Where Have All the Children Gone?

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer news article ("Not Children’s Play, 9/17/2017") bemoaned the fact that children specialty stores are closing and begging the question “Are there enough babies and young children to support existing retailers and newcomers?”  Well, finally somebody noticed?

  Of course, the finger is pointed at a falling birth rate, as well as that #1 fiend -- the internet -- which allows e-tailers to sell their wares cheaper than brick and mortar stores, thereby causing a drop in sales at stores such as The Children's Place, Justice and Gymboree, which is closing hundreds of stores in an effort to survive after bankruptcy.  And Toys “R” Us (owner of Babies “R” Us) also has filed for bankruptcy claiming it needs to revamp its long-term debt.

But let’s peel the onion back a little further.  What fueled that falling birth rate? Would more customers have helped the bottom line?  They certainly could not have hurt it.  In 2014 the U.S. estimated abortion rate was 926,190 (National Right to Life).   Is there even a remote possibility that if these stores had the opportunity to peddle their wares to almost a million more children that year (and in the previous years since Rose v Wade) that perhaps – just perhaps – the children’s market for goods would have remained sustainable?

Gymboree was founded in 1976.  Think of all the children that were aborted that year (1,179,000).  Conceivably, their deaths might have played a part in Gymboree’s ultimate demise as these aborted children would not grow up to have their own children and then grandchildren, so the lack of original sales was then compounded.   It’s sad to talk of children in a dollars and cents connotation and maybe this is an over simplification of more complex economic issues that these businesses faced.  However, it is noted in a Life News.com 2010 article that Toys “R” Us was dropped from Life Decisions International’s  boycott  list once the store stopped funding Planned Parenthood.  That cannot excuse the fact that prior to that time, Toys “R” Us, a company which relies solely on sales of children’s toys, clothes, videos, etc., was donating to Planned Parenthood,  an organization that takes very seriously its task to remove those same children from society.  I did not matriculate at Wharton, nor do I have a Harvard MBA, but I have to question the strategic thinking of the Board of Directors that thought that was a good idea. 

And while many of these children’s stores may have had no affiliation with Planned Parenthood, how many of them actually took a front-and-center stand against abortion?  Perhaps if the titans of these children-centric companies had spoken up for the rights of their future customers, they would not be facing extinction now.