Where have all the mothers gone?

Apparently, they’re not very busy in most industrialized nations.

Robert Samuelson looks at the birth rates — actually the “total fertility rate” (TFR) — within industrialized countries and finds that most fall far below the TFR of 2.0 that’s required for a stable population. A country with a TFR far below 2.0 faces a strong prospect of a shrinking population, along with a shrinking customer base, labor shortages, declining tax base, and other problems.

There’s one exception to the trend: The United States, where the TFR is “roughly at the replacement rate, 2.1 children per woman.” That rate is fairly constant among various racial groups.

What explains the American exception? [Demographer Nicholas] Eberstadt [of the American Enterprise Institute] cites three differences with Europe and most other advanced countries: greater optimism, greater patriotism and stronger religious values.