Voice of the Family

A LAY INITIATIVE FORMED TO DEFEND

CATHOLIC TEACHING ON THE FAMILY

Population bomb or birth dearth? Belief in “overpopulation” persists against all the evidence

By Ann Farmer   |   6 August 2025

Concern about the world’s declining birth rates is increasing;1 last year, the Office for National Statistics announced “Fewer children are being born in England and Wales and the fertility rate is at its lowest level on record.”2 The Guardian, echoing the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of World Population Report, blamed money worries and sexist attitudes: “Millions of people are prevented from having the number of children they want by a toxic mix of economic barriers and sexism”, quoting UNFPA executive director Dr Natalia Kanem: “The answer lies in responding to what people say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care and supportive partners.”

However, The Spectator’s Matthew Parris called this “nonsense”; in “Falling birth rates are not a crisis”, and asks whether “Africa (4.1 births per woman)” has “better family leave and fertility care and more supportive partners than Sweden (1.4)?”3

He says that when questioned, “most people are unlikely to reply: “babies are hard work, and restrict my freedom to live the life of my choice’”, because saying ‘“I don’twant children” sounds selfish’ — rather, they say that “for one reason or another beyond their control” they “are prevented from having a bigger family”. And according to the survey, “only one in five said they expected to have fewer children than they’d like.”4

Historically, however, children were economic assets, contributing to the family income, and — as now in developing countries, where infant mortality rates are high — in a large family at least some might survive childhood. Despite this, population controllers continue to insist that the poor should have fewer children rather than more food.5

Labour laws make children expensive, and as more women enter paid work, having children means lost income. In the UK, when wives’ earnings were included in mortgage arrangements, it helped push up house prices, thus creating a vicious circle.6

Child benefits help, but are paid for out of taxation; with echoes of 1960s “population bomb” propaganda still reverberating, such benefits exacerbate prejudice against larger families.7 and politicians compete to decriminalise it,8 Parris fails to mention the generously funded UNFPA’s role in engineering the population decline about which they now complain.9 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the UNFPA’s solution to collapsing global fertility is “reproductive freedom”, AKA fertility control, including abortion.10

Parris insists, “Modern couples are making a lifestyle choice in curbing procreation. Babies are thoroughly inconvenient. Pets (say reports) are substituting for children as they’re less trouble. Dog ownership is increasing.”

Whether animals are cheaper and “less trouble” is debatable. But whatever the trouble and expense of children, parents tend not to complain about having them — although doubtless Parris would see this as another example of people not wishing to appear selfish. He says he is the oldest of six children people from the thought that they themselves might not have been born under a Malthusian “small family” system — although neither would Malthus, the sixth of seven.

Parris recognises the failure of government financial incentives to procreate, arguing, “The reason for falling birth rates is the emancipation of women.” Moreover, “The doubling of available talent for the modern economy must be vastly beneficial both to productivity and the sum of human happiness,” although “it doesn’t encourage procreation.” Despite this, the Labour Government’s recent pro-natalist initiative is even more childcare for working mothers.11

Parris says, “professionally successful modern women now choose motherhood towards the end of the female productive lifespan”; mothers are, of course, mere “amateurs”, but Mother Nature works with biological reality, and more older women are desperately seeking motherhood from the “infertility” industry, which offers IVF as a reassurance that postponing childbearing need not mean childlessness.12

An estimated one in thirty schoolchildren are now the product of fertility intervention,13 but IVF is hugely wasteful as well as hugely profitable, with clients paying to keep millions of “surplus” embryos in perpetual frozen limbo.14

Sadly, there is nothing so much in demand as that which cannot be had — especially when the thing we want was carelessly discarded in our youth. Even major abortion provider BPAS acknowledges that women want children, although their own fertility assistance service closed within a year, apparently for financial reasons.15 Perhaps those seeking help to have children prefer not to seek it from an organisation dedicated to killing them before birth.

In conclusion, Parris disputes the idea of “underpopulation”: “It’s only about ten minutes since world overpopulation … was the popular cause for anxiety.” He admits that with fewer young people, workers have to be “imported”, and that immigrants also age and need care; however, he argues from the “lifeboat economics” position that “the fewer of us there are, the greater for each will be our share; and the more easily we could halt the despoliation of the planet”, adding illogically that the “world might become a nicer place to bring children into.”

Resources are not in short supply, just unevenly distributed, although according to Parson Malthus, any shortages mean there are too many people. But if we wish to secure humanity’s future, we need to address the shortage of children; despite this, in all the reports about declining population, there is no mention of those who have engineered and continue to engineer this decline. The Neo-Malthusian disciples of Parson Malthus saw birth control as the solution to the poor “breeding like rabbits”, and ever since the nineteenth century, lavishly funded population controllers have also seen “getting women out to work” as a way of restricting human numbers.16

Parris admits, “Of course, if world birth rates stayed below 2.1, humankind would eventually become extinct. But that’s for generations hence to ponder. For our own, there is no shortage of people — quite the reverse.” Imagine the furore if he had suggested that future generations might “ponder” the state of the environment after our own generation had trashed it. But if those future generations are never born, there will be no one to ponder anything — just an overgrown, eerily silent planet orbiting an obscure star in a universe entirely bereft of humanity.

At the very beginning, God blessed Adam and Eve, saying, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it.” (Gen 1:28) Neo-Malthusian founders Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant, both atheists, blamed Christianity for “overpopulation”.17

Serious failures to protect our earthly home have sparked legitimate concern but have also fuelled a campaign from those whose campaign to protect the planet does not include protecting it from their own carbon emissions.18

Nonetheless, environmental propaganda provides a useful argument against anyone suggesting that the world needs more children, for if humans cause environmental damage, more humans would cause even more damage, even though the children of the poor are much less likely than Sir David Attenborough — who called humanity a “plague” on the planet — to travel the world calling for other people to restrict their childbearing.19

The poor are much more focussed on the problem of staying alive; they recognise a real problem when they see it. During the 1978–79 “Winter of discontent” — strikes, go-slows and general economic mayhem — Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan famously remarked, “Crisis? What crisis?”20 Now, even countries with coercive population control are desperately trying to raise birth rates;21 but even with disturbing evidence that Covid vaccines may have helped to lower fertility,22 some remain stuck in the “overpopulation” mindset, unable to grasp the fact that declining births represent the slow death of humanity. They still believe there are “too many people”; but until we recognise that we are facing not a population explosion but a birth dearth, we cannot address the problem. That is the real crisis.

Notes

  1. https://news.sky.com/story/global-birth-rates-crisis-people-do-still-want-to-have-children-but-many-cant-heres-why-13381290; https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2025/06/the-debate-over-falling-fertility-david-bloom; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnvj3j27nmro https://www.ft.com/content/19cea1e0-4b8f-4623-bf6b-fe8af2acd3e5; https://www.newsweek.com/graph-birth-rates-decline-50-years-2087997; https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/the-daily/the-apocalyptic-decline-in-birth-rates ↩︎
  2. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionandfertilityrates/articles/howisthefertilityratechanginginenglandandwales/2024-10-28 ↩︎
  3. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/10/un-population-fund-unfpa-report-reasons-falling-global-fertility ↩︎
  4. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-real-reason-birth-rates-are-falling/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020250619%20%20AL+CID_dbd48f802f1ba223d523278fcd71fa6c ↩︎
  5. https://www.abebooks.com/9781901157628/Prophets-Priests-Hidden-Face-Birth-1901157628/plp https://www.abebooks.com/Left-Why-World-Needs-Children-Morland/32203898045/bd ↩︎
  6. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxe2842xr62o#:~:text=Prices%20increased%20by%202.1%25%20over%20the%20year%2C%20the%20fastest%20pace%20since%20December%202022.&text=Part%20of%20the%20reason%20for%20the%20jump,as%20their%20wages%20rise%20in%20real%20terms. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-14764549/Relaxed-mortgage-rules-boost-time-buyers-send-house-prices-says-report.html ↩︎
  7. https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?nkw=ann+farmer+%27by+their+fruits%27&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_odkw=books&_osacat=0] Our ancestors would be astonished to learn that we feel too poor to have children — that we allow millions of abortions each year. Indeed, abortion has replaced disease and starvation as the leading cause of death worldwide.[https://www.lifenews.com/2024/11/26/abortion-kills-73-million-babies-worldwide-every-year-but-leftists-dont-want-anyone-to-know-that/ https://www.mercatornet.com/sooner_or_later_babies_will_be_too_precious_to_abort?utm_campaign=20250131_friday_1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newmediafoundation Feminists might see this as a wholesale rejection of motherhood, but references to “one in three women” having abortions are highly misleading: while most women have no abortions, others have multiple terminations.[https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2022/abortion-statistics-england-and-wales-2022] Lack of support is the more likely explanation, especially when abortion — free of charge, taking only a phone call, and with abortifacient pills sent by post — seems the easier option. [https://www.lifenews.com/2025/03/12/nba-star-anthony-edwards-hates-his-ex-girlfriend-for-not-aborting-their-baby/?cmid=ddfd25ea-f7c8-4573-8203-eeb3c3af6db2] But while campaigners use spiralling abortion rates to justify making it even easier to access, [https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/24/the-new-abortion-law-is-nothing-to-fear/?utm_source=The+week+on+spiked&utm_campaign=50ac7937f5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_06_27_04_38&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0-50ac7937f5-65584149 ↩︎
  8. https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/07/uk-decriminalize-abortion-pro-life-evangelicals/?utm_source=CARE&utm_campaign=84d815c6c8-The_Roundup_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cc8d9cafe-84d815c6c8-459222642&mc_cid=84d815c6c8&mc_eid=61347b2f6c;https://thecatholicherald.com/when-the-killing-of-the-innocent-is-ignored-everyone-is-in-danger/; https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/this-barbaric-parliament-is-committed-to-the-culture-of-death/ pro-lifers offer real help.[https://lifecharity.org.uk/ ↩︎
  9. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57791538] as well as accusations of using population control as ethnic cleansing.[https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/bangladesh-accused-of-coercing-rohingya-women-to-use-contraceptives/ ↩︎
  10. https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/un-absurdly-claims-abortion-not-more-babies-is-the-answer-to-the-global-fertility-crisis/?utm_source=daily-catholic-2025-06-18&utm_medium=email https://www.unfpa.org/swp2025 ↩︎
  11. https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/07/01/uk-govt-urges-young-people-to-have-more-children-amid-plummeting-birthrates/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_campaign=20250701 ↩︎
  12. https://www.hfea.gov.uk/media/2716/the-state-of-the-fertility-sector-2017-2018-final-accessibility-checked.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01484-3/fulltext ↩︎
  13. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/one-child-in-school-class-is-ivf-baby-zqgz6ww2w] but IVF is hugely wasteful as well as hugely profitable, with clients paying to keep millions of “surplus” embryos in perpetual frozen limbo.[https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/ivf-is-growing-in-the-uk-with-more-lesbians-and-single-clients-using-it/?utm_source=digest-catholic-2025-06-30&utm_medium=email ↩︎
  14. https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/ivf-is-growing-in-the-uk-with-more-lesbians-and-single-clients-using-it/?utm_source=digest-catholic-2025-06-30&utm_medium=email ↩︎
  15. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/21/england-first-not-for-profit-fertility-clinic-closes-within-year-of-opening-bpas ↩︎
  16. https://www.abebooks.com/9781901157628/Prophets-Priests-Hidden-Face-Birth-1901157628/plp https://www.abebooks.com/Left-Why-World-Needs-Children-Morland/32203898045/bd ↩︎
  17. Cf. Annie Besant, My path to atheism embracing reason, challenging dogma — a journey to intellectual liberation (Wombrook Publishing, 2023); Ann Farmer, Prophets &priests: the hidden face of the birth control movement (Saint Austin Press, 2004).] and yet their warnings of mass starvation, etc., have been exposed as false prophecies.[Cf. Julian L Simon, The ultimate resource 2 (Princeton University Press, 1998). ↩︎
  18. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/18/greta-thunberg-climate-change-hypocrisy-gen-z/ ↩︎
  19. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/9815862/Humans-are-plague-on-Earth-Attenborough.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1207018/Attenborough-joins-campaign-curb-worlds-population.html?ITO=1490 ↩︎
  20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent#/media/File:Crisis_What_Crisis_Sun_headline.jpg ↩︎
  21. https://www.pop.org/pri-insider-volume-5-issue-22-june-20/?vcrmeid=qoL1aJ9cJkOXU6xwmeIQg&vcrmiid=j2WXnK2qdkWX_WRlhHZKNA#communistchina https://www.pop.org/pri-insider-volume-5-issue-20-june-6/?vcrmeid=4FL6e3t6dUmZBaWeh5rDwg&vcrmiid=j2WXnK2qdkWX_WRlhHZKNA ↩︎
  22. https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/covid-vaccine-lowered-chances-of-conception-study-of-1-3million-women-finds/ ↩︎

Tags

Share