The demographic CLIFF: The fertility CRISIS no one is ready for



America is approaching a civilizational breaking point as young men abandon the left to move right, while young women drift further left. This has left a massive gap that’s not only threatening the future of marriage and family formation, but even basic population replacement.

“This has come to a head to some degree. Now, I will say this, if you are a conservative young woman entering into marriage years, it is a good time to be you. ... The market is very much in your favor,” BlazeTV host Steve Deace explains at AmFest.

“Countrywide, you’re unicorns,” he says, noting that despite their existence, “all these things eventually have to come to a head somewhere.”


“Someone is going to have to change, right?” he asks.

BlazeTV contributor Todd Erzen believes that there will need to be "incentivizations.”

“I just don’t think the mere biological cliff we are falling off, that realization is enough because that’s baked into the cake. That was the point all along. That is the dark success story of all of this,” Erzen says.

“I think there may ultimately need to be incentivizations that are kind of like a steroid that wake enough of the culture up to keep things going,” he continues.

However, “Steve Deace Show” executive producer Aaron McIntire disagrees.

“The bad news is, you look at countries like Japan, South Korea, they have faced the same sorts of demographic cliffs that we’re about to maybe go over. They have done all of these technocratic policies, you know, trying to actually animate, trying to just get people in the frame of mind of, ‘Hey, this is going to have a tax benefit for you. This is going to have some economic benefit for you if you have more children,’” McIntire says.

“They’re trying to encourage this, and it really hasn’t had much of a difference,” he says, adding, “So, I don’t think there’s any sort of technocratic solution that you can put in place.”

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My crooked house made me rethink what really needs fixing



Our new addition is finally finished — level floors, wide doors, and a space where my wife, Gracie, can move freely despite her severe disabilities. After years of improvising in tight quarters, we’re grateful to have a place that works for us, even if it’s not perfect.

The new part of the house went up during Trump’s second non-consecutive term; the original part went up during the second term of the only other president to do the same, Grover Cleveland. Joining the two is a bit like welding a Tesla to a horse-drawn buggy — functional, charming, and only slightly defiant of gravity.

When most of life leans, you can still make one crooked thing right.

During construction, the fridge in our tiny kitchen got bumped off the carefully placed shims and tilted just enough to drive me crazy. Admittedly, that’s not a long trip.

I ignored it for about a week but finally couldn’t stand it anymore. Leveling a refrigerator in a cabin built during the Cleveland administration isn’t simple. There are pulleys, levers, questions about physics, and — in my case — a call to the engineering department at Montana State. They were not amused. My neighbor Charles, who often “pity helps” me, wasn’t available. I can’t prove it, but I think he hung up and immediately burst into laughter.

So I did it myself.

I knew it would be a project — and once I started, it could not easily be interrupted by caregiving duties. But exasperation collided with need, and I got down on the floor (at a slant) and went to work. It went exactly as expected: mild swearing, a few tears, and then a small victory. When the bubble on the level finally drifted near the center, I declared success, remembering that old rancher’s saying: “Most things can be fixed with baling wire and bad language.”

It’s level — well, Montana level — but I’ll take it.

Much of what I’ve faced as a caregiver over 40 years can’t be fixed. But small victories, like leveling a refrigerator in a house built when bread was 3 cents and buffalo still outnumbered politicians, remind me that even when most of life leans, you can still make one crooked thing right.

Everyone has a version of that tilted refrigerator — something off-kilter you keep meaning to fix but never quite reach. It might be a strained relationship, a stack of bills, or a heart worn down by too much bad news. You can’t straighten the world, but you can steady what’s right in front of you.

When life feels unsettled, taking time to level something — even a small thing — matters more than we think. Sometimes that quiet act of setting one thing right gives us just enough footing to stand through the rest of it.

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Osobystist via iStock/Getty Images

Years ago, city officials talked about “broken-window” policing: Neglect one thing, and the whole neighborhood starts to crumble. The opposite is also true. Fix one small thing, and a bit of order comes back. Leveling even one ordinary object pushes back against the chaos.

Most caregiving must be repeated tomorrow, but every so often something stays fixed. A grab bar anchored in the right place. A ramp that finally fits the chair. The day may still be full of mess and pain, but that one thing won’t need doing again. It stands there quietly, reminding you that not everything leans. Some things still hold. And sometimes that’s enough to remind you that you still can too.

When I turn on the news, I see dysfunction I can’t do anything about. But when I fix dinner, my refrigerator no longer leans.

There’s an old Appalachian saying: “Fix what you can. The rest was never yours to mend.”

Level what you can. Let the rest lean.

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'Something has gone terribly wrong': Marriage is in 'disastrous' decline — perhaps because of women



The marriage rate has been in decline for decades, dropping from 10.6 per 1,000 people in 1980 to 6.1 in 2023. Last year, American adults were less likely to be married than at nearly any other time since the Census Bureau began logging marital status in 1940, with married couples heading only 47.1% of U.S. households.

The apparent aversion to marriage is bad news for American children, who perform better in school and are far less likely to end up in prison or depressed when raised by married parents, as well as for American adults who tend to see better health outcomes, be happier, and live longer when espoused.

'Devaluing marriage and motherhood has consequences.'

Recent Pew Research Center analysis of survey data from the University of Michigan suggests that this decline may continue — especially if young women's growing resistance to marriage goes unremedied.

Whereas 20 years prior, 80% of 12th graders said that they were most likely to choose marriage in the long run, only 67% of 12th graders polled in 2023 indicated that they want to get married someday. Another 24% said they don't know if they'll get married, up from 16% in 1993.

This drop appears to have been largely driven by shifting views among girls.

In 1993, 83% of girls and 76% of boys said that they wanted to get married. In 2023, only 61% of girls said they wanted to get married — a drop of 22% — while 74% of boys indicated they wanted to ultimately tie the knot.

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Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images

Pew indicated that there was also a precipitous drop in the percentage of 12th graders who indicated they wanted to have kids if they marry.

Whereas in 1993, 82% said they wanted to have kids, in 2023, only 73% indicated they wanted to welcome new life into this world. Even more dramatically, the percentage of those who said they would "very likely" want to have kids if married dropped from 64% in 1993 to 48% in 2023.

"It's almost like decades of devaluing marriage and motherhood has consequences," wrote the Alabama Policy Institute.

Katy Faust, founder of the children's advocacy group Them Before Us, stated, "More than almost anything else trending, this terrifies me. Because of the nature of our bodies women have historically pursued marriage more. What kind of disastrous, antihuman messaging are young women being flooded with to return these kinds of results?"

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Photo by Lambert/Getty Images

Dr. Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, said the anti-nuptial trend among young women and adolescent girls was "disastrous."

Wilcox underscored that this trend reflects a particularly raw deal for women, highlighting a recent YouGov survey of U.S. women, ages 25 to 55, fielded by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute, which found that married women with children are:

  • more likely (19%) to report being "very happy" than both unmarried women with children (13%) and unmarried women without children (10%);
  • more likely (47%) to report that life has felt enjoyable most or all of the time in the past 30 days than both unmarried women with children (40%) and unmarried women without children (34%);
  • less likely (11%) to report being lonely most or all of the time in the past 30 days than both unmarried women with children (23%) and unmarried women without children (20%);
  • more likely (51%) to receive physical affection than both unmarried women with children (29%) and unmarried women without children (17%); and
  • more likely (28%) to report their lives have a clear sense of purpose than both unmarried women with children (25%) and unmarried women without children (16%).

Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet said of the Pew report, "Something has gone terribly wrong."

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