What Do We Lose When Birthrates Collapse?

The tragedy isn’t merely national decline, strained pensions or a shrinking labor force. It is the intimate, human loss, writes Bethany Mandel.

Economic charts can tell us birthrates are collapsing, but they can’t tell us what that actually feels like. I was recently in Greece with my six children—a country in demographic freefall—and we were treated like a traveling circus. People stared out of shock, not rudeness. They would stop us, smile and count the kids aloud. Again and again, strangers told us some version of the same thing: This is how Greece used to look. That’s how they grew up.

Representational image.

The tragedy of falling birthrates isn’t merely national decline, strained pensions or a shrinking labor force. It is the intimate, human loss. Americans talk about the country feeling “lonely,” but we rarely connect that to the most obvious cause: fewer brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. Fewer people to whom we belong. The childhoods so many Americans grew up with—holidays packed with relatives, built-in playmates, bustling Friday night dinners—are quietly disappearing. The country feels emptier because our homes are emptier.

In his column “The Great American Baby Shortage” (Politics & Ideas, Dec. 3), William Galston writes that “when Americans once again believe their best years . . . lie ahead, we may see more strollers in our parks.” But the causation may run the other direction. Our futures are bleak not simply because we lack optimism but because we are creating a society in which fewer people will have the most reliable source of meaning and joy that humans have ever known: family. No civilization in history has raised children in the isolation we’re normalizing today—without the intergenerational web that once carried people from infancy to old age.

The American dream was never merely about opportunity; it was about continuity. A belief that life is worth building because someone will inherit it. If we want to restore hope, we can’t talk about only GDP or policy tweaks. We must tell the truth about what we are losing, what Greece is already living through, and what kind of country we will become if Americans stop believing family is worth the struggle, sacrifice and extraordinary reward of a full dinner table.

Bethany Mandel

Washington

Ms. Mandel podcasts and writes at “The Mom Wars.”