Saving Civilization Starts with a Date

Part one of a four-part series on dating from Katy Faust

We are living through a demographic crisis experienced by every developed nation — shrinking birth rates, delayed marriage, and collapsing family formation. Politicians argue about tax credits. Economists propose housing subsidies. Governments experiment with cash bonuses and childcare programs.

None of it addresses the root problem.

This is not primarily an economic crisis. It is not a housing crisis first. It is not an education crisis. It is a relational crisis. More specifically, it is a dating crisis.

In this four-part series, I (Katy) am going to argue that the fertility collapse begins long before the first baby, before the wedding, and even before engagement.

It begins with the disappearance of dating.

In Part I, we’ll examine the data: collapsing teen dating rates, a “dating recession” among marriage-minded young adults, delayed marriage, and how family breakdown and digital life have quietly rewired an entire generation away from embodied connection.

In Part II, we’ll rebuild the pipeline. What does healthy dating actually look like? What should parents encourage in middle school, high school, and college? What practical steps can families take to lower the pressure and raise the courage needed for young men and women to pair off?

In Part III, we’ll examine what it means to evaluate a relationship wisely. How do you determine whether this is someone worthy of lifelong vows? What truly predicts durability — and what doesn’t?

And in Part IV, we’ll talk about guardrails and priorities: why worldview alignment matters, what parents must communicate to their daughters, especially, and how churches can intentionally cultivate a marriage-forming culture again.

Civilizations are not sustained by incentives. They are sustained by families. And families begin with a date. Let’s start at the beginning.

PART I

The Fertility Crisis Is a Dating Crisis

I recently returned from London, where we had an advisory board meeting for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. In the “social fabric” stream, the primary concern is cratering birth rates. A 2.1 fertility rate is needed to simply maintain a population. The United States is at roughly 1.6, most of Europe is around 1.4–1.5, Japan about 1.2, China near 1.0, and South Korea a stunning 0.7–0.8.¹

There is no financial incentive that has restored sustained replacement-level fertility in any developed nation. Scandinavia has tried it. Japan has tried it. Hungary has tried it. Child allowances. Tax credits. Housing subsidies. Cash bonuses. Some policies produce modest or short-term increases. None has delivered a durable demographic recovery.¹

Across developed nations, fertility closely tracks marriage rates. Births outside marriage have also fallen, not risen, in recent years. The fertility collapse is not being offset by nonmarital childbearing. When marriage falls, births fall with it.⁷

The only factor that consistently correlates with higher birth rates is higher marriage rates, especially marrying earlier.

“According to one model, an average age for marriage of twenty-four yields a birth rate of 1.8, but an average age of thirty yields a 1.55 birth rate.”²

Demographers consistently note that delaying marriage compresses childbearing into fewer reproductive years, lowering total completed fertility even when the desired family size remains constant.¹ And here is what makes this especially tragic: surveys consistently show that most young adults still say they want two or more children. The collapse is not one of desire. It is one of formation.

The problem is, most Western nations have cratering marriage rates.

In 1970, about 59% of American adults were married. Today, that number is closer to 47%.³ The median age at first marriage is now roughly 30 for men and 28 for women — up from the early 20s in 1970.⁴ Some see signs of hope because divorce rates have fallen. But fewer families are breaking down because fewer families are forming to begin with. What most fail to see is that the marriage crisis isn’t primarily a housing crisis, a financial crisis, or an education crisis.

It’s a dating crisis.

The Dating Collapse

In the United States, the majority of births still occur within marriage, and nonmarital birth rates have also declined in recent years alongside falling marriage rates.⁷

People have fewer babies without marriage.

Marriage does not happen accidentally. It requires repeated, intentional relationships. What we used to call “dating.” But there’s less and less dating these days. In 1976, roughly 86% of 12th graders reported having ever gone on a date. By the mid-2010s, that number had fallen to the low 60s.⁵ That’s a dating drought, not just a decline.

But the problem is not just high schoolers.

The Institute for Family Studies reports that among 22–35-year-olds who expect to marry someday, 74% of women and 64% of men said they had not dated or had dated only a few times in the past year.⁶ These are young adults in their prime dating years who want to get married. Yet they’re not dating.

IFS calls it a dating recession.⁶

One factor is that widespread family breakdown makes children of single parents or divorce more hesitant to form and maintain their own families. When large numbers of children grow up amid familial instability, they carry more skepticism about marriage into adulthood—showing lower commitment and confidence in the permanence of marriage, a greater tendency to choose cohabitation, and a higher likelihood of avoiding marriage altogether, which depresses overall marriage formation in the next generation.⁹ ¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹²

Another factor is that we have removed the procreative requirement for marriage- it need not include a man and a woman, it can now be between any two adults (soon more, because every argument for gay marriage also applies to polygamy). During the Obergefell deliberations, one group of scholars argued that legalizing same-sex marriage was correlated with a roughly 5-9% decline in birth rates. That connection makes sense. If marriage no longer acknowledges that sex makes babies, babies need their mother and father, and marriage is the social institution designed to bind them together, then marriage becomes optional to procreation, and it holds that there’s nothing special about procreation at all.

But it’s not just legal changes. The dating drought is widespread. The primary explanation is that the digital world has moved young people’s lives online to such a degree that many struggle to have meaningful in-person connections at all.

Chat groups have replaced hangouts. Split-second Snaps have replaced in-person selfies. Their classroom is digital. Their friendships are in a Fortnite chat group. They don’t even need to talk to anyone when they check out at the grocery store.

And they’re not even having sex.

CDC data show that in 1991, 54% of high school students reported ever having had sexual intercourse. In 2021, that number fell to 30%, and in 2023 it was 32% — the lowest levels recorded since tracking began.⁸

While you may think it’s a good thing that fewer teens are having sex, don’t celebrate too soon. Many have just transferred their sexual energy to consuming or producing porn via OnlyFans. Better for out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates, but worse if we ever want our teens to have healthy in-person relationships with the opposite sex.

Research shows a broader decline in adolescent “adult activities” — driving, working, and in-person socializing have all fallen significantly compared to prior generations.⁵ Teens are getting their licenses later. They are working fewer hours. They are spending less time face-to-face with peers.

Dating requires courage, resilience, and embodied risk. Digital life removes all three. Young adults struggle to exist in person with others — let alone with someone they’re attracted to. Relationships involve skill, practice, and sacrifice.

When teens don’t have opportunities for in-person conversations, they never build the muscles needed for vulnerability, courage, humor, rejection, recovery, and discernment needed for a relationship. Add to that the challenge of interacting with a member of the opposite sex you have a crush on, and many simply opt out. We have raised a generation that not only doesn’t know how to date, but they also don’t know how to be in the same room.

The Christian Overcorrection

Parents of Gen X — especially Christian parents — were panicked about hookup culture. The early 1990s marked the peak of teen sexual activity in CDC tracking data.⁸

So much so that they emphatically told their children to “kiss dating goodbye.” The problem is, parents’ attempts to prevent sin may have inadvertently prevented skill. We eliminated dating instead of reforming it. We told them to avoid the shallow end of the pool — and now they won’t get in at all. Now we are in a place where many young adults avoid dating altogether. They are paralyzed, hyper-cautious, or expect perfection before even beginning.

We told them dating was dangerous. They believed us. And the price may be their own ability to get married and have children.

Christians, of all people, should get this right. When we marry, we have more children than our secular peers. Evangelicals and Catholics average about 2.3 children. Latter-day Saints average more than 3. The religiously unaffiliated average closer to 1.6. Regular religious attendance consistently predicts larger families. That’s because healthy marriage and generous childbearing require a clear understanding of the male–female union, a conviction that children are a blessing, and a willingness to trade short-term sacrifice for long-term harvest.

We need to update our dating apologetic. No more kissing dating goodbye. We need to encourage and coach our children to kiss dating hello.

We need to model healthy dating, marriage, and parenting in our own communities and then show the rest of the world how it’s done.

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In Part II, we move from diagnosis to reconstruction - and outline practical steps to help a generation learn how to date again. In Part III, we look beyond infatuation to worldview alignment and character.

Saving Civilization Part II - Restoring the Structure from the Foundation

Saving Civilization Part III - Dating for Evaluation, Not Intoxication

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1. OECD, Society at a Glance 2024: Fertility Trends Across the OECD.

2. American Reformer / Alliance for Responsible Citizenship demographic model discussion.

3. U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Marital Status Tables.

4. U.S. Census Bureau, Median Age at First Marriage (2023 release).

5. Jean M. Twenge & Heejung Park, “The Decline in Adult Activities Among U.S. Adolescents,” Child Development (2017).

6. Institute for Family Studies, “Today’s Young Adults Are in a Dating Recession.”

7. CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Nonmarital Births Data Brief.

8. CDC, Youth Risk Behavior Survey Trend Report (1991–2023).

9. Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Understanding the Divorce Cycle: The Children of Divorce in Their Own Marriages (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

10. Scott W. Whitton et al., “Effects of Parental Divorce on Marital Commitment and Confidence,” Journal of Family Psychology (2008).

11. Paul R. Amato, “The Intergenerational Transmission of Union Instability,” Journal of Marriage and Family (2016).

12. Charlotte A. Johnston et al., “Family Structure Patterns from Childhood through Adolescence and Early Adult Union Formation,” Journal of Family Issues (2019).

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    Them Before Us is a global movement committed to defending children’s right to their mother and father. We believe that adult desires should never come at the expense of a child’s fundamental needs.

    We are not professional lobbyists or political insiders. We are ordinary people with an extraordinary conviction: children must come first in every conversation about marriage, family, and fertility. We exist to make one thing clear: when adults sacrifice for children, society thrives. When children are forced to sacrifice for adults, everyone pays the price.

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