Family – Family Council

What’s Wrong with Wanting Grandchildren?

Jan 2, 2025John StonestreetFamilyFamily

With more millennials choosing no kids, would-be grandparents mourn the end of their family line.

People often joke that if they’d known becoming a grandparent was so much fun, they would have done it before having kids. Having grandchildren is widely considered one of life’s great joys, one which, historically, most adults experienced. Today, however, a growing number of people will never have this experience.

Grandparents in America are becoming rarer. In 2014, 60% of people over 50 had at least one grandchild. By 2021, that had fallen to just over half. The historic decline in birth rates means that many who devoted their early lives to raising families will spend their later years watching those families end. The main reason for this is that many millennials, the generation now entering middle age, have chosen not to have kids.

Writing at The New York Times recently, Catherine Pearson gave voice to “the unspoken grief of never becoming a grandparent.” People she interviewed confessed “a deep sense of longing and loss when their children opt out of parenthood, even if they understand at an intellectual level that their children do not ‘owe’ them a family legacy.”

Parents of children who don’t want children find themselves in a difficult spot, especially those who have bought into the expressive individualist idea that children are a choice, and the only reason to have them is to enhance personal happiness. If their children don’t want children, these parents are supposed to be okay with that decision. Apparently, many aren’t.

For example, one would-be grandmother assured Pearson, “This decision was right for my kids,” before adding sadly, “I’m not going to have grandchildren. So that part of my life is just over.” Others who face silent golden years when they expected the patter of little feet are still hoping to convince their adult children to reconsider. One mother said she gently reminds her intentionally childfree daughter that she might not always feel this way—that the woman her daughter will be in ten years “will not recognize the person she is today.”

According to Pearson, she received a largely hostile social media reaction to her article, mostly from millennials. Their “how dare you feel entitled to grandchildren?” reaction puts a “silencing effect” on the whole conversation. In generations past, hopeful grandmas and grandpas would encourage families, but they now simply keep quiet as their children remain unmarried into their thirties, often citing climate change, racism, and school shootings as their reasons to be childless. One 69-year-old mom said her daughter has “made it perfectly clear … that this subject is not to be discussed.”

It’s difficult to imagine a more practical “ideas have consequences” moment than this. The inability of so many to articulate why not having grandkids is a tragedy and to be honest about their grief reveals much about our values. We’ve lost even the language to say what people for most of history took for granted. It is good and normal to want to see your descendants, and it hurts when that hope is dashed.

This moment also illustrates how ideas and their consequences are intergenerational. The view that children are unnecessary burdens or optional accessories did not start with millennials, but it has reached its logical conclusion in that generation. The rapid disappearance and replacement of once-common family relationships, including siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents has made the world lonelier for young and old alike.

Christians should “mourn with those who mourn,” which is what Pearson’s article attempted. The pain of never becoming a grandparent should be acknowledged and legitimized, and parents should not be bullied into unconditionally affirming every choice their grown children make. Kids aren’t products, so no one is “owed” grandkids, and not everyone will or should get married, but some choices are better for society than others. The record number of people in our world choosing to remain barren points to a deep societal sickness.

Christians should also witness to a countercultural way of life, including a positive perspective on children. At least, we can make sure they know they’re not burdens or accessories, that they bring joy, and that we hope—Lord willing—the same joy may one day find them.

None of this by itself will turn our demographic future around. But until it’s once again okay to look forward to seeing our children’s children, there won’t be much of a demographic future in the first place.

Humans Were Meant to Be Here: Guest Column

Sep 9, 2024Shane MorrisCurrent EventsChildren, Family, Marriage

We are a blessing to be preserved, multiplied, and redeemed.

For a long time, if you encountered a writer warning about declining global birth rates, it was a safe bet you were reading a right-leaning or Christian publication. But that appears to be changing. In the last couple of years, mainstream news outlets seem to have caught on that the problem civilization now faces is not too many but too few babies, and some are sounding the alarm. Recent stories in The Spectator, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all clearly describe why a shrinking and aging society is a bad thing and try to identify the causes behind this population “bust.”

The fear of a population “bomb” haunts mainstream psyche greatly due to Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb, where he famously declared in the opening line that, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” and predicted mass starvation due to overpopulation.

This of course never happened, and in fact, global food production vastly outpaced population growth, making it easier than ever to feed everyone. Facts aside, the baby-banning ideology persists.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post editorial board ran a response to the surge of critical comments they’ve received on stories about declining birth rates. As anyone familiar with the comments section under controversial (or really any) articles can imagine, a litany of bad arguments had been unfolding. One commenter wrote that, “Endless growth—whether that’s of the population or the economy—is an unachievable fantasy.” Another declared, “Now is the time to reject growthist ideology for good.” Many cited climate change, overcrowding and, of course, running out of food as reasons to encourage lower birth rates.

The Post did a surprisingly nice job of refuting these. It pointed out that having more young and creative minds is precisely how mankind has enjoyed an unprecedented technological boom over the last two centuries: “Ingenuity and innovation have repeatedly empowered humanity to overcome ecological constraints,” and have “liberated much of humanity from misery.”

Imposing population constraints on developing nations would also, it said, “amount to a kind of environmental imperialism,” denying to poor countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America precisely the opportunities for growth and improved living standards that richer, western countries have long enjoyed. And, they added, there is simply no evidence it would help the environment:

Productivity growth can take the world in directions that are benign for the physical and social environment. Growth can mean less pollution, more forests and better health.

Of course, the real reason The Post caught flak from many of its readers wasn’t environmentalism or economics, but something better described as a “mood” instilled in the popular imagination by books like The Population Bomb and in a host of sci-fi movies. It’s a sense, seemingly shared by more today than ever before, that humans are bad, that our activity is inherently exploitative, and that the world would be better off with fewer of us.

In this way of thinking, people are a disease on the planet—a species whose inventions have allowed us to bypass the checks and balances of natural selection and multiply out of control. In short, we don’t really belong here; not in such high numbers. And a large reduction in our population could only be beneficial.

But what if human beings are good, actually? Not in a moral sense, but in the sense that we’re meant to be here? What if this world was specifically designed to support us and thrive under human stewardship? What if the way we continually defy the doomsday predictions of writers like Ehrlich through innovation and discovery shows that we are more than just another species devouring resources?

This, of course, is exactly how the Bible describes human beings. And it’s why, despite the race’s fallen condition, Christians view human life as a blessing to be preserved, multiplied, and redeemed; and the human mind and spirit as resources more inexhaustible than any material we consume.

We bear a certain resemblance to our Maker in that we can, in our limited and creaturely way, also create. Which is why a lack of new humans is not good news, and why I’m happy to see that some mainstream publications are starting to realize this—even if The Population Bomb still haunts their comments sections.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.

Nearly Half of U.S. Adults Under 50 Don’t Plan to Have Children: Pew Research

Jul 31, 2024Jerry CoxFamilyChildren, Family

New data from Pew Research Center shows nearly half of adults under 50 in America don’t plan to have children.

Researchers found a staggering 47% of adults surveyed said they are “unlikely to ever have kids.”

When asked the reasons for choosing not to have children, most did not blame the economy or the rising cost of living. Instead, 57% told Pew that they simply don’t want kids. Forty-four percent said they “want to focus on other things.” Pew writes that most of these adults also said that “not having kids has made it easier for them to afford the things they want, have time for hobbies and interests, and save for the future.”

Interestingly, researchers found that among 18 – 49 year-olds, women were actually more likely than men to say that they simply don’t want to have kids.

These numbers are up drastically from 2018, when 61% of adults under 50 said they planned to have children someday.

All of this underscores how our society seems to view children as, at best, an accessory, and, at worst, a burden.

Society doesn’t treat children like they are a blessing from the Lord. Instead, people have been told that children will somehow stop them from doing what they want.

This is evidenced by the fact that earlier this year medical researchers reported that voluntary sterilizations are on the rise among 18 – 30 year-olds.

The fact is, children are good for society. We’ve seen in other countries how low birth rates hurt the economy, contribute to labor shortages, and make it harder to care for the elderly. In 2020, a Chinese Communist Part official admitted the country needed to do more to raise its birthrate in order to “meet labor demands.”

Many of the people who participated in Pew’s survey even said that “parents have it easier when it comes to having someone to care for them as they age.”

But more than just being good for society, children are a blessing. Children are an incredible responsibility, but they’re also an incredible joy. As John Stonestreet once said, “Every person bears the image of God, so whenever families produce children, they mirror God to the world. Sure kids are sometimes irritating, but they’re often hilarious, and they always remind us that life isn’t about ourselves.”

That’s a message more Americans should take to heart.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.