‘Reborn Babies’

At a time when our population growth is at a new low, multiple reasons have been identified for this drop:

The fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low in 2024 with fewer than 1.6 children being born per woman, federal data released Thursday shows. The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all.

Kristen Lee, teaching professor of behavioral science at Northeastern, provides additional explanations:

‘The United States used to have one of the highest rates of teen fertility among all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries,’ she said. ‘There was a lot of active public policy to decrease teen birth rates, things like better access to contraceptives. … Some of the decline is just people who would have had babies when they were 17 or 16 might now have babies in the future. … If everyone’s having babies later in life, our statistics aren’t good at capturing that.’ But data suggests women are not just having children later as they prioritize education or career but are skipping parenthood altogether. There is a long list of reasons people might not have kids, Lee said, from concerns over the amount of time they’d need to invest in parenting to worries over the future of the planet thanks to climate change and global instability. Others might defer because they can’t afford to take time off work, either financially or professionally. Some simply don’t want children. [snip] Changing attitudes certainly play a role in this trend. For one, the stigma surrounding not having children has decreased. Gender roles are changing too, with women pursuing higher education and careers. These things take quite a bit of time: to finish school, particularly bachelor’s degrees or more, and then to launch a career. This can lead to a delay in childbearing. Demographers know that a delay in childbearing can lead to fewer children than one had intended to have. This is an empirical fact. Or sometimes no children.

It’s clear that our declining birthrate shows no sign of reversing the trend. That conclusion could lead to serious impacts on our country, culturally and economically:

The big takeaway from the trends we are seeing is that low birthrates “age” the population as a whole. We have an aging population. People might say, “So?” It can have a large effect in that there will be fewer working-age adults and more elderly. For one, economists know that this is not good for the economy. Also, consider Social Security, a program designed to financially help support our older population. Fewer working-age adults, who are paying for Social Security, does not bode well for the Social Security program and the financial security of our older population.

But the consequences of these trends are even more ominous than might be obvious from the data. There is a cultural phenomenon occurring that suggests that women are not only not having babies, but they are deciding to take a different approach to childrearing: acquiring reborn babies.

What is a “reborn baby”? Production of these dolls is becoming a homegrown market:

The labor that goes into creating well-made silicone dolls is significant. With products including paint, finishing powder, glass eyes and hair, the supplies for one doll can easily run over $500. Well-made silicone dolls can easily sell for over $5,000, because the labor that goes into them is significant. Most dollmakers start with a basic kit from one of the online retailers such as Bountiful Baby. Then they personalize it through a painstaking process of tweaking and painting, often in dialogue with the client, who may have photos of what they want the doll to look like. Vinyl kits usually start around $100 and silicone kits run about $200. With products including paint, finishing powder, glass eyes and hair, the supplies for one doll can easily run over $500.

Women provide many reasons for purchasing these dolls: some of them are doll collectors; others are recovering from the loss of a child; still others treat the doll as if it were a real baby, as they feed, diaper and put it in a stroller to go on walks. But some of the most alarming descriptions appeared in a reborn industry magazine:

• They look and feel like a real baby and not a factory painted doll.

• A Reborn doll can be customized to look like a real baby in your family.

• For some, they provide long term companionship.

• They invoke an emotional response, after all they look and feel like a real baby.

At a time when loneliness, isolation and depression are endemic in our country, many women are looking for a guaranteed relationship. A reborn baby can’t reciprocate the affection and care the woman may offer, but since this appears to be a strange fantasy of the woman’s, she probably doesn’t mind, or imagines the doll reciprocates.

In fact, think of all the benefits of a reborn baby: the baby won’t wake up crying in the middle of the night; you don’t need to change its diapers; you can feed it whenever it’s convenient for you; you can imagine that it is the “best” kind of baby, one who is cheerful and smart and sweet. Your relationship with it is imaginary, and can provide many of the benefits and none of the drawbacks of raising a real baby.

One report estimates the reborn baby market at $200 million in 2023, with growing trends in greater realism and high-quality dolls.

There is no data to distinguish collectors from therapists, or healthy women from mentally unhealthy women, but joined with the declining birthrate, cultural loneliness and isolation, it’s worth considering the impact of the growing reborn population.

[Originally published at American Thinker]