On Thanksgiving Day, my son invited me to brunch at the Country Inn, an affiliate of CoolFont, the resort where he works. Hope that everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday. We certainly did.
So far, the apparent lovefest between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani is still holding, exemplifying a very shrewd move on Mamdani's part. Can he keep it up, given that many of Trump's people must be trying to disrupt their new alliance?
According to Google (the final authority on just about everything!): "The term 'population collapse' is used to describe the potential for the U.S. population to shrink, a scenario driven by declining birth rates, lower immigration, and an aging population
. While official projections from the U.S. Census Bureau suggest the population may start to decline around 2080, some experts believe the U.S. could see its first population decrease in 2025 [right now!] or 2031 due to lower-than-expected immigration and birth rates. This trend could impact the economy and social systems, particularly Social Security and Medicare, due to a smaller workforce and a larger elderly population."
West Virginia, where I am living now, is one of several US states where deaths currently outnumber births. Unless more immigrants are again allowed to enter our country or unless folks here start having more babies, this state and a number of others will face a shrinking population, top-heavy with mostly non-working elders like me. Already, we see abandoned and deteriorating houses right here in Berkeley Springs. In Japan, due to the even more serious baby bust there, whole villages have been left abandoned. Without babies, there are simply no more people. We all started out as embryos, then fetusues, then becoming actual babies, youngsters, and teens. Infants and children are not some alien species, but essential stages in the developemnt of everyone, both you and me, starting out with our own younger selves.
Some folks who might consider having kids "some day," just fail to actually get around to it in time, or may find it is no longer possible when they finally decide they are "ready." Before birth control and voluntary sterilization, people in heterosexual relationships just expected to have children and so they mostly just did. As I've said, my father's mother was the youngsest of 12 children born to a farming family in southern Alberta. Without her, I wouldn't exist today.
Speaking now as a birth mother myself, as well as an adoptive mother, I consider it a privilege to have and care for some of the kids becoming the adults of the next generation. Without children, there are simply no more people. Do homo sapiens now want to end up being extinct, as happened to the Neanderthals? Even those without any children themselves still need to pitch in to help raise the next generation. Who do they expect to tend and care for them when they themselves reach old age?
Free child care and baby bonuses have had only minimal effects in increasing birth rates in Europe, but still might be tried here, as they are certainly useful for working parents and may also help keep birthrates from falling even further.
U.S. birth rate hits all-time low,CDC data shows/ CBS/APThe fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low in 2024 with fewer than 1.6 children being born per woman...The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all. The new statistic is on par with fertility rates in western European countries, according to World Bank data.
As may have been previously mentioned (perhaps in a vanished post), even worldwide fertility is now close to replacement, so urgently needs to be maintained at current levels to prevent our human population from actually shrinking.
Presently, our world could even be facing a crisis of Malthus in reverse, possibly entering a death spiral whereby humans will eventually vanish completely from our small planet earth. Then the universe may still continue on as usual without showing any trace of our all-too-brief human existence.
And if our own US population has already started shrinking, then the border closures and deportations being carried out right now simply need to stop ASAP. Such measures are exacerbating. not helping fix, our problems as a nation. A manageble number of immigrants must again be admitteed. Nor is screening these new arrivals actually even practical. We will just have to take our chances, as has always been the case--win some, lose just a few. We must trust the odds that most people are not criminals, not even possible future criminals. That system--or non-system--of just taking in the majority of people who come here without any special screening has mostly worked out pretty well over the last few centuries. So here we are today, with the usual mix of honest, industrious folks along with just a few bad apples, such as would be found in any human population. Donald Trump and JD Vance should also remember that their own dear wives actually are immigrants. Immigrnats should be welcomed, not shunned. "Immigrant" is not a pejorative term!
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Does providing free childcare offer folks an incentive to have any, or even any more, children? We'll have to see how that plays out now in New Mexico. Free childcare in some Euorpean countries has not so much increased birthrates, as perhaps kept them from falling even further. Somehow, 2 children has become the desired maximum for many modern families, a first child, followed by only one sibling at most. The result here in the US is an average birthrate of about 1.6 per woman, as some have no kids or only one. Thus the birth average falls well short of replacement, which would require 2.1 kids per woman, with immigration then helping make up the difference. Donald Trump, please wake up now from always dozing off and just start to listen! (Donald: You yourself have more than 2 kids, setting an example for others.)
Free childcare may also help some couples decide whether to have more or even any kids at all.
New Mexico's Universal Free Childcare
- What it is: Starting November 1, 2025, New Mexico became the first state to offer free childcare to all families, regardless of income.
- How it helps: Officials anticipate this could save families an average of $12,000 per child annually.
- Funding: The program is funded through investments from oil and gas taxes, and a constitutional amendment now guarantees families access to high-quality childcare and prekindergarten.
As for the preferred gender of childcare workers, just based on my own experience as a working mother of 4 children, sometimes with some of my kids enrolled in group care, as well as in my former job monitoring and licensing childcare and preschool facilities in California, I would not actually urge more men to work with children of preschool and elementary school age. Indeed, why not?
Though male caregivers have sometimess been encouraged to provide children with a male role model, while also giving more men a chance to work with kids, I would urge cautiion. Because of both cultural and hormonal factors, it might actually be best to continue with mostly female caregivers and teachers of young kids. I will explain why, based on my own extensive personal and professional expeience.
We have already seen in the Catholic church and even among married clergy in other denominations, that too many men, whether married or not, who work closely with young children end up sexually or sometimes physically abusing them. Of course that's not always or even often true and certainly gay male couples have successfully raised children of both genders. However, the male sex drive (perhaps bolstered by cultural factors, as well as by the hormone testosterone) may tend to encourage men to seek sexual encounters even with vulnerable kids, including with some who are underage, even among their own offspring. Defacto, that is what actually has sometimes been occurring. Is that perhaps too broad a generalization which might actually deprive young kids, both boys and girls, of healthy contacts with adult males?
Yet, in fact, too many male parents, both birth and step parents, do end up sexually molesting children and young teens of both genders, even within their own families. When I was working as a Spanish medical interpreter in Washington, DC, I saw many such cases.
I also saw many cases as a social worker and a juvenile probation officer even before that, never once encountering a case of a woman sexually molesting a child--it's mostly the testosterone, as I've already said.
So now I feel torn, as a mother of girls, as well as of boys, about having men working closely with young kids. I've also had professional experience in my former role in the licensing of childcare facilities, as well as after having served as a Spanish interpreter in so many cases of child sexual or other abuse. I have been involved in far too many cases of a male staff member working with preschool or elementary age children being accused of either their sexual or physical abuse. As indicated, I have not seen such cases among the much more numerous female staff working with kids, although some have been accused of failing to pay proper attention or of handling situations inappropriately or sometimes even of slapping a child in frustration. A few women working in childcare have even been sanctioned for spanking a child, though this is very rare, as they have been warned never to hit or spank a child in their care.
Even when I had my own children enrolled in a Catholic elementary school in Califonria, the lone male teacher there was dismissed after quite credible sexual allegations had been made by students, although no legal action was ever taken. Most facilities prefer to dismiss an errant male staff member hoping that he has learned his lesson, thus avoiding a harmful public spectacle and a painful legal battle. That particular school then continued on after the man's departure, but with only female teachers and staff thereafter.
I don't mean to imply that men cannot be good teachers and even excellent caregivers of young children, as doubtless many actually are. Yet, the possible influence of testosterone cannot be totally ignored either. Readers are certainly invited to comment on this matter based on their own experience and may even accuse me of having a bias against men, though I am the mother of chersihed children of both genders. But certainly testosterone plays a role in sexual desire for both men and women--and men have really so much more of it, as nature intended.
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While we are on the subject of having and caring for children, I'd also like now to go on record to oppose ever using any physical punishment at all with them. I never ever hit or spanked any of 4 my kids (despite or perhaps because of the spankings--even with a hairbrush-- that I had once endured). I don't support the popular maxim "spare the rod, spoil the child."
However, I will confess that once (and only once) I did hit one of my kids---I slapped my son Jon's cheek after he kept getting up out of the time-out chair. "Time-out" was my usual punishment, allowing the child and myself to both cool down, rather than resorting to spanking.
However, I will confess that once (and only once) I did hit one of my kids---I slapped my son Jon's cheek after he kept getting up out of the time-out chair. "Time-out" was my usual punishment, allowing the child and myself to both cool down, rather than resorting to spanking.
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Sen. Jim Justice agrees to pay $5M in back taxes after DOJ files suit https://thehill.com/homenews/
Apparently after discovery of the massive tax fraud engaged in by West Va., Sen. Jim Justice, he is now being allowed to simply pay back the taxes that he owes--just the amount he actually tried to steal but then got caught--with no further consequences whatsoever. And he continues to remain in elective office. If he is on the ballot here the next time I vote, I certainly won't mark his name.
{aiusa-d} Fwd: Action Guide: Free Dr. Abu Safiya
I am now passing along a very worthwhile action from Amnesty International appealing for the release of a Palestinian doctor being held by Israel without any stated reason or due cause. Even though Donald Trump has given his wholehearted blanket support, both financially and morally, to many suspect Israeli officials, including to probable war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, regardless of what they may say or do, such support is no longer merited in my well-informed opinion. Nor should any more of our precious tax dollars keep on flowing to Israel, not any more for any reason at all. Those of us holding this opinion need to make our concerns heard in the US political realm. I am now considering how best to do that myself.
On another topic, I would certainly recommend reading Jose Azel's column The Azel Perspective on the Media Echo Chamber.
Here's another highly recommended article, written by a young Cuban economist, this one on the Cuban economy, also available in English, although the notification has appeared in Spanish. El mas reciente articulo de Carlos L Martinez <carlosluisrodriguez7@gmail.
A former Capitol Hill neighbor, an amazingly good cook, keeps on sending me photos of her latest efforts in the kitchen. Alas, I am no longer living nearby to actually have a taste, so am only able to enjoy them "virtually," just as my readers can do right now.
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