The world is running out of children, but there’s a path forward [Video]

We can avoid the looming fertility crisis with these steps

In my neighborhood, families regularly have five or more children. Playgrounds fill up with 100 or more kids on holidays. Youth multiply on the streets on the way to school or friends’ homes. Meanwhile, families support each other by watching kids, carpooling, establishing meal trains for new mothers, lending or giving away toys and clothes and by doing countless acts of kindness day in and day out.

This kind of high fertility community — and the culture of neighborliness it engenders — used to be the norm everywhere. But today, my neighborhood just north of Washington, D.C., stands out as highly countercultural — an island of fertility in an ever-widening sea of infertility sweeping the world. This natalism isn’t a product of happenstance. It’s largely the result of countercultural norms that governments concerned about low birthrates have the power to foster.

According to the UN Population …