Children of Men: Are Birth Rates Declining Due to Anti-natalism or Economics?

“For the first time ever, more than half of women aged 30 in England and Wales are childless. This is not a normative condemnation but a descriptive statement.”

P.D. James is a strange place to begin a piece on fertility and birth rates, but her 1992 novel referenced in the title, The Children of Men, concerns an infertile Britain in 2021, a sterile, depopulating country turning in on itself (and each other with a feminist civil war), becoming increasingly authoritarian. The fact that sperm counts drop to zero in this fictional world echoes the real-life concerns about falling fertility in men today. Both sides of this vital and visceral question are having problems, contributing to shrinking and aging populations across the developed and newly industrialized world. The question of whether this is due to anti-natal messaging or to economics and culture is not clear cut, with each playing its part. And we must not forget the spiritual realm in an otherwise coldly materialistic and utilitarian discussion.

Firstly, there is an issue concerning terms: Birth rate and total fertility rate are not the same thing. The most important difference “between birth rate and fertility rate is that birth rate is the total number of births in a year per 1,000 individuals in a population whereas fertility rate is the number of live births in a year per 1,000 women of reproductive age in a population.” The numbers looked at below are the total fertility rate (TFR).

Secondly, talking about fertility levels and birth rates can be awkward, given the sensitive issue of having and raising children. It is no small commitment and something that changes the lives of those who decide to take the leap into the new world of becoming parents. It can also come across as weird when men talk about something that inevitably affects women most without women’s input. But men have mothers, sisters, and daughters; women have fathers, brothers, and sons.