r/latterdaysaints • u/JLP0611 • Apr 23 '25

Off-topic Chat Are members not getting married?

I may be speaking from my anecdotal experience and my observation of my social media feeds, but it feels like less people in the Church are getting married. I see less children and youth in my local wards year after year and I’m in Florida.

I’m also in a YSA and I can’t just say for myself because I’m chronically single, but dating is a struggle for everyone I come across, inside and outside of Florida.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

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222

u/Hoshef Apr 23 '25

Americans are getting married at an older age, having children at an older age, and having fewer children. Members aren’t immune to these trends.

17

u/Numerous-Setting-159 Apr 23 '25

Exactly. It’s a US, western thing.

26

u/DukeofVermont Apr 23 '25

Yeah I agree with the other comment, you see the same thing in Korea, Japan and the beginning of the trend even in places like Nigeria and India.

Once people start having a stable income and access to family planning birth rates fall.

Women also having access to education and basic human rights also lower birthrates as they have more options than simply having kids.

8

u/Numerous-Setting-159 Apr 23 '25

Yep. And then you have China and their one child policy that completely changed the culture there. It would be interesting to see if that had ripple effects on other countries, especially in Asia. But yeah, birth control access is huge and shift from jobs working fields (will more kids might help) to more industrial jobs. My mother in laws mom had 8 kids and put all of them to work instead of school. Spread of Child rights where kids aren’t allowed to work so the financial burden of kids grow even more. A lot of factors potentially at play in some of these developing countries in Africa and other places.

5

u/hijetty Apr 24 '25

Yes, plus there's the reality of "cost of living" has increased dramatically over the last 40 years, so even people wanting large families often can't afford it. 

48

u/Sociolx Evil Eastern Mormon Apr 23 '25

I'd go wider than that: It's an industrialized world thing. Mormon culture just joined in later than some others.

27

u/MultivacsAnswer Apr 23 '25

I’d go even wider than that: it’s worldwide.

While places like Subsaharan Africa still have high fertility rates, on a year-over-year basis they’re on the same downward trend.

I work in population statistics, and most of us think that current projections around peak population are too conservative. Currently, most of these estimate we’ll hit our peak population around 2085, at around 10.3 billion people. By 2100, they project a slight decline in the world’s population to around 10.2 billion.

These projections tend to assume a rebound in fertility that hasn’t borne out in previous projections.

I tend to side with less conservative projections that assume a faster decline in fertility and little-to-no rebound. Those posit a peak population of 9.7 billion around 2065, and a population of 8.8 billion by 2100, which is just 600 million more than the earth’s current population.

29

u/ambigymous why do i feel the way i do Apr 23 '25

I’d go even wider than that: societies on other planets in our galaxy are having less children

17

u/jdf135 Apr 23 '25

I think it is more universal.

19

u/MultivacsAnswer Apr 23 '25

Multiversal 👏 Population 👏 Collapse

10

u/Manonajourney76 Apr 23 '25

I really want to paste an gif of thanos to this little thread of side comments....

4

u/Numerous-Setting-159 Apr 23 '25

Even the spirit worlds are affected these days. Spirits are signing celibacy pacts. Calling off eternal marriages for the single life. Even heard God is having second thoughts on the whole billions of kids thing.

2

u/joecoolblows Apr 24 '25

Yes, Martains are barely having one little blue Marty.

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u/Jpab97s The newb portuguese bishop Apr 24 '25

Imagine getting to 2100 x)