In this post, I just want to make a small point about the Church’s report of new children of record in the annual statistical report. Here’s a graph showing annual end-of-year counts since 2010.
The count was flat for several years, but then started falling consistently from year to year starting in 2015. And then of course it fell off a cliff in 2020, going from 94,000 all the way to 65,000, a drop of over 30%. (For the rest of this post, I’m going to abbreviate thousands as “K,” so 94K is 94,000.)
It seems clear that the 2020 decline was caused by COVID. But there are (at least) two possible mechanisms that could be driving the effect of COVID on new children of record. One is that COVID affected birth rates. I had the idea in the back of my head that economic downturns are often associated with declining birth rates, and a quick Google turns up at least one paper that suggests that that’s true. However, given the nine month length of human gestation and the fact that COVID was officially declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, it seems pretty unlikely that couples were changing their childbearing plans and having the effects show up before the end of the year.
The other possible mechanism by which COVID could affect children of record is through church activity. The children of record count is effectively a count of children born to or adopted by LDS families where at least one parent is active enough to get them recorded on Church records. With COVID pushing church meetings to be online, or suspended entirely, it’s not surprising that families were less diligent about recording their births and adoptions with their local units than they would have been in ordinary times. So I think the big drop from 2019 to 2020 makes sense.
What is striking, though, is that the 2020 to 2021 recovery is smaller than I would expect. New children of record rebounded from 65K to 89K, which seems like a healthy gain. But if my guess that people were just lax in recording new births and adoptions is right, there should have been a big backlog from 2020 that got recorded as people largely returned to attending church in person in 2021. Really, the 2021 count should have exceeded 2019 if this was the case.
Here’s a simple way of looking at it that makes me think the rebound is small. In the five years before COVID, the average annual change was a decline of 4.1%. If we apply a 4.1% decline on the 2019 count, we get 90K as the expected 2020 count. That would mean a backlog of 25K (90K expected minus 65K actual for 2020) going into 2021. If there’s another 4.1% decline the next year, the expected count for 2021 is 87K, which is really close to the actual count of 89K. But what happened to the 25K backlog if the difference is only 2K (89K vs. 87K)? Well, maybe in the second year of the pandemic, people really did have fewer kids. Let’s be aggressive and double the annual decline, to 8.2%. That would mean an expected count for 2021 of 83K, which only puts the actual at 6K more than the expected. Still, most of the 25K backlog has vanished.
New children of record are a function of two things: birth (and adoption) rate by Church members, and activity level, as inactive members are much less likely to get their kids’ names onto Church records. I suspect what the weak rebound in 2021 shows is that the activity rate has fallen markedly and at least somewhat permanently. Probably a bunch of people who stopped going to church in March 2020 when we all stopped together are just not coming back. (Anecdotally, I definitely know of people for whom this is true.) So perhaps the backlog from 2020 won’t actually turn out to be 25K, but something more like 15K or 20K. If activity has fallen, then the 2021 count of 89K might actually include much of that backlog, which would mean that future expectations for new children of record would be even lower, as the backlog clear was a one-time event. So maybe the 2021 count of new births and adoptions could be say 72K from 2021 and 17K backlogged from 2020.
Of course, the backlog probably isn’t entirely clear yet. There are members who are older, or immunocompromised, or who are probably waiting for COVID to be more fully resolved to return to in-person church. Also, as the same small children who have been born or adopted recently are also at greater risk if they’re too young to be vaccinated, it’s possible that parents of these young children are overrepresented among members who have not yet returned in person (and therefore maybe haven’t had their children recorded by the Church) but still plan to do so eventually. I do wonder, though, how big this group really is, as people who appear to be returning slowly might end up just revealing that they’re people who aren’t ever coming back.
I’ll be very interested to see the new children of record count next year. If it’s close to 2021, that will suggest that the backlog took longer to resolve than I had thought. I’m expecting it’s more likely, though, that it will be markedly lower than the 2021 number, suggesting that the backlog has cleared, and we’re entering a new, post-COVID era of even lower church activity levels.
That’s really interesting. I appreciate the statistical analysis you do for these posts. Slipping activity levels would explain the lower child blessing rate. Another explanation may be that not having a public baby blessing turns out to be a really convenient thing. Maybe some of these new mothers realize they don’t want to have to host a baby blessing. I’m in Utah, and blessing your baby means you have a newborn and a house full of relatives who all want to hold the baby.
My first baby was blessed in sacrament meeting with full turnout from both sides of the family. That was really stressful. My second baby was blessed with only three people present in unusual circumstances. But that one was so nice that I just didn’t have my third baby blessed at all. I had to ask the ward clerk to create a membership record without the baby blessing.
I’m guessing that some of the reduction in baby blessings might be mothers realizing that they don’t want to host a family party with a brand new baby. And I concluded that without even needing to worry about Uncle Weirdo who refuses to get vaccinated!
This is clearly a reflection of members voting with their feet and walking out the door.
The church continues to fight culture wars that were lost long ago. President Oaks keeps beating the dead horse of LGBTQ fear. Young people don’t buy it, and they don’t want it. The same goes for the leadership’s attempt to keep women from even discussing a co-equal and loving Heavenly Mother.
Basically, members are having their babies blessed because they see no reason to remain. Instead of berating them, the leaders should find out why they are leaving and give them a reason to stay.
Janey, thanks for pointing that out. That makes total sense now that you say it that people might find baby blessings at home far preferable to baby blessings at church, and that could drive the lower numbers of members reporting their new babies to get listed on Church records in the first place.
Ivy, sadly, I agree. GAs seem pretty uninterested in finding out why people are leaving. They’re already convinced that they know, and that more pressure is the way to stop people from slipping out the door.
With the cost of homes and child care, many couples cannot afford to have more than one or two children. Many mothers are working full-time. This could be a factor as well.
Oh, that’s an excellent point, Chris. I think that the cost of having and raising children is definitely contributing to the overall decline in new children of record across the past eight or so years. I hadn’t thought of it as a special cause of declining birth rates during the pandemic, but it certainly could be, with inflation, especially in house prices.
It’s no surprise couples are only having 1-2, MAYBE 3 children with skyrocketing costs and stagnant wages. Most LDS families I know say they’re done with 2 kids. Some have 3 children, but to have 4+ is considered unusual. LDS mothers entering the workforce full-time has also contributed to smaller families.
I’m curious to see how this will change the LDS Church’s landscape in the coming years. Less children equals smaller Primary and YM/YW programs, less involvement with EQ and RS, and no one available or willing to staff those callings or put on ward activities, fundraisers, parties, and other events with both parents working full-time and juggling the demands of family/personal life. I can’t imagine the single/never married, divorced, and widowed members being happy about taking on the heavy lifting, either. It’s very frustrating for them when married members assume that they don’t have lives outside of church and work due to their single status.
It’s also hard not to wonder if the general authorities are actually aware of this ticking time bomb or if they’re opting to bury their heads in the sand. Sad if they’re doing the latter – so much can be fixed and made better if they opted to get feedback from church members.
I don’t have children (yet), but I’m pro blessing your baby at home with just family members and close friends vs. blessing your baby in sacrament meeting with the entire ward in attendance. I hate the idea of what is supposed to be a sacred moment for me and my family being ruined by inconsiderate members who let their bratty children cry, scream, throw tantrums, and walk/run up and down the aisles during baby blessings, missionary farewell/homecoming talks, and sacrament meetings in general. It is rude and it is disappointing that church leaders on all levels have not come down on those who engage in and enable this behavior.
Add me to your anecdotal evidence. I was alreading reading blogs like yours for a couple of years, but during lockdown is when I decided to leave the church and find another.
Even so, is it possible that the 2020 number was driven by avoiding blessing the babies, and the 2021 nunber was driven mainly by a drop in birth rate for that year? I wonder how those years compare with the national birthrate trends.
I think that with the world and the covid situation still feeling so volitile, the 2023 number will be what tells us about the trend going forward postcovid. Having children is (among other things) the ultimate act of hope in the future, and it can be scary out there right now.
Great points, JC, about how declining birth rates will or could affect the Church overall. As you said, the GAs must clearly see these issues coming. I’m sure this is what drives things like Neil L. Andersen’s talks about having more kids and being more opposed to abortion.
Hedwig, thanks for adding to my anecdata! You could be right that 2020 was just backlogged and then birth rates were way down in 2021. It will be interesting to see the 2022 number in a year or so!