Basil Jarrett | About that article last week on boys and birth rates

Since my column last week, where I argued that Jamaica’s population crisis is mostly a result of our chronic failure to properly invest in our boys, I’ve heard from just about everyone. In that piece, I suggested that our declining fertility rate isn’t merely a reflection of our women’s lifestyle choice or economic hardship, but a symptom of a much deeper social imbalance, where too many of our boys are underperforming, underprepared, and underwhelming as partners, fathers, and citizens.

Since then, my phone, inbox and social media have been ringing and pinging off the hook.

Some messages were supportive. Some were angry. One simply said, “Fix up yuh argument, boss.” Apparently, I touched a nerve. Or twelve. Women felt I was blaming them for Jamaica’s falling birth rate. Men phoned and WhatsApp-ed me to say they were tired of being painted with the same broad, lazy brush. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a very kind gentleman messaged me to say, “Basil, you’re brave. But the truth always stirs hornets.” Well, consider the hive well and truly stirred.

I’d like a moment then to respond to everyone. Because as a writer, I value disagreement. It means people are thinking. And that’s always a good thing.

FIRST UP, THE MEN

The overarching sentiment from the testosterone side of the room was “Why are you blaming us for the birth rate crisis?” A fair point, I admit. It’s easy to come across that way when the headline reads “Our Boys Are the Problem.” Yes, it was provocative and deliberately so. But what I was trying to say is that our national investment in boys and men has been dangerously insufficient, and that this is now showing up in every aspect of society, from crime, to education, to, yes, fertility rates.

I wasn’t pointing fingers. I was merely sounding an alarm that we have abandoned too many of our boys. And many of them have responded in kind, by abandoning school, abandoning purpose, and in this case, abandoning fatherhood.

I know many hardworking, responsible Jamaican men of course. They’re coaching football, fixing pipes, raising daughters, hustling, driving trucks, planting food, and mentoring youth. I see them. I salute them. But I’m also asking, where is the national strategy to multiply those men? This isn’t just about blame. It’s about the need for a blueprint.

STEREOTYPES AND TRAUMA

“You’re stereotyping us as jobless and violent”, was another refrain. I hear that too. I really do. The stats don’t apply to all but they do apply to too many. The 2023 JNCVS report didn’t say that all Jamaican men are violent or unemployed. But it did say that young men 18–24 are the least engaged in the labour force and most likely to be on the wrong end of a police report. That should concern all of us, including the very men who are doing the right things. Let’s not waste time defending what isn’t being attacked. If you’re one of the good guys, and there are many, this article wasn’t about you. Then again, maybe it is. Because we need your help to mentor the others.

“You’re not talking about the trauma we go through as boys” was another response. Now that’s a critique I accept without defence. Because there’s none. I didn’t say enough about how early trauma, absent fathers, harsh school environments, and broken homes shape our boys. So I’ll fix that and say it now: We will never truly fix our men unless we heal the traumatised boys inside them. And that means better mental health services, more empathy and more early, sustained support.

AND NOW TO THE WOMEN

Quite a number of supportive women did reach out to me to say “yes, you are quite right. The quality of men on offer today leaves much to be desired”. But not all. Many of my female readers did fire back saying that I was putting the burden of reproduction on them. After losing many of those arguments, (yes, I should have known better than to argue with a woman over her reproductive choices), I see how that line could have landed wrong.

When I said that women were “opting out of motherhood” because of the quality of male partners, it was an observation rooted in data. If women are thriving in school, out-earning men, and out-migrating them in droves, and if they’re saying, “I’d rather build a life alone than settle”, then we should listen and try to understand their position. But the point isn’t to pressure women into motherhood. It’s to ask why so many feel they’re better off doing it all on their own.

One of my detractors criticised me that I sounded as if I was saying women’s success is the problem. Absolutely not. I wrote, and I meant, that our girls are thriving. And that’s something to celebrate, not downplay. But progress can’t be one-sided. If girls are going up and boys are sliding down, that’s a recipe for societal imbalance. We have invested heavily in girls with scholarships, mentorships, girls’ STEM camps, leadership programmes, etc. And rightly so. But now we need to bring our boys up to meet them, not ask our girls to lower their bar. That’s not equity. That’s regression.

MARRIAGE AND BABIES AREN’T EVERYONE’S GOAL

Ah, that decades-old argument. Let’s be clear. I’m not saying that they should be. Everyone gets to define his own version of success. But from a national development perspective, declining birth rates and collapsing populations do matter. If we want to avoid a future where we’re a nation of empty schools and overworked pension systems, we need to understand why people are no longer choosing to form families, and what role culture, economics, and gender dynamics play in that.

So, where does that leave us? Well for one, it leaves us with a very complex conversation. Despite the furore, I still maintain that our boys need urgent intervention. I still believe too many of our girls are walking away from relationships because they feel they have to carry too much. And I still believe that our fertility crisis is a societal reflection, not just a medical one.

But I also believe, and now more than ever, that we have to tread carefully in how we talk about these things. Because beneath the stats are people. And behind every critique is someone trying to be heard. So thank you, every caller, commenter, and critic. You’ve sharpened the conversation and stirred the hornet’s nest. And that, I believe, is a win in itself.

Major Basil Jarrett is the director of communications at the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and crisis communications consultant. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrett. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com