@Wendy And yet here is the blunt reality: There will not be an American Dream to achieve if our nation as a whole doesn’t increase its birth rate. The American Dream requires, well, Americans—and families, too, are required. Yet sadly, according to a recent report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. birth rate has fallen to 1.72 children per woman, which is substantially below the replacement rate of 2.1 children. We are not blind: To keep America strong we need to keep American families strong and plentiful.Â
There are many reasons why the birth rate is falling. One factor is the increasing number of women joining the paid workforce, and the stagnation of wages for many over the last few decades has made working women a necessity for many families. Yet if women are working outside of the home, they must sometimes make a cruel tradeoff: their job versus their children. That is a hard dilemma, indeed.
