Sighhh….Decline in marriages year-on-year. Decline in the number of newborn babies year-on-year.
It’s not exactly news. We’ve been down this road before.
So why did the latest announcements on the continued decline in my nation’s number of new marriages and babies still sting?
With So Few Babies, An Extinction-Level Event Awaits!
Around this time of the year for the past decade or more, we’ve been seeing how this road of depopulation is leading us as a nation ever closer to doom and gloom! Or in apocalyptic language, an extinction-level event!
Earlier this week, the government announced that our TFR, or total fertility rate, for 2025 has sunk to a new historic low of 0.87 from an already dismal 0.97 in years 2023 and 2024. (The “ideal” TFR worldwide to achieve population replacement level is 2.1, meaning at least two kids for each woman in her reproductive years. The .1 is to account for kids who don’t reach adulthood).
Our nation’s leaders did the math, and this figure of 0.87 implies that every 100 residents today will have 44 children and 19 grandchildren. Since our population only grew by 0.7% last year, it’s not hard to see that we’re slowly “disappearing”!
Sighhhh…since sliding below a resident TFR of 1.3 over a decade ago, we’ve been on a consistent downward trend.
Three years ago, we sank below 1.0 for the first time, joining the ranks of other baby-starved nations in Asia, like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea (though some signs of improvement are happening in South Korea for the last two years).
I’ve written about why people aren’t marrying and having babies here and here. For me, I felt that it was so important to put it out there in hopes that people aren’t deceived by what I call “porous” (ie flawed) reasons” into living childless lives.
But the truth is, no matter how logical and evidence-based my arguments are. Or for that matter those by people smarter than me are, people will always choose what to believe. For at the end of the day, emotions and culture rule.
And going by today’s world, many who are of child-bearing age no longer believe marriage and babies are a rite of passage for them. In one study here, it was found that seven in 10 young adults think this way!
As a nation, we are doomed!
And that’s why this existential crisis staring at us feels like a bee sting.
Float Like A Butterfly. Sting Like A Bee.
It stings because previous generations took no pains to verbalise, extoll, and exemplify the virtues of marriage and babies to the next generation. They merely “floated along like a butterfly”, assuming cultural norms will continue without question from one generation to the next.
Thanks a lot, Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964) and the Traditionalists or Silent Generation (1925-1945). The latter, in particular, have certainly lived up to their label!
It stings because this depopulation means every child unborn is yet another human potential unrealised. Another soul disallowed from existing with the rest of us. A genius that could have come along and solved the most pressing issues and needs of our time.
And it stings because, even though I realise a while ago that — short of a miracle proportional to the size this childless issue has developed to here — we will never achieve replacement levels of TFR 2.1 or better, I still carry some hope that we might at least still regain some ground and move close to that magic number. Like what South Korea seemed miraculously to have done in the past two years, after holding the dubious record for a while of being the country with the worst TFR. (Taiwan is the worst now at 0.72, but my country’s clearly giving them a good run for their money!)
Next Step? Living With Fewer Neighbours
With this post, I’m officially announcing that I’m giving up on even that hope. No thanks to the latest statistics announced.
In my sad and humble opinion, we will never regain ground. Not in my lifetime anyway. (By the way, no nation with a TFR falling far below 2.1 ever recovers sufficiently to hit 2.1 again and stay there)
And while it breaks my heart that my nation is dwindling, I believe we need to move quickly past this grief and into new paradigms and actions.
We need to plan and prepare now to live in a world with fewer people.
Fewer answers.
Fewer everything.
What will that mean to lifestyles everywhere? When there are fewer humans around to share the load of stewarding this still mostly green and blue planet?
We must start to accept that this will be the new world order in the foreseeable future and bend all efforts into making the best of what we have.
With the now not-so-many we have.
The question is, what efforts?
Or, to put it simply, how?
[PS Watch this space in the coming months for possibly more reflections on this extinction-level crisis that might lead to some answers]
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