In conclusion, though there are certainly without question many factors that come into play on this issue, our declining birth rates can without doubt be traced back to modern society’s devaluing of the role of the mother and everything exclusively feminine in favor of careers and progressive policies. This society has repeatedly told women that what we do in childbearing doesn’t count. It’s only “biology” and doesn’t matter. Our bodies, our sexuality, and our sexual and childbearing functions have been demeaned, debased, devalued, and exploited by the modern culture to an absolutely unprecedented degree. This civilization has repeatedly told women for decades now that any unpaid labor women do at home is nothing but meaningless and oppressive drudgery without any redeeming social or political value and that the only thing that counts is contributing to the GDP. A severe form of myopia that doesn’t see the long-term value and necessity in women’s unpaid labor and personal sacrifices in childbearing to society and the economy.
A man who dies in battle is given honor and a medal and is considered to have done his duty to his country. A woman who dies in childbirth––while a sad and lamentable thing to be sure––is given no medal and no honor. A woman who bears a child is given no pension, no economic nor any form of social security, no unique status nor unique rights. She isn’t even guaranteed to so much as even keep that child (in fact, it’s almost guaranteed that in the long run she won’t). She is not hailed as a hero for having done an invaluable duty to contribute to the future of civilization. If she had been in uniform and hit by a stray bullet she’d be hailed as a hero, “trailblazing” new paths for women, but if she bears a child she has done nothing of any value that’s worth protecting and honoring. This society has repeatedly told women that childbearing doesn’t count, that women don’t fulfill their civic duty to society whenever they bear children, and that women will only really be doing their civic duty to their respective countries only when they’re subject to a military draft … and yet now countries around the world are panicking because women aren’t bearing enough children. Hypocritical much? If women stopped having babies tomorrow there’d be no country to fight for––let alone soldiers to even so much as go and fight in war. There’d be no workers in the workforce to prop up the economy, there wouldn’t even be a civilization.
But let’s break down the hypocrisy a little bit further. So, basically, women are supposed to do their “civic duty” to bear at least two children each (plus a little extra just in case!) to replace both parents––the sex that gives birth and the one that doesn’t––giving up their own bodily autonomy and dignity and risking disfigurement, injury, illness and even death itself, just to keep the population afloat, yet at the same time women are not doing their “civic duty” unless they’re subject to a military draft just like the boys?
Ha. I’ve only got one thing to say: ***middle finger***.
Is it any wonder why women don’t want to bear children? Women have been told for decades that childbearing doesn’t count, yet somehow now civilizations the world over desperately need women––as women are the only ones with the biological capability to do it––to have babies. Best of luck with that. I mean, I thought women’s reproductive capabilities were only pure biology and weren’t important enough to matter or warrant any differential treatment between the sexes nor any special protection for women as the child-bearers and the more weaker and nurturing sex? I mean, I thought what women, and women alone, do wasn’t special or important?
In the end, only by valuing women for their uniqueness and valuing and protecting women’s traditional roles in the home and in their children’s lives is any civilization going to keep their birth rates afloat. It is unlikely that anti-abortion laws or attempts at limiting access to birth control in order to force women to bear children will have much any lasting meaningful or positive effects. And to whatever extent that they might, perhaps these policies will also come with other long-term unintended consequences that favor women. For instance, legislatures and courts might just slowly start seeing once again that those children born should simply stay with their mothers––who were given no choice but to bear them––and that fathers should pay up. This is, after all, precisely what happened the last time that abortion was banned and birth control began to be limited in the 19th century. And history does always have a funny way of repeating itself.