Revisiting the baby bust: Is “The Children of Men” prophetic?

“The Children of Men” is a dystopian 1992 novel by P. D. James about a world in 2021 when humanity is experiencing mass infertility. While we seem to have so far avoided such a dramatic fate, populations seem set to drop in countries across the world, with results that are sure to be surprising.

Back in October of 2020, when we were still grappling with pandemic lockdowns, I speculated on what might happen if the extra stresses placed on women and families led to a baby bust. There was certainly a lot of evidence that this might be an outcome, given that the burdens of the pandemic were disproportionately placed on women and girls.

Helen Lewis, writing in The Atlantic called the period “a disaster for feminism.” Clare Wenham, at the time an assistant professor of global-health policy at the London School of Economics, observed that, “Everything that’s happened has been predicted, right? As a collective academic group, we knew there would be an outbreak that came out of China, that shows you how globalization spreads disease, that’s going to paralyze financial systems, and there was no pot of money ready to go, no governance plan … We knew all this, and they didn’t listen.”

Concern about falling birthrates isn’t new. Indeed, demographer Philip Longman wrote a 2004 book (“The Empty Cradle”)…