Where have all the babies gone?

It used to be that there were babies all over any given city battling it out for first baby of the New Year. Yet in 2006, the first baby born in the hospital in Nashville wasn’t born until 6:54 a.m. Now, I realize Nashville isn’t anywhere near being called a “big city”, but with over 500,000 people you’d think it would be likely that there would have been a baby born before 7am on January 1^st.

Is this evidence of the growing depopulation of countries around the world? While statistics seem to indicate that America is keeping an even birth rate, many other countries are suffering small rates of decline – the world is not repopulating itself. Is this intentional? Is it instinctual in some way – a means of protecting our young from some great catastrophe in the world to come? Or is it the natural process by which humans will die out, replaced in the future by another form, or none at all?

Many people argue that the lack of population replacement is due to selfishness on the part of people who choose not to have children. Well, excuse me, but whether or not someone else does or doesn’t have children really isn’t my business, or anyone else’s. If the species meets its demise, so be it, but I don’t really think propagation of the species is a good reason to just keep breeding anymore. Can you imagine a law that would force every physically able couple to have children? Can you imagine how miserable some of these children might be? If people don’t want to have children, they really shouldn’t have children. Sure, the possibility exists that once the child is born, they might change their minds about it, but it is also possible that the parents could end up forever resenting the child, and we all know that doesn’t make for a healthy adult. Is it selfish? Perhaps. But you can’t change the way someone feels. If someone is really dead set on repopulating the world, they can have all the kids they can squeeze out. But forcing the situation – having kids for the sake of having kids, is not a healthy or responsible decision.

I figure one of two things will happen: the birth rates in most countries will end up balancing out again in several years and meet an upsurge in births or (duh) they won’t. And if they don’t, then maybe it is what is supposed to happen. Humans have free will for a reason, and if it dictates that the species will expire, well there you go.