There were nine of us wandering Italy. My husband’s parents, his four siblings, our newborn daughter, and the two of us. For three long and melancholic weeks, we soaked in every aspect of Italian culture, but it was clear that our family size put us at odds with their family ways. Birth rates in Italy sit at 1.24 births per woman on average, well below the replacement level of 2.1.

Italians were especially delighted to see such a young baby with parents in their mid-twenties. Locals often exclaimed, “Wow, what a big family you have!” We joked that we were on a tour to increase the birth rate—who wouldn’t want their own baby after seeing how cute our daughter is? “If you say you want a lot of kids here,” one Italian woman said, “then people call you a Fascist.” Mussolini’s pro-natalist policies, aimed at increasing the birth rate by any means for the sake of the nation, still lingered bitterly. These policies, it seemed, had fueled a cultural uninterest in having children. It was clear during our visit that nothing short of a miracle would reverse Italy’s decline from a glorified tourist state in the coming decades.

Today, countries across the West are once again trying to increase birth rates, this time not so much for national glory as national survival. From Israel, Hungary, and Romania to China and the United States, each country wants to see if and how they can motivate people to have more children.

In the 20th century, pro-natalist ideas like motherhood medals and financial benefits for women with three or more children seemed promising. As in Italy, however, pro-natalist policies often failed to produce long-term results other than a backlash of anti-natalism— that is, the belief that it is wrong to have children. The increasingly popular decision to avoid human suffering and environmental harm by refusing to have children is evidence of this. Given the choice between these two opposing trends, I once thought that I had little in common with any anti-natalists. That is, until I observed some of their emphases on a child-centric approach to procreation.

Julio Cabrera, an Argentinian philosopher and philanthropic anti-natalist, argues that humans should abstain from procreation to place what is best for children above the desires of parents. For Cabrera, children are not ameanstoanendbutareanendinandof themselves. His view seemed to develop as a reaction to the pro-natalism of the twentieth century. But Cabrera’s effort to counterbalance statist natalism goes to anti-human extremes. His work focuses on whether there is a moral justification for procreation on its own terms, as opposed to the psychological, economic, or ecological terms most anti-natalists cite.

Of course, I strongly disagree with Cabrera’s conclusion that the best answer is that childbearing is unethical because it is unconsented to. But it struck me that this prominent anti-natalist seemed animated by the same concerns I have about how childbearing can be treated like an act of the will. That’s an essential problem because a child is not an achievement to congratulate yourself about. It’s a gift to be humbly received. As technology and law have enabled unnatural family structures to grow—from intentionally child-free married couples (“DINKs”) on the pill to same-sex parenting through in vitro fertilization and surrogacy—the natural “package deal” of marriage, sex, and procreation has suffered on all fronts.

Consent as Permission or Self-Giving?

The question of consent, it turns out, is central to both the anti-natalist and the pro-natalist positions. For anti-natalists like Cabrera, the so-called impossibility of consent from potential children means creating new life can’t be ethical, and so, perversely, must be opposed. On the other hand, pro-natalists claim that if each of the adults involved in the process has given their consent, then that’s all that ethically matters. In commercial surrogacy contracts, for example, the morality of the agreement comes down to whether the parties involved each consent, with monetary compensation, to participate. This can include up to six “parents” from the intended mother and father, the fertility doctor, the surrogate mother, and a possible egg and/or sperm donor.

Sin has corrupted our understanding of consent.

Those who value a pro-family ethic, like me, recognize that when a watered-down understanding of consent becomes the primary concern in procreation, we lose the essential understanding that children are a gift. The pro-family ethic affirms that children are good and recognizes that many nations need more of them. Nonetheless, how we create children and to whom they go matters. A pro-family ethic honors and protects the intrinsic worth of each child, not because of what they can do but because of who they are as fellow human beings. Consent, properly understood, means to feel together. It is a vulnerable act of mutual self-giving with another person. Here the emphasis is on what one gives another person as each seeks to selflessly share each other.

Sin has corrupted our understanding of consent. The fullness of what it means to give oneself to another has been reduced to an individualist request for permission: “May I do this thing?” The focus is not on what is given but on what a person takes. The consequences of this are apparent in hook-up culture (“may I touch you there”), so much so that authors with different political views, such as Mary Harrington and Christine Emba, have questioned whether consent can be a governing sexual ethic. Of course, when consent only means permission, it is insufficient.

Unlike some anti-natalists whose moral opposition to bearing children extends into a perverse duty to stop or take life, Cabrera exhibits deep respect for life that already exists—especially unborn life. Cabrera recognizes that abortion is necessarily wrong, given that it is the imposition of someone else’s will upon the most helpless and defenseless of the parties involved. In Because I Love You, You Will Not Be Born, Cabrera argues:

Many countries, which care little about the “sacred” nature of human life in other sectors, are already encouraging people to have more babies. In France, there is an incentive for families to have a third child ... Thus, in addition to the direct manipulation of the parents, there is an ongoing social, economic, and political calculation, at a planetary level, aiming at ensuring that productivity does not fall below the limits tolerable to the market of lives.

Cabrera highlights the inconsistency of the pro-natalist stance—namely, that in many cases it is only interested in increasing the number of certain kinds of wanted children. Again, a surprising connection is found between a pro-family ethic and anti-natalists in their desire to prioritize the needs of children over state-oriented goals.

The Unintended Consequences of Nationalist Natalism

China is a prime example of why statist, secular pro-natalism struggles to deliver on its promises. After decades of a strict one-child policy, China found its total fertility rate declining well past the replacement level. As one report from the New York Times noted, once a country reaches this point, history suggests it is all but impossible to make a full recovery. Still, China is trying everything it can to reverse course. In recent years, China lifted its one-child policy by slowly increasing the number of children a couple may have. They have also begun to offer couples financial incentives to have more children, initiated an aggressive pro-natalist messaging campaign, and pledged to build one in vitro fertilization clinic for every three million people. The only problem? It is having the opposite effect on people.

Italy in the 20th century and China in the 21st century illustrate that utilitarian attempts to increase the birth rate not only fall flat but can push citizens toward radical anti-natalism. There is an important warning here for the United States. The rise in anti-natalism, whether from a desire to avoid suffering or to preserve the climate, reflects something about the cultural values people are catching as it relates to childbearing. As Katy Faust has pointed out, it should come as no surprise if more people begin to align themselves with anti-natalism if our laws continue to prioritize the desires of adults over the well-being of children.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The difference between anti-natalists like Cabrera and those who (like me) hold to a pro-family ethic is that Cabrera assumes that permission-oriented consent—where adults impose their preferences upon children who are incapable of consent or agency—to be not just humanity’s normative state, but its only possibility.

So, while carefully constructed child tax credits or widespread access to artificial reproductive technologies might lead to a short-term increase in births, these policies will not solve the fertility crisis plaguing many nations, including the United States. We need a cultural shift—fueled by families and the church, not just the state—that enables us to see children as a gift.

No longer should we view children as an imposition on our autonomy or as a source of wish fulfillment. Instead, we must practice and train others in the art of receiving children as they are—not because of what the child looks like or what he or she can do. In the end, this radical acceptance of children can overcome the anti-natalists’ reaction against the seeming “production” of children for another person or entity’s ends and help put us on a better footing for increased fertility in the long term.

Much can be said for the rich genre of marriage and family structure studies that highlight the benefits of marriage—you’re happier, richer, tend to live longer, and have a better sex life than your unmarried peers. The same field of research rightly extols the benefits of children in marriage as the greatest source of meaning and purpose in many couples’ lives. It also shows the benefits of marriage for children, such that children raised by their married biological parents tend to do better when it comes to education, finances, self-esteem, and mental health.

Nonetheless, these studies are not the main reason my husband and I decided to get married or be open to children early in our marriage. It was far more intuitive than that. He thought I was beautiful, and I thought he was the most interesting man I had ever met. We submitted to God, who perfects imperfect love and decided to build a life together. We’ve discovered that few things reflect heaven quite like a child’s unconditional love for and delight in you... even when it is 3 a.m., and you would prefer to be asleep. (And no, it doesn’t hurt that they’re so cute.)

Anti-natalists fear a life of suffering where adults, driven by selfish desires, create life with little concern for the well-being of the child. With so much of what passes for love today driven by conditional and ulterior motives, as Cabrera senses, it’s all too easy to understand why disillusioned people react by condemning childbearing altogether. The pro-natalist vision of children for the sake of some greater goal—national security, higher GDP, or civic renewal—will never be able to satisfy the deeper fears and desires that drive people to continue on generation after generation.

We need a pro-family ethic—protected by law, promoted in church, and practiced in the family—to offer hope to a perishing world.

Emma Waters is a Senior Research Associate in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation.