Tag Archives: population constraints

The Misplaced Fears About the United States’ Declining Fertility Rate

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SETH WENIG / AP
America’s fertility rate is in steady decline: In 2018, it dipped to an all-time low, down 2 percent from the year before, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published Wednesday. American women are now predicted to have an average of 1.73 children over their lifetime. The absolute number of births has also fallen to a historic low: Roughly 3.8 million babies were born in the United States last year, the smallest tally since 1986, when the country was just starting to emerge from a recession.

Some observers are worried that the ongoing decline will have grim economic consequences in the not-so-distant future. Without enough new babies, the theory goes, America’s demographic makeup will tip further toward older generations, whose members will grow needier and less productive with age. A shrinking workforce could, over time, make this imbalance all the more unsustainable.

If the trend holds fast over the next few years, those fears may prove valid, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, a demographer and sociology professor at Bowling Green State University, told me. But, she says, the trends revealed by the new report are more complex than just the declining fertility rate, and it contains some hopeful news as well: The teen birth rate dropped by 7 percent from 2017 to 2018, according to the CDC’s analysis. Meanwhile, the rate for women ages 30 through 34 was virtually unchanged, and their counterparts in their late 30s and early 40s experienced a slight uptick in birth rates, up 1 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Generally speaking, the older a woman is when she has her first child, the better that child’s socioeconomic outcome.

Against this backdrop, Benjamin Guzzo argues, using that 1.73-children-per-woman stat to predict catastrophe doesn’t make sense. The common measure of a country’s fertility rate is known as its total fertility rate, or TFR. The TFR predicts the expected number of children an average American woman will have in her lifetime. Importantly, it isn’t some ongoing tally—rather, it gathers the actual fertility rate of, say, U.S. women in their 40s and extrapolates from that number to assert what the rate for women currently in their 20s will be two decades from now. TFR is a useful metric because it’s simple and enables apples-to-apples comparisons globally, Benjamin Guzzo says. But in a country and an era in which more and more women are delaying motherhood, she argues, TFR is an estimate that is bound to be skewed.

That’s especially true because, by and large, the rate at which American women of childbearing age express an interest in starting a family hasn’t changed much in the past decade, suggests research presented at a recent meeting of demographers. Nor have notions of the ideal number of children in a family. Meanwhile, a growing body of research challenges traditional assumptions about the risk factors of so-called geriatric pregnancies. Women, Benjamin Guzzo notes, have long had children in their 40s—it’s just that, in the past, they were often having their third or fourth kid.

While some of this apparently declining fertility rate may be attributable to delay, notably, a woman’s decision to delay a baby does increase the likelihood that she won’t end up ever having one. “We need to be changing how we talk about this from mostly a story about delayed births to, increasingly, a story about births that these women are simply never going to have,” Lyman Stone, a researcher at the Institute for Family Studies, told me in an email.

Whatever’s going on, people decide not to have children, or to delay having them, for all sorts of reasons, not always because they’re not interested. For instance, a 2018 study surveying healthy, egg-freezing women in the United States and Israel on their motivations found that “lack of a partner” was the primary driving force. Specifically, the study participants pointed to a “massive undersupply” of men who are university-educated and committed to fidelity, marriage, and/or parenthood.

Other would-be parents are likely putting off kids because of insufficient resources, or a sense that their environment is too unpredictable. “Economic instability and unaffordable care could be factors for people deciding to have children later in life, or not at all,” said Josie Kalipeni, the policy director of the caregiving advocacy organization Caring Across Generations, in an email. Numerous studies have attributed the growing desire to delay motherhood to financial stressors: economic uncertainty and overwhelming student debt, for example, or job instability and limited access to health insurance. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that societal problems such as climate change—which may eventually affect some women’s ability to procreate—could discourage some prospective parents from becoming parents after all.

All of which is to say: The record-low fertility rate likely isn’t a sign that the United States’ younger generations are rejecting having children. Rather, the way Benjamin Guzzo and many other observers see it, it’s a sign that the country isn’t providing the support Americans feel they need in order to have children.

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And here’s a letter to the editor from a friend in response to the above:

 

I understand the author is seeking to assuage fears being reported about our country’s declining fertility rate but I strongly object to both this professed fear and the need to mitigate it. Grim economic consequences because people aren’t populating fast enough to become working drones? It’s hard not to laugh at the absurdity of such a thought when everything indicates the opposite is actually the cause for grim writing on the wall. If humans don’t change our global industrial economic model, and soon, human civilization will be collapsing in our lifetimes. And we’re taking just about everything else out the door with us! This Great Extinction Event we’re experiencing is begging human civilization to live differently—breed less, consume less, harm less. This should be the mantra guiding us all right now.

I’m one of many U.S. child-free women who opted out of child-bearing and -rearing intentionally—not only because I wanted to spend my professional years serving others not of my own making, but also because our world’s burgeoning and exponentially increasing human population is well past sustainability. I actually considered the personal act of bringing a child into the world immoral, given the state of affairs of our current world and the ecological crisis that is mounting. In short, I concur with one of the author’s theories: dropping fertility rates do in part reflect women like myself who are looking at climate doom & gloom and choosing not to procreate. For Earth’s sake, I’m just grateful I’m not alone.

 

Earth’s overpopulation exasperating climate change

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https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/letters_to_editor/earth-s-overpopulation-exasperating-climate-change/article_c811b4f6-1c1a-5083-9420-24afcbf82792.html

Every social and environmental issue is exacerbated by overpopulation. Fifty years ago, there were 3.4 billion people living. Now that number is 7.6 billion. Human population has grown more in the last several decades than in the past three million years. We add 80 million mouths to feed every year. At that rate, world population will grow to 12 billion by 2050.

Five results from overpopulation are: 1) hunger and starvation; 2) squandering natural resources until we run out; 3) landscalping and the loss of land fertility; 4) cultural, economic, and political upheaval; and 5) harm to wild things. 

In about 300 years, the acreage needed to feed humans has gone from less than 10 percent to nearly half of Earth’s land acres—more than a five-fold rise. Earth’s atmosphere, seas, and forests can’t soak up our industrial, transportation, and agricultural emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases.

Between 1990 and 2003, U.S. per capita greenhouse gas emissions went up by 3.2 percent. But overall U.S. emissions went up 20.2 percent! How can this be? Our population rose 16.1 percent. So, unless we get a handle on population, we’ll never succeed in reducing greenhouse gas production. 

Economist Edwin S. Rubenstein recently wrote “The impact of U.S. population growth on global climate change.” He concludes that, “Over the long run, U.S. population growth is the most important factor in CO2 emissions emanating from this country.”

Experts writing in the Lancet say that “Prevention of unwanted births today by family planning might be one of the most cost-effective ways to preserve the planet’s environment for the future.”

 Norman A. Bishop

Bozeman

Volunteer to Distribute Free Endangered Species Condoms

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http://www.all-creatures.org/alert/alert-20180115.html

Action Alert from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Center for Biological Diversity
January 2018

ACTION

Valentine’s Day is just a few weeks away and soon people will be busy thinking about romance, fancy dinners and, well, getting busy. The world could use a little more love right now, but as our human population grows, there’s less room and fewer resources for wildlife.

Help us give away free Endangered Species Condoms on Valentine’s Day. They’re a fun, unique way to break through the taboo and get people talking about how human population growth affects wildlife.

The good news is that safe sex saves wildlife — so this Valentine’s Day show wildlife some love by helping hand out free Endangered Species Condoms.

Be a part of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Endangered Species Condom project, and distribute free condoms featuring six endangered species threatened by unsustainable human population growth.

SIGN UP NOW USING THIS FORM to join our volunteer distributor network. And note that Valentine’s Day requests must be submitted by Jan. 18 for consideration.

The Center distributes thousands of condoms every year as a part of our Population and Sustainability Program to spotlight the toll human population growth and overconsumption have on our planet. Sign up to receive condoms and help educate people across the country about how endangered species — from Ozark hellbenders to monarch butterflies — are affected by our rapidly growing numbers.

Here’s how it works:

The condoms are distributed for free through the Center’s volunteer network nationwide and at specific times of the year — particularly around certain holidays and, of course, Earth Day.

Due to the high volume of requests, we’re not able to send condoms to everyone who signs up. So the more you tell us about your ideas for cool events and opportunities to engage people in conversation about human population and endangered species, the easier it is for us to make sure the condoms are sent where they can have the greatest impact. Submissions are reviewed on the 1st of every month, so if your request is urgent, please let us know. Unfortunately we’re unable to ship condoms anywhere outside of the United States.

See two of the six condoms available.

endangered species condoms

endangered species condoms

Thank you for everything you do for animals!

I told my doctor I didn’t want kids. She sent me to a therapist.

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http://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/2/20/14617778/woman-no-kids-sterilization

 by E.P. Wohlfart Feb 20, 2017

“What about when you and your husband get divorced, and you meet someone else?”

She said when. The gynecologist’s voice was steady and detached, but her lips pursed in a condescending smirk and her eyes gleamed. I was 25 years old and had married my best friend three years earlier. Everything about being married brought me joy. I certainly had no intention of getting divorced. She paused briefly before delivering the final blow.

“What if Mr. Right wants children?”

She seemed to take pleasure in my inability to give an immediate response, but if I stumbled on my own thoughts, it was only because I was reaching for a response that would not get me thrown out of the gynecologist’s office. I finally went with: “That would mean he is not Mr. Right.”

Her patronizing smile told me she was not satisfied.

“My husband has nothing to do with my desire not to have children,” I continued, hoping I did not look as flustered as I felt. “I knew before I met him that I did not want children. In fact, I was the one who first brought it up with him.”

I only ever considered having children at the insistence of others

“Mummy?”

In my memory, she is peeling potatoes. I don’t know if that’s exactly what she was doing, but she had her back to me and was engaged in some important back and forth between the sink and the stove. I was 8 or 9, and I was planning on becoming a fighter pilot or a lawyer, depending on the time of day.

“Isn’t it selfish to have children?” I asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the baby doesn’t exist yet, so you can’t be doing it for the baby’s sake. You don’t know what it wants. That means you’re creating a human being just because you wanted a child.”

I don’t know if she stopped peeling potatoes and came to sit with me at the kitchen table while she responded. I might have that mixed up with the time I asked her if falling out of love isn’t actually a sign of never having been truly in love to start with. The best time to ambush my mother with difficult questions is while she’s cooking — her attention may be divided, but she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“Yes, I suppose it is selfish,” she said. Anything she said after that did not matter; I had my validation that it was okay for me not to want to have children.

The first time my friends asked me in all seriousness how many children I was going to have, I said zero. We were 14, and although I was not very concerned with fitting in, reading the room, I sensed I had said something that should not be repeated.

“I might adopt an older child one day,” I conceded when the topic came up from then on. “I might have biological children someday.”

On some days, even I believed those words. But at 19, I realized something crucial: I had only ever considered having children at the insistence of others. For the first time, I let myself think about all aspects of parenthood from the perspective of what I wanted, and one thing was certain — I did not want to be a parent.

“You will change your mind,” people told me. “Maybe I will,” I said. “But knowing me, it doesn’t seem likely, and I can’t live my life based on unlikely scenarios.”

What it took to convince my gynecologist to even consider sterilizing me

The gynecologist’s condescending smile faded slightly. She wanted to know why I was in such a rush. Why I had come into her office only a week after reaching the minimum age legally required to ask for sterilization without the intervention of social services. “You will still be able to have this procedure at age 30 or 35.”

I have never understood how following up on a decision more than 15 years in the making was rushing simply because I was 25. But my brand new gynecologist was not the only one convinced that I was rushing things. That was also the opinion of 100 strangers, who expressed themselves in significantly more misogynistic terms in the comments field of the interview I gave to the local newspaper after a journalist deemed my life choices newsworthy.

“I am an archaeologist,” I told the gynecologist with the relative calm of someone answering an emotionally loaded question with a rehearsed response. “I don’t know if I’ll be living in a country where abortion will be available to me should I become pregnant.”

This was no exaggeration. I still lived in Sweden, where I was born and raised, but many of my peers were settling temporarily in Ireland, where large-scale infrastructure works put archaeologists in high demand — and where abortion is still illegal in most instances. In the summers, I worked in countries where I couldn’t legally bring half of my book collection, much less get an abortion should the contraceptive implant in my arm fail. My husband and I were open to moving to such a country if I got a more permanent position.

The way she snorted at my concern made it clear she did not understand what it means to struggle financially or to leave your country for a job because you desperately need one. In her mind, I could always pay to abort the pregnancy I was attempting to avoid should I not be covered by some national health care system abroad. I could also fly back home to Sweden, she told me, where health care is next to free. Her disregard for my financial situation aside, this was simply not true. Swedish citizens who live abroad are not eligible for subsidized elective health care. This woman held the keys to my future, and she intended to make her decision based on ignorance.

“I am also concerned about the rising conservative trend globally,” I carried on. “I can’t be sure that I will be able to get an abortion in 10 years, much less get one wherever I might live.”

Her half-laugh and the way she turned away to compose herself before looking down her nose at me made her feelings absolutely clear. Child, her eyes said, don’t be stupid. You live in Sweden, and the world is always going to get better and better. This was 2009, and the far-right conservatives who want to restrict access to abortions were not yet the second-largest party in the opinion polls. “I am going to refer you to a therapist here at the hospital. If you can convince her, I will approve you for the procedure.”

I specifically wanted the Essure procedure because it was the option with the lowest impact on the body — a nickel titanium coil is inserted into each of the woman’s fallopian tubes through the vagina. Her body then responds to the intrusive metal by growing new tissue around it until the fallopian tubes close up, effectively stopping the eggs from ever meeting sperm.

At the time, fewer than 30 hospitals in Sweden had the necessary training to administer the procedure. Out of the 10,000 women in the country sterilized that year, 0.06% chose Essure. Tubal ligation (“having your tubes tied”) remains the ubiquitous choice.

I had spent months poring over testimonials and documentation detailing all available types of sterilization, regularly presenting my findings to my husband. Together we decided on Essure because of its less invasive nature and shorter recovery time. If I was unable to get the procedure, we decided my husband would ask for a vasectomy.

“My job is to determine that your aversion to having children is not the result of a fear that we can cure”

The dark and empty hospital corridor leading to the therapist’s office was not wide enough for a medical emergency. There was no waiting room. I had the distinct feeling that this corridor was not meant for me. I was nervous about the amount of power the stranger behind the door might wield over my future. This is what I imagine waiting outside of the headmaster’s office feels like.

The office could barely fit her desk. When I sat down opposite her, I tucked my feet under the chair so I would not accidentally kick her toes.

As I answered questions about my parents’ marriage and my early childhood, my mind explored strategic options. Would the truth about my brother’s autism and sister-in-law’s cerebral palsy highlight my understanding of parental sacrifice and lifelong commitment, or would it be twisted into a convenient scapegoat for my unconventional stance?

“My job is to determine that your aversion to having children is not the result of a fear that we can cure,” she said.

I decided to tell the truth, no matter how inconvenient.

After almost two hours of exploring my feelings and extolling the uneventfulness of my happy, sheltered middle-class childhood, after I was told to lean back in the uncomfortable office chair and imagine myself cradling my newborn infant, I was allowed to leave. It was concluded that there was nothing a professional could do to heal me of my deviation.

What the sterilization procedure is like

A nurse showed me across the open floor plan to the empty bed in the corner, ticking off boxes as I responded to questions. Fasting? Check. Pregnancy test completed? Check. “Please change into your gown and take off any jewelry and hair clips. I will give you some privacy.”

I was just about to lift my shirt when the curtains parted and a man with white hair and in scrubs appeared briefly inside my makeshift changing room. As I unhooked my bra and reached for the hospital gown, he wandered in again, apparently too short a visit to say hello or sorry but long enough to get a clear view of my mostly naked body. Ten minutes later, when my clothes were safely stowed away and I had left the privacy of my changing station, he was introduced to me as my doctor.

Fifteen minutes later, I rolled into an operating room on a bed with a drip attached to my arm, just in case. This type of sterilization can technically be done in a gynecologist’s office, since there is no need for sedatives or a blade. Operating rooms, however, are better equipped than gynecologists’ offices.

I don’t remember the words he spoke, but my new doctor’s first full sentence directed at me was hissed in irritation. He scolded me for coming in while I was on my period. We would have to cancel the whole thing and reschedule. He did not say so, but the undertones were clear: I had wasted everyone’s time and money either by ignoring procedure or by lying to the nurse who scheduled me.

I tried to steady my fear and shame as I told the angry stranger between my thighs that I’d had my period two weeks earlier, but stressful situations cause me some minimal breakthrough bleeding, rarely more than two or three drops of blood in total. That was what he was seeing. I swallowed hard, and tried to sound as authoritative as one can while on one’s back and naked from the waist down. “We can reschedule, but I doubt it will be less stressful next time,” I said.

Everything went well up until the cervix. Not having borne children into this world, it turned out that mine was smaller than the catheter used to guide the metal coils into my fallopian tubes. My doctor’s solution was to simply hammer the tool with brute strength against the opening in the hope of forcing it through. The logic was sound. The two female nurses between my legs grimaced in horror just before pain shot through my body. I tried to focus on my breathing when it hit me again, and again, and again.

I stared into the bright lights above until the nurse anesthetist squeezed my hand and leaned in over me. He wanted me to voice my desire for pain relief. He extolled its virtues, the ease with which it could be administered, and how soon it would help me. I couldn’t tell if I needed any. The pain was terrible, but my mind was rationalizing it. It would all be over any moment now, I told myself. He asked me one more time if I wanted pain relief. I nodded. The pain shot through me again. Twice.

I don’t remember the doctor’s words. I simply remember that he had no intention of stopping. Pausing for pain relief would take one minute. To him, it seemed, my pain was a reasonable price to pay for that minute saved. Each time I recall this moment, the nurse anesthetist’s raised voice sounds more and more like a lion’s roar. I don’t remember his words, either. He told off an older man with a fancier degree, who clearly was not used to being talked back to, and relieved me of the source of my pain until the chemicals in my bloodstream would take the edge off it. He was my hero.

My doctor’s dismissive post-operation commentary

I was in a rush to leave. I had made big plans to spend the rest of the day in bed, watching films while eating large quantities of ice cream and small to moderate quantities of pain medication. My husband was on his way to pick me up. His big plan for the day was to hold me and to refill my ice cream.

Waiting around to be debriefed by the doctor was not on anyone’s schedule, but the nurses assured me that a short talk about how the procedure went was desirable. They left me in a windowless room the size of a confessional with two chairs facing each other. A few minutes later, my doctor arrived to tell me that the sterilization he had performed on me had gone well.

“You know, when you regret this, a few years from now, the government will no longer subsidize your in vitro fertilization.”

He said when.

E.P. Wohlfart is a freelance writer and historian with a penchant for making bold but joyous moves, such as relocating permanently from Sweden to France. Follow her at epwohlfart.com or on Twitter.

The Real Newcomers

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The heavily-funded Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is fond of spreading the hype that today’s wolves are Johnny-come-latelies and thus should keep their paws off of theose prized trophy “game” species. But unlike sport hunters, wolf packs play an efficient and necessary part in nature’s narrative—a role that has served both predator and prey for eons.

Like rightful kings returning from exile, wolves are far from new to the Yellowstone ecosystem. Their 71-year absence was the result of a heartless bounty set by the real newcomers to the fine-tuned system of checks and balances that has regulated itself since life began.

New to the scene are cowboys on four-wheelers with their monoculture crop of cows and ubiquitous barbed-wire fences. New are pack trains of hunters resentful of any competition from lowly canines, yet eager to take trophies of wolf pelts, leaving the unpalatable meat to rot. And new is the notion that humankind can replace nature’s time-tested order with so-called wildlife “management,” a regime that has never managed to prove itself worthy.

Unmatched manipulators, modern humans with their pharmacies, hospitals, churches, strip malls, sporting goods stores, burger joints and fried chicken franchises have moved so far beyond the natural order that population constraints, such as disease or starvation, are no longer a threat to the species’ survival (as long as society continues to function). Hunting is no longer motivated by hunger. Twenty-first century sport hunters are never without a full belly, even after investing tens of thousands of dollars on brand-new 4X4 pickups, motorboats, RVs and of course the latest high-tech weaponry.

But wolves can’t afford to be acquisitive; if they run low on resources, they must move on or perish. Theirs is a precarious struggle, without creature comforts or false hopes of life everlasting.

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The preceding was an excerpt from my book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport…

Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson