J.P. De Gance – Are Americans waiting too long to start families?

Americans continue to say they want larger families, yet birth rates remain well below replacement levels. What is driving the growing gap?

J.P. De Gance, founder and president of Communio and co-author of Endgame, joins the show to discuss declining fertility, delayed marriage, and what these trends could mean for America's future. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome back to the Lawrence Larson Show. It's First Amendment Friday, and it's a pleasure to be with you. I want to get to your phone calls and emails in a moment because we try to make this the best conversation in talk journalism. And it is, I think, every single day at 866-A Lars. And of course, if you're a namesaker, you go right to the head of the line at 866-439-5277. Send your emails to talk at largeblarston.com and vote in our poll on X. We put up a brand new poll question from the news of the day every day at LargeLarston Show at at largeLarson.com. Well, Americans want more kids than they are having right now. And a brand new report says the whole country could begin shrinking within decades. Are we waiting our way into a kind of a population collapse? I thought we'd put that question first to JP DeGans, who is founder and president of Communio and co-author of the book called Endgame. Welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Lars, great to be back with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Why aren't we having more kids collectively?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah, gosh, it's it's complex. At the end of the day, uh life has gotten really expensive is a huge, a huge part of it, particularly for young people. Okay, the cost of housing is skyrocketed. Um and and there's a lot of goods that our parents' generation were able to enjoy uh that were part of the commons, that were free to us, uh that are no longer free, right? The idea that you'd be able to go to a free free public school where where your kids wouldn't be indoctrinated, uh would they be surrounded by kids from a two-parent family, where there'd be a lot of human capital surrounding them and and with them, that's gone away, so you're so you're having to replace that with private education. That that's making things more expensive. Uh also, also, I think parents uh are signaling to their kids frequently that you you know, uh prioritize being financially stable, getting a great career, and then after all that, look around, look around maybe for a partner to get married to. Okay, nine out of ten parents say that that's very important uh for their children. Only two in ten parents, right? One out of five are saying that that uh getting married and having a and having a child is a priority for their own kids, right? So so there's a lot of bad messages coming from parents. There's a lot of upward uh uh uh uh headwinds uh economically, and and and so there's you know, it's a it's a problem. It's one we gotta we gotta tackle because if we don't, uh the reality is is in 50 years at our current rate of fertility, yeah um without without migration, we will be uh we will shrink, our working uh working age population will shrink by 40 percent, right? And and we'll start to see uh uh very real population decline uh uh within the next two decades.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

And we're not the only country. I mean, China and Japan and others are facing similar kinds of demographic problems, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 3:16

No, there's a this is a a global phenomenon, right? Uh at the end of the day, um I I might describe it as uh consumerism, uh perhaps, sort of the glorification of uh stuff in in a certain sense. The idea that uh the eternal goods, right, the the enduring goods of family and faith have have uh declined uh across uh across the planet in so many ways. And and so uh we're not prioritizing the uh the good of a lifelong marriage. And uh the average age of marriage, Lars, today is 30, right? And and anybody who knows that uh uh uh a woman's fertility begins to uh decline physiologically at the age of 30. And once you hit 35, uh you know, folks don't like it. My wife didn't like it when the doctor said that she was having a geriatric pregnancy, uh, but that's what it that's what it is, based on the obstetrics. So so the reality is is is we've gotten really far away uh from the idea of marriage as a cornerstone relationship, right? It's you used to, before the year 2000, marriage was something that the first relationship you availed yourself of to have a life well lived. And and you two two young young adults would get married and go figure out life together, right? And you might not have a pot to piss in. And today we're told, you know, parents are telling their their kids, no, no, no, wait, get get a uh get the advanced degrees, uh assemble, you know, as much savings, have no debt, um, maybe even have a house beforehand. And what ends up happening is once they once they're financially ready, uh they're they're not able to, they're not able to couple up. As an old friend told me years ago, uh when she delayed marriage, she said, you know, the odds are good I could get married, but at this point uh the goods are odd. And and so uh the delay of marriage very frequently leads to a lot less people get married as a consequence less than a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Do you remember when it was either time or news we got themselves in trouble by saying statistically a woman of a certain age was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to actually get married? Uh and and they and uh and they said, well, it was statistically accurate. It was just there were an awful lot, both men and women, who objected to that characterization. But how much of this has to do with, say, selfishness saying, I want to play, I want to go out and enjoy life, I want to travel, I want to do all these things until say I'm pushing 40, and then I'll get married, then I'll have kids. How much of that is is what's going on?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

That that's a very look, that that's a I think that's a key cultural ingredient, right? That there's folks from higher income families put putting off marriage. Uh and and um uh while college students are certainly college graduates are more likely to get married than their counterparts in the same uh in the same age groups without a college degree, their average age of marriage is still approaching 30. So uh there is look, I think the so Pew Research has us data on what parents are valuing with their kids. And our kids receive the message, right? If if we tell our kids, look, you you gotta be financially independent, right? You gotta be uh when we say that, what we're saying is you gotta be divorce proof. If your marriage ends, okay, you're we're coaching our kids to have a foot outside of the boat so you could jump out at any time, right? That's uh uh that's certainly a uh a big part of it. And the reality is is if we're honest with ourselves, humans, none of us are really independent. We the the key in life is to learn who we can depend upon in a healthy way, right? I mean, we're born into a family, and it takes us 18 to 25 years to become independent. It takes a hamster 21 days to be independent, right? So we're just you know, we the name of the the name of the game for form here are our young people, our children, is to learn how to be dependent in a healthy way, how to love sacrificially, love authentically, find the right person uh to love for a lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Well, and what happens when, as you said, 30.8 percent, or 30.8 is the median age for marriage for men, 28 and a half for women, whereas in 1975, 50 years ago, the numbers were 23 and 21, almost a decade of difference.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yep. Yeah, that's that's uh absolutely right. And and there's good research. So so some people think that marriage lane is is uh uh that's fine because you'll you'll get married anyways. Okay, that is not holding true.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

No, it's not. That's JP deGans, who is uh founder and president of Communio, co-author of the book called Endgame. JP, thanks very much. Back in a moment. You got the Lars Larson show.