Written by Olivia Nater | Published: May 13, 2026
People around the world and especially in the Global North are increasingly choosing to have fewer children or none at all. A neglected reason for this trend appears to be increased awareness of the “metacrisis” — the figurative illness that manifests as the many interrelated crises plaguing our world today. Despite the dire circumstances, falling birthrates provide hope for the future. Here’s why.
The enormous financial cost of raising kids (especially in the United States) is the most frequently cited reason for declining birthrates in the Global North. A recent New York Times op-ed challenged this, arguing that the main driver of low fertility is actually unease and uncertainty about the future.
The author, Anna Louie Sussman, is certainly on to something. In Population Connection’s survey on family size desires, outcomes, and what factors influence these, concern over the state of the world was tied with affordability as having by far the biggest impact on people’s childbearing decisions.
Sussman argues (as we have) that shrinking family size cannot just be a matter of finances, because wealthy individuals and those living in countries with generous government support for parents are also having fewer children:
“What unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics, researchers are now realizing, is young people’s inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.”
She acknowledges that humanity has gone through times of deep uncertainty before, but suggests that this time, it’s more extreme. She points to the “polycrisis” — a term that describes all our interlinked socio-environmental crises, such as catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss, widening inequality, worsening mental health, increasing polarization, and the high risk from AI and of nuclear devastation.
Sussman doesn’t go as far as addressing that, according to scientists, this polycrisis is in fact pushing us dangerously close to societal collapse. But people are clearly sensing that things really are quite bad. Never before have we had to deal with so many converging existential risks.
While the circumstances are dire, the fact that so many young people seem to be questioning the morality of having kids in such uncertain times reflects a positive trend towards considerate, thoughtful family planning.
Ultimately, as we’ve argued before, the declining birthrate trend is driven by choice. For the most part, women in high-income countries are finally free to decide whether, when, and with whom to have children (a freedom they didn’t have during historical times of upheaval), and the majority now have a preference for a small family size.
Much to the chagrin of conservative pronatalists, couples no longer default to getting married and having kids because “it’s what you do.” Instead, they now carefully consider whether they are able to meet a child’s needs and provide a safe, nurturing environment for them to grow up in.
Freedom of choice and thoughtful family planning translate into less childhood trauma and poverty, lower crime rates, and ultimately healthier, wealthier societies. [Ample evidence demonstrates the inverse relationship: both forced birth (see e.g. here) and negative childhood experiences (see e.g. here and here) reinforce poverty and antisocial behavior, and lead to poor health outcomes.]
When asked what it would take for her to feel comfortable having kids, 28-year-old Clare Zakowski told Ms. Sussman,
“I feel like there’d have to be, I want to say a revolution, but basically big political change, like a moral awakening from everyone.”
What a profound statement that elegantly sums up what a growing movement of scientists, thinkers, and change-makers is arguing (in much more complex language)!
To wrap our heads around the polycrisis, we need to dig deeper. Where are all these interconnected crises coming from? Some researchers in this space describe the structures, systems, and paradigms that underlie the polycrisis as the “metacrisis.” The foundations of the polycrisis include our growth-based economic systems and the dominance of policies that prioritize short-term profits over long-term wellbeing and sustainability, for example. These have emerged from modernity, our global cultural paradigm. It is this cultural paradigm, which promotes materialism, individualism, endless growth, and an anthropocentric worldview, that lies at the heart of the problem.
Ms. Zakowski is correct in that changing this essentially requires a “moral awakening.” Modernity nurtures the less desirable aspects of human nature: greed, tribalism, and short-termism. We need to end the dominance of these problematic values by cultivating the positive things: our capacity for cooperation, wisdom, empathy, and care.
We are failing to meaningfully address the polycrisis because proposed solutions are all offshoots of the very systems and paradigms that caused the crises in the first place. We try to fix our environment and resource problems with technology and “green growth,” for instance, which create new problems. World leaders cannot agree on collective climate action because no country wants to make the required sacrifices that might disadvantage it against other nations that keep doing business-as-usual.
Fixing the polycrisis requires cooperative restraint, which the human enterprise has not yet figured out how to do. In the event that this change will not occur voluntarily (which unfortunately seems likely), it may be forced on us. The Renaissance was in large part enabled by the population collapse caused by the Black Death, which shifted power dynamics and boosted wages and education rates. Cultural paradigm change is coming in one way or another — preferably by design, not by disaster.
Cycling back to Ms. Zakowski’s quote, the comment section on the New York Times article reveals that others share her sentiments. One person wrote:
“There would have to be drastic changes in our social fabric for me to feel comfortable bringing a child into this world. Acceptance of science, a feeling of community, a feeling that the good guys can win — all of these are lacking right now. Why bring a child into a world that will look like Mad Max by the time they’re an adult?”
Very low fertility rates might indeed be a sign that humanity is waking up to the metacrisis, which is encouraging because it provides hope that maybe we can achieve the critical mass required to remodel governance, societies, and economic systems without first having to go through catastrophe.
Fertility decline itself might provide a powerful lever for ridding ourselves of our harmful growth obsession. When populations stop growing, governments that are currently hellbent on boosting fertility will be forced to adapt societies and economies to an absence of growth.
And global population decline driven by choice would undoubtedly be hugely beneficial to our environment.
In summary, low birthrates are not inherently bad. They reflect positive developments, including women gaining more choices over their bodies and lives, more thoughtful family planning, and rising awareness of the metacrisis. They also help pave the way towards a more sustainable future.
Pronatalists in positions of power should take note that the most effective way to bring fertility rates back up to replacement level would be to help bring about the cultural paradigm shift required for a wiser, happier, healthier world in which people can feel good about having kids.
Journalists across the Global North are so fascinated by declining birthrates that this trend has become the dominant population-themed media narrative. Despite substantial published research on family size choices and…
Read More
