As the press is telling us more and more, across much of the world, fewer people are choosing to have children. Economists warn of shrinking workforces. Politicians talk of national decline. But birthrates are not only an economic indicator. As Pope Francis once put it, “The birth rate is the first indicator of the hope of a people.” And hope, its absence, is the deeper crisis behind our demographic decline.
The current conversation in Washington, from billionaires to think tanks, has been about incentives and subsidies. The Heritage Foundation — close to the current administration — is reportedly advocating a “Manhattan Project” for babies. Vice President Vance and Elon Musk have joined the chorus, calling for policies to incentivize families to have more children. Their proposals hinge on two concerns: avoiding the economic impacts of depopulation and ensuring a sufficient number of what some call “Heritage Americans,” a euphemism for maintaining a white, Christian, native-born majority.
But these approaches and the debates surrounding them fail to grapple with the deeper dimensions of the problem. I suggest some considerations to move us toward a better, richer and more humane conversation.
I write as someone who dispositionally leans left politically, but whose cultural and religious sensibilities are decidedly conservative. This perspective shapes my approach to the issue. While I am concerned that “the family” is in profound trouble in many countries around the globe, I believe we need to look beyond economic incentives, technocratic fixes or nostalgic cultural preservationism to address the crisis at its roots.
The trouble with family life today is not just material or structural; it is existential. Demography offers a valuable lens to diagnose the symptoms, but it cannot explain why people are unwilling to have children. As Nicholas Eberstadt has shown, the current demographic crisis is volitional — a deliberate choice not to have kids. Unlike the Black Death, this has not been imposed by nature or war but comes from millions of individual choices couples are making.
Reviving and scaling hope in the face of profound challenges — geopolitical, ecological, technological — is the task before us. This task is more fundamental than any policy tweak offered by D.C. think tanks or the administration.
Frankly, I am skeptical of the ability of policy and politics to restore hope and reverse depopulation. After all, an administration dismantling FEMA while ignoring the perils of climate disruption, unleashing unregulated AI and flirting with the displacement of entire populations to create new beachside resorts is hardly a beacon of humane and hopeful cultural renewal. Nor do the Democrats, who appear reluctant to articulate any real vision of culture’s power to improve lives, appear to do much more. But perhaps cultural crises are best left to poets and philosophers, pastors and rabbis, rather than politicians.
Still, policy has its place. While it cannot create hope, it can support those who are trying to live out that hope by building families. Current debates about policies to make parenthood more feasible — paid parental leave, child care subsidies and the like — are helpful but insufficient. Why? Because the decision to have children isn’t just about personal economics. It’s communal.
Raising a child is a monumental effort, and the costs — financial, emotional and social — can only be borne in solidarity. Children are not just a gift to their parents; they are a gift to all of us. Welcoming that gift requires a society willing to receive it with openness and generosity. But the problem is that we’ve become a society increasingly hostile to “outsiders.” Whether it’s immigrants, neighbors with different political views or people with mental illness, our culture is increasingly marked by suspicion, exclusion and anger. This hostility seeps into how we treat even the smallest outsiders: babies and their families.
When we view children as burdens or assets — as much of the pronatalist dialogue today does — rather than persons, we reduce them to their utility. Of course, we need children to sustain our workforce, fund pensions and ensure national security. But these arguments, while valid, are insufficient. What ultimately matters for human flourishing is not just that we are rich or secure. It is that we live in a society capable of renewal — moral, spiritual, artistic and cultural — through the constant arrival of new life.
To paraphrase Stanley Hauerwas, we cannot sustain the practice of having children in a world that treats it as a matter of individual satisfaction. The truth is, in today’s world, having kids is often framed as a lifestyle choice akin to getting a pet. And if we’re honest, it’s not a great choice if one’s aim is maximal personal pleasure and economic security.
Having children is not about personal gain. It is an act of hope. It is a declaration of dependence and interdependence — a recognition that we are bound to one another across generations and that life is worth sustaining. However, this hope cannot flourish in a society that valorizes individualism, independence and consumption over community and care.
So, where does that leave us? First, we must reject the idea that solving the demographic crisis is purely a matter of economic incentives or nationalist rhetoric. Instead, we must ask: What kind of society makes it possible — and desirable — for people to choose children?
It is a society that welcomes children as gifts, not burdens; sees families as central to the common good, not private enterprises; and values interdependence as much as independence and solidarity as much as success.
Politicians will not build such a society. It will be built by ordinary citizens willing to reimagine what it means to live together. Above all, it requires a renewal of hope — a hope that can only grow in a culture that believes the future is worth having. Until we confront the demographic crisis as a cultural and spiritual challenge, no policy, whether tax credits, government-funded savings accounts, child care subsidies or bonuses for large families, will be enough.
Joe Waters is the cofounder and CEO of Capita, a think tank focused on the flourishing of families and their communities. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.