Children or Pets?
by Archbishop Héctor Agüer
Emeritus of La Plata, Argentina
Buenos Aires, February 11, 2025
Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes
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| [The collapse of birth rates in Argentina] |
I read in [the Argentine daily paper] “La Prensa” that, since 2016, births in the City of Buenos Aires have been decreasing. Between January and mid-December 2024, 37,864 births were registered, according to official figures from the Buenos Aires Civil Registry: a twelve percent drop compared to the previous year.
The impact of this trend is evident when observing the evolution of the figures over the last decade. The causes of this phenomenon are being discussed: economical, social, and cultural factors that determine the family's decisions regarding maternity and paternity could play a role. The sustained decline in the birth rate could have long-term implications in terms of urban planning, public policies, and social services in the City of Buenos Aires.
It is instructive to mention the case of China, where the consequences of the long-standing “one-child” policy have been noted. The decline of the Chinese population was seen as a very serious danger to national greatness and so the ban was overturned. Today, there is a struggle to encourage the Chinese to have children and funds are being offered to reward the new development of promoting a larger family, which contradicts the cultural situation that had been created.
A recent survey by the consulting firm Sentimientos Públicos -- which included a sample of 700 cases -- revealed that twenty percent of young centennials ["Generation Z"] in the City stated that they do not want to have children, while fifteen percent of this same group prefers to devote their affection and care to pets. The study also highlighted a lower satisfaction with their parents' experience among millennials, who are between 30 and 43 years old, compared to those over 43 years old. According to the results of the report, 77 percent of the Buenos Aires inhabitants surveyed declared having children and within this group, two thirds stated that the experience of being parents has improved their lives, while the remaining third expressed that parenthood is something they enjoy sometimes, but not always. This phenomenon shows the contrast between nature and culture. The encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which Paul VI warned of the immorality of artificial means of birth control, refers to this. We are undoubtedly facing a serious anthropological emergency.
An alarming report was also released on the plummeting birth rate in Argentina. Our country, already sparsely populated, runs the risk of becoming, if this trend continues, almost a semi-desert. According to official figures revealed by the National Health authorities, in 2023 there were only 460,902 births; the lowest figure in the last 50 years. And this implies a reduction of seven percent with respect to 2022; and of more than 40 percent with respect to 2014. The fertility rate in 2023 was 1.33, well below the replacement rate of 2.1, that is, the number of children needed to keep the population stable. These are concrete figures, not “fables.” This is the result of decades of plundering; and not “won”, as the governing parties of the time called them. Governments of apparently different political signs, but all of them working for the anti-natalist globalism, abandoned Juan Bautista Alberdi's saying that, “to govern is to populate,” for the alleged “empowerment” of abortion, divorce, the destruction of marriage and the family, the praise of promiscuity, and any other anti-Christian --and, therefore, anti-human-- agenda that is going around.
Christian tradition has always put forward the family as a model, which in the modern world has been substantially modified to the point of becoming unrecognizable. The fall of the meaning of marriage through divorce has led to the denaturalization of the roles of men and women. In this perspective, children are not the natural consequence and pets take their place; culture -- the custom, let's say it better -- has replaced nature.
The propaganda in favor of homosexuality, and the spread of this practice, also undermined the natural purpose of having children. The disastrous “equal marriage” has given rise to the adoption of children, who, against the most elementary aspect of nature, grow up without knowing what a mother and a father are.
