Here’s a question: It is estimated that by 2100, about 40% of Europeans will cease to exist, provided that there are no epidemics or wars that will engulf the entire continent. Where does this demographic disease, which can be called the “Black Death” of the 20th and 21st centuries, come from?
Well, among its many causes, I would first mention the culture of relativism, egoism and hedonism that has hit the way of perceiving the family, which breaks with the accepted norms of family and sexual life. This culture puts the individual on a pedestal and tells them to care only about their own satisfaction, fulfilment and the search for pleasure. In male-female relationships, the sense of satisfaction with the relationship has gained an almost absolute status, which in practice means that the relationship lasts as long as it is a source of pleasure. If it stops being enjoyable or we simply get bored with the other person, we end the relationship and look for another one. It is as if the basic feature of the family, namely durability, which is connected with going beyond the perspective of immediate satisfaction, with responsibility and readiness for sacrifice, which ultimately bring with them not only the most subjectively perceived happiness, but also very tangible benefits. Each spouse offers a part of themselves for the sake of love for their wife or husband, in order to open up to a new life. It is hard to imagine a war in Europe that could consume 200 million people, and this is exactly what the effect of this culture of hedonism will be. Why do we create devastation for ourselves that is much greater than even the two world wars of the 20th5 century? I think that in most cases we do not even think about it. The attitude of openness to conceiving and accepting a child or, on the contrary, avoiding and preventing it is a resultant of some economic factors and, above all, the internal worldview map. This is shaped to stick to the “war” language of the question, through a war that most of society does not notice on a daily basis. The demographic consequences of the cultural war waged in the reality of relative material prosperity may, as you can see, be even more dangerous than the conventional ones. Although the sources of these cultural changes can be seen in many revolutions and philosophical trends, the strongest blow to the condition of the family turned out to be the sexual revolution, the beginning of which is usually associated with 1968.
How did it come about?
A stable family is a natural human environment, which provides all its members not only with a sense of elementary security, but also a space for the individual to gain identity. The unprecedented economic development and the accompanying material prosperity have, paradoxically, created conditions for the development of intellectual trends questioning the capitalist system that made this prosperity possible. The so-called Frankfurt School, a group of neo-Marxist philosophers who came to the United States during World War II and gained enormous popularity at local universities, proved particularly influential. They portrayed Western, capitalist societies as oppressive. They described the freest generations that have ever lived on Earth as enslaved and built on the suppression of individual freedom.
Is the most enduring element of this oppressive society supposed to be the family?
Exactly. The history of the sexual revolution is somewhat similar to the history of the fall of the first people in the biblical paradise. Although life in the West was very good, ideologists “whispered in society’s ear” that this was an illusion of freedom, masking enslavement from which one had to break free. Responsibility for the family, work, staying married and raising children is precisely the system of oppression, and true freedom is on the fields of Woodstock, where one can practice free love without unnecessary restrictions. However, the sexual revolution was not just about the drive itself. According to the neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse and philosophers like him, the destabilization of the sphere of sexuality was to be a very important mechanism undermining the “old” social order, the foundation of which is the family. It was therefore about another attempt to build Utopia, a new social order.
Supposedly, things are not so bad with us yet, because research shows that generally people want to start families. Do we have something to build our demographic future on?
In my opinion, the thesis that people want to have more children, but due to economic conditions cannot afford it, is generally not accurate. A sense of comfort and convenience seems to prevail over declarations regarding fertility.
If the key to higher fertility were the economy and prosperity, the most developed countries in the world would not be in demographic crisis. Of course, economic difficulties, especially those related to housing conditions, play their part, but they were no smaller right after the war, or in the 1970s and 1980s. On the other hand, there are many wealthy, young couples and relationships who, living relatively comfortably, decide not to have children. Why?
In addition to the phenomena and ideologies we discussed earlier, fertility is not helped by a specific approach to work, which is sometimes referred to as workism. It is about treating work as basically the exclusive space for self-fulfilment and achieving life successes. It may be an exaggeration to say that work is the purpose and meaning of life for Poles, but it is undoubtedly so important that it often overshadows other life goals. According to international statistics, Poles are a nation that works very hard. This is connected with the risk of reducing the home to a recreational space, a place where you can sleep, relax, watch a film, but which is not an area of ”self-fulfilment”. Many find this primarily in work, which ennobles, gives money and social prestige.
And family and children?
Exactly. While a managerial position at work and good earnings are an immediate reason for social advancement, in the media space, which is not without influence on society, a low assessment of motherhood dominates, and even discourages having children. A review of the largest dailies and weeklies of opinion allows you to quickly come across entire series of articles discouraging parenthood and praising life without children. Fulfilled women brag about it and talk about how good it is not to have children and how they sympathize with their friends who have gotten themselves into trouble raising children.
The EU policy and the “equality” policy promoted by Brussels do not help to build a positive pro-family strategy either.
The belief that being a mother is an unprestigious occupation, and that only professional activity can bring fulfilment and benefits to society, is not entirely the result of spontaneous social processes, but the result of the systemic “equality” policy conducted at the international and national level. It is a clear reflection of the ideas propagated by feminist movements since the 1960s. Therefore, the value of a woman is currently perceived through the prism of the economic profits resulting from her professional activity, depreciating the work she does raising children. Working at home is perceived as not bringing any tangible financial benefits, and is even a “burden” on the system. A mother who gives up work to raise, for example, five children, has no chance of becoming a pop culture icon, but her social status among friends will not increase because of it.
Let’s go back to the sexual revolution, which would not have been possible without contraception. It became a tool for separating sex from lasting relationships, responsibility and procreation. The Church saw this as a danger to the family and demography, because in the summer of 1968 Pope Paul VI wrote a “prescription” for the world in the encyclical Humanae vitae. What was the response?
The reaction was a rather radical opposition observed in the Western world. The Pope was criticized even in the Church. Humanae vitae correctly diagnosed the diseases that resulted in the current breakdown of the family and the demographic crisis. The encyclical reminded us that the proper space for human sexuality is marriage open to accepting new life. Today we see sexual life being separated from procreation and marriage – each of them functions independently of the others.
If the world had listened to the Pope, we would not have such a family crisis, a demographic crisis, the result of which will be an economic collapse. Is it possible to return to Humanae vitae?
It is certainly impossible to introduce a ban on contraception today and we can only remind people of its negative consequences. The process of change has gone so far that some processes are practically impossible to reverse. Contraception, popularized in the 1960s, was one of the tools and main levers of the sexual revolution, adding a “technological” component to the ideological, affirming sex without commitments that degrades a person. Without contraception, this revolution would not have been possible. Pope Paul VI saw this danger and tried to counteract it. That is why he was met with such a brutal attack after the publication of this encyclical.
Meanwhile, we have more and more analyses showing that the crisis of the family and the demographic collapse will continue to deepen. Where are these processes heading?
They spill out in different directions. One of them is the increasing atomization of society. Professor of sociology at the University of Texas Mark Regnerus, examining these processes, draws attention to the importance of three technological factors that significantly affect them. The first is contraception, which we have already mentioned. The second is pornography, which is the cheapest form of sex, its substitute, and the third is the great popularity of “dating” websites. According to Regnerus, these services have changed the way relationships are entered into, because they have made the emotional cost of entering into and ending them practically zero. By facilitating the rapid establishment of new relationships, they have reduced their stability.
We live in an era of the triumph of egoism and hedonism. Where will they take us?
There are many indications that it will not be heaven on earth. Leaving aside the moral dimension, the demographic crisis alone can lead to epochal changes. The solutions adopted so far do not seem to lead to its interruption. It is difficult to completely rule out a scenario in which Europe, unaware of or rejecting its roots, shares the fate of the empires known from history. However, this will certainly not happen overnight. A long period of uncertainty lies ahead of us.
