When Babies Disappear

[Valin]

RealClear Books:

 

Heather Wilhelm

1/14/13

 

Five years ago, on a quiet, leisurely Thursday night, my husband and I sat at the dining room table with a yellow notepad, discussing when we should start having kids.

 

"See, here's how it works," he said, drawing a graph. "With a dog, you put in a medium amount of work, and you get a medium amount of reward. If you were to, say, purchase a lion, you'd put in a lot of work, but you'd get pretty much no reward - and you might even get eaten. Horrible deal." He paused, drawing a straight line that hit each point directly between the axes. "See? With a kid, you put in a ton of work, but you also get a huge reward for years to come. It's a great deal!"

 

That was three kids ago, and I can assure you that the "ton of work" part is true. The "huge reward," happily, is also true. Children are a source of great joy, and, as a bonus, often hilarious. This is especially useful to remember when the preschooler gives you pinkeye, the toddler flushes your contact lenses down the toilet, and the baby cooks up a habit of happily, inexplicably, all-out yodeling at 4:30 each morning.

 

 

 

What's strange about our dining room child-planning summit, from a historical perspective, is that we considered it at all. "A few generations ago, people weren't stopping to contemplate whether having a child would make them happy," wrote Jennifer Senior in her much-discussed parenting treatise, "All Joy and No Fun," which ran in New York magazine in 2010. "Having children was simply what you did."

 

But not, apparently, anymore. Around the globe, fertility rates are plummeting. Countries like Japan and Russia teeter on self-imposed fertility cliffs, facing dramatic population shrinkage and the potential collapse of their welfare states. Europe, with stagnant birth rates, isn't far behind -- and, contrary to popular opinion, neither is America, according to Weekly Standard writer Jonathan V. Last. His new book, What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster, documents a remarkable demographic shift: the global baby un-boom.

 

(Snip)