10 Reasons to Have a Baby: Now is the Best Time to Start Your Family

Why have children? The case for kids and pure love — how one baby changes the whole world

Re-births follow wars. Will the great pandemic (the “invisible war’’) unleash a marriage and baby boom like the one that followed World War II?

A March 30 poll found 13 percent of U.S. adults saying they are having more frequent sex during lock-down. Condom sales crashed worldwide as communities closed. Hard liquor sales jumped 75 percent. Babies in 2021?

Marriages in America just hit an all-time low: 6.5 new marriages for every 1,000 people (40 percent of the post-World War II peak rate of 16.4 per 1,000 in 1946).

Just half of U.S. adults live with a spouse versus 70 percent in 1970. Seven percent live with unmarried partners compared to 1 percent 50 years ago. The current birth rate of new children is the lowest in a century.

“Millennials are in peak marriage years, their 20s and 30s, and it’s still dropping,” researcher Sally Curtin warns. “This is historic…A lot of it is the economy, and the extent to which COVID has a lasting effect on the economy, it might affect family formation.”

The isolation of being in lock-down for more than 45 days forced people to turn inward, examining priorities, habits, and behaviors. Will post-pandemic economic growth and returned freedoms create pent up demand for marriage, stronger relationships, and a new baby boom?

Lessons from Michigan and other childless “shrinking states’’

Fewer births have a cost? My home state of Michigan lost 800,000 jobs between 2000–2010 (more than all other U.S. states combined). We were the only state to lose population over the decade-long “Winter that Never Ends.’’

Terrible economies mean fewer births and fewer young people supporting their elders. Michigan births have plunged 18 percent since 2000, triple the national rate, Bridge Magazine found. Only Illinois had a steeper collapse.

“All of our policy thinking assumes growth… we may have to start managing stagnation and decline,” retired University of Michigan demographer Ren Farley told Bridge.

Turning population numbers around became a primary goal of state government when I joined Michigan’s economic development team in January 2011. Michigan is bigger in 2020 than it was in 2010 (while other states continued to shrink).

Some advocate a continuing decline in birth rates: the United Nations promotes “population control” to ease climate change. The UN Women Twitter account called motherhood “a penalty” for women. Around the developed world, families are having smaller families for a number of reasons.

In Japan, the birth rate is now the lowest ever: the 864,000 babies born last year (in a nation of 126 million) is the lowest number of births since 1899 (when Japan’s total population was just a third of its current size). The number of Japanese marrying is half the rate of the early 1970s. Just 2.3 percent of Japanese babies are born out of wedlock (compared to 40 percent in the United States).

While just 864,000 babies were born, 1.4 million Japanese died, meaning Japan is shrinking by 500,000 people per year, another first.

“We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families,’’ David Brooks argues. “We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children… The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.’’

10 reasons to have a baby now:

1. Life is about generating love

The root word of “gen’’ means to produce, leading to words like generous, progeny, and generate (to generate energy, revenue, feelings, or life itself).

“Gen,” Christopher West, explains, brings us everything from gender to genitals to generations. Materialism, he adds, is a body separated from its soul, valuing things over people. He calls spiritualism a spirit disconnected from its body, cutting off sexuality from the bodily need to procreate.

Core needs derive from the Latin word “cor,’’ meaning heart, the heart of a matter. All life (even plants) have an inert need to generate and regenerate. Two loving people “making love’’ create a life, making new love possible.

2. Society itself is derived from the first institution: the family

A family is the basic unit of society. As the family goes, so goes society. Any lack of love or dysfunction in the family tends to be replicated in society. If you don’t appreciate the family you were born into? Start your own better one.

3. Becoming “self-sustaining’’

The pandemic taught us the dangers of densely-populated areas. Planting your own garden, becoming self-sufficient (less dependent on the outside world), and “living off the grid’’ all are gaining appeal, Fast Company reports. What’s more self-sustaining than a family? One generation building upon the next.

The opposite of “self-sustaining’’ is living alone and isolated. The General Social Survey found 28 percent of young men, 18 to 29, are abstinent, a rate that’s tripled in the past decade. They’re terrified, author Peggy Orenstein concludes, arguing rampant pornography has given them unrealistic expectations about relationships and themselves.

4. Children make us happier

After a few studies raised alarms about finances, researchers dug deeper. A large body of research, including a study of 1 million Europeans, confirmed what common sense should tell you: money may cause stress but children bring love into your life, making you happier.

“We also find that your kids raise happiness the most compared to stepkids,’’ Dartmouth professor David Blanchflower told Katie Couric. “Young kids raise happiness more than those from 10–14, who are preparing to leave home. Teenagers aren’t easy and our study shows that.’’

5. Too costly? Children are your best investment

Stories about the rising cost of healthcare and education have made some fear they can’t afford to have kids.

The Atlantic trumpeted: “It isn’t the kids. It’s the cost of raising them. Having children makes people happier — if they can afford it." Many have seen the estimates that raising a single child can cost $200,000 over the first 18 years of life and argue they simply can’t afford it. A Hollywood actress went further, claiming abortion enabled her to become rich and famous.

The flip side of the economic argument? Like buying rather than renting or saving for retirement, children are a long-term investment.

Children give you an incentive to work (“I’ve got a family to feed’’) and to do more with your life. You may not always feel like doing something for yourself but you will do that harder thing for the good of your family or to make your babies proud. A St. Louis Federal Reserve study found a correlation between larger families and financial success.

Do the multiplication: Having children makes you immortal, Plato wrote, while Pope Francis adds, “Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: it is enriched, not impoverished.’’

6. Would you rather die alone in a nursing home?

About 20 percent of the pandemic victims died in nursing homes. Now ask yourself: perhaps you can save some money by avoiding the cost of educating children but how much more money will you spend on healthcare and nursing care at the end of your life if you are living alone without family?

7. Children can give your life meaning and purpose

The first “viral meme’’ was the 1990s “dancing baby,’’ who made an appearance on a much-debated episode of “Ally McBeal’’ in January 1998.

Ally’s main dream and desire was to find the greatest love, “the one.’’ She found herself haunted by the vision of this dancing baby she regularly ran away from. She found joy when she surrendered, deciding to run toward that dancing baby.

For many years, I took my children to church believing “it’s too late for me but I will do this for them.’’ It was never too late for me, of course, but their very presence forced me to do more.

It’s like the studies showing you’re more likely to go to the gym if you know your friend is expecting you to go. The most meaningful things we do in life, the acts that give our lives purpose are the gifts we give others.

8. Children give us hope, help us believe in something bigger

A baby’s ear changed everything. Whittaker Chambers was a famous writer and editor spying on America for the Soviet Union when he made the conversion from atheistic communist spy to Christian anti-communist. As he watched his baby eating in her high chair, Chambers recalled:

“She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life… My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear — those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind ‘No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature. They could have been created only by an immense design.’”

9. Children force you to become a better version of yourself

How many people have you seen transform themselves and “get it together” because they are now a mom or dad? I’ve seen it many times.

Culture means the “cult of what we worship,” meaning whatever you value most becomes your “god.” I’ve seen some young mothers make their baby the most important thing in their life, which poses its own dangers.

But the very addition of a child forces you to review your life’s priorities along with your life’s mission and purpose. That added responsibility helps you become a better version of yourself.

10. Your baby may be the one who saves the world

Will your child add to the world’s problems? Perhaps. But what if your child or your child’s child is the one who will figure it all out?

More than 2 billion Christians believe God chose to come to Earth as a baby. Every great human who ever made a difference — including you — began as a baby.

What if the baby you create today becomes the world to someone else? What if your next baby is the one who will come up with the next big answer that saves the world?

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