Far-right authoritarian pundits and political actors, from Matt Walsh to Elon Musk, all seem to have gotten the same memo instructing them to fixate on “low” fertility and birth rates. Musk has claimed that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming” and that it will lead to “mass extinction.”
Some liberals are flirting with this narrative, too. In a February New Yorker essay, Gideon Lewis-Kraus deploys dystopian imagery to describe the “low” birth-rate in South Korea, twice comparing the country to the collapsing, childless society in the 2006 film Children of Men.
It’s not just liberals and authoritarians engaging in this birth-rate crisis panic. Self-described leftist Elizabeth Bruenig recently equated falling fertility with humanity’s inability “to persist on this Earth.” Running through her pronatalist Atlantic opinion piece is an entirely uninterrogated presumption that fertility rates collected today are able to predict the total disappearance of the species Homo sapiens at some future time.
But is this panic about low fertility driving human population collapse supported by any evidence?
The only way not to die in miserable circumstances is to die suddenly, and retirement homes typically take away people’s ability to choose even that.
I would not wish my grandmother’s “well-earned retirement” on my worst enemies.
retirement homes are not what almost anyone means when talking about retirement, most are simply talking about a form of quitting where you never work again (or never need to).
No, there are many circumstances in between.
My grandparents both lived in a retirement home for the last few years of their lives. My grandfather died suddenly but my grandmother did not.
My grandmother had a long, gradual decline with dementia. We visited her often and took her out of the retirement home for tea. Her accommodations there were very nice and our family would visit several times per week (grandma had 6 adult children). We would have lunch there and the food was very good. Her dementia meant she could not remember people visiting her but she was not unhappy. She was always happy to see us!
I’m so sorry your grandmother faced miserable circumstances. In Canada we now have legal MAID which I am a supporter of. No one should be forced to live in constant pain without a choice.