We need more married mothers

Amidst rising rates of unmarried childless women, someone needed to be blamed. And feminists, predictably, zeroed in on men as the dastardly culprits. Reviving an Independent article from 2019 (“Lack of ‘economically-attractive’ men to blame for decline in marriage rates, study suggests”), social media adjudged that “‘most women hope to marry but current shortages of marriageable men — men with a stable job and a good income — make this increasingly difficult, especially in the current gig economy of unstable low-paying service jobs,’ explains Dr Daniel Lichter, lead author of the study [‘Mismatches in the Marriage Market’; Lichter, et al., September 2019].”

Stunning and brave.

This, of course, goes against the Barbie-esque narrative of strong independent women that don’t need no man.

Furthermore, another study (“Why people face difficulties in attracting mates: An investigation of 17 probable predictors of involuntary singlehood”; Apostolou and Michaelidou, Science Direct, January 2024) points out that, “for women, we found that poor flirting capacity, poor sexual functioning, high choosiness, and low agreeableness were associated with higher probability to be involuntarily single than in a relationship or married. Moreover, shyness, agreeableness, sexual functioning, and choosiness had indirect effects. In addition, high choosiness was associated with more years being single.”

And indeed, emphasizing the “choosiness” angle, another study (“Do Men and Women Know What They Want? Sex Differences in Online Daters’ Educational Preferences”; Whyte, et al., Psychological Science, June 2018) confirmed that: “women were more likely than men to stipulate educational preferences at all ages. When members indifferent to educational level were excluded, however, the specificity of men’s and women’s preferences did differ for different age groups. That is, whereas women expressed more refined educational preferences during their years of maximum fertility, their demand specificity decreased with age. Men’s specificity, in contrast, remained stable until the 40s, when it was greater than that of postreproductive women, and then was higher during their peak years of career-earnings potential. Further, when individuals’ level of education was controlled for, women (compared with men) were more likely to state a higher minimum preference for educational level in a potential mate.”Unfortunately, the supposed hypergamous predisposition of women has been magnified by woke progressivism, such that their normal (even logical) choosiness has been exacerbated by the vastly increased options made available by social media, plus a culture promoting a “career first marry later” ethic and the media’s fascination with the ridiculously birdbrained DINK (Dual income, no kids) lifestyle.

This has led to unprecedentedly unfortunate consequences.

WHY IS THE OVERPOPULATION SCARE LIKE CLIMATE CHANGE?
As previously pointed out here (“Population collapse and the RH Law mistake,” March 2022; citing “Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100,” The Lancet, July 2020), the world’s population is already shrinking to alarming levels.

Thus, “the global population was projected to peak in 2064 at 9.73 billion (8.84-10.9) people and decline to 8.79 billion (6.83-11.8) in 2100.” Total fertility rates (TFR) for several countries are expected to fall drastically: “By 2050, 151 countries were forecasted to have a TFR lower than the replacement level (TFR <2-1), and 183 were forecasted to have a TFR lower than replacement by 2100; 23 countries in the reference scenario, including Japan, Thailand, and Spain, were forecasted to have population declines greater than 50% from 2017 to 2100.” Even more disconcerting is the expected aging global population: “with 2.37 billion (1.91-2.87) individuals older than 65 years and 1.70 billion (1.11-2.81) individuals younger than 20 years, forecasted globally in 2100.”

The World Health Organization itself, not an organization known for enthusiasm in encouraging population growth, declared that: “By 2030, one in six people in the world will be aged 60 years or over. At this time the share of the population aged 60 years and over will increase from 1 billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion. By 2050, the world’s population of people aged 60 years and older will double (2.1 billion). The number of persons aged 80 years or older is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050 to reach 426 million.”

As for the Philippines, “the total fertility rate (TFR) of Filipino women aged 15 to 49 years dropped from 2.7 children per woman in 2017 to 1.9 children per woman in 2022, based on preliminary results of the National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). The PSA defines TFR as ‘the average number of children a woman would have by the end of her childbearing years if she bore children at the current age-specific fertility rates.’ With the lower TFR, the country is already below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman.” (Philippine Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department)

Furthermore, “in the 2022 NDHS, women were asked whether they wanted more children and, if so, how long they would prefer to wait before the birth of the next child. About half (48.8%) of currently married women aged 15 to 49 years (including women who are sterilized or whose husbands are sterilized) want no more children. The percentage of women who want no more children increases with the number of living children, from 4.3% with no living children to 72% with six or more children. Around 13.9% of women want to have another child within the next two years and 17.4% want to wait at least two years before having another child. Moreover, less than one percent (0.2%) of women want another child but have not decided when, and 8.1% are undecided about having more children.” (Philippines Statistics Authority, Report November 2022) Bottomline? As The Lancet points out: “A sustained TFR lower than the replacement level in many countries, including China and India, would have economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences.”

SUFFER THE CHILDREN
Disturbingly, a considerable number of women — to get around the self-accountability and responsibilities that marriage demands — are now resorting to getting pregnant but without the benefit of marriage. This leads to this present tragic statistic of 58.1% or 844,909 of new Filipino babies being born illegitimate.

Which points us to the reality that increased single-women households damage everyone, definitely society as a whole, but most unfortunately it damages the Filipino youth.

Consider that practically every school shooter in the US (for example) were bereft of fathers, “whether due to divorce, death, or imprisonment” (“When Will We Have the Guts to Link Fatherlessness to School Shootings,” Susan Goldberg, PJ Media, February 2018), as I pointed out in my column “The two parent advantage (or why a divorce law is a dumb idea)” in June this year.

As I wrote in my column, “Divorce is a deadly killer” in March 2018, “Then there’s this: ‘72% of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers; the same for 60% of all rapists, 70% of juveniles in state institutions grew up in single-or no-parent situations. The number of single-parent households is a good predictor of violent crime in a community, while poverty rate is not,’ (Terry Brennan, Co-Founder, Leading Women for Shared Parenting).”

As I wrote in “The two parent advantage (or why a divorce law is a dumb idea)”: “Gratifyingly, Melissa Kearney, the University of Maryland’s Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics, recently came out with the highly relevant and quite commonsensical book The Two Parent Privilege. Here, she presents a data-driven defense of marriage and declares that to depreciate it leads to economic problems, fractures society, and badly hinders children’s development.

“Presenting no religious arguments and based on more than a decade of economic research, the Two Parent Privilege demonstrates that ‘marriage, for all its challenges and faults, may be our best path to a more equitable future’ and that when two adults marry, such immensely and comprehensively benefits not only the married couple but their children as well.“Indeed, ‘two parents combined have more resources than one. Two parents in a home bring in the earnings — or at least the earnings capacity — of two adults. And so, in a very straightforward way, we see that kids growing up in single-mother homes are five times more likely to live in poverty than kids growing up in married parent homes. (Kids in single-father homes are three times as likely to live in poverty).” See “Why Two Parents Are the Ultimate Privilege,” Bari Weiss interviewing Melissa Kearney, Free Press, December 2023.

BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY
However, there are positive signs that the malignant influence of feminism is waning. CNN — of all media ironically — reported (March 2024) that “the number of marriages took a dive around the start of the pandemic, numbers show. For the past two decades, the number of marriages stayed around seven to eight per 1,000 people a year, according to new data released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

But in 2020, the marriage rate was down to 5.1 per 1,000 people, the data showed. The rate started to climb the next year, and by 2022, the number of marriages had reached 6.2 per capita and over 2 million in a year, according to the report.”

And quite interestingly, “in 2022, the divorce rate was 2.4 per 1,000 people. Although that isn’t the lowest it has ever been — in 2021, it was 2.3 — it continues a downward trend, according to the data. By comparison, the rate of divorces in 2000 was four per 1,000, which means the current rate is a big decline from two decades earlier.

Indeed, the trope of the 50% divorce rate is influenced much by those in second, third, and subsequent marriages. Such marriages do have higher possibilities of ending in divorce. But recent first marriages are demonstrating much higher survival rates, with possible separations as low as 15-20%. For those couples considered part of the Traditional Catholic community, the rate can be as low as 5%.

Hopefully, this return of sanity and commonsense keeps on going. The last thing the world needs are more unhinged Kamala-clones shrilly trying to convince us on how happy they are.

Jemy Gatdula is the dean of UA&P Law, as well as a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.