I had sometimes given thought to the low birth rate crisis in the U.S., but it wasn’t until I was unable to put two tables together at a Chipotle restaurant to accommodate my family of six that I decided to give it much deeper thought.

If you run into my family at a grocery store, you will see my husband pushing the grocery cart with our toddler in the cart, me pushing the double stroller with our twins on board, and our six-year-old walking alongside us. We have learned to factor extra time into our trips because we will, without fail, get stopped by others who either want to admire our twins or tell us how great it is to see a big family. We will also, without fail, hear, “You have your hands full!”

From time to time, we will get the “Wow, that’s a lot of kids!” comment, but we don’t find offense in it. At times, it can be difficult to go out as a family because it’s not easy to find places that will accommodate a family with four young children. For example, restaurants don’t always have comfortable seating for large families with kids, and not all customers enjoy sharing spaces with children.

As our culture continues to shift toward anti-family values, the low birth rate crisis in our country is becoming more obvious.

My kids have recently become obsessed with the movie “Boss Baby.” The movie is about a “corporate” baby who comes down to earth on a mission to stop Puppy Co.‘s plan to replace babies with puppies. There is a scene in the movie wherein Boss Baby presents to his peers a pie chart showing how adults’ love toward puppies is overtaking adults’ love toward babies.

That scene perfectly demonstrates the anti-family, anti-children culture we live in.

The term DINK (dual income, no kids) became popular on TikTok in recent years. This term describes working couples who choose not to have children. The couples boast about how much free time and money they have because they have chosen a childless lifestyle.

Childless women deny their biological instinct to nurture but find they cannot run away from it. Instead of following their biological instinct to nurture a baby, they replace the baby with a pet or a plant. This is why we see women calling themselves “cat moms” or “plant moms” and insisting that mothering a feline is the same as mothering an infant that forms in a human’s womb.

Both sexes are influenced by culture to focus on the self and worry about starting a family later or not at all. Young women are taught that children are obstacles to lucrative careers or higher education. Young men are told they need six-figure salaries to support a wife and children.

Evie Magazine perfectly summarizes the anti-family culture: “The societal message is clear: Children are seen as inconveniences rather than blessings, and this view is reflected in the policies and attitudes that pervade American life.”

Along with the anti-family culture comes the structure of modern American cities. From New York to Los Angeles to Nashville, cities are not built to support thriving families. Developers focus on building rental apartments and condos, leaving single-family homes behind. Those who are hoping to start a family or already have a growing family find it difficult to find single-family homes in cities, and if they do find one, the home is often out of their budget.

As cities continue to become more dense, climate activists will continue to screech the false narrative that our planet is overpopulated. Though this narrative is false and can be easily debunked, it has worked well in convincing younger generations not to have children. Climate change hysteria is taught to students in public schools, and it becomes an engrained doctrine by the time students reach university. However, entrepreneur and maverick Elon Musk, who worries about global warming but is also a realist, disagrees and believes that the low birth rate crisis is far more dangerous than climate change.

So, how does our country fix the low birth rate? It’s a big conversation that we must engage in, and it will include a change in or introduction of policies. But for now, Chipotle could help by not screwing its tables to the floor so that big families can enjoy a meal together and not be split between two separate tables.