Children Aren’t Optional

Americans are having fewer and fewer babies, and the New York Times wants to know why.

We’ve talked quite a bit on BreakPoint over the past few months about the declining fertility rate in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the average American woman will have 1.76 children during her lifetime.

To put that in perspective, that’s lower than the largely secular Western European countries of France, Norway and Sweden. It’s only 10 percent higher than China, with its history of forced abortions and the “one-child,” now “two-child” policy.

The decline in fertility has become so serious that even outlets like the New York Times have started to ask what’s behind this decline. In fact, the Times recently ran an article entitled “Americans are having fewer babies. They told us why.”

The answer was, in a word, “economics.” Four of the top five answers cited financial or economic reasons, led by “Child care is too expensive.” The top two non-economic reasons were