By Lawrence Solomon, published by the Financial Post, October 28, 2026
Policy-makers say they want population growth but their intrusive policies rob potential parents of agency and the desire to have children.
The West is already in demographic free-fall—and the policies meant to reverse it are making the collapse permanent. Across the low-fertility world, the same trap is closing: once the ranks of women in their peak childbearing years thin and median ages climb into the forties, demographers say even a return to the replacement rate of 2.1 cannot undo “negative population momentum.” The decline becomes self-reinforcing.
In this Financial Post opinion piece, author and journalist Lawrence Solomon notes that conventional pro-natal policies (child-care support, maternity leave, cash subsidies) have repeatedly failed. Families today often have more disposable income and labor-saving technology than when fertility was higher, so cost is not the core barrier. Instead, expansive “nanny-state” government policies are a major driver of demographic decline by eroding parents’ agency and desire to have children, argues Solomon.
By dictating vaccines, curricula, identity questions, and even whether parents may know their own child’s medical status—while regulating leave, daycare, housing, and speech—governments reduce mothers and fathers to surrogates. Robbed of “the demanding, creative, terrifying, and decades-long commitment of raising children” who might carry forward family, community, and culture—people simply have fewer of them. Solomon’s conclusion is blunt. Continue here to the publisher’s website to read this article in full.
Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book, The Population Implosion, is executive director of Fertility Probe, a joint project of Canada’s Energy Probe Research Foundation and U.S.-based Probe International Foundation. https://fertilityprobe.org/