JESSE POWELL writes regarding his recent report on fertility statistics in the U.S.:

In regular day-to-day life, it is easy to think that there is no opposition to feminism, that American culture is dead, that nothing good is happening. Maybe one runs across a positive indicator here or there but that is only “anecdotal” and perhaps illusory. However, my study on fertility by Census Tract offers absolute proof that “something is going on” on a national and systemic level.

The amazing thing about my findings regarding fertility level and the Married Parents Ratio and the change from 2000 to 2010 is that they prove that a cultural revival really is going on in the country and that this revival is systemic. The gap between 2000 and 2010 in terms of the Global Fertility Level at a given GFL percentile noticeably starts to shrink after the 70th percentile. This indicates that weak effects from the cultural revival are already starting to show up at the 70th percentile! The power of the cultural revival overcomes the power of decline in absolute terms at the 94.7 percentile level regarding fertility and at the 98.0 percentile level regarding Married Parents Ratio but cultural revival is occurring along a broad spectrum; it is not an isolated phenomenon only occurring at the very top.

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JESSE POWELL writes:

What makes for a healthy community? Children. It is really quite simple. A community that invests in children is investing in the future; it is demonstrating the desire to perpetuate itself. This is not simply a worthy ideal. It is a reality apparent in the statistics of social health.

The fertility of a community turns out to be the best indicator of both current family functioning and future flourishing. High fertility is associated with both positive family outcomes in the present and change in a positive direction in the future.  A high Married Parents Ratio by itself does not indicate a positive future direction; neither does high income or other indications of economic prosperity. In this way, fertility is different; high fertility is actually a predictor of future increases in fertility as well as future increases in the Married Parents Ratio.

IN THIS recent entry, readers discussed anecdotal evidence that a baby boom has occurred in some affluent, predominantly liberal white communities. This may be true in certain areas, but recent census figures suggest the trend is not widespread. As Jesse Powell reported previously, in the ten wealthiest zip codes discussed by Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, fertility and family stability all declined between 2000 and 2010. In Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, a suburban town of multi-million dollar homes large enough to accommodate families of ten in style, the number of white children went from 859 to 788 and the proportion of white children living with both of their natural parents went from 91.7 to 87.9 percent. In Chappaqua, New York, another “Super Zip Code,” the number of white children went from 3,585 to 3,355 and the proportion of those living with their own parents declined from 93.6 to 92.5 percent.

Of course, the deterioration was far worse in communities farther down on the economic scale, as has been documented here many times. However, this class divide does not represent a true cultural divide; rather it is the reflection of disparities in intelligence and inherent levels of restraint.

Murray believes that at least some stability can be returned to places where single motherhood and divorce are now common if America’s ruling classes preach the values of marriage and stigmatize illegitimacy again. As I wrote in this previous entry,

[Murray’s] notion that there is a great American divide is problematic. America’s elite does not believe in sexual restraint. It does not believe in traditional sex roles any more than America’s working classes. The well-educated simply suffer less from the consequences of the cultural revolution. How could they possibly preach what they don’t themselves endorse?

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SUZANNE writes:

My husband and I are happy to be expecting our fourth child in seven years of marriage. Unfortunately, I rather dread telling most of my family members. We are Protestant, and the idea of “openness to life” has not been embraced for at least three generations, as far as I call tell. I wonder if you or any of your readers have clever answers to the questions I am sure to receive such as, “Oh no! What are you going to do?,” “You’re not having anymore after this, are you?!” and the ever popular, “You DO know how that happens, right?” Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

Looking at fertility of white women in America over the past 40 years, we see the development of a sharp divergence between college-educated and non-college-educated women.

In 1970, the fertility patterns of college-educated women, who represented a much smaller proportion of the overall female population, didn’t differ much from the non-college-educated.

Both groups of women had a strong preference for having their children young, before they were 30. Delaying childbearing until later in life was not common in either group. Also, illegitimacy was low for both.

Much has changed since. The group of college-educated women has expanded dramatically and a sharp disparity has developed  between the fertility of the non-college-educated, who account for more than 60 percent of all births, and the educated.

The non-college-educated woman in 2009 is more prone to delay having children until 30 than the college-educated woman was in 1970. And, among the college-educated, the desire to have children before 30, which was very strong in 1970, almost completely disappeared by 2009. Also, overall fertility has dropped greatly among both groups of women.

The high school dropout in 1970 had an illegitimacy ratio of ten percent while the esteemed college graduate had an illegitimacy ratio of only one percent; the ratio for the high school graduate was four percent. Read More »

ANDREW writes:

I read your recent blog posts on contraception, culture, white fertility and parenting with great interest.

Artificial contraception was introduced in Europe and North America decades before Asia, Africa and Latin America. I am a cancer specialist, and I can assure you that growing evidence clearly shows the link between hormonal contraception and breast cancer. Ovarian cancer may also be linked to estrogen pills.

Further, landmark studies have found that prostate cancer is linked to oral pills used by women. Here is one study. At this point it is not known whether it is due to direct absorption of estrogen by penis from vagina, or due to ingestion through water and food items. But the link is incontrovertible.

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THE NATIONWIDE INCREASE IN FERTILE CENSUS TRACTS

By Jesse Powell

A traditionalist or patriarchal subculture is growing throughout the United States among all religious groupings (and presumably among people more secular in orientation as well). This is what a close analysis of the 2000 Census and the 2010 Census reveals. To support this claim I look at what I will call Fertile Intact Census Tracts (FICTs). A FICT is defined as a census tract with more than 2.5 children per married couple that has children, a greater than 90% Married Parents Ratio (MPR), and more than 500 children in the census tract (all these measures are applied to the white Non-Hispanic population only). A FICT census tract has high fertility, a high proportion of intact families, and a big enough population to prove the positive indicators are not an accident but truly represent the character of the neighborhood. FICTs can be assumed to be highly religious census tracts; an upper class neighborhood might have a high MPR but it is unlikely to have a high fertility rate. A neighborhood with both intact families and a high fertility rate is a marker of religious influence.

Neighborhoods that are merely upper class are declining throughout the nation; they are declining in terms of their white child population and in terms of their white MPR. Read More »

[NOTE: The below report has been updated to fully include all the new information available in the 2010 Preliminary Birth Data report.]

JESSE POWELL writes:

The National Center for Health Statistics has released the Final Birth Data for 2009 and the Preliminary Birth Data for 2010. The pattern of “risk aversion” presumably in response to the economic crisis is continuing. The ratio of births out-of-wedlock grew slowly from 2007 to 2010 but during this period fertility and the proportion of women of reproductive age who were married fell sharply. “Risk Aversion” can explain the decline in fertility among both married and unmarried women as well as a reluctance to get married which might explain the proportion of women who are married accelerating its long standing decline.

Since 2007, the United States has seen a sharp fall in its fertility rate. Looking specifically at the white population in the United States in 1940, during the Great Depression just after World War II started, the white Total Fertility Rate (TFR) was 2.229 children per woman. This rate then grew steadily reaching a peak in 1957 at the height of the Baby Boom with a white TFR of 3.625. After 1957 the fertility rate then fell steadily, plumbing the depths with a rate of 1.652 children per woman in 1976, the absolute low-point of white fertility up to this time. After 1976, white fertility slowly but persistently crept upwards reaching a high of 1.908 children per woman in 2007. In the three years since 2007, however, the white fertility rate has dropped sharply hitting a TFR of 1.791 in 2010; the lowest fertility rate since 1997.

In the past three years, from 2007 to 2010, the white TFR has fallen by 6%; for blacks it has fallen by 8% and for Hispanics it has fallen by an amazing 17%. In 2010 the Hispanic TFR rate was only 12% above replacement level. If the Total Fertility Rate among Hispanics falls as quickly from 2010 to 2012 as it did from 2008 to 2010 then in 2012 the Hispanic TFR will be 2.05, below replacement level. Read More »

Do you remember the glass slipper and the poisoned apple, the damsel with hair dangling from a tower window and the whole castle fast asleep? The Age of the Fairy Tale is past, dear reader. Today, we only have tales of self-fulfillment, of the social atom seeking fusion. Here is a perfect example.  In a new book, three women describe their quest for motherhood. Complete with donated sperm, abortion, miscarriage, and marriage at the last minute, it’s an anti-morality play that ends in motherhood for all. The New York Times writes:

Three would-be mothers, some “lucky” sperm and — voilà! — three happy families, with all of the pregnancies happening the old-fashioned way. Read More »

A Field Guide to Evil would be handy sometimes, wouldn’t it? It could offer graphics that look like geological cross-sections, with their observable layers of rock. Like the earth, evil is multilayered, extending into the past and composed of radically different materials.

Here is a perfect example of what I mean.

Lisa Belkin of the New York Times in her Adventures in Parenting series (take note of the title; that’s one layer) interviews a woman who has become unexpectedly pregnant at the age of 22. She is unmarried and has just been accepted into a prestigious master’s program. Belkin presents Emmie’s case and solicits comments on what the young woman should do about her predicament. Seven hundred readers write in with their ideas. After publicly considering the possibilities of adoption, raising the child and abortion (marriage does not appear to be an option she considers), Emmy opts for an abortion. She ends her meditations on the subject with this kernel of heartfelt wisdom:

If I get my degree then maybe the path it will take me on will lead me to work on women’s issues. Maybe one day I’ll make a million dollars and start a scholarship program for pregnant graduate students. I can’t believe that nothing good can come of this, I know I’ll do something right one of these days.

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Much has been said about fallen birth rates and what they mean for the economies of the Western world, especially for consumer and government spending. We are after all economic beings, are we not? We are only economic beings, yes? So whatever lower birth rates entail, it will be economic in nature, or so our wise demographers tell us.

 Less has been said about how lowered fertility has changed the entire tenor of society. One hundred years ago, roughly three-fourths of American households included children, today only 32 percent do. Let’s leave aside for the moment the pressing matter of what this portends for our civilization and simply notice the changes. Do you notice? Does it seem odd? Read More »