In a recent podcast I listened to, they talked about world population growth, or lack there of. It was thought in the 1990s that that the average woman was going to have two children, and that world population would hit a peak around 10 billion, around 2060 or so, And after that, it’d be stable and we would live happily every after. This was good news after the population explosion fears of the 1970s. Well, that does not look like it is going to happen. Each women needs to have 2.1 children to keep a steady population. Greater than that the the population grows, less than that and it shrinks.
Turns out most of the industrialized world (what we used to call “1st world countries) has a a negative fertility rate. Here are some numbers; USA:1.7, France:1.8, Poland:1.5, Mexico 1.8, Italy:1.3, Korea: 0.75. There are some bright spots in population growth like Cameroon with a 4.3 rate, though that is down from 6 in the 1980s.
The fertility rate right now for the whole earth is 2.3, just above replacement rate, and is declining every year. It is now calculated that the earth will reach a peak of 10 billion people in 2060, and then start to go down, reaching 6 billion in a few hundred years. Also, the population will grow increasingly older.
What does this shrinkage of world population mean for the Church? While the true numbers are not know, antidotal evidence shows the active membership is shrinking in most industrialized nations, particularly Western Europe. The Church’s bright spot is the same for fertility, the African nations. But I can’t see the Church making up for lack of growth in the West with baptisms in Africa.
Looking at the graphs here on this LDS Growth Wikipedia page, it is easy to see that soon the Church is going to reach a plateau of membership with little or no growth. I predict in the next ten years we’ll reach that point, with a stead state of about 20 million members. This is just my WAG [1].
Assuming I’m right about this stalling of growth, what will be the apologetic response from the Church? How could they spin it to make it faith promoting?
Do you think we’ll soon get talks about having more babies? In the past this has been a major source of growth for the Church, but even Mormons are having less babies now days. Utah’s fertility rate is just over 1.8. So even Utah is not at replacement rate.
What will a stagnate grown rate church look like in the future?
[1] WAG is Wild Ass Guess, a technical term used in Engineering!
Wheat & Tares 
The apologetic response will be something along the lines of, it’s the end of times and we’re seeing the sorting of the wheat and tares. Couple that with Matthew 24:24 “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” and we’re in familiar territory: We hold the truth and everyone else is wrong.
We are definitely getting talks about more babies. Elder Cook was over in the UK a few weeks ago, and that was one of the areas his address covered. Raising families is a primary objective of our lives. And not to think about things we might need before marrying and having families. Meanwhile, they are definitely not admitting any decline. Nope, it’s all growing in Europe. Wonderful things are happening in the UK and Europe apparently.
One of the biggest challenges that the developed world faces. Many European countries have tried desperately for decades to spur population growth, but to little avail. An increase in women’s education and women’s freedom directly correlates to lower population growth rates. Even Utah, said to be having lots of babies, is now at a meager 1.8 total fertility rate. A couple of elementary schools in east side Salt Lake County are shutting down next school year.
The church may indeed talk about having more babies. But they themselves have been talking about that for decades. And TFR rates among Mormons have gone down. Individual expectations for lifestyle have gone away up and there is no way to sustain those with having large families.
The easiest fix for the developed world is allowing more migrants from the less developed world in. People from Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia want to migrate to more developed areas of the world. Let them.
Seems a vicious cycle the world is in- Most families can’t survive without two incomes. Even then, they can’t usually afford more than two children. One of my married children chooses not to bring children into such a troubled world, another has tried and been unsuccessful, etc. This is the reality- I would like to hear more about what the predicted future of this reality would be.
Brad, may I suggest that the easiest fix to having more babies is to make it easier on women. Maybe possible financially. Family friendly policies don’t produce babies, but they make it feel like it is possible. Things like parental leave, inexpensive child care (probably government subsidized) affordable housing, wages that will support a family, these are all things that Republican “have more babies” men refuse to pass because they think it is just women’s responsibility to suffer the high cost of having children. And cut the maternal death rate and respect women’s choices about their body and health care. Fix our medical system so that women with good insurance don’t have child birth out of pocket cost that equal a medium sized house. My daughter had complications with her pregnancies and her cost on top of insurance was more than the house they were living in. My daughter in law had an ectopic pregnancy and the after insurance cost was 3/4 the price of their home. Three out of three of my granddaughters say they will not have children because it is just too expensive and it is the woman who pays both the physical cost to her body and the cut in earning power from having children. Plus, there are male jerks out there who say that huge medical bill for *his* child is 100% the responsibility of the mother. In today’s world, too many women just feel that children are too big of a sacrifice and mothers are the only ones making that sacrifice.
“Importing” population from other countries is a short term fix. Those immigrants get here and they quickly realize that they just cannot afford the high cost of having and raising children. And what about when we improve conditions in third world countries to give women access to birth control and their birth rate drops below replacement.
Our society needs to make it possible for women to afford children if they are going to fix declining birth rates.
We’re getting those talks now.
Camille Johnson, BYU Women’s Conference, May 2024: “If women cease to bear and nurture children, this mortal experience ends…As leaders of the Church, we are concerned about recent trends in marriage and childbirth…As covenant women, we plan and prepare for marriage and the bearing of and the nurture of children.”
Dallin Oaks, April 2022 General Conference: “Consequently, he [Satan] seeks to oppose progress toward exaltation by distorting marriage, DISCOURAGING CHILDBEARING [caps added because I don’t know how to add italics here], or confusing gender.”
Dallin Oaks, Worldwide Devotional, May 2023: “Consider what young adult Latter-day Saints miss when their marriages are intentionally delayed…Most important, it means fewer children born to grow up with the blessings of the gospel.”
I think for Dallin Oaks, this has been a concern for a very long time, and is at least partly at the root of his anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Here is something he wrote in 1984: “One generation of homosexual ‘marriages’ would depopulate a nation, and, if sufficiently widespread, would extinguish its people. Our marriage laws should not abet national suicide.”
If it had been just a little easier, if we’d had just a bit more support, I might, maybe, have had a third child six or seven years ago. I’m forty-three now, and feel as though that window is effectively closed. Husband will be fifty next year. Could we do it? Maybe. Is it wise for any of the parties concerned? Nope. The decision has been made, and we are endlessly grateful for the two we have.
I agree with Anna that a society that made childbearing logistically and financially easier would have maybe helped tip us toward having the third. But it’s hard to say for sure. Everything about becoming a mother was SO HARD. From pregnancy onward. I thank God not infrequently that the breastfeeding and diaper days are over. That we’re through preschool. That they’re both in full day elementary school.
But also, I have been made to feel like a burden, actively and tacitly, by just existing in public with my children, including in church. We can and should implement policy changes that make life easier for parents and their children; I don’t think those will come without our having some honest conversations about how we -really- feel about kids and their parents, especially their mothers.
Church population remains flat, world population declines, at some point the two meet at which point everyone is a church member.
I have read a number of news articles over the last few years regarding the challenges faced by developed countries due to a shrinking fertility rate. There definitely are challenges to be addressed. That said, the articles almost universally seem to assume that returning to a positive (even if very modest) population growth rate is desirable. I have wondered for decades whether a continuously growing world population really ought to be the goal. Is the world really better off with even more people than it has right now? I’d like to see news articles written on how all countries, both developed and developing, could gradually reduce their populations over time. What would be the ideal number of children for each person to have if the goal is to reduce the population (presumably it’s a fertility rate somewhere around 2.0)? What can society/governments do to try to reduce the earth’s population while limiting the negative effects of a decreasing population as much as possible? I don’t understand why the underlying assumption in pretty much every news article I read is that returning to population growth is desireable. I guess it would help solve some of the problems caused by a low fertility rate in the short term, but in the long term, shouldn’t the goal be to reduce the earth’s population to a more sustainable level? (Note: I am not a believer in a literal 2nd coming of Christ or that the end of the world is nigh, despite Russell Nelson’s claims to the contrary. I think we should be responsibly planning for the survival of mankind for millenia to come, not burying our heads in the sand and ignoring problems because Christ is coming any day now anyway, so who really cares?)
Talks from Church leaders won’t have much of an effect on fertility rate, but as we can learn from Church history (and as others have noticed, they’ve already been trying), the Q15 will inevitably tilt at windmills for awhile to give it their best shot anyway. The forces that led our society away from racism and towards equality for women were far too strong for the counsel of elderly, conservative, out of touch Church leaders to resist with GC talks, despite their best efforts to cling to internal racism and to keep women at home and out of the workforce having as many babies as physically possible. Likewise, the societal forces driving low fertility rates in developed countries are far too powerful for GC talks to have any noticeable effect on Church membership in the long run (exhibit one is the current fertility rate in Utah). Just as with racism and women’s roles, it will require some kicking and screaming, but the Church position on the fertility rate and desirable population growth will eventually reflect that of the rest of society.
I think this means that eventually all the calls to “hasten the work” by having as many babies as possible as quickly as possible so that all those spirits in heaven who are desperate to be born into a faithful Mormon family can come to earth so that Christ can return as soon as possible will diminish over time (this won’t be officially disavowed–the Q15 will just stop talking about it). It’s hard for me to imagine the Church backing off on this rhetoric myself, but if the pattern holds, the Church will eventually give in and embrace societal norms. They’ll just be 30-40 years late to the party, is all.
The lack of Church growth won’t be publicly discussed by Church leaders. They will be silent on the issue. Successes in the Church or growth in certain parts of the world will be highlighted, but Church leaders will simply remain silent on any negative news about Church growth in most of the rest of the world. If you don’t acknowledge the problem in the first place, you don’t have to come up with justifications for those problems. That is the Church’s modus operandi, and it zealously sticks to this philosophy, unless absolutely forced to do otherwise.
Like mountainclimber, I also question whether the declining birth rate needs to be fixed by somehow encouraging women and their partners to have more babies.
Economically, countries with below-replacement birth rates should be planning for a shrinking workforce. What adaptations can be made so that society can still function while the birth rate gradually continues to drop? Hire some economic policy advisors and let’s start working on designing society in a way that doesn’t crash and burn when the elderly and retired population increases relative to the working population. This will require a paradigm shift. Right now, the only economic numbers that matter are economic growth and the GDP and other numbers measured by ‘more stuff.’ Perhaps we start looking at economic numbers that provide for a country’s population. A growing number of elderly are secure in their housing and health care as they retire. Yay! That counts as a positive economic number! More and more young people are choosing to study geriatric subjects, in order to make life dignified and livable for an aging population. Yay! That’s a great investment of a country’s resources!
By all means, put some economic policies in place that make it easier to have babies, but also turn some of that economic planning energy towards supporting an aging population.
As far as Church goes, they’ll have to adjust. Some few people may individually decide to have one or two more children out of obedience, but Church leader words aren’t going to change things on a large scale. They should be adapting too. Back when I was a youth, four families with 6-8 kids each could be the core of a ward’s youth program for a decade, with mom in the YW Presidency. There just isn’t that kind of volume and continuity anymore. To have a good youth program, the Church should be investing real time and resources in developing a program that doesn’t depend on just a few people. They obviously have moved in the other direction.
I doubt the world population will shrink on a straight line. There will likely be swings. Maybe in a century or so, the world population stabilizes around 6 billion (pulling a number out of a hat), but every couple hundred years is gets up to 7 billion or drops to 5 billion. Predictions and statistics can only ever be conjecture, so that’s my conjecture.
Mountainclimber, Janey, I was having a very similar conversation with one of my brothers a year or two ago. Even if we believe there are spirits waiting to come to earth, why do we imagine this has to be achieved as quickly as possible, instead of sustainably. He quoted me some decades old quotes from when the population was smaller, and how there’s plenty of room on the planet. Tell that to the wildlife facing extinction and losing their habitat was my response. We agreed to disagree. It’s not necessarily a comfortable conversation to have as the 1st of 7 siblings, with the 5th, the implication possibly being that they ought to be elsewhere. But anyhow… neither he nor I have more than 2 kids ourselves, though other siblings range from 3-9.
This issue is largely tied to housing costs across the “Mormon corridor.” While many LDS members still aspire to have larger families—perhaps three children instead of the four to six that was once common—Utah’s housing prices have far outpaced wages. This is delaying marriage and pushing childbirth later into adulthood. Biology then collides with financial reality: a lack of affordable childcare, high housing costs, and lingering cultural norms (e.g., some older Relief Society members still quote Ezra Taft Benson to discourage women from working outside the home) all play a role.
We’re seeing a U-shaped trend: those with the fewest resources often continue having children despite economic challenges, while the ultra-wealthy—like influencers from Ballerina Farm—can afford large families thanks to immense financial privilege. In between, average LDS couples face mounting costs for housing, transportation, healthcare, and childrearing.
There’s a reason Utah’s fertility rate has dropped from #2 in the nation to #10. No number of General Conference talks can overcome the hard math: it now costs around $250,000 to raise a child in the U.S. If Church leadership truly wants to support family growth, they might consider replacing proselyting missions with something like a Habitat for Humanity-style program—building affordable homes for faithful young members. Without serious housing solutions, larger families—and even homeownership itself—will become luxuries out of reach for most median-income LDS households. At current cost levels, supporting more than one or two children is simply not financially viable unless you are very high in the wage distribution or receive significant financial assistance from parents.
Despite all the excitement that once existed or still exists around the growth of the Church, I’ve met very few members who are under any illusion that the Church is going to be a dominant or the dominant force by the time the Savior comes again. Nephi’s look into the latter days and seeing that “they were few” in numbers rings quite true to most.
And yet, when I last looked, the Church is still technically growing, and at a pace faster than the world. It would take millennia to catch up, but I still think it’s another reason many other Christians see us as a threat. Also, if you look strictly at religious groups (rather than movements), the Church really is one of the larger organizations in the world and one of the most ubiquitous. By most standards, it truly is a World Religion.
There are still plenty of talks on having children. Less noticable to me, though also very present, are talks on being satisfied with what we have. My wife and I still have all five kids at our modest, medium-sized home, and on one income only. I work in technology, so it’s in no way a meager income, but I’m pretty sure (at least according to online salary averages) it’s less than most families with two incomes. We don’t have boats or ATVs. We do camp, eat out, see a movie, or do a road trip on occasion. I have not been convinced, despite all initial outward appearances, that families with less children and/or bigger homes are in any way consistently happier than we are. We do spend a good portion of my income on eating healthily. You’d be surprised how far that goes towards happiness, and eliminating other expenses for that matter.
Admittedly, we did buy our home at the height of the recession. I can’t imagine the impact on my life buying right now.
I have a coworker who is a member and makes almost as much as I do. He is just a few years younger than me. He also has a fairly lucrative side-gig and his wife also works full time. I was shocked but short of disgusted when he told me a few months ago that he was hoping for a raise or a new job in which they could have a liveable wager in which to bring their first child into the world. I almost experienced some reverse-envy at that point, and it was a reminder that money is in no way the biggest factor in happiness.
Does anyone see any validity in the supposed “trad-wife” movement that can be seen online? My initial gut reaction is to say it’s simply a trend for Tiktok income (which isn’t inherently bad), but others have expressed that it’s real, and that others sitll really do seem to be expressing a desire for such. I saw one video of a single corporate woman in her thirties who said (paraphrasing) “I’d love nothing more than to be in coveralls with a child in one arm, walking towards a chicken coop with an egg basket in the other arm, but all my life I’ve been told this is where I needed to prove myself.”
If there really is a movement, it would be extremely interesting to me to see fertility rates rise despite what the Church has done, not because of it.
There are a lot of factors which discourage nest-building. Two that come to mind are the savage and pointless war in Ukraine and the huge burden of debt every country is facing. The party’s over, along with the good times that support the long process of raising families. We are all becoming nihilists.
Our first home was a sweat equity Capp Home. Evans Products set Capp up to sell their wood products. They arranged financing, materials and framing labor. It was up to the buyer to supply the land, utilities and all the finish work in a one year window. We learned a lot about well drilling, septic approval, plumbing, wiring, building inspections and HVAC in that year. On completion we had a pretty nice house at a price we could afford.
Largely because of high interest rates Evans Products went bankrupt and that was the end of Capp. Based on that exerience I would encourage the LDS to take on something similar. Make it possible for families to build a home. LDS has a history of this.
“No man should buy any land . . . but every man should [have] his land measured off to him for city and farming purposes, what he could till. He might till it as he pleased, but he should be industrious and take care of it.” – Brigham Young, July 25, 1847
Those acre allotments in Salt Lake City were sold for $1.50, to cover the cost of surveying and filing.
https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume42_1974_number2/s/113456
IMO LDS is better served by building homes than building temples. That’s what builds the security families need to thrive.
As usual, Anna is spot on. And yes, the church has been scolding women for a long time to just jump in and have more kids, but they do so without addressing AT ALL the real issues couples face. Instead, if you want to behave responsibly, you are “not faithful” and need to just “trust” that the brethren (steeped in patriarchy and idealizing the 1950s), know better than you do. If they were serious about it, then BYU and Utah would be laboratories trying out methods to make child-bearing and -rearing inexpensive and successful. Instead, BYU refuses to provide coverage for birth control until you’ve had FIVE kids, which is (checks notes) f***king insane in 2025 and on a church salary (I guess if you work at BYU and did this and are loving it, go you). Utah in general is one of the worst states in terms of women’s pay. Last I heard (maybe ten years ago?), women who graduated from BYU had an average annual salary of $800. That’s basically not-very-successful MLM money. These are women with degrees. If their husbands die, cheat, lose their job, can’t earn well enough, beat them or their children, come out of the closet, or leave them for a newer model, they are totally screwed. A degree with no work experience is actually worse than work experience but no degree.
The trad-wife stuff online is definitely a movement, and I’ve been told by my daughter’s roommate that it’s closely tied to Christian TikTok which also includes the “submissive” wife BS that is not quite as Mormon sounding, but it’s all the same stuff at core. And like most of this type of content it isn’t what it purports to be. Ballerina Farm only works because they are insanely wealthy and have a huge staff supporting her “trad-wife” lifestyle. Plus, she’s got a rockin’ bod from genetics and training. It’s not like average people who gobble up this content are going to be able to make a go of it. And yet, it’s like a Gen Conf talk to women in TikTok form. Pssst…it’s a lie no matter who’s selling it.
Anna, a number of European countries, some of which have very high costs of living, have tried a number of strategies in making having and taking care of babies more affordable. Some of these have yielded higher birth rates, but all the increases have been rather insignificant. We’re talking maybe 1.6 to 2.1 children per female at best. Nothing like 2 to 4 TFR. People simply expect more forms of leisure, comforts, accommodation, and possessions than they used to. And part of having babies is giving up a lot of comfort and convenience. The people who have the most babies have low female education rates, strong gender segregation, and rather austere social norms that heavily judge people for not getting married young and having lots of kids. These cultures also don’t tend to take care of women’s health. In the developed world, no one wants to go back to that. Consequently women have fewer kids. Immigrants tend to be young, have low expectations of the quality of their lives, are willing to work difficult jobs that pay very little, and live in small square footage with lots of other people. Many of them also already have lots of children and/or come from cultures that have high expectations on females to marry young and reproduce. Africa and other places in the Middle East have the supply of young people, and the developed world has the demand for young workers. Let’s make it happen. South Korea, Japan, Poland, etc. should start importing workers from there and then making them citizens. The US, actually, has already done an excellent job of importing workers from other countries and integrating them. Lots of naturalizations still occur in spite of Trump. The US is remarkably ethnically diverse and the Trump administration and ICE can and will do little to change that. They will manage only to put a small dent in the number of undocumented people in the US. South Korea, on the other hand, needs to step up naturalizations. They’re a ticking time bomb.
We talk a lot about women choosing to have children. There isn’t as much discussion about whether or not men want children. And that’s as it should be — whether or not to bear children is largely the woman’s decision. But I know, anecdotally, of a situation or two in which the woman wants a child or more than one child, and her husband/boyfriend is the no vote. Men shouldn’t be pressured into fatherhood any more than women should be pressured into motherhood. However, we can acknowledge that men who don’t want to be fathers may be a factor in the dropping birth rate too. Being a good father, present in the life of his child, and supportive of that child’s mother, is a big investment of time and money.
The tradwife movement … well, it’s too early to tell if it will have a measurable impact on demographics. One thing it will require is for wages to go up so that a one-income family can live comfortably, or at least decently. I’m in favor of wages/cost-of-living balancing out so that one income can sustain a family. Some families can do it (kudos to Eli). I have two close friends who have been TBM and SAHM for the past 25 years or so, and they’ve done fine. It’s possible. It would be great if we could make it easier on people. I believe people should have the choice to let one parent stay at home with the kids full-time if that’s what they want to do.
Janey, you write: “One thing it will require is for wages to go up so that a one-income family can live comfortably, or at least decently.”
The challenge is that wages are incredibly difficult to control, especially in a free market with historically low unionization rates. By contrast, housing costs can be influenced through policy. The more realistic path is to legalize lower-cost living arrangements by adopting a far more permissive, “build by-right” approach. That means allowing denser housing—townhomes, condos, apartments—in far more places.
One of the most popular kit homes sold through the Sears catalog was only 600–800 square feet. It had no garage, but fit three bedrooms, a dining room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Today, zoning and land-use regulations make it nearly impossible to build anything like that—lots are too big, requirements too strict.
That’s the core of the “Abundance” agenda and what the YIMBY movement is pushing for: legalizing housing people can actually afford to build and live in. If we want to create the ability for one parent to stay home (mom or dad), we have to allow much smaller, denser housing in more areas to reduce costs and create living environments and cities where it doesn’t take 2-car households to survive.
Could someone please explain to me how the decline or even the extinction of the human race is a bad thing? How would this effect the Universe?
Fun fact: The Catholic Church grew by 161, 000, 000 people; LDS grew by 308,682.
Another fun fact: Mormons are about 0.21 % of the world’s population.
We folks in the West are–collectively–the richest people to have ever walked the planet. I’m confident that each of us who lives above the poverty line can find a way to raise a family if we put our minds and means to it.
And don’t worry about humanity fading away–it won’t happen. My guess is that the population will be at least ten times what it is today during the Millennium. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that parents will have 20 or 30 (or more!) children after the earth is cleansed. Folks will live to the “age of a tree” in perfect health–and that includes painless childbirth, IMO.
@Jack
Christ says in Luke 14:28–29:
“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?”
To me, this means we are called to carefully consider the cost before undertaking any major responsibility. This includes ensuring we have the material resources to provide for children—food, shelter, clothing, and transportation—before bringing them into the world.
I also believe this goes beyond just material needs. Do we have the time to do it right? We must also be sure we’re not stretched so thin by work or side hustles that we lack the time to truly raise our children—to teach them, to spend quality time with them in “wholesome recreation” (The Family Proclamation), and to nourish them spiritually with the word of God.
In short, faith should not be mistaken for the failure to prepare (D&C 38:30). We are not called to move forward without adequate vocational/higher educational training & preparation, savings, or steady employment when taking on something as sacred and demanding as raising a child.
Read the room Q15
If you gave $$ back to the families as dividends for each generation of their family that was in the church and contributed to building the chapels and creating the funds for ensign peak….that may encourage some to have kids
Also stop building temples on land that was donated by members as tithing in kind and then the church or the builder builds increased price housing near the temple, increasing the cost for everyone. Utah used to be ranked one of the most economical states to live in….now top 5 expensive. The church contributed to the excessive expense…and then they want more tithing dollars. Haaaa!!!!
There are a lot of great comments here and I don’t know if mine will add value, but here we go.
First, I don’t see an issue with population decline. We are sufficiently advanced that we no longer need to throw tons of people at just persisting life. Since we are a high consumer society, I think that the planet could do with less consumers–an alternative solution pollution…less people polluting.
Second, I don’t understand the rhetoric from the LDS church pushing babies. I can’t remember which women it was that said it in GC, but she said that HF’s plan would stop if we stopped having babies. Really? He’s God. He created life. If life ended, he could start it again, no problem. We seem to be afraid that God can’t be God when it counts. In addition, why the urgency? What time are we running out of? For the love, if God is really omnipotent, he doesn’t really need us. If Spirits need bodies, I’m sure there are multiple ways to skin that cat. We act as if the plan is so brittle and so dependent on us behaving a certain way. That seems a bit self-centered to me yet if true, we probably need to find a new god with a better plan. Either that or what we think the plan is, isn’t really at all the plan.
Third, I wish we would stop blaming Satan for everything (or anything) and just take ownership for our own actions (or lack there of). It just ends up being a means of controlling people rather than fundamentally connecting with someone to figure out the why. That fundamental connection is hard….it’s expensive and time consuming, yet it’s really the only way to bring lasting change. We have the data on why people are choosing to not have kids. And it turns out that it’s not “people just don’t want to have kids because they’re selfish.” Turns out people are just not going to have kids in times of uncertainty and unheaval. Women are done being expected the bear the total burden. They are also done having their bodies controlled. Things are expensive. This whole “have a kid and just have faith it will work out” model is decidedly stupid especially when we expect people to use reason and moderation in everything else. These church goers are literally voting again our best interests by putting a sexual predator in the white house and putting a party in power that is on the war path to eliminate social support programs. Why would anyone want to have a child in the insuing chaos created by people who supposedly are supposed to be living a much higher standard? It boggles the mind.
If the church wants to facilitate more spirit enbodiment, maybe it should use the vast monetary resources it possess to alleviate the financial burden. Or maybe it should stop being silent and actually call out members on supporting gov’t leaders that run totally contrary to everything Jesus teaches. Instead of shaming people for leaving or not having kids, maybe it should have the courage it tells other people to have and stick its neck out to solve or push back against the forces creating problems affecting birth rate. They should really lean into that “prophets are never popular” a little bit more in areas that actually matter.
Grammar peeve: OP says “antidotal” when they mean “anecdotal.”
Carry on.
@Brad D: “People simply expect more forms of leisure, comforts, accommodation, and possessions than they used to. And part of having babies is giving up a lot of comfort and convenience”
While it is true that having a baby is a sacrifice, I want to understand better from you where you think it crosses the line? I think we should foster the best environment possible to bring a child into the world. The mother should feel like she is empowered, she should be educated well, she should have access to the best medical and mental health. The child should have the same. Frankly, I think our society needs to flip this whole thing on its head. Instead, society should be asking what it can sacrifice in terms of money, time, support to facilitate children coming into the world and support them and their caregivers.
When people married early in the old days, generally it was not for reasons of holiness or helping God’s work proceed. Many among both the holy and the unholy followed this pattern.
When people had a dozen or so babies in the old days, generally it was not for reasons of holiness or helping God’s work proceed. Many among both the holy and the unholy followed this pattern.
When women stayed close to home in the old days, generally it was not for reasons of holiness of helping God’s work proceed. Many among both the holy and the unholy followed this pattern.
Those people did what they did in the old days largely as realities within their own personal, family, economic, and societal circumstances. People today have to live in the reality of today’s circumstances.
The gospel of Jesus Christ can fit, adapt, and flourish within all sorts of personal, family, economic, and societal patterns.
I don’t see it as sin to have only a few children — but if you do, please ask Elder Renlund, Elder Uchtdorf, Elder Holland, Elder Bednar, Elder Cook, or Elder Soares.
May God bless us all as we each do the best we can.
First, I don’t take the most dire predictions of the population alarmists too seriously. They assume that present trends will continue indefinitely, when they will amost certainly not. Humanity adapts to new circumstances, as it always has, and will again at some point in the future after the population falls some. Having said that, many countries in the world are facing a painful transition in the coming decades, with economic consequences that we will need to adapt to.
The Wasatch Front region of Utah is a region that faces the same kinds of geographic constraints on where people can live (sandwiched between mountain ranges and bodies of water) as some of our expensive coastal cities such as New York and San Fransisco, and now that most of the empty land has been used up, prices are climbing to match those cities. Utah is going to be more urban and more expensive, and that will further put pressure on family sizes. It’s a far cry from the agrarian world that past Mormon leaders grew up in.
I assume that the fertility rate within the church is still above replacement level, but it’s already apparently low enough to scare some apostles. I would advise them to look at the world that young people are in now and choose their words a little more carefully than some have doing lately. If there are cultural factors that are keeping young people from finding partners and marrying, I don’t mind them talking about that. Loneliness is bad; spending your life with someone is good. Let’s focus on that, and let the rest take care of itself. There are enough pressures on young families without anyone telling them their family isn’t big enough.
When encouraging LDS parents to have more kids, I think we should think about the impact that will have on the additional children in the family.
-Primarily, they get to be born into the LDS church, which means they will have access to saving ordinances during their lifetime (not like 99.8% of God’s children who won’t enter the covenant path in this life, which is really, like, the whole point of this existence. Poor shmucks.)
-Second, I would hope that they would recognize and honor their parents’ righteousness and sacrifice. They should be honored that their parents were willing to follow the prophet and bring more children into this world rather than letting worldly desires get in the way of having more children. (I would never say it out loud, but I think my later children may have caught on that we can’t financially support them, and that we didn’t really want to have more children… but that we were being obedient to the prophet. And I hope that makes them feel Holy… but it seems like they just feel resentful and miserable. I don’t get it.)
-Third, someone’s gotta clean those church buildings. They’re not gonna clean themselves! The more children cleaning the toilets, the more blessings they’re going to get. Seems like a win/win to me.
Given this topic, I am rather curious about your take on the special series that APM’s Marketplace called The Age of Work that has focused on Utah County for at least six episodes now. https://www.marketplace.org/age-of-work. It tells a different story about demographics and growth than what this post is about.
UN report suggests many people want more children than they either had or believe they will have. Coercive government policies appear to a deterrent. What people want is the freedom to make decisions. The comments under the planning for families heading pretty much reiterate the points commenters have been making. People require:
1. Affordable, accessible, quality healthcare
2. Supportive partners who share the load
3. Financial security, including affordable home
4. To be able to trust that the political system is investing long term, beyond the next election cycle
5. A safe world to bring children into
https://www.unfpa.org/swp2025
The longer report here:
Click to access swp25-layout-en-v250609-web.pdf
chrisdrobison, what policies would you propose, then, that would raise TFR in the developed world?
“Instead, society should be asking what it can sacrifice…”
Here you seem to be confirming my point that children in the developed world are regarded as a sacrifice of time and money. And inasmuch as they are, birthrates are likely to remain low. In almost all of sub-Saharan Africa, children are viewed as a sort of asset. They can be a source of wealth for the family or clan. They are a symbol of status and prestige. Society heavily judges individual women for not having lots of kids, starting at a rather young age. The flip side is that children have fewer rights and protections. Child labor is widely accepted and seen as the norm. It is widely accepted that many of the children that a female has will die young. This used to be the case in the US in the 1800s. Child labor was the norm. Infant mortality was high. Then technology and rights movements (notably progressivism under Teddy Roosevelt) started to change that, and no one wants to go back to that time period in neither the US nor the developed world. I think the developed world is hard pressed to figure out a way to increase TFR, and I am pessimistic that it can develop policies well enough and fast enough to spur the growth it needs. Immigration is a much quicker fix.
Hedgehog, indeed women tend to want more children than they have in the developed world. This is certainly part of human nature to want kids. The question is at what point do they say they want more children? In their 40s and 50s? Wanting them in their 20s and 30s, unfortunately, is the only relevant factor. And how many more kids do these women want? 1 or 2 more? 3 or 4 more? From statistics I’ve seen, the average woman in the US wants 2 kids. My general thought is that in the developed world, higher education rates of women cause a delay in marriage and childbearing. They also cause women to foster more expectations for their living standards. There is a correlation between education rates and average marriage age for women. And starting later to have families means fewer kids. Also heavy preoccupation with children’s health and well-being causes lower birthrates. The developed world is very concerned with individual child well-being. Sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, has a more survival-of-the-fittest attitude to children’s lives and well-beings.
“Coercive government policies appear to a deterrent.”
In China before 1979-2015, yes. Other places? I fail to see how. Interestingly, since China increased the limit of children to 2 per female in 2015 and to 3 in 2021, the birthrate does not appear to have changed. This suggests that there are much deeper cultural, socioeconomic, and widespread individual preference factors at play rather than just government regulation or intervention.
“What people want is the freedom to make decisions.”
The Global Freedom Index measures freedom based on a number of factors. The countries with greatest individual freedom tend to have fewer kids, with some notable exceptions of China, Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, and Iran. Countries with the least amount of individual freedom have the largest TFRs, including Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, Niger, Chad, DRC. Again, I fail to see what exactly governments could do to really spur TFR either in terms of policy-making or decreasing their presences in people’s lives.
@Brad D, I recognize this is a very complicated issue, but I also feel like we have to many people for the current levels of consumption so I don’t think that keeping a replacement rate is necessary right now. In fact, I think an always growing mentality is not sustainable.
I guess how kids are regarded is very much in the eye of the beholder. I was interested in where you land and how we should view them. Depending on the time and place, villages would raise kids together, but there were also many places where there was tons of neglect. I personally don’t feel like having kids should be something we do so we can have more laborers and soldiers and tax payers. That should firmly remain a thing of the past. This is why I don’t agree with immigration being used a tool for producing those things. I think people becoming labors, soldiers and tax payers can be a natural outcome of a high functioning society, but it shouldn’t be the reason. I guess I’m hard pressed to think that anyone in a free society would start having kids just to produce those aforementioned things. I don’t think kids should be brought into the world in times of war, pestilence and famine. I think if a nation wants women to have children, then maybe it should view that from an asset/investment perspective and pony up the adequate support system to support and encourage that. In my mind a few things comes to mind:
1) stop legislating control of women’s bodies, we have to adopt an attitude of trust there
2) to facilitate that better, women have to know they will be supported in supporting this new life. That doesn’t just include money. BOTH the mother AND the child have to have proper physical, mental, and emotional support for the long term. That’s why this pro-life nonsense just doesn’t work, because it’s really just pro-birth and a pat on the back the good luck with the rest of it. I think religion used to serve this function, but as people are leaving, the support system is getting left behind.
3) economic factors now play a much bigger role in the decision, which I think is smart. I find it extremely unresponsible to bring a life into this world you cannot economically support. In fact, Faith Matters had a really interesting conversation with a panel when Roe v Wade got over turned that shared some really interesting data for a long term study following women in a poor part of Philly. It turns out that a lot of women there did want kids, but to have one was economic suicide, which is why abortion rates were so high. And those that did keep their kids, basically struggled and often failed to provide basic needs. Fathers were often absent because they were raised with nothing and no father. It is a vicious cycle. So how do you fix these economic factors? That’s a complicated question. Tarriffs certainly don’t help as those overwhelmingly effect lower income people over the rich. We have a massive wealth gap in the this county, it does seem we should transition a more of a Mario Kart way of working where the closer to 1st place you are, the less power ups you get until you basically get no help because you are out front. An interesting stat on TDS that I heard was that under the current tax code, if billionaries actually paid just what they really owed in taxes, that would equate to $174 billion in tax revenue–and they’d still be billionaries. I think raising taxes on the very rich is a reasonable approach. That could fund a lot of social programs. Problem is, that’s labelled as socialism, which is labelled as evil. I also think that conservatives have weaponized that word to that point no social programs are acceptable at all. They believe they are rife with corruption and people taking advantage of them–yet don’t actually get in there to challenge their own assumptions. I saw this really interesting interview of this older lady being interviewed by her son about why she ended up leaving conservatism and the GOP. She’s grown up being fed the line that the people on welfare were all freeloaders and all taking advantage of the system. She lived in NY in the 60s and 70s. The people around her believed very differently, yet were very patient with her personal beliefs. When she entered the job market, the state welfare office had some openings and she decided that she’d apply and while she was there, see for herself how abused the welfare system was. It was a shock to her that the people she helped personally as a state welfare agent were all actually just looking to get real help because they couldn’t get by in life. Not a single one was free loading. In fact, she felt like the gov’t could do a lot more in terms of training and other general help that would actually help these people launch into self sufficiency (because they all wanted it), yet because of their circumstances, were unable to. It completely changed her view on how these people were talked about in conservative circles. That’s not the say that there aren’t bad actors, but when it comes right down to it, dehumanizing groups of people to excuse ourselves from christian responsibility to help and aid regardless of their race and background holds people down. And idolizing the wealthy isn’t helping either.
4) I think we have to stop framing birth rate in terms of just people don’t want to have children. I think the data supports they want less, but certainly not enough less to make things decline. I think the data show that people do want to have children when things are stable, so question should be how we get to stability. I would posit that the voting in the current president and watching Fox News (and most conservative podcasters and talking heads) has produced the exact opposite of feelings of stability.
Jacob L commented on housing costs across the “Mormon corridor.” An offshoot/threadjack here is ward geographic boundaries in Utah, which are small. Does anyone know if the Church still has “inner city” missions for older couples? Talk about an abhorrent/white savior program…
For reference, my father died late 2024 and we just sold his home in an affluent zip code in Salt Lake County – >$300/sq ft
If boundaries become bigger because of shrinkage, it would be a good thing.
chrisdrobison, according to demographers, 2.1 TFR is replacement, 1.6-2.0 TFR is gradual, but sustainable population decline, and anything below 1.6 spells disaster. Many developed countries are below 1.6. Aging populations will have fewer people to care for them. Economies will shrink. Productivity will fall. There are many jobs on the technological and environmental fronts that have to be filled and will be harder to fill with low population growth. Catastrophe looms if populations in the developed world aren’t sustained somehow. My general point (which I think many have misread) is that policy measures to get citizens to have more kids are and have been failing to yield results. Therefore, allowing more immigrants from the less developed world into the developed world will help maintain productivity levels and stave off sharp population declines and the economic and environmental catastrophes that are likely to follow. This is a policy we know can yield quick results. Immigrants from the less developed world are lining up to migrate to more developed countries.
Brad D , what’s your point? If you actually care to read the full report everything you raised is discussed. The full report looks at how can we give people freedom to achieve their ideal fertility. Speaking to people most people said that would be 2, not just in the US. It discusses research on how coercive policies both trying to increase or decrease numbers of children played out on the ground in several countries, including China. In my view the report is outstanding in that it is geared towards providing the best environment for people to be able to make the decisions they would want to make. It also states that people indicated that in improved conditions they may change their minds on how many children they want, to include an additional child.
The report also says that managing aging population is something governments should look at managing separately. Immigration is not a long term answer.
Hedgehog, I read through the UN report, which was fascinating. The report brought up instances of coercion that I was unaware of. Still, however, the general TFR decline in the developed world does not appear to be because of coercive government policies, especially not in recent decades. All of Europe has seen drastically decreasing TFR over the last 50 years. Urbanization, technology, and cultural shifts seem to account for these changes.
I agree that immigration is not a long-term solution, but it is a necessary short-term one. Even if individuals in the developed world started having more kids now, there is a generational gap of low TFR that has to be filled in. Immigrants are the best candidates.
A timely article is in the Guardian from yesterday:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/10/un-population-fund-unfpa-report-reasons-falling-global-fertility
“Factors such as the high cost of parenthood, job insecurity, expensive housing, concerns over the state of the world and the lack of a suitable partner stop people having the families they want, rather than any desire not to have children, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), said.’
The announcement for BYU’s med school said that they were going to deal with health problems unique to latter-day saints which I took to mean as fertility. Time will tell if the solutions the researchers will present are agreeable and affordable.
Meanwhile they are just pretty much counseling have both parents work now to make ends meet. Camille Johnson’s controversial post real purpose was to just say have the kids, it’s now okay to work, and around the same time the BYU institute manual on marriage, newest edition, took out the stuff on stay-at-home moms. It may have been prompted by research I saw that working moms actually have more kids now. I’m guessing the stay-at-home counsel was never about adequate mother-child interactions, since BYU has a preschool and then there’s the nursery expectations (there was a don’t send your kids to preschool talk and no daycare talks).
Clearing the way for parents to have children at BYU by having reduced housing and other flexibilities, and more spiritual support would be a dream. It’s only going to happen though when it becomes more important than pushing self-reliance.