speak to it. First: The U.S. fertility rate is cratering. It has been below "replacement rate" for over a decades and shows no real signs of improving anytime soon, if ever. Indeed, the problem is so acute that the Census Bureau predicts that at current levels we will have a catastrophic population bust by the end of the century:
Second: The U.S. is experiencing an "epidemic" of loneliness, with large and rapidly growing shares of the population struggling with "a sense of social disconnection, being lonely or isolated." The problem is acute across demographics, including huge shares of younger adults in their early 20s.
You don't really need a roadmap to see what's happening here:
We've stopped having babies and it's going to send us into societal collapse while making us comprehensively miserable in the process.
This is not rocket science. It's not even science at all — it's just common sense, inputs and outputs, causes and effects. If your civilization stops having babies, everyone in it will get lonelier and more depressed, and then everything will fall apart. It's simplicity itself.
If the problem is obvious, the solution is even more so: We need to start having more kids. Lots more. The average number of children in U.S. households last year was fewer than two. There are simply not enough babies to do everything we need to do: Maintain our society, sustain our economy, strengthen our families, or give us meaning and direction and joy in our lives. All of these things are vital and indispensable; if there were any doubt about it before, we need simply to refer to the looming crises before us to confirm it.
What this means in practical terms is twofold:
First, husbands and wives of childbearing age need to have more babies. It's pretty simple! It may seem unromantic to state it in those blunt terms, but it's pretty cut-and-dry. If you're married, and you're not having any kids, you should — barring any serious health-related or other concerns — have kids. Or have kids already, have another one (or two).
(Or more.)
The second: We must once again normalize having lots of children. The culture over the last few decades has greatly incentivized having fewer or no children at all; we have instructed young people to delay childbearing as long as possible, and the results are before us now. We must reverse this.
If you have kids of your own, make having children a normal part of your family discourse. If, as they get older, your kids express a desire to get married young and start having babies, don't discourage them. Communicate often the joy, the gratification, the happiness and the other benefits of having a large family.
Make it a good thing, not a bad thing!
The only way out of this dawning catastrophe is more babies. That's it; there is no other solution. If we don't start having more babies now — and making more babies a normal and happy part of our society again — we will reap the bitter and awful rewards of it in the coming decades. It won't be pleasant; in fact it will be awful.
