The Nation magazine’s Kathryn Joyce has a piece entitled :Missing: The 'Right' Babies. It represents the expected “hit piece” on the new documentary demographic winter about Europes empending demographic crises brought on my the Western worlds ongoing trend on neglecting childbearing as a common & collective good.
Rod Dreher of BeliefNet responds with a piece entitled Demographic winter denial. The Atlantics Ross Douthat echos those sentiments.

I went into this Nation piece on conservative demographic panic hoping for a smart, nuanced left-wing take on the thorny problem of the West's changing demographics - one that took some jabs at the "demographic winter" hype and accused social conservatives of using the spectre of population decline to justify their nostalgia for pre-modernity and the patriarchy (which would be a fair accusation, in some cases), but also acknowledged that demography is going to cause some real problems for developed societies over the next century, and grappled seriously with the possibility that falling birthrates might be one of the larger challenges facing the socialist, tolerant, post-historical paradigm so dear to readers of The Nation. Instead, the piece basically reads: Patriarchy patriarchy patriarchy, Catholic evangelical fascist, Mussolini Hitler, racist racist racist. I guess The Nation knows its audience, but still ...

It is important for readers of this blog to listen to the take of Leftists like Kathryn Joyce on Europe’s demographic crises. This belated realization represents a precious opportunity for traditionalists and marriage advocates to forcefully make the point that marriage, sexual restraint, and family values lie at the heart of any civilizations authentic thriving.
In doing so advocates like those at Opine Editorials need to understand the nostrums the left will reflexively fall into: so as to better counter them. Be carfull to avoid what author’s as influential as Mr. Douthat & Rod Dreher fall into. That is, try and avoid the contrived nomenclature of the left & what such language inherently supports.
It is inherently false & anti-intellectual to characterize contemporary social conservatism & concern over population decline as “nostalgia for pre-modernity” As recently as late 60’s & early 70’s the entirety of the western world had birth rates well above replacement level. Marriage rates were high, divorce & illegitimacy by comparison very low.
Are we expected to believe that this post industrial revolution & scientifically literate world was pre-modern? How does championing the values of sexual restraint and fidelity within marriage make someone “pre-modern” in their thought? This is the height of foolishness. There is nothing inherently “modern” about the values of the sexual revolution. By the same token there is nothing pre-modern about vigorously critiquing those values.
The only people who say there is are those who (vainly) wish to conflate feminism & sexual license with scientific discovery & the critical method. No such link is justifiable.
Likewise “nostalgia for the…patriarchy” need beg the question… “what IS this “patriarchy.”? Do 70% illegitimacy rates among African Americans make the underclass a “matriarchy”? Does desperation for a return to intact married childbearing/rearing denote “nostalgia for the…patriarchy” or simple humanity? Are the married couples next door who both are in the paid labor force “post-patriarchal” & therefore represent a greater equality? What of the myriad of married couples who chose a traditional division of labor? Are they throwbacks to “post modernity” & therefore regressive? Is not (as so many maintain) marriage itself the ultimate expression of the patriarchy, so therefore any married couple is regressive?
What of concern for woman who desperately want to have husbands & children yet find today’s sexual culture extremely un-conducive to stable family formation. Are these women harboring “nostalgia for the…patriarchy”? Should they “raise the consciousness and resign themselves to being pioneers in the struggle for “gender equality”?
Do not uncritically except their terms. Doing so risks you becoming them. And to be “them” is to be a very narrow, anti-intellectual, and ill-liberal mind.
The knee-jerk leftist canard of “racist-fascist-anti-sex, anti-women, insecure masculinity, xenophobic, etcetera… etcetera… etcetera…ad nausea” is just that: foul and noxious. Such formulations are meant to stifle & shut down debate much more than enlighten.
If Swaziland was experiencing unprecedented population decline so that increased immigration was necessary for continued economic growth & labor shortages it would have every right to be concerned.
Psychologists mark a will to live (as opposed to resignation toward death) as a sign of a healthy mind. Business leaders routinely recognize that companies that are not actively expanding their growth are poor investments.
I have never met a self described “natalist”. I have meet multiple scholars, authors, activists, and citizens concerned with western culture, the health of particular cultures, and more generally centered on optimal family formation & insuring their children’s dreams of marriage and family don’t go unfulfilled.
It’s a very strange left that can so readily shed a tear the lack of a formal “marriage” license in the hands of a committed gay couple but shares no sympathy or ideological elbow room for the single black Mothers & her child’s need of Husband and Father ;…nor the single career minded woman starring down her fertile years.
It’s a very strange left that can talk of “root causes” & “systemic change” while ignoring a Hispanic immigrant class that is following the black underclass into the cycles of illegitimacy & its in attendant poverty & tangle of pathologies.
Micro trends have macro consequences. Pointing out civilization decline is not chicken littlish (much less racist). Rather: such observations are to be readily expected of any intellectual class that has a healthy love & respect for its own shared heritage.Beyond the more popular observation of Mark Steyn exist a myriad of authors & scholars as diverse as David Hart, Bat Y’eor, Bruce Thornton, Kay S. Hymowitz, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Bernard Lewis, Lawrence Wright, Melanie Phillips, George Weigel, Bruce Bawer, Ian Buruma, George Akerlof… (the list goes on)
All of whom realize the causes & consequences of what the U.N’s 2006 World Population prospectus called “an expected global upheaval that is without parallel in human history”


(Source Link)