There is piece in the March 3rd New Yorker The End of Children that discusses the pervasive global phenomenon of declining birthrates. Particular attention is given to South Korea, which is presented as the future we are all converging towards. Not just sparse of children, but actively intolerant of children when they are around.
The whole subject is fraught, for very good reasons. One paragraph contained the following sentences which aroused particular scorn from some.
For most of human history, having children was something the majority of people simply did without thinking too much about it. Now it is one competing alternative among many.
I think this is a good example of how an otherwise careful writer can suddenly commit an infelicity. I don’t think they actually mean to say that child bearing was done casually or thoughtlessly, or that the dangers of childbirth weren’t real and weighed on the minds of those involved. The more generous interpretation is that we weren’t so preoccupied with the meta-game of reproduction.
But I think even that is wrong. There is nothing unprecedented with a preoccupation with the question of our species reproducing. Take the following from Lucy Woodling’s review of Lower Than The Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity in the LRB.
St Jerome lambasted the young widow Furia, seemingly apoplectic at the thought she might remarry: she had, after all, already encountered ‘the miseries of marriage’, which he described as ‘unwholesome food’. ‘Perhaps you are afraid that your noble race will die out,’ he wrote, ‘and your father will not have a brat to crawl about his shoulders and smear his neck with filth.’ The family values of fourth-century Christianity were not all they might have been.
If you have spent any time with the New Testament you may remember the apostle Paul calling upon the unmarried to remain so.
Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. (1 Corinthians 7:25-27)
If the past 2000 years still feels a little recent, remember that in Exodus, Pharaoh became concerned that the Israelite slaves had become a little too numerous under Egyptian subjugation and decides to thin them out by slaughtering newborns. And if you want to look beyond the Bible, the general abundance of fertility gods and fertility cults suggest that we have always been a little nutty about the reproduction of our species.