The Varieties of Anti-Natalism — and the Roots of a Demographic Crisis

This week, The Financial Times featured an interview with the Finnish demographer Anna Rotkirch, discussing one of the more striking subplots in the widening drama of demographic decline: The sudden collapse of what had heretofore been seen as a pronatalist success story in the social democracies of northern Europe.

Up until recently, countries like Finland, Sweden and Norway had notably higher fertility rates than many countries in southern Europe, and the Nordic socioeconomic model, with its mixture of gender egalitarianism and strong welfare-state supports for child rearing, was often held up as proof that progressive policies could prop up birthrates, even that feminism is the new natalism. The hope was that extremely low birthrates in more conservative countries like Italy (or for that matter South Korea) might be part of a transition through an unworkable mixture of modern economic demands and traditional expectations for women — with Scandinavia showing that a more progressive, feminist and family-friendly destination was waiting on the other side.