What is the Solution to Declining Fertility Rates? Part 1
I'm very happy to be joined by our lovely co-host, my wife Stacey Urban. This morning I'd like to talk about What is the Solution to Declining Fertility Rates? The basic idea is kind of like a no-brainer; duh, I mean people should get married and then have children.
But in our modern culture you don't hear about that being talked about as much as you would think you would. You have leading or figures or I don't know if you call them leading but well known figures like Elon Musk. He has like 14 children by four different women I guess he was married so maybe half of them are from his first marriage or about half but still that's not a very good example. Children need fathers and mothers and they need to be brought up in a safe stable environment. There really are a number of different issues going on here but the biggest one is that people aren't getting married and it's certainly not just in the United States.
People are marrying much later now. The average age of first marriage in the 38 most developed countries, so-called oecd countries is 32 for women and 34 for men. That's not the ideal age to bear children I mean it's okay but you're ready in a period of declining fertility. So what's going on what are some reasons for that kind of statistic? People are marrying later but why are they marrying later? A quiz on the United families International website is saying what are the most commonly cited reasons young adults choose to delay or avoid marriage and the biggest ones are concerns about financial stability and career goals and lack of pressure from family to marry.
In other words marriage has become even not expected necessarily in a lot of families. Shouldn't you as a parent or me as a grandparent be guiding our children about the importance of marriage and shouldn't we be guiding them not to have sex before marriage? When I talk to my neighbors and ask them, 'are you telling your children not to have sex before marriage?', the answer is not necessarily 'Yes". Even my own parents were delinquent in that area. You have to set that clear expectation and lay out all the benefits and of waiting to have sex until marriage and your religious faith could be the most important one, but even if you're not a person of faith there are many, many reasons to wait. When you subscribe to Urban Life Training.org you'll have access to all of our relationship intelligence materials, videos, discussions and much more. We can all then easily discuss these topics with our children. It doesn't have to be an awkward thing.
During the course of the so-called sexual Revolution the use of birth control became common. Before the sexual revolution, sex was equated with having children. Well, duh. But now there's been a decoupling well not now maybe that's been like 50 years now 60 years plus of sex decoupled from marriage and family. Actually this has been a disaster and is it mostly a disaster for women then for men, but none the less a disaster for both women and men. You see women getting hooked up with a bunch of psychopaths instead of waiting for marriage to have children and to create a family. And then there's a whole feminist movement, the movement to move women into the workplace. Oh, I've got to have a career. But all women, and men, too, should ask 'What's your most important thing I need to do in my life? I think it's sad for both women and men, since, of course, it takes two to have a family and to have children. Forming that family is best done, ideally, in your twenties not your thirties or even pushing 40.
Stacey: The whole like idea of marriage has gotten skewed crazy. Do you have any thoughts on that Stacey?
I think one thing is that having children and marriage can bring love into your life and that's something that I don't think should be missed.
Richard: We all desire love; we all need a partner of love. Many different factors too now becoming so common as I shared in my last episode, 70% of couples now say they're likely to cohabit at some point in their life. That's a bad idea, an idea that reduces your chance of marital success, increases your chance of sliding into a bad relationship and so many other things and from the man's point of view; of course you should have a godly man which is what you should look for as a woman, that's not going to be the case, but if you have someone else who's ungodly or as Godly as they should be, then if you're going to give yourself to a person, and it applies to men too but probably obviously affects women even more, then why would you do that if they're not giving you the commitment?
These things used to be common sense, like, duh, don't have sex until you're married, or like that if you don't want to have children don't have sex. But it's not just children of course there are STDs, emotional damage, spiritual damage, ruin of an otherwise good friendship, worry baby mama drama violent relationships and etc. etc. etc. etc., including dating violence, relationship violence, abusive relationships and relationships with psychopaths and all kinds of other things going on. Why would we expose yourself to all of that? Success through abstaining before marriage is what we emphasize in the Urban Life Training program. Urban Life Training is the non-profit Stacey and I cofounded, where you can form local chapters and also access materials for your own use is to teach your children abstinence.