North Star Writers Group

I don't suppose most folks will even notice these statistics, much less acknowledge the cultural nadir to which it means our society has fallen, but we are all going to feel the effect of these trends whether we like it or not. In fact, it doesn't bode well for the future of our nation. Should the old saying about demographics being destiny be even close to accurate, we're all in for a very bumpy ride.

I also don't suppose I'm going to win very many popularity contests by saying so. For some reason, pointing out simple demographic reality and its attendant consequences, much less its causes, tends to ruffle a lot of feathers, especially amongst the self-styled feminist set. But the truth is what it is, whether we want to see it or not. And the truth here is that Americans are disdaining marriage as well as childbearing in greater numbers than ever before. A greater number of those children who are born are born to the selfish and/or irresponsible among us.

This cannot help but have an enormously negative impact on the future. According to agencies such as the Census Bureau and the CDC, children raised without fathers and intact marriages do worse in life than their counterparts. It is further stated that single-mother households are the least economically viable arrangement. Yet we continue to create more and more of both. This makes us ever more vulnerable to losing our freedom, be it due to financial dependence on big government as a replacement provider for a missing husband and father or to having a generation of children who've been so poorly raised that they cannot function as independent, self-sustaining individuals. And when facing an existential threat in radical Islam, which is as content to breed us into submission as it is blowing us to kingdom come (just so long as we're gone), this is no small issue.

So how do we turn it around? Somehow, we have to reinvigorate the cherished state of home and family in America and get young people to once again see this as a priority in their lives. Career is also important, but focusing on it so blindly that marriage and children are coming along later than ever and running headlong into an utterly unchanged biological clock is overdoing it. For better or worse, fertility is for the young. That ought to mean that marriage is too, and of a much longer-lasting variety than presently practiced.

This effort will also run headlong into two institutions who benefit from the current circumstances, who in fact deliberately tried to bring this about, and who aren't about to sit idly by and let all they've worked so hard for be reversed without a fight. The first is that of liberal big government. Given what single parenthood and singleness do for increasing demand for government services as a replacement for family function, and more than that, the fundamental shift of power such dependence represents, it doesn’t want to lose that power position.

The second institution is that of feminism. Having moved American women substantially out of the home and into the workforce over the last 40 years, they do not want to see any swinging of the pendulum back that way. Never mind the negative results of this as outlined at the top. This isn't to say that there weren't positive results as well; but one must ask if what was gained was truly worth sacrificing what was lost in the process. And saying there was a loss is a hard truth, which doesn't change simply because some may not like to hear it. (Just ask Gen X and Gen Y, who experienced the consequences during their childhoods through no choice of their own.)

Another potentially unpleasant hard truth here is that, when it comes to demographic issues, women have the wombs. And to a large extent, it is they who will be deciding in what direction we go and will be taking men along for the ride. (It's the same influence they once wielded, however informally, by making men marry them before having sex and making babies.) If, for whatever reason, women decide to continue along the path they have been, then the game is up. Therefore, whatever we do to reinvigorate family, it must be done with an eye toward convincing women to freely choose to re-embrace the role of administrator of the home. Men, in turn, would also need to be more open to handling less conventional arrangements (i.e. stay-at-home dad), but first things first.

People of good conscience can disagree over the meaning of these statistics, and whether my proscription is indeed the correct one. But only a fool would argue that those numbers have no consequences at all. One way or another, our destiny lies in them. Perhaps we shall prove the converse of the old saying: the hand that won't rock the cradle is the hand that will no longer rule the world. But I sincerely hope not.

To offer feedback on this column, click here.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # DKK36. Request permission to publish here.