The symptom of a cultural illness is often also a cause of that same illness. For example, violence begets distrust, which begets violence, and poverty begets ill health, which begets poverty.
And as it turns out, childlessness begets perpetual adolescence, which begets childlessness.
This vicious circle has been elucidated in, of all places, a research note by Bank of America. Hasbro, which makes toys for children, is shifting to making fantasy card games for 30-somethings.
Here are the details:
Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game that is also a fantasy role-playing and battle game. The median age of a Magic player is 35.
It is the shining light for Hasbro in 2025, Bank of America researchers concluded, thanks in part to “an expanding player base.”
“Retailers look to trading cards & collectibles categories to expand their customer demographic profile and offset softness in traditional toys from a decline in addressable population,” the note continues.
Translation: There are fewer and fewer children every year, and more and more childless 30-somethings with time, mental energy, and disposable income to dedicate to this sort of leisure.
“The population aged 0-12 peaked in 2016 in the U.S. and is forecast to decline through 2036,” the research note comments. “Target continues to lean into trading cards (which includes Magic: The Gathering) where sales are up 70% YTD, and on track to be $1B+ this year.”
Likewise, “the global video game market growing at [high single-digit percentages] since 2010, compared to [high single-digit percentage] growth in the traditional toy market.”
Again, this shift in the leisure market is a fruit, so to speak, of our culture’s infecundity for the past decade and a half. The U.S. birth rate has been falling for 15 years, and we have fewer children than we did a decade ago.
But this market shift isn’t brand new, and we also need to see it as a cause of our cultural shift away from family formation.
The more our culture is set up for adults to live as pleasure- and leisure-seeking individuals, the greater the apparent opportunity cost of commitment, marriage, and child-rearing. The less the economy, including the retailers, the manufacturers, and the marketers, is oriented toward parents and children, the less the idea of family arises in the imagination of those people.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NOTHING IS REAL?
And the more our culture habituates young men into perpetual adolescence, the less our culture habituates them into worthy husbands and fathers.
This is yet another way low birth rates beget low birth rates: through the game aisle at Target.
