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There aren't enough children being born. There's statistical evidence to support that statement, but I have better proof. My wife took our 16-month-old daughter (Meg) next door to see my nephew, who was hanging out with a friend who had just graduated from high school. The friend got excited when he saw Meg. "Who's that!" he asked, pointing at Meg. "Can she walk? What can she do?" When my wife put Meg down and walked away, thus forcing coy Meg to catch her with the straight-legged trot favored by toddlers, the young man jumped out of his seat, laughing and pointing: "Look at that! Look at that!"

It was a charming scene. Yet kind of sad. He apparently had never been around a toddler. It's not the first time my wife and I have gotten that type of reaction from teenagers. As far as those young adults are concerned, the world of the humanitarians G.K. Chesterton opposed has come true: a world without babies. "I might inform those humanitarians who have a nightmare of new and needless babies that if the recent decline in the birth-rate were continued for a certain time, it might end in there being no babies at all; which would console them very much."

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