Why aren’t Americans having more babies? Inquiring minds — by which I mean, a certain breed of nervy social conservative — want to know. New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat, for whom today’s historically low birthrates are a national catastrophe, says the answer is not the dire economic straits faced by millennials but something soggier and more sentimental. “Deeper forces than the financial crisis may keep American fertility rates depressed,” he speculates darkly in a representative column. “The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion.” The column in which this plangent cri de coeur appeared bears the subtle title “More Babies, Please.”