Prospective parents also see the deficit in other, essential kinds of support, community, fellowship, help. In The Atlantic, Alia Wong argues that America’s low fertility rate is “a sign that the country isn’t providing the support Americans feel they need in order to have children”. Even without a life-upending pandemic, trying to have a baby without consistent, legally enforced societal and medical support is indeed very hard. Or, as Anna Louie Sussman posits in the New York Times: “It seems clear that what we have come to think of as ‘late capitalism’ – that is, not just the economic system, but all its attendant inequalities, indignities, opportunities and absurdities – has become hostile to reproduction.”
Could this falling birthrate eventually affect how childfree people are viewed in the US? (Childfree, I’ll emphasize, not childless – a lot of people without offspring prefer to reserve the term “childless” for those who are unable to have children.)
With plenitude, comes acceptance, even normalcy, until the childfree seem unremarkable – something like that?