No, the solution is not simply to have more children

Having children is not a political program. It is a consequence of culture, community, and meaning. And that is where the struggle lies.

Photo by Jessica Rockowitz on Unsplash

This essay was originally published in Swedish and is based on a Swedish context. However, its core message is just as true for other Western countries affected by mass immigration.

I am traveling this week and am currently in Denmark, so I will not be able to record a podcast episode this week. I hope this text makes up for it!

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“Could it be that we need many Swedish children first and foremost, and that the quality of the children comes second?” asks a reader, continuing: “Personally, I don't want a society where people are prepared to walk over dead bodies to get the best children possible.”

It's an honest question. And a common one.

When talking about population exchange and demographic collapse, many people naturally think in terms of birth rates. If we just have more Swedish children—as many as possible, as quickly as possible—then we can reverse the trend. Then we can counter mass immigration with our own growth and, in the long run, “win back” the country.

It is an instinctive reaction. But unfortunately, it is also a simplistic one.

Firstly, reality does not work that way. Secondly, it is not only unrealistic – it can lead us completely astray in our strategic thinking. If we really want to understand the demographic crisis we find ourselves in, we must dare to look at it with a cool head.

Not to lose our humanity, but to take responsibility.

That is what we must do here.

What does demographic change mean?

Demographic change, also known as The Great Replacement, is not something that may happen in the future. It is happening right now. And it is not happening gradually, but at an accelerating pace.

In many of our cities, Swedes are already in the minority – especially among young people. This is not only true of suburbs in large cities, but of entire municipalities where immigration has changed the composition of the population over decades. Official statistics from Sweden show that over 32% of the population in Sweden today has a foreign background, and the proportion is increasing every year.

However, this figure is probably an underestimate, as many third-generation non-Swedes are not included.

If this trend continues, Swedes will be a minority in their own country within one or two generations. This is not an opinion, it is mathematics. Projections from both government agencies and independent analysts show that we are already on that curve and that it will be difficult to reverse, even with drastic political measures.

This is the reality we must understand before we talk about “solutions.” We don't have time to hope that an increase in the birth rate will miraculously save us when we are already on our way to becoming a minority. What we are facing requires more than optimism. It requires strategy.

Why we cannot win the baby-making competition

When someone suggests that we should respond to population decline by having more children, they often overlook a crucial biological reality: not all people function in the same way. We have different strategies for survival, deeply embedded in our genetic and cultural heritage.

In biology, this is referred to as r/K selection theory – a model for understanding how different species, and to some extent even ethnic groups, reproduce.

• R selection means rapid reproduction with low individual investment. Many offspring, short life cycle, high mortality. The focus is on quantity. We see this strategy clearly in many African ethnic groups, where women give birth to many children in a short period of time.

• K-selection is the opposite: slow reproduction, few offspring, high investment in each child. The focus is on quality, stability, and long-term thinking. This is the strategy that characterizes Northern European peoples, such as Swedes.

We are therefore a K-selected people. Our biology, our culture, and our social structures are adapted to a life where children are not mass-produced, but cared for, shaped, and developed over a long period of time.

This means that we cannot—and should not—try to compete with R-selected peoples in terms of childbearing. It would be like asking an oak tree to grow like a dandelion.

The result would be disastrous.

Let's take a concrete example. Today, Swedish women give birth to fewer than two children on average. Somali women in Sweden give birth to between five and seven children. It's easy to say, “Then Swedish women should give birth to seven children too.” But that would require a societal change of a magnitude that we neither see nor have within reach.

For women to have that many children, they usually need to leave the labor market early, have children at a young age, have a low level of education, and live in societies where children are an asset, not a cost. It is not just a matter of biological differences, but of cultural and political structures. And we have been deliberately dismantling these structures for a whole century.

Rolling back all of this—removing access to higher education, closing the door to the labor market, abolishing preschools, and forcing women back into the home—would not only be ethically problematic. It would also never gain popular support. It is a fantasy world. A dead end.

So we need to think smarter. Our way forward cannot be to imitate r-selected strategies. That is not who we are. Not biologically, not culturally, not historically. We need to play our own game. And build something that suits us.

More children is not a strategy

Having children is necessary. It is a prerequisite for our survival as a people. But it is not a strategy. It is not a political response to population decline.

No civilization has ever saved itself by trying to win a race to have more children than ethnic groups that have children faster, earlier, and in greater numbers. Anyone who believes that we can “beat them in numbers” has already lost—not because of a lack of will, but because of a lack of time.

Demographic changes do not occur in a linear fashion. They scale. When a group reaches a critical mass—in residential areas, schools, municipalities—its own growth is amplified exponentially. This is why Swedes are already a minority in many parts of the country, even though mass immigration has only been going on for a few decades.

So we need to stop talking about quantity as if it were a solution. What we need to talk about is what kind of children we are having – and how we are building the society around them.

Children born into fragmented, individualized, urban environments with unfamiliar norms and minority status do not necessarily grow up feeling a sense of belonging to their people.

It is not enough for them to have Swedish genes – they must also have a Swedish way of life.

So yes, Swedish men and women should start families and have children. Not to compete in statistics, but because it is a natural part of a healthy population. But if we do not simultaneously build environments where our children can put down roots, develop, be protected, and be strengthened – then it does not matter how many there are.

We cannot afford to bring children into other people's worlds. We must start building our own.

What we can and should do

If we cannot win through quantity, and if society as a whole is heading in the wrong direction, what remains?

We build our own. We organize ourselves.

It is in ethnic enclaves and parallel structures that the future can be shaped. Not through the illusion that we will “take back Sweden” through parliamentary elections or birth rates, but by gathering our own people, on our own terms, and creating something that can survive the storm.

It starts with community. With densification. With moving closer to each other, finding each other, helping each other. Because that is where – close by, in everyday life – our children are shaped. Not through slogans or pamphlets, but through songs at the dinner table, flags on the wall, and safety in the neighborhood.

We don't need to chase statistics. We don't need to sacrifice our women to a reproductive machine. We need to build a way of life where it feels meaningful to start a family. Where children are not a project – but a given. Where responsibility, loyalty, and faith in the future grow from the ground we stand on, not from propaganda.

Our strength does not come from numbers. It comes from meaning.

And what we are building now, what we are gathering and holding together, is not just for us. It is for those who will come after us. Our children. Our grandchildren. They are the ones who will one day say that in the midst of decay, there were some who held on to something. Who did not give up. Who did not lose their minds in a society that did everything to break them.

And that is enough. That is where it begins.

This is not a quick fix

There is no quick fix. No election result, no TikTok appeal, no public campaign that will reverse the trend overnight.

We must start thinking in terms of generations, not quarters.

We need to start living as if the future matters—not just for the individual, but for our people as a whole. And we need to reclaim a concept that modernity has done its best to eradicate: responsibility.

Responsibility for our children. Responsibility for our ancestors. Responsibility for those yet to be born.

Having children is not the solution to population decline. But it is an answer—a necessary, inevitable, fundamental answer to a deeper understanding of who we are and what we want to preserve. It is an expression of vitality. Of faith in the future. Of loyalty beyond the individual.

But it is not enough for children to be born. They must be born into something.

Into communities. Into culture. Into structure. And that is where our real work lies. Not in counting births – but in building what makes those births meaningful.

We are not here to win with numbers. We are here to survive with the Swedish spirit intact. And perhaps, if we do it right, to create something better than what we lost.