Low Birth Rate Kills Economy, Society, New Film Shows

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Over the past few decades, it has become fashionable for young people, especially men, to put off marriage until later in life or to avoid it altogether, Kay Hymowitz, a scholar and noted author with the Manhattan Institute, explains in the film.

This is partly because women have become more career-minded and economically successful in recent years and are less inclined to have children as a result, she says. But there is also a certain unwillingness to enter adulthood and all its responsibilities that affects men disproportionately, Hymowitz argues.

"Men have a harder time growing up without women than women do growing up without men," she observes in the film.

No-fault divorce laws and a co-habitation mindset that sidestep the guarantees that come with marriage are identified in the film as major contributing factors behind the looming "demographic winter."

And the key trends undermining natural families are intertwined, studies show.

Statistics cited on the film's Web site, for instance, indicate that almost half of all marriages in the West are broken by divorce. Moreover, social scientists find that the children who grow up with divorced parents are less likely to marry and less likely to have children.

The way to reverse the trend:

To reverse this trend, Phillip Longman, a senior fellow with the New America Foundation, called for a return to traditional, patriarchal family structures during Tuesday's panel discussion.

Longman, who is in the film, is the author of several books on demographics and economics. While it may not be politically correct to speak in terms of patriarchal family models, he said, these structures impose responsibilities on men that they would just as soon avoid.

Longman sees hope for the future among those who hold religious worldviews and among young people especially.

"There is a self-correction side to this," Longman said. "Secularism correlates so strongly with childlessness that there is almost by default a shoring-up of the family with traditional values.

"I think we can see that today. There is evidence of rising aspiration among younger folks today for marriage. I'm talking about people in their 20s. This new millennial generation is so different in so many ways from Generation X," Longman added.

The feminists told women they were doing themselves a disservice by getting married and having children. Younger women today are intelligent enough to see through those lies, and are ignoring them.

I've noticed the vast majority of those in the 18-25 crowd are pro-life. They will be the ones to reverse the childlessness of the secularists.