“The Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and The Future of Humankind” concluded with the adoption of a Declaration demanding that governments everywhere adopt pro-family demographic policies. The Declaration was adopted by participants at the June 29-30 Summit held at the Russian State Social University, Russia’s largest university.
Translated from Russian, The Declaration states in part: Read more…
An article in today’s New York Times (“Russians Adopt U.S. tactics In Opposing Abortion”) mischaracterizes the upcoming Moscow Demographic Summit: The Family and The Future of Humankind – June 29-30 a the Russian State Social University – as “an international anti-abortion meeting.” Read more…
So much for the over -population groupies.
by Marcus Roberts
Back in 2009, the leadership in Japan realised that there it was facing a massive demographic problem. This problem was not rampant population growth, but the opposite – declining fertility and a growing elderly population. According to The Washington Post: Read more…
PUTIN WANTS TO BOOST RUSSIA’S BIRTHRATE – WORLD CONGRESS OF FAMILIES SAYS PLACE TO START IS AT MOSCOW DEMOGRAPHIC SUMMIT, JUNE 29-30
In a speech late last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged to raise the nation’s birthrate by up to 30% in just three years. Due to a rapidly falling fertility, Russia has experienced a dramatic population decline, going from 148.5 million people in 1995 to 143 million today. Unofficial estimates indicate that there are nearly 4 million abortions per year in Russia yet only 1.7 million live births. Read more…
One has to wonder sometimes if Western Civilization is even going to bother showing up for the the future of the world.
Well, not the way things are going in America lately, at least not according to recent government data as reported in the LA Times:
LA Times:
The maternity business has experienced a recession, too, it appears. Births fell 4% from 2007 to 2009, the biggest drop for any two-year period since the mid-1970s, according to federal government data released Thursday.
Meanwhile across the pond, our British cousins are procreating, but not bothering to get married. Consider a few items published recently by their Office for National Statistics: Read more…
File this one under “Duh! Ya’ think?” We exterminate a third of the offspring who would have otherwise been supporting us in our old age, and then we wonder why the Social Security system didn’t work out the way we had planned.
Occasionally on this blog, same-sex ‘marriage’ proponents have challenged those of us who would seek to protect the institution of marriage to explain why, if we truly believe that (part of) the public purpose of marriage is to attach parents to their children, we nevertheless maintain that even a man and woman who are (for whatever reason) incapable of procreating together, or who simply have no desire or intention of doing so, should still be allowed – and even encouraged – to enjoy the benefits of married life. Read more…
Categories: Artificial Reproductive Technology, Babies, Book Suggestions, Demography, ethics, family, fathers, feminism, Marriage, Parenting, popular culture, sex differences Tags:
Just in case anyone still thinks the one-child policy is a good thing.
by Carolyn Moynihan
The trafficking of women for forced marriage and prostitution is a growing problem for China, but a predictable one given its population policy and resulting demographics.
The official China Daily reports that Chinese police have “cracked 9,165 trafficking cases and rescued 17,746 women since April 2009 when the Ministry of Public Security launched a special campaign”. Many are lured to neighbouring Asian countries — Malaysian police had detained a total of 5,453 Chinese women suspected of prostitution by the end of November — but they can end up as far afield as Europe and Africa. Read more…
Two articles caught my attention recently. The first was “Japan population shrinks by record in 2010”. The title should be self-explanatory. Already the most aged nation on earth, Japan’s demographic winter in 2010 was the most severe on record.
The result of more and more of their young people “waiting to get married and choosing to have fewer children because of careers and lifestyle issues” is that the proportion of the population over the age of 65 is increasing ever rapidly. (25% now, 40% by 2050) Consider the strain on the economic and social resources of any nation when 4 out of 10 citizens are past retirement age. Read more…
This chart speaks for itself.
One thing that ought to be obvious from looking at this chart is that birthrates are indeed falling all over the world. You must realize that not all of the consequences of this are going to be good.
Dr. J has often discussed the essential public purpose of marriage. Many of our commenters have dismissed her account of that purpose because it emphasizes the procreative aspect of marriage as the public purpose. They seem to think that this purpose was made up in order to exclude certain non-favored groups from marriage.
Well, here’s a definition of marriage that has been with us since time immemorial, encoded in the Yoseph Karo’s immortal Shulchan Aruch, the basic code of Jewish Law. It’s the very first paragraph in the very first chapter in the volume containing the laws of marriage (emphasis added. The Rem”a, by the way, is a slightly later gloss added by a different author, Rabbi Moshe Isserles).
1. Every man is obligated to marry a women in order to be fruitful and to multiply and anyone who doesn’t engage in being fruitful and multiplying is as if he spills blood, and lessens the appearance, and causes the divine presence to depart from Israel. Rem”a: He who does not marry is not allowed to make a blessing or to engage in Torah etc. and he is not called a man, and when he marries a woman his sins are cast into doubt, as it is said: “One who has found a wife has found goodness and obtains favor in the eyes of God.” (Prv. 18:22)
While this purpose somewhat differs from Dr. J’s purpose in detail (and somewhat in practice as well), I think the case that marriage is about procreation (and always has been) is well nigh overwhelming.
Lest you think the sentence, “anyone who doesn’t engage in being fruitful and multiplying is as if he spills blood” is wholly without basis, I quote from a recent article about our nation’s second least fruitful city: Seattle. “There’s something missing from many Seattle neighborhoods: the sound of children’s laughter.” The same thing would likely be missing following a general massacre. Surely, Jewish Law does not literally consider a childless person a murderer. Nevertheless, it is essential to note that childlessness and murder share some practical results. (Seattle is the second least fruitful city. Any guesses as to the very least fruitful? No points for correct guesses. That one was just too easy).
December 14th, 2010
Betsy
by Anna Halpine
Who really believes women’s reproductive health is the main concern in House Bill 96?
Last week in Manila, Malcolm Potts, grand-daddy of the international family planning movement, announced that unless the much debated “Reproductive Health” bill is passed in this session of Congress, the Philippines would become the next Somalia. No surprises in that. Within the same week, however, Bill Clinton, also visiting Manila, amazed everyone (including his wife, no doubt) by stating that the growing Philippines population is an asset to the country, and that its babies, expanding the population at a rate of 2.04 per cent a year, are a “massive natural resource”. Read more…
by Carolyn Moynihan
How good are your children at relating to their grandparents? How would they respond if granny developed Alzheimer’s? These questions beg an even bigger one: how will societies with an average of 2 or less children per woman cope with a burgeoning elderly population and a growing worldwide epidemic of dementia? South Korea has come up with answers in a remarkable campaign. Read more…
What China imposed on its population, we’re adopting voluntarily.
Published on The Weekly Standard
For the last several months, Chinese officials have been floating the idea of relaxing the country’s famed “One-Child” policy. One-Child has long been admired in the West by environmentalists, anti-population doomsayers, and some of our sillier professional wise men. In Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008), for instance, Tom Friedman lauded the policy for saving China from “a population calamity.” What Friedman and others fail to understand is that China is built upon a crumbling demographic base. One-Child may or may not have “saved” China from overpopulation, but it has certainly created a demographic catastrophe. Read more…
From Weekly Standard
What China imposed on its population, we’re adopting voluntarily.
For the last several months, Chinese officials have been floating the idea of relaxing the country’s famed “One-Child” policy. One-Child has long been admired in the West by environmentalists, anti-population doomsayers, and some of our sillier professional wise men. In Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008), for instance, Tom Friedman lauded the policy for saving China from “a population calamity.” What Friedman and others fail to understand is that China is built upon a crumbling demographic base. One-Child may or may not have “saved” China from overpopulation, but it has certainly created a demographic catastrophe. Read more…
I recently reviewed Red Families vs. Blue Families. (I didn’t like it much.) The authors’ constant refrain was “The Blue State Script works. Delay marriage and childbearing until the mid-thirties, with the help of unapologetic use of abortion and contraception. The marriages last longer and are more stable. The kids are better off. Be like us. The Blue State Script works.”
It all depends on what you mean by “works.” Here is an article in The Weekly Standard that shows a bit of Trouble in Paradise. It seems that the Parents in one of the tonier, Bluer regions of the Nation’s Capitol, are inflicting themselves on the Non-Parents, or as they prefer to call themselves, “the Child-Free.” Listen to them complain in these blog entries:
“Keep your nasty little snotty kid away from me, PLEASE!!!! Do not let your stickly offspring rush up to me in Whole Foods and grab my $250 Ralph Lauren silk skirt with its grubby crusty hands.” Read more…
Lefties are fond of condemning the Right for our worries about Demographic Winter.
They’re fond of condemning us, but not so keen about disputing us. That’s because the facts needed to rebut our worries are few and far between.
But there are points to be made in rebuttal. I’ve never seen any such point wielded by a Lefty. So, let me call your attention to one made by an EEEEEEEEVIL Right winger, John Derbyshire. It comes from this week’s broadcast of his gloomy but hilarious podcast “Radio Derb.”
This is a favorite selling point of the immigration boosters. Japan, China, the European countries all have below-replacement birthrates, and so aging populations. Read more…
Childlessness among women aged 40-44 has increased dramatically since even the baby bust years of the 1970s.
(CBS) Nearly 1 in 5 American women beyond childbearing years never gave birth as fewer couples, particularly higher-educated whites, view having children as necessary to a good marriage. Read more…
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