As discussed in a profound post by George Christensen (see below), the world is grappling with a quiet but profound crisis, one that threatens the very foundations of Western techno-industrial civilisation: plummeting fertility rates. The United Nations Population Fund's 2025 "State of World Population Report," of all places, paints a stark picture, revealing that most nations, particularly in the developed world, are failing to achieve the 2.1 births per woman needed for population stability. This isn't just a demographic hiccup, it's a looming catastrophe with far-reaching implications for economies, societies, and global power dynamics. Based on a survey of 14,000 people across 14 countries, the report underscores that most people want children but feel "shut out of parenthood" by financial pressures like housing costs, childcare expenses, and job insecurity. Over half of respondents cited these concerns as reasons for hesitating to start or expand families. Yet, the solutions offered by governments, cash incentives for newborns, subsidised childcare, or short-term housing relief, have proven largely ineffective, as seen in countries like China, South Korea, and Japan, where birth rates continue to spiral downward despite significant spending of billions.
What's driving this crisis? At its core, it's about opportunity costs. In wealthy nations, the decision to have children, especially at a young age, comes with steep trade-offs. Young women, fresh out of university and launching careers, face a daunting calculus: motherhood often means sacrificing professional growth, income, and social mobility. The cultural shift in advanced societies has tilted the scales, making childlessness an increasingly attractive option. Individual achievement and autonomy are celebrated, while traditional family structures are often sidelined. Add to this a pervasive sense of hopelessness, fuelled by everything from climate alarmism to cultural guilt (all based upon falsehoods), and it's no wonder young people hesitate to bring children into a world they've been taught is overcrowded and doomed because of "white racism." The UNFPA notes that South Koreans, for instance, are more likely to cite financial woes than Swedes, who benefit from generous family leave policies, yet both nations languish among the lowest fertility rates globally. Clearly, throwing money at the problem isn't enough.
Contrast this with the world's most fertile nations, places like Niger, Angola, and Uganda, where birth rates soar above five children per woman. These countries aren't known for booming economies, robust childcare systems, or progressive reproductive health policies. In fact, many face high unemployment and limited opportunities, yet their populations continue to grow. Why? In these societies, the opportunity cost of motherhood is low. Cultural norms, often rooted in religion like Islam, emphasise large families, and remaining single past a certain age can carry social stigma or economic peril. Woman's lib and feminism have not yet made their pernicious marks. This stands in sharp contrast to the West, where Christian family values have waned, and even authoritarian communist states like China struggle to convince women to bear more children for national glory.
The UNFPA's proposed solution, expanding reproductive choice, including easier access to abortion and fertility services for marginalised groups, feels oddly disconnected from the evidence, being more about woke New World Order ideologies than realities. High-fertility nations don't rely on extensive reproductive health systems, and the report offers little proof that abortion access boosts planned family growth; by definition abortion lowers the birth rate as occurs in the West. Instead, it seems to sidestep the deeper issue: people need hope. The report's poetic flourish about the need for "hope for the future" hits closer to the mark but lacks specificity. Hope is eroded by economic insecurity, yes, but also by a cultural narrative that paints humanity as a burden on the planet. Young people in the West are bombarded with messages about overpopulation and environmental collapse, making the act of raising a child feel almost irresponsible. Meanwhile, policies like paid family leave or affordable fertility care, while well-intentioned, don't address the profound sense of alienation gripping younger generations.
The consequences of this fertility crisis are dire for techno-industrial civilisation. Shrinking populations mean aging workforces, straining pension systems and healthcare infrastructure. Economic stagnation looms as fewer workers drive innovation and consumption. Japan, with its labour shortages and stagnant growth, is a harbinger of what's to come for other advanced nations. Social cohesion frays as family units shrink and intergenerational bonds weaken. Globally, the disparity between high-fertility, less-developed nations and low-fertility, industrialised ones could reshape power dynamics. Sub-Saharan Africa's demographic boom might position it as a future economic force, but only if infrastructure catches up. Meanwhile, the West risks fading into irrelevance unless it can reverse these trends.
So, what's the path forward? The UNFPA's focus on reproductive choice and inclusivity, while noble, misses the mark by prioritising ideological goals over practical realities. Instead, societies must tackle the root causes: reduce the punishing opportunity costs of parenthood through transformative investments in housing, childcare, and workplace flexibility. More importantly, they need to foster cultural optimism, countering narratives of doom with reasons to believe in a brighter future. High-fertility societies offer a clue, strong community values and family-centric cultures can outweigh economic hardship. The challenge is adapting these lessons to advanced economies without resorting to coercion or nostalgia for outdated norms. If techno-industrial civilisation is to survive, it must find a way to make parenthood not just feasible but desirable, restoring hope for both individuals and the children they might choose to raise.
https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/are-your-grandkids-already-extinct
The UN has recently admitted that birth rates are collapsing around the world.
Their response is to promote woke policies instead of helping traditional families.
Male fertility is crashing due to decades of exposure to environmental toxins.
Western culture now discourages parenthood and celebrates status over family.
The answer is to rebuild strong families and restore a culture that values children.
That's right. On June 10, the UN's own Population Fund (UNFPA) released its "State of World Population Report" and couldn't hide it any longer. The birth rates are collapsing. Couples want kids but can't have them. Societies are shrinking. Entire civilisations are on the brink.
Now, before you get the idea that the UN's grown a spine or rediscovered sanity—don't. Because instead of confronting what's really going on, they've fallen back on their usual script: throw more taxpayer cash at so-called "inclusive reproductive health" programs—which is globalist code for more abortion for everyone—flood the workforce with "diverse" hiring schemes, and double down on empowering the LGBTQIA+ lobby to raise other people's children.
Seriously. Their big answer to a world not having babies? Pay people not to be parents, and subsidise anyone except the traditional family.
You can't make this stuff up.
But let's pause here. Because buried under their wokewashed nonsense is a bombshell. The United Nations, of all places, has finally admitted that something's gone horribly wrong. They've seen the numbers. So have we.
In rich, developed nations—where "progress" supposedly rules—people aren't having enough kids to survive. Not even close. South Korea, Japan, Italy, France, Australia… all below replacement level. And no, it's not just "lifestyle choice" or "women's empowerment." That lie's grown stale. The UN now admits over half of people who want kids are being shut out by sky-high housing costs, job insecurity, and a future that looks darker by the day.
But instead of addressing those real, systemic causes—like cultural rot, anti-family policy, and a market economy that punishes parents—the UN blames "stigma." They think if men took more paternity leave and women felt safer freezing their eggs, the babies would suddenly appear.
Wrong.
Let's talk about what they're not saying.
Start with the spermpocalypse—the male fertility crash that's quietly decimating families around the globe. In May 2024, the CEO of male fertility start-up Legacy warned that sperm counts have dropped by over 60% in the past 40 years. That's a freefall—from 104 million per millilitre in 1973 to just 49 million by 2018. And since 2000, that decline has accelerated—falling at over 2.6% per year.
So what's causing it?
The BBC—yes, even the BBC—covered the story last year and couldn't avoid the truth. The real culprit? Pollution. Environmental toxins. Plastics. Fire retardants. Endocrine disruptors. Chemicals banned decades ago but still lingering in our homes, our food, and even the womb. In one study cited in their report, researchers found reduced sperm motility and increased DNA fragmentation in both humans and dogs exposed to everyday household pollutants.
This is more than just a fertility issue. As one top epidemiologist put it, declining sperm count is "a marker of poor health of men, maybe even of mankind." And if these toxins are damaging the most basic building blocks of life across generations, what does that say about where we're heading?
But this war on fertility isn't just environmental—it's ideological. As UnHerd laid out in December, we've engineered a culture where status replaces family. Success now means delaying marriage, avoiding kids, and sinking everything into career and consumption.
Young men are drowning in pornography, junk food, antidepressants, and soy ideology. Women are told motherhood is a burden, not a blessing. Children are painted as carbon-footprint liabilities. And the global elite—whether it's the Davos crowd or the Albanese government here at home—cheer it all on, whispering that maybe it's better if "the West" just quietly fades away.
Meanwhile, the nations still having children—places like Uganda, Niger, Chad—aren't poisoned by either polluting modern consumerist lifestyle or woke self-hate. They're not making fatherhood optional or family shameful. They're not encouraging sterilisation through the back door of identity politics.
The UN sees the disaster unfolding. But instead of admitting that the West's spiritual, moral, and demographic collapse is by design, they offer lipstick on the corpse—more taxpayer-funded IVF, more rights for non-parents, and more abortion "access" for people supposedly being shut out of parenthood.
It's madness. It's evil. And worst of all, it's deliberate.
So what's the answer?
You already know. Strong families. Faith. A culture that values motherhood and masculinity. Governments that support parents, not just careerism. And a spiritual revival that tells the truth: children are not a burden—they are our future.
But here's the hard truth—you won't hear this from the ABC, or Labor, or the UN. If we don't fight now, if we don't defend the family and rebuild the culture, there won't be a country left to save."
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2025/06/10/u-n-report-warns-of-global-fertility-crisis/
"The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on Tuesday released its annual "State of World Population Report." According to the report, the world is experiencing a fertility crisis and most of the policies implemented to fight it are ineffective.
"As policymakers and pundits raise the alarm about fertility rates, they often assume that if people are having children, it's because they can and want to, and if they're not it's because they can't or don't want to," UNFPA observed.
The report made the contrary argument, based on a survey of 14,000 people in 14 countries, that "most people want to have children," but many of them feel "shut out of parenthood." Over half of them cited "financial worries, including housing costs, childcare, and job insecurity" as reasons they were reluctant to have more children.
The report went on to lament that policies to combat this very problem – including "lump sum payments when a baby is born" and "short-term efforts to lower childcare or housing costs" – have been "ineffective and offer scant support."
UNFPA's solution was – in a bizarre demonstration of ideological rigidity over common sense – to make abortion easier and stop talking about population decline:
[C]ountries should be expanding reproductive choice, and supporting inclusive policies that empower and improve the welfare of all people.
That means improving access to reproductive health services for everyone, especially those currently left behind – disabled persons, ethnic minorities, migrants and more. It means supporting women who want to join, or stay in, the workforce without sacrificing the chance to become mothers. It means ending stigmas and workplace policies that discourage men from doing their share of childcare.
It can also mean expanding family support, including fertility and adoption services, to people who are too often excluded: those in the LGBTQIA+ community, single people, and women once considered "too old" to be suitable mothers. It also means respecting people who don't want children at all – a valid, legitimate choice that should be equally protected from stigma and pressure.
There is considerable evidence that UNFPA is right about policies to financially incentivize childbirth having little effect. This is most clearly demonstrated by countries like China, South Korea, and Japan, which have devoted considerable resources to subsidizing childbirth and child-rearing, without much observable effect. South Korea did manage a modest uptick in birth rates last year, the first in nearly a decade, but its fertility rate remains far below the level needed for a stable population. In the same year, China's birthrate continued to decline despite prodigious spending.
On the other hand, the nations with the highest fertility rates on Earth are not noted for their booming economies, extensive child care subsidies, or abundance of "reproductive health services": Niger, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Benin, Chad, and Uganda.
Uganda has been excoriated for its hostility to the LGBTQIA+ community, but it still has a fertility rate of 5.17 births per woman. A nation needs 2.1 for population stability and not a single nation in the affluent, abortion-happy, exquisitely LGBT-friendly Western world can meet that threshold, unless you count Israel.
"Vast numbers of people are unable to create the families they want. The issue is lack of choice, not desire, with major consequences for individuals and societies. That is the real fertility crisis, and the answer lies in responding to what people say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care, and supportive partners," argued UNFPA executive director Dr. Natalia Kanem.
And yet, the Asian countries experiencing sharp demographic decline have offered all of those things, without much impact on their demographic cataclysms.
What the UNFPA comes close to realizing is that in wealthy nations the opportunity cost of having children at a young age is enormous. Subsidizing hospital costs, providing generous maternity leave, or even providing cash benefits for new families does not approach the perceived loss of career opportunities, income, and social mobility for young mothers.
Population growth requires a substantial share of the female population to have multiple children, which usually means getting started on motherhood at the age women in advanced societies are graduating from school and planning their careers.
Stated simply, the population kill switch plaguing advanced societies is partly a consequence of their tendency to make not having children look like a very attractive option. As China, South Korea, and Japan have learned, not even the strong Asian cultural preference for marriage and family have been able to balance those scales.
On the other hand, the countries with high fertility rates do not have high opportunity costs for motherhood. To the contrary, remaining single past a certain age in those cultures and economies can be very unpleasant or dangerous. Toss in the strong urge for large families promoted by Islam – even as Judeo-Christian cultures have grown uncomfortable with "family values," and autocratic states like China have trouble motivating women to bear more children for the glory of the State – and a great deal of the demographic conundrum is solved.
The UNFPA drifted close to this solution by noticing that South Koreans are more likely to cite financial difficulties as a reason not to have children than Swedes, who enjoy generous family leave policies – but both nations still have among the lowest birth rates in the world.
The report's authors hypothesized that unintended pregnancies, which are common even in countries with very low birth rates, make it hard for people to carefully plan the large families they might otherwise have desired, but the report offered very little evidence that comprehensive access to abortion helps to resolve that hypothetical anxiety.
A more interesting conclusion was added to the report summary as a poetic flourish: "People need hope. They need hope for their own futures, and hope for the futures of the children they want to have. For that, policymakers must listen to what people need."
Young people in much of the Western world have been taught to feel hopeless and alienated by their left-wing political elites, with everything from climate hysteria to heavy burdens of cultural and historical guilt. UNFPA suggested alarmism over population decline could create a doom loop by making young people nervous about having children – but those people have been taught to believe the Earth is overcrowded and exhausted, mankind is a threat to nature, and raising the carbon footprint of humanity is sinful.
"Hope for the future" is a huge and nebulous concept. Many different factors could make people feel hopeful, or hopeless. High unemployment rates have long been suggested as a reason people might not feel enough hope for the future to have kids – but some of the most fertile countries in the world suffer from perpetually high unemployment and offer dismal economic prospects to young people.