Les Jones

Population > Philip Longman's "The Return of Patriarchy"

(Before bursting a blood vessel, be sure to read Longman's definition of patriarchy, which doesn't include keeping women in garters, panty hose, or chastity belts.)

From Foreign Policy via Instapundit.

Meanwhile, single-child families are prone to extinction. A single child replaces one of his or her parents, but not both. Nor do single-child families contribute much to future population. The 17.4 percent of baby boomer women who had only one child account for a mere 7.8 percent of children born in the next generation. By contrast, nearly a quarter of the children of baby boomers descend from the mere 11 percent of baby boomer women who had four or more children. These circumstances are leading to the emergence of a new society whose members will disproportionately be descended from parents who rejected the social tendencies that once made childlessness and small families the norm. These values include an adherence to traditional, patriarchal religion, and a strong identification with one’s own folk or nation.

This dynamic helps explain, for example, the gradual drift of American culture away from secular individualism and toward religious fundamentalism. Among states that voted for President George W. Bush in 2004, fertility rates are 12 percent higher than in states that voted for Sen. John Kerry. It may also help to explain the increasing popular resistance among rank-and-file Europeans to such crown jewels of secular liberalism as the European Union. It turns out that Europeans who are most likely to identify themselves as “world citizens” are also those least likely to have children.

...

Societies that are today the most secular and the most generous with their underfunded welfare states will be the most prone to religious revivals and a rebirth of the patriarchal family. The absolute population of Europe and Japan may fall dramatically, but the remaining population will, by a process similar to survival of the fittest, be adapted to a new environment in which no one can rely on government to replace the family, and in which a patriarchal God commands family members to suppress their individualism and submit to father.

The current reliance on government won't last forever. Government can provide a safety net, but it can't replace a family. A case worker isn't kin.

It will be interesting to see if Western liberals who easily grasp natural selection in the context of Darwinian evolution will be able to grasp the identical concept when applied to culture. It's true, of course, that culture pre-ordains destiny to a much lesser degree than genetics, but it's hard to argue that cultures and sub-cultures that are dying demographically will prevail culturally.