God’s opinion

A child is God’s opinion that the world should go on.

Those words are on a plaque that has hung on the wall of my son’s bedroom since he was born. It used to make me smile every time it caught my eye (except, perhaps, when I was storming out in anger, in which case I may have wanted to toss it out a window). Now, it makes my heart bleed sadness.

The end began more than a dozen years ago, just after the first major worldwide pandemic with its ensuing lockdowns. I thought it was a natural reaction of women using contraceptives more successfully, the ever-increasing sociopolitical chaos, and/or the poorly functioning global economy forcing couples to put off starting families until they could afford the expense. But, at a certain point, it became evident that women just were not getting pregnant.

Anywhere.

Article after article started to appear not just in scientific journals but in every day digital newspapers: “Scientists searching for clues to why global births are plummeting”; “Baby Bust? What’s happening to the world’s birth rate?”; “Condom sales down and abortions eradicated as even teenagers shooting blanks!” It was baffling. People just suddenly stopped having babies.

It only really pierced my consciousness (I don’t regularly follow the news), because my son and his wife had been desperately trying to have a baby for years and no doctor could tell them why it wasn’t happening. Each test determined that there was absolutely no scientific reason why she didn’t get pregnant every single time they tried.

Anyway, as my research has progressed, I have realized that it is not just a personal issue. Nor simply local (some wondered if it was something in the water or the air), nor national (is the government secretly poisoning us?). No. I have read articles in English, Spanish, French and German from across Latin America and Europe, describing the same issue. My friends, Tatka, Nadine and Nisha have shared similar results from articles they have read in Russian, Arabic, Hindi, and Mandarin.

The world population is rapidly decreasing as annual deaths have increased over the last ten years, exceeding 100 million a year for the last three…while the last recorded birth was five years ago.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I was cleaning the house. I saw the plaque in my son’s room.

And, suddenly, I understood.