Canadian Paper Editorial Warns of “Full-Blown Fertility"
Canadian National Paper Editorial Warns of “Full-Blown Fertility Crisis”
Editorial says, “start making babies”
Wednesday March 14, 2007
By Hilary White
TORONTO, March 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canadians are more materialistic, career-oriented and irreligious than Americans, which is why women have no more than one or two children; an article by the Canadian Press explains the reasons for the low Canadian birth rate.
The 2006 census data were released Tuesday by Statistics Canada showing the Canadian birth rate at 1.5 children per woman. 2.1 is necessary to maintain a stable population with no growth.
An editorial in today’s National Post proposes a solution that is getting little mention in the mainstream press: “start making babies.” The Post points to the example of France with its generous tax subsidies for couples with children that have “spurred a mini-renaissance in the country's birth rate.”
Sally Ritchie, a Toronto career woman told CP reporter Sheryl Ubelacker, that though she was the youngest of a family of eight siblings, she herself only wanted one child. “Nowadays, it's very, very difficult to have more than one child and be sure that you're going to be able to put them through university and provide them with the home you want to provide them with,” Ritchie said.
She adds: “And, frankly, you want to do better for your kids than was done for you . . . and I couldn't afford to do that if we continued with growing the family.”
“And it's vitally important to me that I have a career.”
The CP article cites “better contraception,” higher average age at the time of marriage, a 50 per cent divorce rate and “career women who delay marriage and babies as they establish themselves in the workplace.”
But the real difference between the US and Canada, Ubelacker writes, is what demographers are calling “religiosity,” defined as the tendency to adhere “to a traditional family structure, with men as the breadwinning head of household and women primarily as nurturers of children.”
Amelie Quesnel-Vallee, a social demographer at McGill University in Montreal, was quick to point out that just being willing to give children life is no indication of US superiority. She said, “Definitely [Americans are] having more children, but they're not necessarily giving them the same life conditions that Canadians would.”
The Post points out that while Canada has one of the highest growth rates of the G8 nations, about 5.4 per cent, the increase is due exclusively to massive and unprecedented levels of immigration. Shifts in economics and demographics are creating a difficult choice for the future: “limit our intake of immigrants, or lower our immigration criteria to sustain the current high numbers.”
In either scenario, says the Post, the population will drop or “our economy will be saddled with waves of poor performers who burden our social- welfare systems and contribute little to the public fisc.”
“Either way, there will be no one to pay the bills when the current crop of middle-aged Canadians retire.”
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/mar/07031404.html
