We’re having too little sex and too few babies. Let’s enjoy both and stop worrying about the future
Sex isn’t the answer to everything, but it certainly helps. A study of 34,000 men and women aged 16 to 44, published in the British Medical Journal, found that sexual activity declined between 2001 and 2012. Fewer than half have sex at least once a week, while half of all women and two thirds of men say they would like to have sex more often.
The researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine blame the fall in regularity of intercourse on gender equality, which means that women no longer feel obliged to meet the needs of their partners, and on “the busyness of modern life”. There are other factors, not mentioned in the study. Pornography breeds anxieties instead of babies. Couples worry that they cannot afford children or are frightened of childbirth. The intimate connection between sex and reproduction is now seen as problematic.
The BMJ study illustrates a general decline of sexual activity in advanced societies. This trend has gone furthest in Japan, where one in four heterosexual adults aged 18 to 39 is still a virgin. The result is that fewer than a million Japanese babies (946,060) were born in 2017, a record low since records began. Not only is the birthrate far below replacement level, but the proportion of people aged 65 or older is more than 20 per cent, a figure that could rise to nearly half by the end of this century, by which time the population of Japan would have fallen by two thirds.
Such a stark demographic destiny may seem remote from the British experience, which has seen robust population growth. But this has been due to immigration; the UK birthrate remains around 1.7, below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, though it is not as low as many other European countries.
Worldwide, the birthrate is now 2.4 children, with more than half of all countries now facing declining populations. Global population growth is being driven mainly by Africa, but it will probably peak around the middle of the century at nine or ten billion and then begin to fall. Fears of a planet unable to feed itself are increasingly unjustified, as this week’s UN report into biodiversity confirmed.
Sir Robert Watson, chairman of the UN panel, warned that though wildlife was threatened by rapid population growth, setting targets to limit population in developing countries was pointless. It was better, he argued, to achieve stability “through the education and empowerment of women”. He believes that by reducing food waste, mainly in rich countries, and increasing agricultural productivity in Africa, both famine and environmental disaster can be prevented: “Could we feed sustainably 9 or 10 billion? I would argue the evidence says yes.”
Doomsday scenarios about overpopulation, then, are wide of the mark, whether they come from authoritarian politicians or climate alarmists. The risk is, rather, that Western societies are increasingly importing younger migrants to replace the children they are no longer having. Such mass migration brings with it all kinds of problems, from the challenge of cultural integration to competition for housing and public services. Better, surely, to keep immigration at sustainable levels, while removing unnecessary obstacles to having children. A nation that keeps births and deaths roughly in balance is likely to be a happier one.
In the week when the nation rejoiced over Meghan’s and Harry’s newborn baby, we have just been reminded that children bring joy into our lives like nothing else. Making babies is as enjoyable as watching them grow up. We should stop worrying about the future and just get on with both.
