Welcome to the Recent Speaches Podcast presented by BYU Speaches, featuring inspiring new

devotionals and forums given each week on BYU campus. Be sure to check out our other podcasts

by searching BYU speeches wherever you get your podcasts or by visitingspeches.bYU.edu slash

podcasts. This forum address entitled Why Children

Became Useless. Faith in the Future of the Family was given on October 28th of 2025 by

Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, then faculty at the Bush School of Business in Catholic University,

and founder of the political economy academic area.

Thank you so much for such a warm welcome. I'm so happy to be here among so many friends, old friends at that.

Do children just happen because we are animals and nature urges us to reproduce?

That's what most people seem to think if they've thought about it at all.

But if that is so, just how many children does nature urge us to have?

And why are birth rates so low and going lower?

Children and families are disappearing from the landscape of American households.

The share of non-family households has more than doubled since the 1960s.

60% of American households are now childless, meaning no child under 18 resides there. Fewer than 10% of households have a baby or a toddler. 2024 marked the lowest fertility rate ever recorded in the United States,

1.59 expected births per woman. This number is not explained by COVID or the financial crisis.

It's the culmination of a century-long implosion.

About two children per woman is required for population to replace itself.

The United States has generally been below that number since 1971.

The population of the world is also collapsing.

Single child families, one-and-duns,

are the most common type of Canadian family with children.

...