Macleans Cover Story
Canada’s
Low Birth Rate Leading to Demographic Crisis
LifeSiteNews.com
By Gudrun Schultz and Steve Jalsevac
TORONTO, Canada, May 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The plummeting birth rates
in developed nations around the globe were the subject of a lengthy cover story
in Maclean’s magazine this week, with Canada’s own
demographic crisis taking center stage.
With a birth
rate of just 1.5 children per woman--an all-time low--Canadian society is
already beginning to feel the impact of a withering population, wrote
Macleans journalist Lianne
George. A healthy replacement birth rate is 2.1 children per women.
“Across the country, women on average aren’t having their first child until the
age of 31,” George wrote. “Elementary schools and daycare facilities, without
enough kids to fill the nap mats, are closing for business.” Another article stated that in
“
The lack of skilled workers--and workforce members at any skill level--is
expected to reach a shortfall of 1.2 million by 2020. With most of the
industrialized world facing the same shortage, the massive increase in
immigration necessary to counter the population loss will be hard to come by,
said Carleton University professor Linda Duxbury.
“The numbers that we’re talking about are phenomenal,” Duxbury said. “Half a million to two-thirds of a million per year.”
Canada’s situation is mirrored all over the developed world, George wrote, with
some countries, such as Japan, in even worse shape--Japan’s birth rate has reached
the record low of 1.26 children per women.
Among the reasons cited in the article for the reduction in births are the
financial costs of raising a child, the career blow professional women face
when they embark on motherhood, and the problem of
infertility among women attempting to begin a family towards the end of their
fertile years.
As well, the author acknowledges a growing disinterest in taking on the demands
and sacrifices of parenthood in a society that values autonomy and control.
“In a hyper-individualistic, ultra-commodified
culture like ours, motherhood, for better and worse, is less a fact of life
than just another lifestyle choice.”
As with most similar reports published in recent years, some key, but
politically incorrect, issues affecting birthrates are not covered in the Macleans article.
There is no mention of the dramatic collapse in the rate of religious belief
and practice in
Statistics
While birth control was briefly mentioned as a possible contributing factor,
abortion was skimmed over with an off-hand comment referring to
Although largely ignored by population demographers as a factor in plunging
birth rates, an estimated 46 million abortions take place annually on a global
scale, with a majority occurring in the developed or developing world. In
In