I was a guest on today’s Coffee & Markets podcast, where we discussed plex challenges facing America as reflected in recent demographic trends. What do declining birthrates across the developed world indicate?

For one thing, they show that crises are not limited to one feature of our lives and there are important spillover causes and effects across social spaces. So financial crises have impacts on the home, and vice versa. Or as I wrote last year, “Healthy and vibrant economies promote the flourishing of healthy and vibrant families. But the reverse is also true. The vitality of each social institution is linked with the welfare of others, and the microeconomic effects felt by families necessarily have macroeconomic implications.”

The family is in significant ways the vanguard of civilization, and as family life is threatened so too are all of the other civilizational institutions. As Elias Boudinot put it, “Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people degenerates, their political character must soon follow.”

So what about social reformation and renewal? There’s no better place to start then your own family and no better time to start than right now. As Hunter Baker observed:

The first moves are the most immediate. If you are a child, be a respectful child who wants to learn and grow. If you are an adult, take care of your parents as they age. If you are a husband or wife, mitted to your spouse. Work on sustaining a stable and peaceful household in which all the members feel heard, cared for, and respected. If you are a parent, focus on loving your child’s other parent, providing financially and emotionally for the child, and encouraging the child in learning. If you are a grandparent, help young parents adjust to the newness of their role and encourage them in the hard work of taking care of children.

Check out the podcast episode as well as some of the mended reading below:

Jordan Ballor, “Debt and the Birth Dearth”Greg Forster, “Economics 101: Productivity Starts in the Home”Sam Gregg, “Europe’s Choice: Populate or Perish”Jason DeParle, “Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do'”AdWeek, “Multigenerational Households”Allan Carlson, “How Protestants Learned to Love the Pill”Joel Kotkin, “America’s Baby Bust”