If you want to know why declining birth rates are bad for humanity writ large, and the United States in particular, then Chapter 6 of Tim Carney’s new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, is definitely for you.

But if you are already convinced the world is a better place with more babies in it, then Chapter 14 on civilizational sadness will be more thought-provoking. Carney begins the chapter by noting that Germany, Italy, and Japan led the world in declining birth rates decades before other nations. “One couldn’t help but notice that the countries least interested in reproducing were the countries that had been on the wrong side of a world war or two in the previous century,” Carney writes.