SPEAKER_00 0:04

The whole world seems to have stopped having as many kids. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 0:11

The big dilemma is that whatever's going on seems to be hardening into a pattern where these birth rates, they're not bouncing back.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

You tend to grow to meet the challenge that's presented to you. Go for it. It's worth the risk. Last year, America had 3.6 million babies. Sounds like a lot. It's a lot of diapers until you learn that it's the lowest birth rate ever recorded in our country. Ever.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

And Dan, it's not just that Americans stopped wanting kids. It's actually something much sadder than that.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Welcome to Abundant. Conversations about the life everyone's actually looking for and what's getting in the way. I'm Dan Jarvis with my friend and also licensed family therapist, Del Fasenfeld. And full disclosure today, I'm not a neutral observer to this discussion. My wife Melissa and I are raising 10 kids. Six came home to us through foster care. So our house is loud, our grocery bill is high, and we are still right in the middle of all of it. Today, Dell, we want to talk about what's happening to the American family, and particularly the birth rate is lower than it's ever been, not just in America, but across the Western world. So Europe and Canada and a variety of other countries as well are struggling with the what that means for their demography going forward. Our podcast series here is about the future of America in various categories. And this question is maybe the biggest one of all. There won't be a future for America if there aren't future Americans. And so somehow we have to address this question of the birth rate. And when I do the math myself and look at the statistics, I realize that right now we are not replacing ourselves. So if you give it enough time, the current American population would dwindle away. And that same dynamic is also happening in Japan. It's happening, I believe, in China. It's happening all across Europe. And so, wow, the whole world seems to have stopped having as many kids. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

It's pretty crazy. And uh the short answer is, Dan, I really don't know.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Let's find out. Let's work on it.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

It is a phenomenon, and you're right. 2.1 is replacement. So it's pretty incredible to think that the most advanced civilizations in the world today, if something's not done, will literally die out by their own choosing.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

So 2.1 would mean the number of babies that the average woman in that civilization has. So some are going to have more, some are going to have less, but it has to average out to 2.1, or you don't have enough people for the next generation. Our current rate is 1.6 in various European countries. I think it's down to 1.3, 1.2. You know, that sounds kind of neutral, I suppose, when you just look at it. When you zoom in and just think about one family and go, they they only had they only chose to have one child. Maybe they had good reason for that. But when you zoom out and realize everybody's having one child, maybe two, very few people are choosing to have more than that. You start to ask the question, what changed? You could go back in time and think, well, you know, there it wasn't that long ago, maybe a century ago, that you'd see just as a in the regular course of things across America, families with five or six or ten, or sometimes you hear the crazy story of, like, I was one of thirteen siblings, and you don't hear that very often anymore.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, and governments, you know, they're they are sort of morally neutral about that topic. They don't care if you have one or ten kids, but they're freaking out all over the world because they're doing the same math that you're doing, and realizing that slowly dying off as a culture has all kinds of problems. We recently discussed fiscal policy, and you don't think about it, but birth rate actually is a fiscal problem because uh they're the future taxpayers.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Yeah. Well, the whole system of Social Security and Medicare is predicated on essentially a pyramid that there would always be more people paying in in the future to cover today's costs. And the problem is that pyramid's more and more upside down.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

So governments are doing all kinds of things to try to solve the problem of this collapsing birth rate. And you mentioned some of the European countries that are actually farther on and for you know far worse in terms of their decline. And they've been at this for a little bit longer. And so I think some of them are actually in offering incentives.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, I heard about one country that meets certain qualifications. You have enough kids, they'll give you a minivan. There's other ones that'll give you tax incentive. I think it's Hungary, the country of Hungary, that if you have four kids, you get exempted from income taxes for the rest of your life. Say, wow, those are some pretty impressive benefits. But what studies have shown is that none of those benefits are actually moving the needle. They're not actually helping the average family say, you know what, I think we will have three kids instead of one, or one kid instead of none.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

It's where the head scratcher part comes in because I know in some levels they're looking at like, are people losing their sexual desire? And they're kind of examining and studying that. Like, why aren't men and women sort of like attracted to each other in these kind of ways? They're looking at all kinds of factors, like, is it is it something more fundamental to the psychology? And I do know in our own country we were at, I think, replacement levels as recently as 2007, which was of course right before the big economic collapse in 2008 and birth rates as they often do during economic insecurity precipitously declined. But there was a difference this time in the sense that they often will bounce back, but in this case they didn't.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

So I'm just remembering this something else happened in 2007 that's notable that could have something to do with this. The release of the iPhone was 2006, 2007, that era. And within a few years everybody had one. So that that definitely changed our behavior. Uh probably changes the recipe of marriage quite a bit, the recipe of relationships. I don't know if you could completely blame that. It's just notable that you yes, we had the Great Recession, and so people were thinking maybe I won't bring kids into this world yet because I don't know if I can afford it. I don't know if we'll have housing. Right at the same time, you have an explosion of technology that kind of occupies you so that instead of pursuing romantic relationships or getting closer with your partner, you might just lay on the couch and look at your phone each night. I don't know. There could be a lot of factors here, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

The big dilemma is that whatever's going on seems to be hardening into a pattern. And so we're looking at new normals where these birth rates, they're not bouncing back. They seem to be on a trajectory of continued decline, and you can just look out, you know, one, two, three generations, and all of a sudden now you've got a really big societal problem.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

So, Dell, in our friendship over the years, and you know, now we get to work together in multiple contexts, I've often thought that when I just can't come up with the answer to a question, when there's just something so complicated or so messed up, I don't know what to do. I just refer the whole thing to you. Um so that's uh that's today. I I look at this problem and I think, well, in my own life, I I can see the challenge of raising kids. We've we have 10. We've helped raise more than that through foster care. So there have been a lot of kids in and out of our household over the years, and my wife and I have just spent an enormous amount of our energy and our heartbeats trying to care for them. I definitely can resonate with the idea that kids are expensive and kids are challenging, and maybe life would be easier if you didn't have them. I I see that on one level, but I also think about all the joy, all the purpose that my family has brought into my life. And I do feel kind of sad that it could be that a vast number of our fellow citizens don't have that. Maybe they don't want it, maybe they can't have it for some reason. I I realize it's complicated. I was thinking about just very practically, you look at low birth rate and you think, well, the obvious answer is to tell people to have babies. Hey, it's get married and have kids. That's what Charlie Kirk used to say to people, right? And yet you have to sort of check swing there and go, well, that that's easy to say, but then there's a lot of people who, you know, you might find a woman who desperately would love to get married and have kids, but she can't find the right guy. Or you might find a couple that would love to have another child, but they've got secondary infertility and they it's just not happening. Uh so there could be reasons why somebody might wish for something different than they have, but at the same time, culturally, I notice quite a few people who could have those things and they don't. They choose not to get married. I even read a tweet from somebody that recently where they were saying I they were thinking of not having kids as actually being selfless. Like they were giving up their dream of child rearing because they thought it would be so difficult for that child in the future that it would be like more loving to not even create them to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah, and I think that's a comment, Dan, that I hear a lot from couples and younger people when they envision or think about the question, do I want to have kids? That's an oft-repeated thing that I just would never want to bring a child into this kind of world. So it's interesting that part of what may be driving some of this behavior at least is that people are losing hope for the future on a really cosmic scale, like on a really epic scale. And you know, I did hear one of our senators and great statesmen, I think, of the last of this century, who's dying of cancer right now, Ben Sass, senator from Nebraska and historian. And he just made the comment that there is no better barometer of the hope of a culture or of a people than the audacity to have a child. Like he thought that was the ultimate statement of hope when it comes to the future. The biggest statement of hope that you could make about the future is whether you would or wouldn't have a child.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

So, Dell, here's a question I have, and I honestly don't know the answer. If I was thinking about the world we live in right now, I think I could argue that it's more prosperous, safer, there's more opportunity, there's more variety. On many levels, things are better than they ever have been. Global poverty is lower as a rate than it ever has been. And so this idea that people are afraid to bring a child into the world when this is the best the world has ever been by multiple measurements, I don't quite understand that. Obviously, there are problems in the world. I'm not discounting that. There's doom and gloom out on the horizon we can worry about. But right now, today, I think about people who had kids way back in ancient times. I mean, the neighboring tribe would come and kill the people, and there were there was, you know, famine and pestilence and catastrophe and evil empires all over the place. And now life's pretty good. And the low birth rates, those statistics are coming from the countries that have it the best. The richest countries are struggling the most with this. So, what do you think is happening?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

It's just a matter of record that we are experiencing across the West an unprecedented level of fear, worry, anxiety. And it's worse than our younger people, but it's across every generation. And I think part of the reason for that is that we were not biologically equipped to handle the 24-7 news cycle, which also simultaneously discovers something about the way human beings work, which is that our attention is more quickly drawn to things that present threats. It's just the way we're wired. Like we pay more attention to something that could harm us that's necessary for our survival than to good news. So if you would just do a content analysis, no matter what media you take and what form and where you get it, the general formula for all news media is the same, which is that you're going to run 12 or 13 fearful, alarming, threat-producing stories to every one piece of positive good news. So you have this phenomenon, exactly like you said, if you look at the pure stats, you would say, wow, things are getting better. But for the average person who's just consuming what's going on in the world, and now we are doing that around the clock, right? In so many different forms because of news.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Just to add to what you're saying, you know, we mentioned smartphones were kind of invented in that. The other thing that came online right around that same time was social media itself, which would be the personalized algorithm of news. So now it's not just generally fearful things that are on like network news channels. It's stuff that you personally are afraid of. That's getting served up in front of you as often as you're on your phone.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

That's right. So when things are getting better, but you feel worse, and you can't really you wouldn't, you can't really blame a group of people who who every time they turn on the news hears something alarming and you know, at a 13 to 1 ratio to start coming to the conclusion that this world is not a safe place for me, let alone for my, you know, five for future children. So I mean it could be, it could be that we are so saturated in a culture of fear that we have actually given up, like Ben Sass said, on our hope for the future. And we're thinking this is this is actually irresponsible. This is actually crazy that I would think about to have a child in the middle of all this mess.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

So I'm just thinking of another factor. So when September 11th happened and the news channels were trying to cover all of the overlapping fears and worries of that day and then the days that followed it. Did you know that prior to that day there wasn't a ticker on the bottom of the screen like giving you scary headlines? Like the the face on the screen's talking about one problem, but on the bottom, there's like, and then there's this problem, and then there's this problem, and you have to keep watching to find out all these terrible things. That was basically introduced at that time. And so prior to that, people even watching the news would have been less stressful because you'd just be hearing about one terrible thing at a time instead of like a whole screen full of flashing lights and bells and whistles saying, well, the stock market's down, there's another threat, there's another problem. So I could see where if if your whole mindset is being informed by scary news, scary algorithms, and then a a world that's uncertain, but I would argue it's always been uncertain. But now we're so more, we're so much more aware of it, it could just be that we're afraid in a maybe at a different level.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

It could be coming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, that is one plausible explanation for part of what's driving. Now, here's the crazy thing by giving into fear on the personal level like that and giving up on the future, you're actually creating a scenario where the worst possible outcome, literally cultural demise, like the death of your culture, becomes not just a possibility, but a probability because you're simply failing to reproduce.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Okay. So as as a therapist, I want to try something here. I want to pass you some I want to make a few statements. Reasons to not have kids. And just you can give me your one paragraph reply to each one of these. Okay. Now after we do this little exercise, I do want to get to some answers, some positive like what's the future? What can we do? How should we change our mindset? Is there a spiritual Christian dynamic that can help us think about all this correctly? But let's just say we're in your your office, and here I am. I'm sitting down and saying, Dell, I I don't feel like I can have a family right now. I don't feel like I can have kids because I'll start with because it's just too expensive. I don't think I can make enough money to give a wife and children a really good lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah, I mean, it is expensive, right? So, you know, that's a reality-based comment at one level. On the other hand, is that kids have always been expensive. There is a correlation, surprisingly enough, between people that go ahead and put down roots, take the plunge, accept the responsibility, accept the risk, and their personal productivity, their longevity in their jobs. It gives you like a purpose and an incentive to actually be productive and creative together. Couples that stay married and have children like correlate with, surprisingly enough, more stable financial outcomes. So there is sort of like this surprising risk-reward ratio that you at least need to like make sure you're thinking about accurately because you are more likely to do the things that add up to the accumulation of stability and wealth when you have a necessity for it, like a child, than when you don't.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Okay. All right, here's another one. Let's say I'm a single female Christian. I really would love to have a family. I would love to find a good guy that I could really trust to have that family with, and I just can't find one. So I don't know if there's any hope for me to have a child or build a family because I can't find the right guy.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah, and that's a that's one, Dan, that hits really close to my heart. I have three daughters, and I'm aware that sociologically in the world today, there are more female people who profess to be Christians. If you take it outside of the Christian context, for whatever reason right now, lots of reasons, women on the whole are are sociologically doing, they're faring better than men across a whole host of variables. Their lives are more stable in that sense. And there are more women who feel maybe ready or able or are in position to have a child than they can find um counterparts. So I just want to acknowledge that part of the reason that some of those folks may not be having kids is they're not finding life partners that they want to like have a family with. And that's a great pain and a whole other issue that I think we need to be working on together. Having said that, the inability to just have a child yourself biologically does not preclude you from being a life giver and being a part of supporting childbearing, whether that be through adoption or through the collective, you know, uh, that's a whole other topic that we can talk about that people bring up, that they just feel so alone you know in the process. But I think part of what's gonna it's gonna take to overcome the fear and to cultivate the hope that we can do childbearing together for the future well as a culture is that we're gonna need m we're gonna need all of us to be supporting and participating in the raising of kids.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Okay, Dell. Let's say that I'm a single parent, or I'm in a marriage that's really rough, and I'm hearing this conversation and thinking I've already tried to do the right thing here, and for whatever reason life has not gone the way I wanted it to go. What should I do?

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Yeah. Super painful. Super I get the reality of that. I think it's worth saying that that may not be the best time, probably isn't the best time to have another child right in the middle of that. Maybe more appropriate to think about reset and resources and to reach out beyond your marriage itself for the resources to a wider network of people that could extend support and God's love to you. And I think this is one of the reasons why I am so bullish on church attendance. I know that not every church creates an environment that is open where you can be open about your problems, but many do. And I think you need uh a network of people wherever you find that that can not only provide empathy um and personal connection, but support for you and the children that you do have right now, because you obviously do need that support that you're not getting. And I think God wants to extend love not just through your marriage, but through others who can support you and hopefully your marriage and your and your kids.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Alright, here's another scenario. Let's say that I come to you and I say, My own family growing up was a dysfunctional mess, and I don't want to take the risk of perpetuating that. I don't I don't even know if I've seen a good example of what family life could be. And so for me to be a dad, I just feel like it'd be better for me not not to start that.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah. One of the one of the incredibly encouraging things to me about family of origin research, meaning like the impact that your growing up had on you as a person and what's possible for you. One of the most empowering things about that research is that it's not certainly what happened to you as a child, your experiences of pain shaped you, impacted you, affected you. But ultimately the most important factor in how that shapes you for the long term as an adult is not what happened to you, but your awareness of the impact and and your decisions from that. Point on what to do with that impact. So the person that's saying, Wow, you know, I don't want to repeat the mistakes of my parents. I don't want to ever put a child in a situation where they ended up with the harm that I ended up with, is probably precisely the person who is aware enough to do the work as an adult to change the outcomes of and the decisions that would impact a child that they would bring into the world. In some ways, we would want those particular people having children more than any other because they know the pain of what it is to be harmed and therefore are more resolutely determined than almost anyone else not to repeat that and to do something different. And therefore they're poised to be the most beautiful uh kinds of parents. So I would I would not want them to give up their future because of the harm, you know, the harm is taken so much already, it doesn't have to take it doesn't have to take their future.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Amen to that. So maybe I should be the one ask kind of answering this next one because I have ten kids in my tribe now. But if uh if I was saying, you know, I already have two and I'm just not sure I want to have three, or from whatever number to whatever number, if somebody was just contemplating should we have another baby, and they hear this episode and they think, well, America needs me to have another baby. The the West needs me uh to stand up and do this thing. But I don't know. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I have the emotional energy. Will you have any encouraging words for them as they like how should they pray about that question? How should they approach it?

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Yeah, I am I am actually curious, Dan, for you to answer that just because I think you said yes ten times to welcoming children into your home.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Well, ours was you know, it was a little different. We built our family in a different way. We didn't know we were going to build a family of ten. We actually started foster care with the intent to just be foster parents and not adopt. But the second child that came to us through foster care became the first child we adopted. He was an infant. It was it was an amazing scenario. Definitely he's a gift from God. And then one after another, you know, we had lots of kids in and out. And so every one of those kids did, you know, in a different way than when you find out you're pregnant. It was like this would be a phone call. Do you want like here's the scenario? And usually it's complicated and it's tough, and there's a lot of unknowns. So, do you want us to bring this child over? Like, would you be willing to do to be his foster parent? So that we did have like this moment of true decision for each child. I think at one point we realized that we're kind of outnumbered anyway. So at this, so what's one more? You know, we were already doing crowd control, and uh, we'd pray for grace, pray for God to grow our capacity to keep loving one more. One of the things that people will ask is like, how do you have room in your heart kind of to love? You feel like you just love your kids to the max and you think, how could I add more? I would say God kind of expands your heart. You know, you you don't realize that your heart can keep growing in love. So you might be loving the kids you already have at 100%, but then when another one shows up, you love that one at 100% as well. So then that was for six of our kids, that's how they came to us through that pathway. Then we had one by birth, and then we thought, like in our own human planning, we'll have one more, because they he was kind of a few years removed from our first six, and we thought, oh, we don't want him to grow up alone, we want him to have a brother or sister to play with. So we have we're gonna have one more, and that one more became triplets. And so it just got out of control. And and yes, it's expensive, and yes, it's complicated, but life is very full and usually it's a lot of fun. Some people make some statement like, Oh, I bet you wouldn't trade a minute of it. I think, well, there there are some minutes that I would trade. Uh, it has not all been easy. Uh, Dell, as a, you know, not only are you my friend, but you've also been my counselor through some of the dark times in all of this. And it's been complicated. Like when you adopt children through the foster system, they there's some dysfunction that comes along, there's some history. So there's been a lot of challenge we've endured through that. And then just having any kids, especially when you start multiplying them this way, yeah, there's there's problems, but it's it still feels, I don't know, fun in the in the long run. I would just say, wow, thank you, Lord, for all these kids that are in my life. And so if somebody was struggling with like, should I have one more, whether it's like by birth or through adoption, I would usually invite a person to lean toward the yes, but that's not really counsel based on any other factor, other than just my own experience, would be you tend to grow to meet the challenge that's presented to you, and God helps you along the way. And even if you think, I don't think I can afford it, or I don't know if our house is big enough. That was all true for me. I didn't, we did not start as a married couple with a house big enough to do the things we've done. We started with small house, small cars, and somehow today we have a big house and big cars, and along the way there are quite a few miracles and quite a few like thank you lords that and a lot of hard work that, you know, between that beginning and today. So I would just say I think it's worth it to go forward. And it's kind of like there's no judgment for somebody who says, I think we have enough, we should stop. But if you feel a little tug in your heart, like maybe we should love one more, I I would say go for it. It's worth the risk. You only get to live once and you might as well max it out.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

I've got one more question I wanted to ask you uh about this, but I do remember coming across some end of life research where they talked to people about their life review and their life regrets. And one of the commentaries on that research was that it it was very rare that anyone would ever say at the end of their life, like an eight they're 80 years old or more, man, I wish we wouldn't have had that kid. But there were a lot of folks who did bring up the fact that they wish they would have had more kids at the end of their life. And it's it's just interesting when you're younger and you're in the middle of all that stress, you think, wow, that would you know. But maybe maybe you have a little bit different perspective when you get to the end as it pertains to these things.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yeah. I met a guy in uh a camp I was at that had seven kids, and they were adults, they were all starting to get married, and I was talking to one of his sons, he and his son were there, and he said, Yeah, dad does put some pressure on us about all this because he wants all of us to have seven kids because he had done the math that like in ten generations they could take over America with just their family if it's you know seven times seven times seven and it starts to multiply out that way. So I do think, you know, having kids does allow you to send more out into the future. Kind of interesting to think about. Your legacy, people might might not remember your name, your profession, the house you lived in, the world will change a lot. A hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, things will be way different than they are now. But your kids might still be out there leading the future.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Well, I think there's a proverb that talks about children like arrows that you that you shoot out into the into the future. And it's interesting to think about them as like offensive contributions, you know, to the world that you're putting out there to bring value and uh hopefully God's love as you pass that down. Now, I want to bring up one this is a painful topic for a lot of people, but there's probably people out there listening who think, you know, the reason that we don't have kids is because of infertility. And I think that's maybe a path that you and Melissa also walked. I don't know if you ever talk about that. You don't have to, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

But yeah, well, I mean, we'd be willing to talk personally to somebody if they're walking through that because that was part of our story. We we had started out with foster care, not we didn't know about that ahead of time. So we were doing foster parenting for other reasons, and then you know, that got out of control, and suddenly we had a house full. In the midst of that house full, um, we were realizing that like from a medical perspective, we had some limitations, and so that was very expensive to overcome. And that was another scenario where it would have been cheaper and probably easier to kind of give up and go, well, I guess it's just not for us. But we pushed past that and some miracles happened. So I'm I mean, obviously we're all pro-family around here, right? Of course, but I just to me, the the narrative of fear, even the narrative of scarcity, like we can't afford it, or what if the world is bad, or what if the environment's bad, or I I just feel like we still have some choice to make. And I'd rather try to move into the future with intentionality and with some vision and optimism than give up.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah. So like if as we're kind of making some of this personal, is is our call essentially for people to go out there and get busy and have some kids? I mean, what is what do you think the what do you think the uh some of the takeaways from a conversation like this?

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Yeah, well, get married first. Important. Do it in the right order. I think there's four things we can think differently about, practically. Whether whether you're a person of faith or not, I would say it's kind of the same prescription, but I would say if you add faith to this prescription, your sense of how this is all gonna work gets to have a supernatural element and maybe a little bit of a more transcendent element. So four things. Think differently about marriage, think differently about children, think differently about extended family, and then think differently about what it means to love one more beyond your bloodline, beyond your family. So if we want to break those things down in the next few minutes, thinking differently about marriage, instead of seeing marriage as maybe kind of an optional step of supreme commitment toward the end of a relationship, you know, or after you've already instead think of that as the gateway to like if you make a commitment to another person and you get to share life with them, that's a beautiful and amazing thing. And so many people forfeit that because they're afraid of the commitment. And so they want to share life with somebody, and so they try and they but they do so without commitment. And then if you introduce kids into a scenario without commitment, that adds extra complexity. I just look at the biblical pathway for how this is supposed to work and say you make a lifetime commitment to a person and you marry them and then you build a family with them. Somebody said, I forget what author it was, that like a family is like a mini civilization, which is why divorce is so destructive, because it it destroys a mini civilization. But in your counseling, I know you walk through all sorts of challenging things with people, probably joyful premarital counseling, but then also marriages that didn't work, or that people that are in terrible scenarios of mistrust or something. So if you were encouraging people to start thinking differently about marriage and maybe having to set aside a lot of bad examples they see around them, how how would you coach them?

SPEAKER_01 32:31

It has so much to do with both your purpose in life, but also the person that you're becoming. For most people, learning how to love requires a context, like you were mentioning, of commitment. And marriage is one of those kind of contexts that actually puts people into you know a c a covenant relationship that requires learning how to love. And and therefore you as you learn how to love, you become a more loving person, which then secondly I think just opens you up to a purpose that goes beyond yourself. That this is not just about self-gratification or you know, something that actually completes me, but it's actually like a catalyst for finding a purpose to learn how to live my entire life generatively. And I think that's where kids come kind of come in right on the uh and the natural flow of God's design for marriage, is that as you're learning how to love, you actually are able to be generative with that love in the way that God is, that it actually has the fruit of something in your life, which is like another human person, which is like just incredible when we kind of grasp that and lean into that vision really for becoming and growing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

You know, there could be somebody listening that is married and just hasn't really been investing in their marriage very intentionally, kind of on autopilot. Uh, maybe there's maybe there are problems, or maybe there's no real defined problem, but just not a lot of purpose. I think a challenge to you, if that's you listening, you know, would be maybe I need to start valuing this amazing relationship I've been entrusted with. Despite the faults that I and my partner have, it's time for us to take seriously the fact that we're together as one and we have a purpose together. So, Dell, talk to us about thinking differently in the realm of kids. Like we spent a lot of this episode talking about the need for kids to be born and the need of what that looks like for America and the future and the West in the future, but just at an individual level, how should a person who is thinking of maybe having another child or just starting to like love and value the child the children they already have, how should they be going forward?

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Yeah, I just think the whole the whole shape of like what God's inviting us into as humans is actually becoming more capable of giving and receiving love. And I don't think there's any higher purpose. Ironically, when you make yourself the point, you lose both yourself and your purpose and the whole nature of like what makes life awesome in the process. But when you can actually like move beyond that, from what am I getting from you to what am I capable of giving to you, then you're thinking generatively and generationally, you're actually handing something on that's sacred to others, and then in the most personal way to your own child who then passes it on, hopefully to a generation after that, and you become part of this whole line really that came way before you and goes way on way on after you of extending love in the world.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah, and don't don't let the negative 24-7 news cycle rob you of that and cut that line off. Um you have the opportunity to be a part of the future.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Yeah, so much, so much related to deep joy and to enjoyment that goes on beyond you.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Extended family. So this is something I think we neglect in our culture, probably because of the way that our housing scenarios are set up. You know, back in the day when things were organized as villages, you kind of lived with your extended family more or less, and so you knew them, and there were aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas and cousins, and everybody's sort of nearby. And now we're very disconnected for lots of reasons. And I think of that there might be a a case to be made that to rebuild the families of the West, it's not just about your nuclear family in your own household. It would also be about starting to mend the fences if possible and build some stronger connections to that wider group of people who share your DNA, or at least a little bit of it.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yeah, I think it's so incredibly daunting. And it could this also could be, Dan, one of the reasons why people are drawn back from having kids in the West, is that on our model of like being more and more fully realized individuals, we've got to do all this stuff on our own. And it is just a lot to raise a kid. I'm watching my daughter, you know, with our little grandchild, our first. And I'm forgetting how much work and how much sleepless nights and like all the things that they're adding into an already busy life, like trying to pay for their first house and developing their careers and all the things. And it's such a it's such a blessing for everybody that they don't have to be doing that completely alone, that they do have the support, uh, in our case, like the blessing of having other family members who live in the area, who are keenly invested in their lives and in this little new life that they brought into the world, who want to be a part of that and who get so much joy out of it, but that I can also lend time and babysitting and resources and you know, maybe even picking up a occasional diaper bill or whatever it is to help them out and to be a part of that journey. And I know that not everybody has that immediate access to uh a warm and functional extended family, but I think this idea that we've all got to do it by ourselves is just one that leads to exhaustion. And I think it would be so amazing to see communities of people, whether they be um immediate extended family or families that we sort of extend by relationship and love, where we actually help each other and we see the sacredness and the value of child rearing and that we all join in to really support and help these families that are taking the plunge and deciding to bring kids into the world.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

They need our help. Yeah, I mean that's part of my story is I I think about the the 10 kids that have and and the and beyond that have been in our life, and that there have been so many people who have served and helped and just in every way that have walked with us and we wouldn't have been able to do all that without them. Kind of leads to the last point for today to pray about, to think about, and that is to think differently about what it would look like for you to love one more beyond your own family. And Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. An interesting way to think of that is to love your neighbor as if they were your own kin, as if they were your own family. So if you live next to a widow and say, I'll love that, I'll love that woman as if she was my grandma. Or you meet a child in need and say, I want to treat that child as if that was one of my children. And you just look at each individual and realize that you could extend the warmth of your family umbrella over more people. And the more you do that, the more love you find that needs to be shared. And then you start realizing that there are quite a few people out there that don't have very much extended family around them. They may not even have nuclear family around them, they might be mostly alone, and your family becomes their family. And whether that comes through your generosity and care in your neighborhood or your extension of love through your church, you can think of yourself as an agent of love in the world. And I think that could help this dynamic as well. You think of all the reasons people might not have kids or might not get married, and it could just be that people are facing a lot of difficult things alone. And if they had the strength of community and love around them, some of which you and your own family could provide, that might brighten their future as well.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Well, this has been Abundant, sponsored by Barrian.life and originating from Barryan Center Bible Church in southwest Michigan. Special production thanks to Ben Sanders, Trevor Jones, and the whole BCBC team. Help share abundance. Subscribe wherever you listen, pass this episode to one person who needs it, and share what you're carrying at share atabundant.show. Until next time, live abundantly.