November 15, 2022.

It is the morning of a Tuesday, 10:30 am. I am heading to our class and everything feels so normal. When I entered the classroom, I heard some of my classmates talking about something, some with excitement and some with concern. “We hit 8 billion people tonight”, “That is a new record”….

Fast forward to this week, Most of our readings for last were about how birthrates decline. USA, Spain, Japan, China, Portugal and more, are countries that expect to have a declining population, some even going to half, by the end of the century. According to the Washington Post article, “More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, new poll says, as U.S. birthrate declines”, Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 were asked how likely it is for them to have kids at some point of their lives. The data made clear that less people wanted to have kids, but that is not what had my attention from the article. In 2018, the most popular answer of why adults without kids do not want to have kids, said that they just don’t have any desire to become parents. In the next research though, that took place on 2021, the most popular answers were medical issues, financial insecurity and lack of partner. That was so surprising to me. Eight billion people on planet earth, and people are still struggling to find a match. How is that possible?

I cannot answer that without referring to the pandemic. All of us felt isolated, feared for the our lives and the lives of our beloved ones. But the pandemic also brought to the surface. We all got a better understanding of climate change, of how vulnerable economies are, the impacts we have to the environment etc. I find a huge correlation to the changes in the responds and the “moments” of clarity that this pandemic gave us. If countries and governments want to find solutions to the birthrate that keeps declining, then they should probably start finding solutions to the actual problems that cause the uncertainty. Some days ago I saw a video about the creation of a “baby factory”, where lab babies will be created and developed in technological advanced wombs. Scientists will be able to interfere with every step of the development and potentially “fix” any anomalies that occur in the dna. With that technology, 30,000 babies will be born every year. That just left me wondering, is that another distraction so we don’t face the real problems?