(LifeSiteNews) — I read in La Prensa that births in Buenos Aires have been decreasing since 2016. According to official figures from the Buenos Aires Civil Registry, between January and mid-December 2024 there were 37,864 registered births, a 12 percent drop compared to the previous year.
The impact of this trend is clear when observing the evolution of the data over the past decade. Causes of this phenomenon are being discussed; economic, social, and cultural factors that determine the family’s decisions about motherhood and fatherhood could play a role. The sustained decline in the birth rate could have long-term implications for urban planning, public policies, and social services in Buenos Aires.
It is instructive to mention the case of China, where the consequences of the long-standing “one-child” policy have been noted. The decline of the Chinese population was seen as a very serious danger to national greatness, and so the ban was lifted. Today the Chinese people struggle to have children, and the government offers funds to promote larger families, which contradicts the cultural situation that had previously been created.
A recent survey by the consulting firm Sentimientos Públicos, which included a sample of 700 cases, revealed that 20 percent of young centennials (Generation Z) in Buenos Aires stated that they do not want to have children, while 15 percent of this same group prefers to devote their affection and care to pets.
The study also highlighted a lower satisfaction with the experience of parenthood among millennials, who are between 30 and 43 years old, compared to those over 43 years old. According to the results of the report, 77 percent of the surveyed porteños said they have children, and within this group, two-thirds stated that the experience of being parents has improved their lives, while the remaining one-third said that parenthood is something they enjoy sometimes but not always.
This phenomenon reveals the contrast between nature and culture. Humanae Vitae, in which Paul VI warned of the immorality of artificial means of birth control, refers to this. We are undoubtedly facing a serious anthropological emergency.
READ: Bishop Strickland: Collapse of the family at the root of our moral, spiritual decline
An alarming report on the plummeting birth rate in Argentina has also been released. Our country, already sparsely populated, runs the risk of almost becoming a semi-desert if this trend continues. According to official figures revealed by the national health authorities, in 2023 there were only 460,902 births, the lowest figure in the last 50 years. This implies a reduction of 7 percent with respect to 2022, and of more than 40 percent with respect to 2014. The fertility rate in 2023 was 1.33, well below the replacement rate of 2.1, which is the number of children needed to keep the population stable.
These are concrete numbers, not “reports.” This is the result of decades of plundering, not “winning,” as it was called by the ruling parties of the time. Governments of apparently different political persuasions, yet all of them functional to anti-natalist globalism, abandoned Juan Bautista Alberdi’s “to govern is to populate” for the alleged “empowerment” of abortion, divorce, the destruction of marriage and the family, the praise of promiscuity, and any other anti-Christian – and therefore anti-human – agenda going around.
Christian tradition has always presented the family model, which in the modern world has been substantially changed to the point of being unrecognizable. The drop in the meaning of marriage via divorce has led to the denaturalization of the roles of men and women. According to this perspective, children are not a natural consequence and pets take their place. Culture – or rather, utilization – has replaced nature.
Propaganda in favor of homosexuality and the spread of this practice have also undermined the natural purpose of having children. The ruinous phenomenon of “same-sex marriage” has given rise to the adoption of children who, contrary to the most fundamental principles of nature, grow up without knowing what a mother and a father are.
Héctor Aguer
Archbishop Emeritus of La Plata
Buenos Aires, Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Our Lady of Lourdes