AP

The Birth Rate Crisis

How many young families do you know of with 3 or more children? The practice of marrying and bearing children is becoming so rare that most countries are not having enough children to meet the rate of replacement. This immense decline is occurring all over the world.

This essay will deal in general truths, and not exceptions such as those people who cannot have children, or who never get married, or who remain single for the sake of the kingdom (Matt.19:12).

Many governments are implementing financial incentives to families. Poland has a policy of zero income tax for families with 2 or more children. In Australia, maternity leave at the minimum wage is given for 120 days, adding up to about $22,000 before tax and yet the fertility rate falls behind the replacement rate of 2.1. We may feel crammed in Australia capital cities, but this cramming is not as attributable to the 292,000 births as the high net immigration of 306,000, to cite figures from 2024.

The ABC claims that “experts say younger Australians are increasingly concerned about their economic security and that’s influencing their family planning decisions”¹ but does not reference any financial statistics. At the heart of the issue is not an inability to have children due to a fall in living standards. Rather the heart of the problem is found … well … at the heart, which means Christians, who specialise in matters of the heart and soul, should have something to bring to the table.

Figure 1: Global fertility rates (1950-2025). Each dot indicates fertility rate for a country, coloured by continent. Fertility rate is the number of children born per woman. The replacement rate is typically 2.1 rather than 2 to account for mortality and an imbalance of boys and girls.

Christians can unfortunately be rather insular. Churches can run seminars on marriage and parenting in a way which says Christians have a monopoly on such concepts. We can place our hope in evangelism, expecting marriage to continue failing unless people turn to Christ. Family is a fundamental part of being human and therefore in a sense does not require special revelation to exist. Not only Christians have families. Of course, family was instituted by the one true God and is best done the way he has revealed in scripture, but family exists all over the world in every cultural and religious setting. Adam and Eve did not need a theological education in order to have a family. The line of Ishmael, for example, did not die out due to a failure to marry and have children.

Family has not been lost in the church due to some heresy; it has been lost in the general populace due to a suppression of internal laws that are self-evident. It is necessary to hold a mere family concept similar to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, in which the broadest fundamentals are established. These pillars of family span cultures and religions, they are universal.

In a democratic nation, where the will of the people is supposed to win out, actions must be taken by Christians not only inside the church but in the town hall and marketplace to uphold the following pillars of family.

Pillar 1: Natural desires

There are many desires which are built into us for the purpose of marriage, but here are three which I have found most profound.

Male leadership

God made men to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” (Gen 1:28). There is a deep-seated satisfaction when a man surveys what he has built after a hard day’s work. This ought to be most truly felt when that building lives and breathes and continues to follow in his footsteps in the next generations. Recently the desire for achievement has been hijacked by counterfeit successes in video games, sport and hobbies. Jordan Peterson said in a lecture on the Meaning of Life for Men: “People need a meaningful goal in life for themselves, their family, and their community to avoid boredom, self-destruction, addiction, and mental health issues.”

The meaningful goal of family has recently been poisoned by the idea that multiplying is an evil. The myth of overpopulation persists despite, every metric and prediction shown to ring false. Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling 1968 book The Population Bomb predicted: “in the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now”. This is not true, as in 2025 UNICEF says “obesity exceeds underweight for the first time among school-age children and adolescents globally”². Christians are often unwilling to look fundamentalist, narrow-minded or uncool by sticking to Scripture, but history always testifies that God is right. We should return to being fruitful and multiplying, subduing and having dominion. Population growth is not evil, it is, as evidenced by the ever-improving quality of life, of prime benefit to the world and therefore a meaningful pursuit for all people regardless of their particular culture or religion.

Unfortunately, boys are instead commonly educated to achieve a career, a sport or pleasure and happiness wherever they want. Parents these days are role models for this as they seek happiness in getting rid of the kids to daycare or school so that they can pursue their dreams at work or in leisure. To utilise the deep male desire to build something which lasts, young men must be directed towards building a family. To do this, fathers must not only teach this in word, but must model it in deed, re-orienting their own hearts to this end.

Male loneliness

As God said of Adam, it is not good to be alone. Humans naturally desire connection and intimacy. Connection occurs when we find someone like us, as Adam could not find a suitable helper in the animals, God needed to make him a helper who was like him. Hence Adam upon seeing Eve, sang: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23).

This sense of connection and intimacy is often usurped by pornography. While pornography (digital prostitution) was not a phenomenon in the New Testament, in-person prostitution was. The family was under attack by temple prostitution in Corinth, necessitating Paul’s letter urging the Christians to treat their bodies as temples of the Spirit, never uniting them with a prostitute and urging each man to have his own wife (1 Cor.6-7). Digital prostitution is a simulation, a cheap and addictive plagiarism of the connection and intimacy that humans desire.

Female nurturing

Women are naturally caring, compassionate, nurturing … mothering. Just take a newborn anywhere near a woman of any sort and observe the reaction. Eve was created as such, her name meaning ‘mother of all living’, but instead of pursuing this end, she turned to self-aggrandizement at the temptation of Satan.

Feminism takes women away from their natural desire for mothering in the same way, promising joy in being a CEO or expert. Childlessness is skyrocketing. There is a whole host of women over 45 who wished to have children, but have not. Nigerian women, not known for feminism, in 2024, birthed more babies (7.56 million) than the US and the European Union combined (7.21 million)7.
Just as pornography hijacks the male desires away from building families, so feminism has done so in women.

Pillar 2: Religion

When Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them (Romans 2:14-15).

Gentile nations do not always die out simply because they are separated from the Scriptures or belief in the one true God. We all, whether we recognise it or not, have the law written on our hearts.

Virtually all peoples have recognised the importance of good works in the family, except the recent generations who atheistically deny morality altogether. God is removing his hand of restraint, giving over people, as Paul says in Romans 1, to suppress the truth and follow the lusts of their hearts.
Instead of a holy reverential fear embodied in a religion, atheism has tilled the soil for the lustful pursuit of immorality. That means the impetus to live a “good” life by marrying and having children is gone.

This is demonstrably true in many places such as China. The fertility rate in China has collapsed from 5.8 in 1950 to 1, well below the replacement level of 2.1. Similar collapses in birth rate are true for all post-religion nations such as Japan where religion has almost died out, South Korea with 60% of people aged under 40 religiously unaffiliated, and most of Europe. In China the generation raised under communistic atheism, as my Chinese in-laws testify, no longer desire children regardless of the immense social kudos, extremely generous parental culture and financial incentives offered by the government. Children, the grandchildless parents lament, are often selfish and greedy. When people no longer believe their actions are judged by a higher power, the associated reverential fear disappears and moral chaos ensues. Older generations obeyed their parents when they said: “get married” or “have children”. Now, having eaten of the tree, young men and women self-determine whether they will marry, let alone reproduce, let alone stay faithful and not divorce.

The removal of atheism is impossible without the introduction of a deity. For example, a biology lesson ought not chalk up the organism to an accident of nature, but an intentional creation by a deity. While some sort of recovery of mere marriage could be achieved with any sort of deity, as long as it is in line with the moral law written on our conscience, the best recovery of marriage would be with the unerring law in the Bible and richness of the mystery of marriage revealed in Christ. Are Christians comfortable with the insertion of Christ into the void left by atheism? The church must play the role of chaplain, as previously in western nations, with prayer and Scripture-teaching part of the curriculum, despite the inevitable accusations of theocracy.

Conclusion

To combat the destruction of the family, the church must not restrict itself only to evangelism. If this were any other social cause such as famine, disease or war we would of course say we must put in every effort to love our non-Christian neighbour.

Saving family is crucial for a number of reasons:

• Childrearing is obedience to God who desires us to be fruitful and multiply.
• Childrearing grows the church as each new generation is raised in the faith.
• Childrearing enriches the world. God’s command to be fruitful and multiply is not at war with itself.
• Saving family in the public square can help to woo people to Christians and their life-saving God from whom such wisdom and love flow. To be well thought of by outsiders in this way is an immense tool in evangelism.

Such saving of family in the public square can be likened to the way Christians champion other causes such as historically has been done with education (namely literacy), medicine, charity and recently with abortion. We are to be a lit-up city on a hill. Let us have our “light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mat 5:16).

• Rory O’Shea

1 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-17/australia-birth-rate-hits-rock-bottom-economic-consequences/104480816
2 https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/obesity-exceeds-underweight-first-time-among-school-age-children-and-adolescents