Under the general heading of “The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same,” we can note that both Romulus in ancient times and the USA today wrestle alike with the problem of a baby shortage.

Romulus then, and the USA and the entire civilized world today, are plagued with a baby shortage. However, the exact nature of the problem was different for Romulus than for us. For Romulus, as explained by Plutarch and others, the shortfall of babies resulted from a shortfall of women. But for us, the cause of our shortfall of babies is not a shortfall of women but instead a shortfall of mothers. That is, too many of our women today are choosing to forego motherhood.

Brad Wilcox notes that the cause of this avoidance of marriage and motherhood is the collapse of the institution of marriage, and is damaging America and threatens her total collapse. The tragedy now playing out in America is repeated and rehearsed around the planet, where the civilization’s hostility to family foreshadows the demise of human civilization.

The great mystery is “Why is this happening?” Even factoring in the sudden appearance in our time of the feminist demand that all women prioritize career over family, the puzzle remains why droves of women, formed by nature from time immemorial for childbearing, have opted for career over family.

Image by AI.

The standard explanation for this choice lies in the fact that motherhood and career are both full-time jobs competing for a woman’s limited time and energy. However, that fact of limited time availability only explains why a choice must be made and that there is a fork in the road of life. It by no means explains why a career should be chosen over a family. So, that proffered explanation does not explain the choice.

This scenario leaves one free to wonder: Might there be a political component to choosing a career over family?

Just a few days ago, Apple released its “Crush” ad, shamelessly boasting that all the beauty, art, and value of the past has been violently compressed into a smartphone:

To understand this, we must fully grasp all the things, ideas, and values within the Apple “crush” range. Would it not be expected that the computer generation would intuit that the pre-digital orthodoxy of mother and homemaker should be crushed and discarded as incompatible with realizing “dreams”?

Peggy Noonan warns of a twenty-first-century zeitgeist, “The Uglification of Everything,” in which “Artistic culture has taken a repulsive turn. It speaks of a society that hates itself and hates life.”

Just as no greater disaster faces an individual than death without progeny, so no greater disaster faces a society than extinction. Indeed, has extinction become our cultural zeitgeist?

This zeitgeist advances individual “dreams” over family. In alignment with this zeitgeist, classical love stories are rewritten to balk at marriage, as every woman’s “dream” is a successful career.

On the Asian video streaming website Rakuten Viki, two marvelously entertaining dramas, “Meet Yourself” and “Will Love in Spring”, are classical love stories worthy of a Jane Austen—with one catch: the woman “dreams” of a career and not of marriage and family.

And in the case of each drama, as the plot thickens and narrows to the point of decision, nothing happens. The drama simply ends, truncated, sans either break up or wedding, disappearing like water poured onto sand. Impaled on the horns of a dilemma and with no possible escape between the horns, the drama merely terminates without an ending.

We who are devotees of streaming dramas observe this emergence of “love story without ending” to be widespread. What is going on?

The art (or is it a science?) of successful breeding in captivity has long been of practical interest to zookeepers but is universally ignored by sociologists and politicians. Perhaps that has been a mistake as our baby shortfall is occurring in our captivity.

“Our captivity”? Yes, indeed, our captivity. Notwithstanding the persistent claims that the election of Donald Trump will bring about the end of “our democracy,” the simple salient fact is that the USA is not a democracy now and has not been such for some time.

How dare I say that? Easy; this isn’t rocket science; this is dirt simple: One essential attribute of that form of self-government called “democracy” is that the laws are enacted by elected representatives of the people. However, in the case of the United States and each of its fifty constituent states, the vast bulk of the laws are made by non-elected administrative agencies.

Therefore, neither the USA nor any of its constituent states is a democracy. And because we are not a democracy, we are not self-governed and, therefore, we are governed by others. If we are governed by others, we are in captivity. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

A far more difficult question is whether there really is a connection between captivity and extinction as a cultural zeitgeist.

Those who welcome progeny to the present have hope for their future. Might not captivity induce despair and extinguish hope, thereby impairing the desire to procreate new life?

Can the family and the institution of marriage be restored? Just as civilization rests upon righteous sexuality so the restoration of family and marriage calls for the restoration of hope for the future, which means escaping captivity and placing the citizenry once again firmly in the saddle of the sovereignty.

This means, in the West, clawing back the administrative state. With captivity banished and hope restored, romance and marriage may again flower into the glory of motherhood. In that regard, note how Raina Raskin writes that motherhood liberated her from a life devoid of meaning (as did Andrea Widburg).

This is equivalent to the call of being: A woman’s discovery of meaning in her child's smile and her determined refusal to quietly into the night.