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Jennie Chancey | January 20, 2012
Several share-worthy posts have come through the newsfeed this week: Anti-Baby Pill Father Laments Bulgaria’s Demographic Bust ~ Djerassi, now 88 years old, was one of three researchers whose formulation of the synthetic progestagen Norethisterone marked a key step in the creation of the first oral contraceptive pill. He has repeatedly said that young Europeans [...]
Jennie Chancey | December 27, 2011
From Mark Steyn over at National Review Online: We now live in Elisabeth’s world — not just because technology has caught up with the Deity and enabled women in their 50s and 60s to become mothers, but in a more basic sense. The problem with the advanced West is not that it’s broke but that [...]
Jennie Chancey | November 29, 2011
From Barbara Kay at National Post: This just in from blogger Mollie Hemingway: “Why do we lie about female fertility?” Hemingway is a wife and mother of two children. She’s now 37 and would like a third child, but realized that at her age easy conception is the exception, no longer the rule. She goes [...]
Jennie Chancey | November 29, 2011
From Demography is Destiny: About a month ago this tragic story from China surfaced in the Western media (the UK’s Guardian). It’s a terribly sad story about a mother, Ma Jihong, who died on an operating table in Lijin, Shandong province, when she was forced by state officials to have a late-term abortion. Why were [...]
Jennie Chancey | November 29, 2011
We post often on demographics, because childbearing (or the lack of it) has huge consequences on our world–both on families and on nations. I’ve picked several excellent pieces to share (now that Internet is working again consistently here!): From Pundit & Pundette: “Pregnancy, childbirth, babies, toddlers, teenagers — they introduce uncontrollable variables into life. Having [...]
Jennie Chancey | November 3, 2011
From The Guardian online: When Ma Jihong became pregnant for a third time, she looked forward to expanding her family. So many neighbours had broken China‘s strict birth quotas she thought she could too. But six months later she died in panic on an operating table after officials in Lijin, Shandong province, forced her into [...]
Jennie Chancey | November 3, 2011
There have been a number of articles over the past few weeks surrounding the birth of the seven billionth person on the planet (which happened at some point on Monday the 31st). Here at LAF, we have posted many articles about demography and how the real worry is not overpopulation but falling birth rates and [...]
Jennie Chancey | September 30, 2011
From Shannon Buckley at Mercatornet: Those who would have us stop having children have obviously got through to the editor of The Guardian, Lisa Hymas, who has announced that she is going to be a ‘GINK’ – which is apparently a trendy new term which stands for ’green inclinations, no kids’…. According to Hymas having no children is a family type that there [...]
Jennie Chancey | September 6, 2011
K. V. Sridhar of India’s Business Daily has posted a pointed commentary about sex-selective abortion and the “ideal family” in India: A look at India’s census reveals a country obsessed by boys and sex-selection laws that no one will enforce. The continuing female feticide explains why the child sex ratio is getting worse. The latest [...]
Jennie Chancey | August 16, 2011
From a great piece over on Mercatornet: In their zeal to preserve the planet from the scourge of babies, these activists overlook the fact that humans are problem solvers and producers as well as consumers. They forget that the solution to poverty is not to eradicate poor people, but to use human creativity, innovation and [...]
Jennie Chancey | July 7, 2011
From First Things: Mara Hvistendahl, author of Unnatural Selection, has been making the rounds in the media drawing out some of the shocking and under-appreciated consequences of sex-selective abortion around the world (we’ve talked about her here and here), but all the while assuring readers that the catastrophic problems she’s describing have nothing to do [...]
Jennie Chancey | May 28, 2011
This is an absolutely fantastic piece: Just two weeks ago the UN predicted the birth of the world’s 7 billionth baby this October. Calls for measures to control the world’s population growth immediately surged, with some pointing particularly to Nigeria’s rapidly growing population. Some Nigerians, meanwhile, are celebrating their growing population as the country’s greatest [...]
Jennie Chancey | May 26, 2011
Mariette Ulrich just posted an excellent commentary: My husband and I have seven daughters. Each one is loved and cherished for the unique person that she is. It’s horrifying and mind-boggling to be reminded of how girls are regarded in some parts of the world. India’s 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number [...]
Luci | October 13, 2010
Having too many people on the planet is no longer demographers’ chief worry; now, having too few is… The trick will be restoring what, in the days of family-owned farms and small businesses, was once true: that babies are an asset rather than a burden. Imagine a society in which parents get to keep more [...]
Jennie Chancey | March 23, 2010
LAF’s archives contain many articles about the declining fertility rate and the coming demographic winter as births in developed countries have plummeted. Carolyn Moynihan recently attended a two-day conference in Barcelona that was centered around the theme, Whither The Child? The Causes, Consequences and Responses to Low Fertility. Her comments bring forward a lot of [...]
