State and Church: Two Routes to Replacement

Beyond state approaches, the church is well-positioned to support families and drive replacement amid falling fertility rates

In the past decade, world leaders have been faced with a puzzling problem—plummeting fertility rates. The problem sweeps across nearly the entire globe. It’s a puzzle because we never really had to think about whether people were getting together and having babies. It’s one of those things that has always just happened, and even more frequently as the world became rich.

The first big reaction to the big problem (which governments perpetuated) was governmental attempts to lower the costs of having kids. The Western middle-to-upper class narrative describes childbearing as a capstone experience that has gotten increasingly difficult. This narrative takes for granted the massive advancements in medicine, nutrition, and other quality of life indicators that the globe has experienced in the past century. But it also captures stark increases in the opportunity cost of investing in family that have accompanied economic prosperity. Governments have tried paid parental leave, tax credits, baby bonuses, free healthcare, free childcare, and housing vouchers.

Susannah Pettit makes the connection from family policies to Hayek’s Fatal Conceit. She argues that the knowledge problem explains the limited impact of cash incentives toward family formation. In “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” Hayek argues

If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them (p. 524).

While reform efforts to improve affordability, for example in housing, childcare, or flexible work, can make a difference for families at the margin, the returns to family policies generally don’t justify the costs.

So what kind of community organizations can leverage particular knowledge of time and place and actually understand the challenges and motivations that drive personal family decisions? The church is one.

My church is full of large families. As Catherine Pakaluk’s recent book illustrates, some families aren’t on the fence about having kids, no matter what the tax benefits are. This doesn’t mean they are exempt from the financial, personal, and professional costs of raising kids. But it is clear that they are accepting the costs willingly, excitedly even, and finding that they are not alone in stewarding the next generation.

What makes the church a great place to grow a family? My experience is not ubiquitous in religious communities, but there is a growing divide between religious and secular groups when it comes to family formation. First, the Bible makes it clear that children are a gift from God (Psalm 127:3) and are made in His image (Genesis 1:27). Jesus went out of his way to assign value and dignity to children: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14).

A few noticeable family-friendly measures that are baked into the life of our church are vibrant kids and youth ministries, meal trains for families with new babies or foster children, parents’ night out events where adults volunteer childcare, daddy-daughter and mother-son events, fellowship groups specifically for young moms, and a homeschool co-op that makes Christian education more accessible. Financial education courses, premarital and marital counseling, and special events for parenting support are other resources available for adults.

In a more informal sense, there is a culture of mutual investment and responsibility among members of the church, parents or not. Teenagers, single men and women, childless couples, and empty nesters look forward to Sunday in part because they’ll get the joy of interacting with little ones. It’s a mutual responsibility that represents many of the ideals of classical liberalism, and beyond caring for the physical needs of families, church members get to pursue spiritual flourishing together through a growing relationship with God.

Classical liberalism and vibrant faith communities go hand in hand because the free society places great responsibility on its members, individuals who do have the relevant knowledge to care for one another’s needs. Needs, problems, and disputes cannot be dismissed as “social” ills, but must be acknowledged and addressed as features of life together. From a classical liberal perspective, even the big, global problems like plummeting fertility demand a response at the individual and community level because that is where the relevant knowledge can be accessed.

The call to love my neighbors (Mark 12:30-31) (and their little ones, Matthew 19:14) is not a light one. I’ll admit it, being a stakeholder in the lives of my friends and their kids is costly. For me, it means spending multiple hours a week with the teenagers who attend my church, welcoming interruptions when someone needs a hand with childcare, and cooking elaborate meals when a new little one makes his or her debut (this one’s on me, I should really just stick to lasagna).

Hayek described the folly of applying macro-solutions to micro- and meso-level problems in The Fatal Conceit. Collectivism was disastrous in its attempt to provide family-like equality and altruism. Even if government measures to boost fertility were effective, they wouldn’t relieve isolation, provide allies for parents, or offer mentors and friends for kids. As a hub of relational and cultural knowledge, the church has an unmatched opportunity to offer the social, material, and spiritual support that families crave. And, compared to collectivist strategies, it’s a route that is much more likely to lead to replacement.

Anna Claire Flowers is a PhD Fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Twitter: @annacflowers