Podcast Summary:
Episode: Why Children Became Useless: Faith and the Future of the Family
Speaker: Catherine Ruth Pakaluk
Date: October 28, 2025
Podcast: BYU Speeches
Main Theme & Purpose
Catherine Ruth Pakaluk explores the sharp decline in birth rates across the modern world, tracing its roots to significant cultural, economic, and technological shifts. She challenges both secular and religious assumptions about why people have children, asserts that childbearing is a conscious and sometimes countercultural choice, and argues that faith forms the highest and most resilient motive for welcoming children. Her address calls for a renewed appreciation of children as blessings and a defense of religious liberty as key to reviving family life.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Unexpected Decline in Birth Rates
- Decline is not linked solely to events like financial crises or COVID-19; it’s part of a century-long trend.
- "2024 marked the lowest fertility rate ever recorded in the United States. 1.59 expected births per woman." (02:02)
- Fertility rates are globally below replacement; numerous countries report drastically low rates.
- "South Korea takes the prize at the world's lowest with a total fertility rate of 0.75." (03:21)
2. Wrong Questions, Wrong Assumptions
- The common question, “Why aren’t people having kids?” is misdirected; the better question is, “Why do people have kids?” (08:15)
- Society assumes children ‘just happen’ due to animal instinct, ignoring that childbearing is a reflective, rational choice for humans made ‘in the image of God.’ (06:10)
3. Historical Analogy: Horses and Children
- Pakaluk draws a comparison to the shift from horses to cars to illustrate how cultural changes follow shifts in utility and function.
- "The bottom line is that cars met a need for transportation and movement better than horses... Culture evolved to embody this new form of needs meeting." (10:55)
- As horses became functionally obsolete, so, Pakaluk argues, have children in their traditional economic and social roles.
4. Collapse of Functional Need for Children
- Historically, children fulfilled three primary needs:
- Labor and household support: replaced by machines/technology.
- Old age security: replaced by social insurance programs.
- Sexual union necessity: replaced by contraception and shifting sexual norms.
- “Children were replaced by machines, by economic growth more generally… By social insurance programs… and by child-free sexual unions.” (17:00)
- The erosion of these needs means children are no longer functionally necessary, leading to their ‘cultural sidelining.’
5. Motives for Having Children: Need vs. Want
- Today, most only have children if they strongly want to, often for deeply personal or spiritual reasons.
- “People have children for the same reason they do anything else. They need to or they want to. The need for children collapsed and kids are now sidelined in culture.” (19:30)
6. Critique of Policy and Economic Solutions
- Both pro-natalist and anti-natalist camps make the mistake of assuming births are a biological inevitability affected by material conditions.
- “The prescriptions that you see for nudging up the birth rate… share a fatal flaw… But since they cannot put the desire for children in the hearts of those who don't want them, these policies fail time and time again.” (21:05)
- Generous economic incentives, as in Hungary, have not restored birth rates.
7. Religion as the Remaining Powerful Motive
- Religious families are uniquely countercultural in their robust approach to family size.
- “They believed children are blessings from God, expressions of divine goodness and the purpose of their marriages.” (22:10)
- Pakaluk recounts interviews with religious women who see childbearing as fulfilling not only personal desires but a divine calling.
8. Personal Stories — The “Children of Want”
- Esther (Jewish mother of nine):
- “I don't feel… like you could ever have too much of any of those things. These are blessings… sometimes we need to ask God to make ourselves proper vessels to receive the blessings.” (22:45)
- Leah (Musician):
- “If anything, children are light. Every child brings a divine gift into the world that nobody else can bring. ... It's almost radical and feminist to say my contribution is healthy, well-balanced children. And that is a contribution.” (24:00)
- Amanda (Mother with ambitions beyond parenting):
- “Nothing I ever do will be more purposeful, meaningful, and have more impact on a human than giving them a body and then nurturing them as a human. ... I also know that relationship is eternal.” (25:35)
9. Remedy: Reclaiming Religious Meaning
- Only faith can supply a motive strong enough to offset the practical burdens of children.
- “The remedy is to reclaim the supernatural value of the child, to announce and give witness… that the child is most desirable, the child is most lovable, and that the child bears the image and likeness of the Most High God.” (26:10)
- Faith softens selfishness and reorients desires toward eternal rather than temporal goods.
10. Policy Recommendations & Social Path Forward
- The best approach isn’t social engineering, but maximizing religious liberty and supporting faith institutions.
- “Rather, it's a program of relentless deference to churches as the providers of a public good that nations cannot buy… The government must do less so that churches can do more.” (27:40)
- Fertility is responsive not to policy, but to faith communities, religious education, and spiritual incentives.
11. Reasons for Hope
- Fertility desires are flexible; conversions, life events, and spiritual growth can change perspectives.
- “Fertility desires are changeable. Life experiences, new information and religious conversions are just a few of the ways that people come around to wanting children.” (27:55)
- The conviction that marriage and childbearing are worthy pursuits continues to inspire countercultural lives.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- “Marriage and childbearing belong to the domain of the spirit—the rational part of the rational animal. Marriage and kids are choices we make. They have to be chosen because we are reasoning beings.” — Catherine Pakaluk (06:35)
- “If all this sounds rudely utilitarian, it is, but it shouldn't distress us. There are lower motives and higher motives for doing anything good.” — Catherine Pakaluk (19:52)
- “The highest motive is to want a child for the child's own sake. Usually this type of motive is nourished by a living religious tradition.” — Catherine Pakaluk (20:40)
- “When we tend to learn through working and first for more selfish reasons. With children, the lower motives, raw needs have mostly been eroded.” — Catherine Pakaluk (20:00)
- “Fertility desires are changeable. Life experiences, new information and religious conversions are just a few of the ways that people come around to wanting children.” — Catherine Pakaluk (27:55)
- “If you had to ask me, how can we make family great again? I couldn't come up with a better answer than to say Light in America the fire of faith again.” — Catherine Pakaluk (end, 28:18)
Timestamps for Key Segments
- 00:41-06:10 — Introduction: The myth of natural reproductive instinct vs. global fertility collapse
- 10:55-15:45 — Horses vs. Cars Analogy: Understanding cultural shifts via functional change
- 17:00-19:30 — The collapse of functional need for children
- 21:05-21:55 — Why economic incentives and pro-natalist policies fail
- 22:10-25:35 — Personal testimonies from mothers of large families
- 26:10-27:40 — The call for a religious and philosophical renewal around children
- 27:40-28:18 — Final policy recommendations and reasons for hope
Conclusion
Pakaluk’s address reframes the fertility conversation: rather than panicking over numbers or concocting policy fixes, she encourages individuals and society to recover a view of children as priceless, faith-rooted blessings. She argues that only the “fire of faith” can restore family life and that genuine renewal is in hearts, homes, and living religious communities—not government edicts or incentives.