By David Sloane -
The Conversation
The National Association of Funeral Directors has projected that by the year 2035, nearly 80% of Americans will opt for cremation.
When the first indoor cremation machine in the United States opened in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1876, its founder and operator, Francis LeMoyne, was severely criticized by the Catholic Church.
The new method was considered dangerous because it threatened traditional religious burial
and society's perception of morality and dignity.
Just under 100 years later — in 1963 — English writer Jessica Mitford wrote the popular book
The American Way of Death
to educate people on what she saw as the terrible commercialization of death and death. commemoration.
After strong criticism from funeral directors, cemeteries and other related professions, she ended with a plea in favor of cremation.
However,
in the late 1970s, only 5% of the population in the United States chose this method
, according to data from the Cremation Association of North America (CANA, for its acronym in English).
By
2020 that figure rose to more than 56%.
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What has motivated this dramatic change?
As an American historian and author of two books: “The Last Great Need: Cemeteries in American Society” and “Are Cemeteries Dead?” published 30 years later, I know that people are choosing cremation for a variety of reasons that vary from person to person. your circumstances.
Here I list the main ones:
Funerals and burials are expensive
Although the numbers depend on the source, according to the World Population Review, families in the United States
are spending an average of $8,000 on funerals
, rising from $6,700 in states like Mississippi to $15,000 in Hawaii.
That's compared to $1,000 or $2,000 for a direct cremation, which is one where the crematorium or funeral home doesn't offer any services other than cremation of the body, as noted by the Parting.com blog, which compares prices between the two. methods.
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However, many people do not choose the cheapest cremation.
The National Association of Funeral Directors noted that
the median price for funeral and cremation is just over $6,000—
certainly a savings, but not the huge figure that many websites promote.
Furthermore, this is not new: direct cremation was already a less expensive option than burials in 1960 or 1990.
environmental costs
The price clearly plays a role, but not so decisive in achieving such a rapid change in cultural practices.
A second factor is
environmental concern over conventional burials
, in which the body is placed in a coffin and buried or entombed.
Alexandra Harker, a landscape architect working to create sustainable environments in the United States, has described how concerns about burials in cemeteries range from land use to the methods by which the body is prepared and stored.
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Some people are increasingly upset about the environmental costs of a burial that requires the body to be embalmed, usually with formalin;
placed in a coffin, commonly made of wood or steel;
then moved to a concrete or iron vault with grass around it that is kept green with the use of pesticides.
Some 1.5 million burials or burials mean Americans are using tons of copper, bronze, and iron, more than 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid, and millions of feet of lumber.
Harker points out that, in 2008, a survey by the Cremation Association of North America revealed that
13% of the people consulted are concerned about the scarcity of land in cemeteries
, so they chose cremation because it requires much less space than burials.
Some people are increasingly upset about the environmental costs of a burial."
David Sloane historian and writer
However, people are exploring the idea of “green” burial in some new cemeteries, where money raised from the funeral can be used to create a “preservation easement” that protects the space so that it continues to exist long after the death. people have become part of the earth.
Conventional cremation burns the body using natural gas, which is not considered as environmentally friendly as burying the body without harmful chemicals or other materials.
Natural gas emits particulates and hard metals like mercury, especially in older crematoria.
Belong to a church or religion
A third factor is the rupture of people with religious institutions, which separates them from cemeteries.
In 2021, only
47% of Americans
belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque
compared to more than 70% of adults who said they were part of a religious institution in 1999.
The National Funeral Directors Association has projected that by 2035, nearly 80% of Americans will opt for cremation.Anze Furlan/psgtproductions/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Many young people are not attached to the religious institutions where their parents or grandparents held a service after their death or from which a funeral procession departed for the cemetery.
The result is that they are more likely to choose a method of disposing of the body that allows them to have control over its remains.
Will cremation endure as a more popular method?
Will cremation affect other elements of how people respond to death?
Americans have traditionally been accused of suffering from "death anxiety," a fear of even discussing it.
For many families the control that cremation gives them has been accompanied by a willingness to mourn more publicly, as evidence of the rapid popularity of roadside shrines, memorial tattoos and other “everyday tributes” used by many.
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Most Americans are now more comfortable with cremation as a practice.
They like the power that comes with taking remains to a cemetery, keeping them at home, or scattering them in forests, parks, oceans, or streams.
Alternatives like “green burial” could change this practice but, at least for the near future, Americans are following the world in accepting cremation.
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