What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster

by Jonathan V. Last

Overview

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded?

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else.

It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years. In some countries, it’s already started. Japan, for instance, will be half its current size by the end of the century. In Italy, there are already more deaths than births every year. China’s One-Child Policy has left that country without enough women to marry its men, not enough young people to support the country’s elderly, and an impending population contraction that has the ruling class terrified.

And all of this is coming to America, too. In fact, it’s already here. Middle-class Americans have their own, informal one-child policy these days. And an alarming number of upscale professionals don’t even go that far—they have dogs, not kids. In fact, if it weren’t for the wave of immigration we experienced over the last thirty years, the United States would be on the verge of shrinking, too.

What happened? Everything about modern life—from Bugaboo strollers to insane college tuition to government regulations—has pushed Americans in a single direction, making it harder to have children. And making the people who do still want to have children feel like second-class citizens.

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.

Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594037313
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	06/10/2014
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	947,677
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at the Weekly Standard. His writings have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Post, Claremont Review of Books, First Things, The Week, Salon, Slate, TV Guide, and elsewhere. He writes a weekly column on politics, "One Last Thing," for the iPad newspaper The Daily.

He is a regular commentator on both television and radio and has appeared on ABC, CNN, Fox News Channel, PBS, NPR, CNBC, Sky News, and the BBC.

He blogs at JonathanLast.com.

Table of Contents

Preface xiii

Introduction: One Child for All! 1

Chapter 1 America's Falling Fertility 12

Chapter 2 The Roots of One-Child 37

Chapter 3 SEX! (and maybe marriage) 52

Chapter 4 What You Can, and Cannot, Measure 70

Chapter 5 Very Bad Things 88

Chapter 6 The Bright Side 111

Chapter 7 Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy 125

Chapter 8 Losing Battles (What Not to Do) 139

Chapter 9 How to Make Babies 156

Acknowledgments 176

Notes 179

Index 222

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A powerful argument that the only thing worse than having children is not having them. I'm reading What To Expect When No One's Expecting aloud to the three little arguments for birth control at my house in hope they'll quit squabbling and making messes and start acting so cute that all my neighbors decide to conceive."

—P.J. O’Rourke, Author of Holidays in Heck

“This book explodes old ways of thinking. Not moralizing, not blaming, Jonathan Last peers methodically ahead at the cold consequences of plunging global birth rates: aging and ever smaller national populations, the fatal destruction of the financial premises of the welfare state, disappearing military strength. He describes the comfortable, happy childlessness chosen by more and more highly educated couples—lives of personal contentment, yes, but with unutterably sad national consequences. We are left to draw conclusions ourselves: The use of sex is not simply personal; the future of the whole human race hangs on it. Those who missed Ben Wattenberg’s The Birth Dearth (1987) have another chance to be shaken awake by the earthquake rumbling louder and faster beneath us.”

—Michael Novak, recipient of the Templeton Prize (1994), and author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

"Jonathan Last provides us with a well-written, well-argued description of one of the most profound, yet poorly understood phenomena of the 21st century: the world worldwide fall in birthrates and attendant rapid aging of the human population. He masterfully describes the key facts and concepts any literate person should know about the sea change in global demography and speculates wisely and soberly about the implications for the future of humanity. Avoiding the alarmism, sexism, and racial chauvinism that mars so such other writing on this subject, Last is an insightful and trustworthy guide."

—Phillip Longman, Senior Fellow of the New America Foundation and author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity And What To Do About It

"Jonathan Last's writing matches his reasoning: as clear as a shot of gin, and just as bracing. America is changing more quickly than ever before, and this book explains why. A terrific, important read."

—Tucker Carlson, Editor of The Daily Caller

"Jonathan Last's pulled off an amazing feat. He's written a book that's at once lively and profound, that deals with weighty matters with a light touch, and that explains a complex subject clearly. It might make you laugh, it could make you cry—but above all it will make you think."

—William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard

Editorial Reviews

According to Weekly Standard senior writer Last, hoofbeats are nigh: his "three horsemen" of the apocalypse-"cohabitation, widespread contraceptive use, and liberal abortion policies"-are riding America's population into the ground. Last claims this is not the fault of women working outside the home or the increasing prevalence of higher education, though still largely attributes it to them. The road to population stability is fraught with disincentives to have children and, statistically, America's fertility rate is "artificially" bolstered by non-white new immigrants and citizens; a borderline racist claim cited, confusingly, as part of the "coming disaster." The book is rife with garbled statistics, and Last blatantly muddles causation and correlation to drill his points home. He states that couples with children are less happy than their childless counterparts; yet, for him, the well-examined life requires sacrificing personal goals and shallow pleasure for procreation-as-self-actualization, period. Moreover, Genghis Khan is cited for his global influence through Y-chromosomal paternity. Quantity versus quality of parenting is not addressed, even though today's parents spend more total hours with their children. For Last, the eponymous biological clock has become a moral imperative, and, in his view, the areligious, "shacked up," blue-state Americans are failing.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

"A powerful argument that the only thing worse than having children is not having them. I'm reading What To Expect When No One's Expecting aloud to the three little arguments for birth control at my house in hope they'll quit squabbling and making messes and start acting so cute that all my neighbors decide to conceive."

—P.J. O’Rourke, Author of Holidays in Heck

“This book explodes old ways of thinking. Not moralizing, not blaming, Jonathan Last peers methodically ahead at the cold consequences of plunging global birth rates: aging and ever smaller national populations, the fatal destruction of the financial premises of the welfare state, disappearing military strength. He describes the comfortable, happy childlessness chosen by more and more highly educated couples—lives of personal contentment, yes, but with unutterably sad national consequences. We are left to draw conclusions ourselves: The use of sex is not simply personal; the future of the whole human race hangs on it. Those who missed Ben Wattenberg’s The Birth Dearth (1987) have another chance to be shaken awake by the earthquake rumbling louder and faster beneath us.”

—Michael Novak, recipient of the Templeton Prize (1994), and author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

"Jonathan Last provides us with a well-written, well-argued description of one of the most profound, yet poorly understood phenomena of the 21st century: the world worldwide fall in birthrates and attendant rapid aging of the human population. He masterfully describes the key facts and concepts any literate person should know about the sea change in global demography and speculates wisely and soberly about the implications for the future of humanity. Avoiding the alarmism, sexism, and racial chauvinism that mars so such other writing on this subject, Last is an insightful and trustworthy guide."

—Phillip Longman, Senior Fellow of the New America Foundation and author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity And What To Do About It

"Jonathan Last's writing matches his reasoning: as clear as a shot of gin, and just as bracing. America is changing more quickly than ever before, and this book explains why. A terrific, important read."

—Tucker Carlson, Editor of The Daily Caller

"Jonathan Last's pulled off an amazing feat. He's written a book that's at once lively and profound, that deals with weighty matters with a light touch, and that explains a complex subject clearly. It might make you laugh, it could make you cry—but above all it will make you think."

—William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard

"Imagine a merger of Mark Steyn and David Brooks with a Supreme Court imposed page limit."

—Hugh Hewitt, Host, The Hugh Hewitt Show

“The Malthusian paranoia of a coming population boom has nothing on the reality of a coming population implosion. Frankly it kinda makes a girl want to procreate.”

—S.E. Cupp

From the Publisher