Japan’s recent record-low birthrate in 2024, falling below 700,000 annual births for the first time since record-keeping began in 1899, sounds an alarm.
It mirrors a broader trend across developed nations, from Germany and South Korea to Italy and beyond. Governments have responded with an arsenal of incentives: childcare subsidies, parental leave policies, tax breaks, and more. Yet these top-down initiatives, while well-intentioned, seem to have little lasting effect. Birthrates continue to fall, and demographic crises loom larger each year.
Beneath these headlines lies a deeper question: why are people in wealthy, comfortable societies choosing not to have children? The answer, I believe, is more profound than any government program can reach. It’s not simply about money or logistics, but about human nature itself: our relationship with risk, meaning, and the essential drive to reach beyond ourselves.
Risk and the Human Drive
At the core of the human experience is the capacity, and even the necessity, to take risks. Love is risky. Marriage is risky. Having children is perhaps the greatest risk of all. To bring a new life into the world is to step into the unknown, to invest in a future that can neither be predicted nor controlled. It demands hope, courage, and a willingness to sacrifice.
Historically, human societies were shaped by risk at every level. Survival depended on accepting and managing uncertainty. Famine, disease, war, and economic hardship were constant companions. In that environment, having children was not just a personal choice but a strategy for survival, a way to hedge against the unpredictable forces of life. Families and communities formed around mutual dependence, with each generation bound to the next through sacrifice and obligation.
This ancient rhythm, risk and reward, sacrifice and meaning, fueled the drive to have children. People sought to build something that would outlast them, to leave a legacy. Their children were not simply biological products; they were living testaments to their hope and courage.
The Aristocracy of Comfort
Throughout history, periods of great wealth and security often brought a paradoxical decline in fertility. The aristocracies of ancient Rome, medieval Europe, and Qing China all faced this conundrum. As their lives became more comfortable, their risk tolerance declined. Children, once a lifeline, became a liability. A wealthy aristocrat could afford to indulge personal pleasure, to live for the self rather than the family. The drive to reproduce weakened, replaced by a focus on art, status, or personal achievement.
In modern times, entire nations have become aristocracies of comfort. Japan’s technological prowess, Germany’s social welfare, South Korea’s economic dynamism; these are societies that have achieved a level of security and abundance unimaginable to their ancestors. But along with that comfort has come a collective risk aversion. People have more to lose, and they guard their time, energy, and resources accordingly.
Marriage itself has become optional, and children, once a source of economic and social security, now appear as a costly and risky investment in an already demanding life. The paradox emerges: the more secure and comfortable we become, the less likely we are to take the risks that once defined us.
Risk Aversion and the Death of Desire
Modern societies have become experts at minimizing risk. We wear seatbelts, buy insurance, take vaccinations, and install alarm systems. These are all good things in themselves, but they shape our consciousness in profound ways. We learn, often unconsciously, that risk is an enemy to be eliminated.
This mindset seeps into our deepest choices. It tells us that anything uncertain, like love, marriage, or children, should be approached with extreme caution. Better to postpone, or even avoid, than to risk heartbreak, disappointment, or failure.
Yet here lies a paradox: without risk, we lose the very drive that makes life worth living. Desire itself is born from a sense of lack, from an awareness that something is missing. It’s the hunger that moves us to seek connection, to build relationships, to create families. When life becomes too comfortable, that hunger fades. We become content to exist within our own bubbles of safety and convenience.
This risk aversion feeds on itself. The more we avoid risk, the less prepared we feel to take any. The habit of safety becomes a prison, and the spark of desire dims.
The Role of Crisis
History shows that crises often reignite the human spirit. Wars, natural disasters, and economic collapses, though devastating, have sometimes spurred higher birthrates in their aftermath. This is not because people suddenly find life easier, but because they feel life’s fragility. Crisis reveals that safety is an illusion, that the future is uncertain no matter what we do. In those moments, people rediscover the essential truth: that to live fully is to risk everything.
Of course, no one would wish for war or disaster. But these historical patterns remind us that human beings need to feel the edge of uncertainty to remember who they are. Risk is not just an external hazard; it is the inner fuel of our deepest commitments.
In times of crisis, people are reminded of their connection to others. They see the need for community, for sacrifice, for building something that endures. They remember that children are not just costs or burdens, but living bonds that tie the present to the future.
Why Top-Down Policies Fail
Governments have tried to engineer higher birthrates through subsidies, tax breaks, childcare centers, and paid parental leave. These efforts are not inherently wrong. They can help families already inclined to have children. But they often fail to address the deeper reality: that the desire to have children springs not from comfort, but from the willingness to risk.
By focusing on making life more comfortable, these policies may actually reinforce the very risk aversion they seek to counteract. They teach people to expect that every challenge can be smoothed away by the state. But comfort, as history shows, dulls the will to reach beyond oneself.
Real change cannot be engineered from above. It must come from a shift in the culture of risk itself; a renewed appreciation that to love is to risk, that to create life is to embrace the unknown. Without that shift, no amount of subsidies or programs will ignite the desire to build the future.
Reimagining Children
It’s tempting to see the past purely through a modern lens, condemning the idea that “children were once seen as assets” as backward or inhumane. But this overlooks the complexity of human experience. In times of hardship, children were indeed a form of security. But they were also a profound source of meaning. They connected parents to the future, to the community, to the sacred.
In today’s world, we have rightly emphasized children’s rights and dignity as individuals. But we have sometimes forgotten the equally important truth: that children are also the living embodiment of society’s hope. They are not merely costs to be borne, but treasures to be nurtured. They are the reason we build schools, hospitals, and parks; they are why we strive to make the world better than we found it.
Reviving this sense of children as treasures does not mean returning to exploitative or patriarchal systems. It means recovering the sense that life is bigger than the individual. It means recognizing that to bring a child into the world is to affirm that the future is worth living for, no matter how uncertain it may be.
Toward a Culture of Courage
The challenge before us is not to eliminate risk, but to recover the courage to embrace it. We must learn again that the best things in life are not safe. Love will hurt us. Children will challenge us. Communities will disappoint us. But in these very risks lie the seeds of meaning, of connection, and of hope.
A society that values only comfort will slowly die. Its birthrate will decline, its families will fracture, and its sense of purpose will wither. A society that values courage, on the other hand, will find ways to renew itself. It will see children not as burdens but as blessings, not as costs but as calls to a higher purpose.
The Risk That Gives Life
The crisis of low birthrates is not just a demographic problem. It is a spiritual crisis; a loss of the willingness to live for something beyond ourselves. The answer is not more subsidies or policies alone, but a transformation in how we see risk itself.
We must rediscover that to risk is to live, to love, to build. Only then will we find the strength to bring new life into the world, and with it, the promise that the future is still worth believing in.
Image by Victoria
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