You cannot buy your way out of it. . .

In a culture and economy accustomed to buying our way out of every problem -- from education to elder care, some are proposing a financial solution to the problem of population implosion.  The problem is that having children simply costs too much and proves to be a burden which expects too much of those of childbearing age.  Therefore, the solution is to ease the cost and make it even financially profitable to have the children you are not having because you cannot afford to have them.  Governments around the world are openly exploring ways to encourage people to have more children in the hopes of reversing what has been a decline in birth rates for more than a decade.  It is, as they would put it, an investment in the future, preventing an aging population without enough working-age people to support the cost of caring for the elderly.  Some countries, such as Hungary, Poland and France, have already implemented financial incentives to do the same, including everything from income tax exemptions to universal child benefits to family allowances or a combination of these.  Add to this list those nations in the process or considering the same kind of financial incentives:  Italy, Estonia, Russia, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, and, yes, even the US.  Will it work?

The reality is that cost is measured in a variety of ways.  Indeed, a high percentage of women from Gen Z and millennial cohorts (the fertile generation) believe motherhood will negatively impact their careers and cost them in ways that money cannot fix. This tension is not simply about money or even economic opportunity.  It is about identity.  Many women -- young and old -- no longer believe that motherhood is a significant part of their identity or even their aspiration.  Many believe motherhood negatively impacts a women’s well-being, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.  Add to this all the talk that encourages uncertainty and anxiety about climate change and political futures, you end up with things dollars cannot fix and an institutional bias now for women of childbearing age to choose fewer children, one child, or no children at all.  The low esteem given to marriage and family has put into place a dynamic that will be hard to buy our way out of and will instead require rebuilding the value and noble character to marriage and family that a Christian community might be well-positioned to advance.  Except that too many Christians and churches have already succumbed to the propaganda against marriage and family and incorporated into their teachings and life the legitimacy for rejecting marriage and family as essential to the person and the society as a whole.

No, we can offer financial incentives but until we change the way we view the institutions of marriage and family, we will be pitting dollars against other self-interests.  The Scriptures remind us that children are a blessing from God and that is the problem.  We no longer view them as blessings or gifts and we have taken over the making of children from God and assigned it to personal desire and the lab.  In such a mechanical view of life, the loss of any burning desire beyond self becomes harder and harder to justify.  So, in a sense, sin has done its worst and we as a society have cooperated in our own undoing.  The situation does not cry out for money into a bank account but for real and honest repentance.