The media goes from yawn to yikes on fertility

Kurt Mahlburg

October 09, 2024 11 Reactions

It’s not the first time the media has suddenly known about something. Consider that just several months ago, they had no idea about President Joe Biden’s rather obvious cognitive decline. Now they all knew about it. Likewise, back then, they were certain Kamala Harris was a lost cause. Now they assure us she is the saviour of democracy.

The media’s trajectory on All Things Fertility has followed a similar arc. The early 2020s saw a flood of panicked reporting on overpopulation, buoyed by the histrionics of Greta Thunberg, the IPCC, Extinction Rebellion and their ilk. Now the legacy press is flooding the zone with stories about the fertility crisis.

Suddenly, The New York Times knows all about it. So does The Guardian, CNN, The Atlantic, NBC, Axios, The Independent — and the list goes on.

These outlets broadly agree on three facts.

First, the decline in fertility is cause for concern. How can our economies continue to grow if there aren’t enough workers? How will nations in decline keep innovating and creating culture? Who will take care of the ageing population? Who will foot the ever-increasing bill for pensions and social security? How high will taxes have to go?

Second, the reasons for the fertility crisis are varied and complex. They include economic concerns like housing affordability and the high cost of living; changing social norms driven by the pill, increased access to the workforce for women, and individualism that prizes personal pleasure over family life; as well as a general ambivalence about the value of children and the status of motherhood. As hinted at previously, there are also environmental worries — a sense that humanity poses an existential threat to the planet, and that having more children is not just undesirable, but even immoral.

Third, these outlets agree that policies thus far enacted by governments are yet to make much of a difference, whether free or subsidised childcare, tax breaks, baby bonuses, more flexible working conditions or more maternity leave.

So, whence the media’s sudden interest?

To be fair, the Society at a Glance report put the fertility crisis in more dire terms than the OECD has done previously. And, hot on the heels of that study was another published in The Lancet examining data from over 200 nations that predicted a “low fertility” future.

Even so, these trends were apparent long before 2024. Mercator has been ringing alarm bells for years.

Call me a cynic, but I can’t help but see at least some political motives behind the media’s sudden knowledge of the crisis.

In addition to the policies mentioned above, governments have used mass immigration as a band-aid for the problems caused by low fertility. But from Europe to North America, mass immigration is on the nose, with many open-borders governments being voted out across the Western world. The band-aid is falling off, in other words.

Recently, the climate apocalypse narrative has also faltered, with elite hypocrisy growing, the popularity of electric vehicles dropping, and many nations taking a second look at nuclear power. Could it be that journalists are following suit, and no longer believe that babies pose a threat to humanity?

Here’s my most cynical take of all: Progressives, who overwhelmingly staff global news rooms, have finally realised they are being demographically replaced. If the only people reproducing are their ideological enemies, their progressivism is doomed to die with them.

Months ago, it was popular to mock Elon Musk for his warnings about the risk falling birthrates pose to civilisation. Now every man and his dog is sounding the alarm.

The reason seems plain enough to me. Left-wing types are good at making ideological converts, but they’re not so good at making babies.

And babies, it turns out, are the future. Who would have thought? 

What do you think? Are newsrooms staffed by “childless cat ladies”, as J.D. Vance says? 

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.

Image credit: Rakesh Sitnoor on Unsplash