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Dominant voices in the European Union
believe that the country of Sweden has solved the population and family
problems of modern societies. They argue
that the depopulation which threatens all of the developed, industrial world
has been countered in Sweden by an aggressive, feminist-inspired reconstruction
of the family and by the single-minded pursuit of gender equality in all other
aspects of social, cultural, and economic life.
These
opinions are advanced by leading European policy experts with an almost
religious zeal. As Jean-Claude Chesnois
summarizes, “in Sweden, …empowerment of women insures against a very low birth
rate.”[1]
With Sweden especially in mind, sociologist Peter
McDonald asserts that “[i]n a context of high gender equity in
individual-oriented institutions, higher gender equity in family-oriented
institutions will tend to raise fertility.”[2] J.M. Hoem links Sweden’s success to a
“softening” of “the effects of women’s labor force participation on their life
sufficiently to reduce the inherent role conflict [relative to motherhood] to a
manageable level.”[3] Other recent articles claim to show that the
gender equality provisions of Sweden’s generous parental leave benefit, which
push fathers into staying at home with infants while the mothers work, actually
increase the odds of having a second or third child.[4] Referring to Sweden, Paul Demeny concludes
that “[f]ew social policies enjoy greater unqualified support from demographers
and sociologists than those seeking” to make “participation of women in the labor
force compatible with raising children.”[5]
Of course, the deeper source of
anxiety driving these analysts is the plummeting fertility of the European
peoples, a continent-wide development.
In the year 2000, the whole of Europe (from Iceland to European Russia)
recorded a Total Fertility Rate of only 1.37, meaning that the average European
woman will bear 1.37 children during her lifetime, only 65 percent
of the level needed to replace a generation.
The generation “replacement” figure is slightly over 2.0. In that same year, 2000, 17 European nations
already recorded an absolute decline in numbers, with deaths outnumbering
births. Within two decades, unless
there is a dramatic change, all European nations will predictably be in
the same circumstance. Some regions of
Spain (such as Catalonia and the Basque country), of Italy (including Rome,
Venicia, and Tuscany), and of Germany (such as Saxony) have total fertility
rates well below 1.0. The figure for
the Czech Republic in 2003 was 1.18. In
the whole world, only Bulgaria—at 1.13—was lower that year. In Northern Europe, marriage is increasingly
rare, replaced by cohabitation; in Southern Europe, young adults increasingly
avoid both marriage and cohabitation, refusing to form childbearing
unions of any sort. This is the essence
of the joint European family and population crisis of the 21st
Century.[6]
We can see an extreme illustration of
this crisis and its geopolitical implications by comparing the
populations—past, present, and future—of two nations: Russia and the small, poor,
Middle-Eastern, Muslim nation of Yemen.
In 1950, the territory that now comprises Russia had a population
of 103 million. Following the
disasters of World Wars I and II, there was a large surplus of females over
males; still, the population showed some signs of the “pyramid” typical to a
growing nation. Yemen, in contrast, was
a tiny nation of 4.3 million, with only 4% of the Russian population
figure.
By the year 2000, sharp fertility
decline was evident among the Russians, with shrinking numbers of
children. Still, because of past
momentum, its overall population had climbed to 146 million. Yemen, meanwhile, with a total fertility
rate of about 7.6 during these years, had grown to 18 million, an increase of
400% over 1950.
For a projection to the year 2050, we
turn to median-level calculations from United Nations demographers. Here, the U.N. predicts (I think
implausibly) an increase in Russia’s TFR of 50 percent by 2050. Even so, Russia’s population tumbles by 40
million, to only 104 million, leaving a nation heavily tilted toward the
elderly. The U.N. demographers also
project a decline in Yemeni fertility by over 50 percent (which is also,
I think, not likely) to a TFR of 3.35.
Even so, Yemen’s population would still grow to 102 million, almost
equal to that of Russia!
We might also compare the 25 nations
of the expanded European Union to 25 Muslim countries of North Africa and West
Asia. Again, using very optimistic
assumptions for Europe (a rise in the TFR of 30 percent to 1.82 and the annual
entry of 500,000 immigrants), the European population still falls from 451
million in 2000 to 401 million in 2050; while the population of North Africa
and West Asia more than doubles from 587 million in 2000 to nearly 1.3 billion
in 2050. If these numbers prove to be
true, the migratory pressures on Europe from these nations, which are already
large, will become enormous, indeed nearly uncontrollable.
And so, Sweden now charges to Europe’s
rescue, with claims of a unique solution to the joint family and population
crisis, a solution which is applicable to all of Europe. Recently, the Swedish Institute—what might
be called that government’s propaganda arm on social and cultural matters—published
a paper entitled “Gender Equality—A Key to Our Future?” The author, Lena Sommestad, is professor of
economic history at Uppsala University and director of the Swedish Institute
for Future Studies. This short document
perfectly outlines the Swedish family policy model for the European future.
Professor Sommestad’s essay claims
that Europe’s challenge of declining birth rates, population aging, tumbling
marriage rates, and rising out-of-wedlock births has two sources: female
emancipation and “a crisis of the traditional European male breadwinner
family.” She says that nations such as
Germany, Italy, and Spain, which have tried to protect or shore up the male
breadwinner and his homemaking wife, have failed to understand the irrelevance
of these roles for the future, and have paid the price with extremely low
fertility.[7]
Sweden, in contrast, has recognized
women’s full emancipation and complete gender equality as “social facts,” and
as the keys to a sustainable future.
Professor Sommestad points to the theories of Alva Myrdal from the
1930’s; she had also argued that under modern conditions, the
breadwinner-homemaker model, premised on a family wage for fathers, could no
longer produce a sufficient number of children. Myrdal instead insisted that “declining fertility rates should be
fought with increased gender equality.”
This idea, Professor Sommestad admits, went dormant in Sweden during the
1940’s and 1950’s when, during a time of affluence, male-breadwinner families
become common in Sweden (another author calls this “the era of the Swedish
housewife”). However, “[f]rom the 1960s
and onwards, a growing number of Swedish women returned to gainful employment,
and by the early 1970’s, the two-breadwinner norm had been firmly established.”[8] Today, Sommestad continues:
Swedish
gender equality policies build on a strong tradition of pro-natalist and
supportive social policies….No entitlements are targeted at women in their
capacity as wives. The state uses
separate taxation, generous public day-care provision for pre-school children,
and extensive programmes of parental leave to encourage married women/mothers
to remain at gainful employment.
Revealingly, Professor Sommestad
argues that “[P]opulation ageing, problematic as it is, may prove to be a
window of opportunity for radical gender-equality reform.” Feminists, she says, “must overcome their
traditional suspicion of demographic arguments and develop [instead] a new,
progressive population discourse.”
During the 1930’s, Alva Myrdal proposed using the birth rate crisis as “a
battering ram” for radical feminist social reform. Dr. Sommestad now does so again, although this time on a larger
European canvas. She claims:
…that
birth rates are particularly low in countries that support traditional patterns
of marriage and breadwinning….[S]ince the early 1980’s, high birth rates in the
industrialized world have tended to go hand in hand with a high level of female
labour-force participation….In short: women’s access to the labour market
appears to be a prerequisite for a higher birth rate.
Dr.
Sommestad also adds “that countries that do not stigmatize non-marital cohabitation
or extra-marital births have a better chance of maintaining higher fertility
levels.” Moreover, she says, the
Swedish model shows that to raise the birth rate, men must also take on “a
greater responsibility” for child care.[9]
In sum, using less lofty language, the
Swedish model of family policy sees strong feminism as the answer
to the fertility crisis. If European
peoples want to survive in the 21st century, she argues, they should
eliminate the full-time mother and homemaker, abolish the family
wage ideal, end the home as an economic institution, welcome
out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation, push all women—especially actual
or potential mothers—into the labor
force, enforce strict gender equality in all areas of life, engineer
men into childcare-givers, and embrace expensive state child allowances,
parental leave, and public day care programs.
The result, she says, will be more babies!
These are not just the ideas of
academics, I hasten to add. In its
official statement of policy toward the European Union, the Swedish government
summarizes its goal in one sentence: “We want to see a Union that is open,
effective and gender equal.” Let
me underscore this: the attainment of the feminist agenda is Sweden’s
primary purpose within the EU. This
government statement from April 2004 elaborates:
Sweden
has a particular responsibility for increasing
the pace of gender equality efforts in Europe. Decisions have already been taken to the effect that an equal
opportunity perspective shall permeate all aspects of the EU’s employment
strategy. Gender equality aspects
should be integrated into all areas of policy.
Modern family policies that promote the supply of labour regarding both
women and men and which enable family life to be combined with a professional
life, are needed in order to meet the demographic challenges Europe faces.[10]
Moreover,
official documents pouring out of the European Commission emphasize ever
greater attention to gender equality and so-called harmonization of European
family policy around the Swedish model, stressing “an individualization of
rights” and a “new gender balance in working life” involving basic “changes in
family structure.”[11]
So what shall we make out of all
this? To begin with, I do want to admit
that there are aspects of the modern Swedish model of family policy that
are attractive, and succeed in their goals. To begin with, the Swedish system does do a better job of bonding
newborns to mothers and fathers, in the short run. The generous “parents insurance” program
provides new parents with 390 days of paid leave, at 90 percent of salary, and
another 90 days at a lower allowance.
This means that virtually all Swedish children enjoy full time parental
care during their first 13 months of life (compared, for example, to only a
third of infants in the United States).
This also allows new Swedish mothers to breastfeed their newborns. Again, the
majority of Swedish babies enjoy the health-giving effects of mothers
milk for at least six months, compared to only 20 percent in the United
States. And even some of the more
coercive aspects of Sweden’s parents insurance program—such as the requirement
that fathers take 45 days of the paid parental leave for the couple to receive
the full benefit—these have their human side: it turns out that Swedish fathers
have a strong preference toward taking their parental leave during Sweden’s
elk-hunting season![12]
However, the other claims made by
advocates for the Swedish model—particularly the claim that this approach will
be Europe’s demographic salvation—are far more problematic; indeed, these
claims are not true.
To begin with, the Swedish model of
family policy has not solved the birth dearth in that land. Assertions that it has rely primarily on a
peculiar development during the 1988-1993 period, which has since proven
ephemeral, not real. During the last
decade of Sweden’s “breadwinner father/homemaking mother” era, 1960-69, the nation
had a fertility rate well above the replacement level of 2.10. Contrary to assertions by Alva Myrdal and
Lena Sommestad, this “family policy” system clearly succeeded relative to
population. However, once Sweden
implemented the new model built on the deconstruction of marriage,
out-of-wedlock births, working mothers, parents insurance, and day care,
fertility fell by 30 percent to 1.61 by 1983. However, during the late 1980’s, the number apparently started
climbing again, and was said to reach 2.11 in 1991, just above the replacement
level. Progressive social analysts
around the European continent shouted hosannas! Sweden had found the answer! But it proved not to be real. By 1993, fertility was falling again, and by
2003, Sweden—at 1.54—was close to the European Union average. Indeed, in the year 2000, Sweden joined that
group of nations where deaths actually exceed births: more coffins than
cradles.[13]
It turns out that Sweden’s “success” in the early
1990’s was primarily a statistical fluke, an error. A change in policy regarding eligibility for parents insurance,
called a “speed premium,” had the one-time effect of reducing the spacing
between first and second births; but this change did not significantly increase
the total number of children born per family.[14] Judged empirically, then, the Swedish model
simply has not achieved replacement level fertility.
Second, Professor Sommestad’s brief
history of the introduction of Sweden’s new family policy during the 1960’s also
grossly overlooks its radical and coercive nature. As honest feminist historians have admitted, there was
no
pressure for change from young Swedish housewives and mothers during the
mid-1960’s. By all accounts, they were
largely happy with their situation.
Instead, the pressure came from other directions. Government planners in the Labor Ministry
foresaw labor shortages in Sweden’s future.
Instead of opening the doors to greater immigration, though, they
decided to pull Sweden’s young mothers into the workplace.[15]
At the same time, the radical wing of
Sweden’s ruling Social Democratic party took power, inaugurating what feminist
historian Yvonne Hirdman calls Sweden’s “Red Years,” 1967-1976. As their heart was a massive “gender turn”
that would radically alter the nature of marriage and family in Sweden. In 1968, the Social Democrats joined with
the labor unions in a joint report concluding that “there are…strong reasons
for making the two-breadwinner family the norm” in all welfare and social
policies. The next year, 1969, our old
friend Alva Myrdal chaired a major panel “On Equality,” which concluded that
“[i]n the society of the future,…the point of departure must be that every
adult is responsible for his/her own support.
Benefits previously inherited in married status should be
eliminated.” The Report also called for
an end to tax policies that favored marriage.[16] In 1969, a Ministry of Justice committee
declared Swedish marriage law “clearly anachronistic,” based as it was on the
Christian notion of “two becoming one flesh.”
Instead, the law should focus on the new imperative of “personal
fulfillment.” In 1971, Sweden’s
Parliament abolished the income tax system favoring marriage, so giving this
land the most “fully individualized taxation system” in the world. According to analyst Sven Steinmo, this
single change “more or less eradicated” the traditional home in Sweden.[17] The Family Law Reform of 1973 introduced
“no-fault” divorce, claiming that it was “only natural that if one of the
spouses is dissatisfied, he or she may demand a divorce.” All social and welfare benefits tied to
marriage were abolished.[18] By the time the Social Democrats were voted
out of office in 1976, their forced revolution in family life was fairly complete;
the Swedes had been re-engineered into a post-family order.
Moreover, Sweden—and Europe as a
whole—now finds itself in new circumstances where the old calculations no
longer apply. In the year 2000, a team
of demographers reports in Science magazine, Europe’s
population reached a vital turning point.
Until then, although fertility was abnormally low, the overall age
structure of the continent still had a “positive momentum;” that is, long term
stability could still be gained if women raised their average family size to
slightly over two children. In 2000,
however, prior decades of low fertility produced a new effect. Europe’s population entered into “negative
momentum,” which means that a TFR of 2.1 will no longer suffice to gain even
stability. A TFR approaching an average
of 4.0 children would now be needed to achieve the same end.[19]
Further, it is becoming increasingly
clear that common sense still rules; that forced “gender equality” can never
be the solution to fertility decline, no matter how hard feminist analysts work
to manipulate the numbers. For example,
a team of analysts recently noted that key components of the Swedish model—the
reconfiguring of women’s education into equality with men, the movement of
women into previously “all male” jobs, the deconstruction of marriage—these are
the very same policies which have generated dramatic declines in the fertility
of women in the developing world.[20] Economists have shown that providing “free”
daycare to working mothers is counter-productive relative to fertility, for it
means hiring ever more women to provide the care, which raises the aggregate
“social cost” of children and so reduces overall fertility.[21] Despite claims by Alva Myrdal and Professor
Sommestad, you cannot turn a cause of fertility decline into its cure,
no matter how much money you throw at the problem.[22] Indeed, no less an authority than Joseph
Chamie, Director of the Population Division of the United Nations Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, concluded in 2004:
While
many governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental
organizations, and individuals may strongly support gender equality at work and
in the home as a fundamental principle and desirable goal, it is not at all
evident how having men and women participate equally in employment, parenting
and household responsibilities will raise low levels of fertility. On the contrary, the equal participation of
men and women in the labor force, child rearing, and housework points precisely
in the opposite direction, i.e., [to] below replacement fertility.
The Swedish model flies in the face of
other well documented causes of the decline in fertility. John C. Caldwell, one of the world’s most
eminent demographers, recently examined the dozens of rival theories behind
what he calls “the fertility crisis in modern societies.” He explores the perils of a liberal economy
which create doubts among women whether they should devote themselves to
children. He dissects the special
circumstances behind fertility decline found in Southern, Eastern, and Central
Europe and in Asia. And he considers
the effects of varied social policies on fertility, looking for common
threads. He concludes “that a social
order that does not reproduce itself will be replaced by another” and that the
Swedish model works no better than any other social welfare model in countering
depopulation. In the end, he admits
that he can do no better than repeat the conclusion of Kingsley Davis from
1937, when the Western world faced a similar challenge: “the family is not
indefinitely adaptable to modern society, and this explains the declining birth
rate.”[23]
Under this explanation, then, the Swedish model stands
doubly condemned. First, it represents
an attempt to engineer a wholly new family system, which can only fail in face
of the constants of human nature grounded in the natural family. And second, the Swedish model represents a
forced march of all its citizens into modern urban-industrialized society: the
very problem to be overcome.
Taking another broad look at Europe’s
population crisis, Paul Demeny underscores how the two-income, or two-career,
family norm eliminates all incentives to have larger families:
…despite
flexible work hours, generous paid vacation, father’s temporary home leave to
care for an infant or a sick child, or other similar benefits—the actual chosen
number of children in two-working-parent families gravitates toward…families
that are either childless or have only one or two children.
He
adds that as low fertility continues, the elderly base of the electorate grows,
making it highly unlikely that state welfare benefits could ever be rechanneled
toward young families. Demeny
concludes:
What
can be taken as highly probable is the failure of the now prevailing orthodoxy
governing European social policies.
These policies will fail to increase fertility up to replacement
levels and thus will fail to prevent the long term numerical decline of
the European population.[24]
Finally, Belgian demographer Ron
Lesthaeghe underscores that “secularization,” defined as “the decrease of
adherence to organized religion,” still serves as “the most powerful variable
at the outset of fertility decline” and “the one with the longest lasting
effect or the highest degree of persistence.”[25] He sees plunging European fertility during
the late 20th Century as simply continuing the “long term shift in
the Western ideational system” away from the values affirmed by Christian
teaching (namely, away from “responsibility, sacrifice, altruism, and sanctity
of long-term commitments”) and toward a militant “secular individualism”
focused on the desires of the self.[26] And as you might guess by now, Sweden leads
Europe in measures of secularism and feminist inspired individualism.
In sum, 21st Century Sweden
embodies, even cherishes, the very social, economic, and cultural qualities
that cause fertility decline.
And we also know that the “magic” of the Swedish model does not really
work. It is a dead-end.
And yet, it is true that
Europe’s other, and older, family policy model—a system premised on the
breadwinner/homemaker model of the 1950’s—has also failed to work since
1970. Still found to some degree in
Germany, this model encourages the full-time maternal care of children through
maternity benefits, child allowances, and homemaker pensions. All the same, Germany’s TFR for 2004 stands
at 1.38, below Sweden’s already low figure.
For some reason this approach, which had worked effectively in the
decades following World War II, no longer does. I suspect that “secularization,” the retreat from religious faith,
which accelerated during the 1960’s, is the cause. In any case, this model also seems to hold little real promise
for the future.
Might Europe as a whole look elsewhere
for answers? Is there any modern
nation that has beat the depopulation problem?
Yes, as a matter-of-fact, there is.
The surprise, perhaps, is that it is the United States of America. As John Caldwell suggests, instead of
studying Europe, “[p]erhaps what [really] needs explanation is the curiously
high fertility of the USA.”[27] Indeed, while the U.S. led the Western world
in fertility decline between 1964 and 1976, the U.S. birth rate began climbing
again during the 1980’s. By 2000, the
USA could claim a Total Fertility Rate of 2.06, by far the highest in the developed
world, and nearly 20 percent above the 1976 level. The U.S. figure of 2.08 for 2004 is even higher than the figure
for Albania, Europe’s last high-fertility area. The U.S. Census Bureau projects the American number to rise to
2.12 by the year 2010.
One response is that this must be due to America’s
greater ethnic diversity, particularly to the flow of high fertility Hispanic
immigrants from Latin America into the USA.
This is part of the puzzle, but not all. In fact, American women of European descent actually recorded the
greatest increase in fertility between 1976 and 2000, rising 24 percent
to 2.05. Another retort is that this
American difference must be due to a rising number of out-of-wedlock
births. Again, this is part of the
explanation, especially before 1995, but not the whole story. Rather, marital fertility has
also risen:
by 11 percent since 1995. As The
Economist magazine ably summarizes: “Demographic forces are pulling
America and Europe apart…America’s fertility rate is rising; Europe’s is
falling. America’s immigration
outstrips Europe’s….America’s population will soon be getting younger. Europe’s is aging.”
The Economist predicts a U.S.
population of 500 million by 2050, an 80 percent increase over the figure for
2000.[28] Indeed, the European nations might consider
looking to America, not to Sweden, for answers.
If they did, what explanations might
they find for this American exceptionalism?
Simply put, certain groups of Americans have crafted new ways, often in
spite of poor public policy, to counter the modern forces driving family
fragmentation and fertility decline in the developed world.
To begin with, the last three decades
have witnessed a remarkable experiment in the de-industrialization of a key
aspect of American family life: namely, education. Starting back in the 1840’s, the American states had taken over
the schooling of children, using industrial organization to displace parents as
the chief educators of the young.
Demographer Norman Ryder has shown how this modern interruption of the
parent-child bond was critical to the emergence of both “modernity” and
fertility decline. There was a
struggle, he reports, between the traditional family and the modern state for
the minds of the young. The state
school served as “the vehicle for communicating “state morality” and a modern
political mythology designed to displace those of families.[29] And there is clear evidence that this spread
of state schooling was closely tied to a sharp decline in family size among
Americans.[30]
However, starting in the mid-1970’s,
a growing number of American parents—for various reasons—turned to home
schooling. At first, they faced hostile
state authorities: hundreds were arrested, and some imprisoned for seeking to
reclaim this pre-modern family task.
Yet the home education movement grew, and by the early 1990’s had
regained this natural right in all 50 states.
By 2004, over two million American children were in home schools. The educational results have been
impressive. And relative to family
life, there are also significant results.
Virtually all home schooled students are in married-couple homes. And 77 percent of home schooling mothers do
not work for pay, compared to 30 percent nationwide. Importantly, the fertility of these families is substantially
higher. Sixty-two percent have
three or more children, compared to only 20 percent nationwide. And slightly over a third (33.5 percent) have
four or more children, compared to a mere 6 percent in all homes with children.[31] By rejecting “modern” state education, and
by embracing “pre-modern” approaches, these American families have grown stronger
and larger.
Second, America also rediscovered
about 20 years ago an alternative to state child allowances and paid parental
leave that has a positive fertility effect.
Specifically, after two decades of neglect, the U.S. Congress in 1986
nearly doubled the value of the personal income tax exemption for children to
$2,000 per child, and indexed its value to inflation. Repeated studies have found that European child allowances—where
the state pays mothers a monthly stipend for each of their children—have little
positive effect on fertility. However, in
the U.S., there is strong evidence of a “robust” positive relationship between
the real, after inflation value of the tax exemption for children and family
size. Economist Leslie Whittington has
actually calculated an astonishing elasticity of birth probability with respect
to the income tax exemption of between .839 and 1.31. This means that a one percent increase in the exemption’s real
value results in about a 1 percent increase in birth probability in families.[32]
Why this difference? It appears that allowing families to keep
more of what they earn while raising children—that is, turning children into
little tax shelters—has a positive, even life-affirming psychological effect on
parents that money coming from the state cannot replicate. In any case, the significant increase in
overall American fertility coincides with the sharp increase in the exemption’s
value in 1986. More recently, the rise
in marital fertility, starting in 1996, correlates precisely with the
introduction of a new, additional Child Tax Credit that year. It seems that pro-family tax cuts work!
Third, Americans stand almost alone
among modern nations as a people bound to active religious faith; and active
faith commonly translates into larger families. At the most dramatic level, some religious communities still on
the margins of American life—the German-speaking Old Order Amish found in rural
communities in 20 states, the Hutterites in Montana and North Dakota, and
Hassidic Jews in New York, Cleveland, and other cities—continue to report
average completed family size in excess of six children. Closer to the mainstream, the fertility rate
of the state of Utah is nearly twice the national average, reflecting a TFR
among Latter-day Saints or Mormons there of about 4.0. Surveys also show that “fundamentalist
Protestants” and traditional “Latin Mass” Catholics who attend religious
services at least once a week also record higher total fertility.[33]
Finally, Americans are generally held
less hostage to the anti-natal dogmas of
pure “gender equality” than are the “Swedenized” Europeans. As the University of Virginia’s Stephen
Rhodes’ new book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously, reminds us, women and men are
hardwired to be different. Denying
these differences can only result in violations of human nature, doing
particular harm to existing and potential children.[34] After decades of work by feminist ideologues
to re-engineer human nature, some Americans remain resilient, open to the
natural power of gender complementarity.
For example, despite massive Federal financial preferences and
incentives for putting small children in day care, a full third of young
American mothers still find ways to remain home full-time with their pre-school
children. And this proportion appears
to be growing again. The imperatives of
biology, of human nature, are still active in the USA. The
Swedish model, resting on state child allowances, the mandatory employment of
mothers, parents insurance, day care, and gender equality in all aspects of
human life, has not worked. The current
fixation of European scholars and policymakers on this response to depopulation
is both a delusion and a death wish. If
Europe’s political leaders seriously want to renew their nations, they need
look elsewhere: even, perhaps, to “the American model” involving the
empowerment of families through home schooling, tax cuts sensitive to marriage
and family size, religious belief, and respect for the natural complementarity
of man and woman, wife and husband. The
issue is, after all, a matter of the life or death of nations.
Endnotes:
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