The press and policymakers have been calling out the fact that birth rates in advanced economies are falling even faster than demographers predicted. For instance, from a Lancet report in March based on “a global research effort led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine:”
- By 2050, over three-quarters (155 of 204) of countries will not have high enough fertility rates to sustain population size over time; this will increase to 97% of countries (198 of 204) by 2100.
- Pronounced shifts in patterns of livebirths are also predicted, with the share of the world’s livebirths nearly doubling in low-income regions from 18% in 2021 to 35% in 2100; and sub-Saharan Africa accounting for one in every two children born on the planet by 2100.
Recent stories confirm this overall trend. For instance, from CNN:
The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and a new report shows that another drop in births in 2023 brought the rate down to the lowest it’s been in more than a century….
Meanwhile, births continued to shift to older mothers. Older age groups saw smaller decreases in birth rates, and the birth rate was highest among women ages 30 to 34 – with about 95 births for every 1,000 women in this group in 2023. Women 40 and older were the only group to see an increase in birth rate, although – at less than 13 births for every 1,000 women – it remained lower than any other age group.
Now, the question is why are fewer deciding to have children? One can see how the perceived to be horrific consequences (no groaf! proportionately more useless eater oldsters!) are among other things leading conservatives to try to curb women’s reproductive control so as to make sure, unless they renounce sex, that they have babies.
A new Wall Street Journal story tries to find some answers. As we’ll explain in more detail, it finds that the high cost of having kids only partly explains the problem. The article also contends that “high cost” is due not just to an increase in costs like housing but also to parents deciding (or perhaps more accurately responding to new norms) to spend more on high cost activities like pre-school education and summer programs. Another factor is some couples deciding to consume more retirement, as in plan to retire early.
While these factors no doubt accurately reflect what couples have told the Journal about their conscious processes for deciding not to reproduce, your humble blogger feels compelled to point out their are additional issues that are not sufficiently acknowledged in polite society.
The first is that bringing up children, even before getting to elevated contemporary notions as to what that should amount to, is inherently not gratifying work. 1 Yes, most parents really do love their children and are willing to sacrifice for them. But there IS sacrifice. Recall that aristocratic women would nearly always farm out childrearing to the help.
A second factor is that neoliberalism, as in the promotion of nuclear families to facilitate labor mobility, has made the job harder. People used to live very near where they were born. Parents could turn to extended family for help: grandparents, aunts, cousins, siblings. Media accounts of parenting are consistent with the idea that there is a lot less active help from relatives now than in the 1950s and 1960s.
Third is that the responsibility for bringing up the child, by default, is the mother’s duty; men have an option as to how much task support (as opposed to legally mandated financial support) they provide. Approximately 50% of first marriages end in divorce, and the odds increase with second and third marriages. 25% of US families are single parent households. So if a married woman has a child, she faces much higher odds than in the 1950s and 1960s of having her husband leave her. So there are rational reasons for women being chary of child-bearing, even though most won’t admit out loud to concerns about relationship durability, even in a presently seemingly solid one.
An extreme example of this dynamic is Japan. Marriages in Japan are not a great deal for women. The sort of stably-employed salaryman that was a good catch works six days a week, and often comes home late and drunk due to office norms of hanging out at the workplace even if there is nothing much to do, going out after hours, and long commutes.
When contraception plus more female access to the workplace hit Japan, many young Japanese women preferred to stay at home with their parents and have a job rather than get married. The fact that the “parasite singles” phenomenon is much decried has done little to change women’s behavior. I would be curious as to whether those who read Japanese or are otherwise culturally plugged in can indicate whether there is any recognition as to how marital norms are directly contributing to Japan’s baby bust.2
Fourth is climate change and the (potentially internalized as opposed to articulated) concerns about social and political stability in light of greater competition for resources. I probably have a skewed sample due to having most of my younger contacts as progressive-leaning. Among them, I heard quite a few expressing deep doubts about having kids, not just from a planetary load perspective but “Could I be subjecting them to terrible conditions?”
Finally I suspect but cannot prove that the childless couples are underplaying the role of the increase in many costs over time on their decisions. Mind you, some of the interviewees are explicit that they think it is not responsible to have kids if they don’t have enough to provide for them well. But the Journal itself fails to look at cost increases in relevant categories, such as housing, health care, transportation and food compared to average wages since the 1970s. As we know too well, housing and heath care have seen very high increases in real terms. But readers have also pointed out that this is true for categories we don’t think about as much, such as cars. In the 1960s, a typical working person could generate enough discretionary income to buy a low-end car outright in a matter of months. No longer. To put it another way: look at how dramatic they think the tradeoff is between time of retirement if they have kids v. don’t have kids. If the difference was lower, how much of an impact would that have on decisions?
Now to some snippets from the Journal:
Americans aren’t just waiting longer to have kids and having fewer once they start—they’re less likely to have any at all…Childlessness accounted for over two-thirds of the 6.5% drop in average births between 2012 to 2022…
Throughout history, having children was widely accepted as a central goal of adulthood.
Yet when Pew Research Center surveyed 18- to 34-year-olds last year, a little over half said they would like to become parents one day. In a separate 2021 survey, Pew found 44% of childless adults ages 18 to 49 said they were not too likely, or not at all likely, to have children, up from 37% who said the same thing in 2018.
The first couple showcased talks about money concerns, and contrary to patterns I have observed among peers, it is the husband, and not the wife, who is eager to have kids:
Giovanni Perez, 38, has been trying to convince his wife, Mariah Sanchez, 32, that they’re ready to become parents….
Sanchez isn’t sold.
With a single mom during her early childhood and a brother 15 years her junior, Sanchez grew up helping with diaper changes and bottle feedings. Before she has kids of her own, she wants to move from the couple’s one-bedroom apartment into a bigger place. She also hopes to climb the ranks at the advertising agency where she works, ideally doubling their combined income of $100,000.
“I know what it’s like for a child whose parent wasn’t prepared for them,” says Sanchez. Still, she admits, the amount she thought she needed to earn before having children was far lower a few years ago. “It feels like a moving target,” she says.
The story does not pick up on her observation that her perception of what it would cost to do an adequate job as a parent has risen over what clearly is comparatively few years.
The Journal plays up the notion that parents now feel responsible to provide enriched childhoods, and that is driving up expected costs as much as increases in essentials:
Parents are spending more on their children for basics such as housing, food and education—much of that due to rising prices. Another factor, however, is the drive to provide children with more opportunities and experiences….
Middle-class households with a preschooler more than quadrupled spending on child care alone between 1995 and 2023, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Department of Agriculture data by Scott Winship at think tank the American Enterprise Institute.
Yet only about half of the increase is due to rising prices for the same quality and quantity of care. (Child care prices are up 180% overall since the mid-90s, according to BLS data.)
The remaining half is coming from parents choosing more personalized or accredited care for a given 3- to 5-year-old, or paying for more hours, Winship says.
The article acknowledges the time cost of helicopter parenting. Like the many dinosaurs among our readership, I can’t fathom how structured kids’ time is these days, and how it can’t be good preparation for their adulthood to have their parents setting so much of their schedules. Even when I was six, as long as I was home for dinner (a strict time in household) and back by 8 PM, I was free to do as I liked, which included to go around the neighborhood on my bike and hang out with other kids.,
Beth Davis loves her niece and nephew. But she isn’t envious of how much time and money her siblings spend bouncing between volleyball tournaments, baseball games and trips to the mall to replace outgrown clothes….
With a combined income of $280,000, the couple is able to put about $4,500 a month toward what they hope will be a mid-50s retirement. Another $2,600 pays rent on a sprawling Creole townhouse. The remaining $8,000 or so—much of which they assume would have been eaten up by child-rearing—goes primarily toward enjoying their lives.
I am not about to attempt scenario planning, but I would guesstimate that most people like the Davises who are planning for retirement, early or not, underestimate the cost of assisted living or at-home care late in life, particularly since long-term care insurance has been repriced to reflect risks and now is not deemed affordable by many potential customers.3 Of course, even though children historically have served as old age insurance, there are way too many cases where the offspring can’t or won’t help much.
Some childless couples admit to not being willing to compromise their lifestyles:
Trevor Galko and Keri Ann Meslar, 44 and 42, both grew up in the suburbs assuming kids were in their futures….
For Meslar, who works in growth strategy for a CBD company, part of the justification for leaning into her kid-free reality was wanting to avoid making the same sacrifices she saw her parents make.
She says she can’t remember her mom or dad buying anything new for themselves while she was growing up so they could afford for her and her three siblings to join sports leagues and attend out-of-state colleges.
Finally, a big subtext of the article is that not having kids is now an acceptable choice and the kid-free can find similarly-situated couples with which to socialize.
In the long run, this demographic change would help reduce climate change pressures not just via fewer children translating into lower demands on planetary resources, but also less perceived need for environmentally costly dispersed single family homes. But this shift even though it seems rapid in population terms isn’t coming remotely fast enough to prevent probable bad outcomes.
______
1 Think of all the bodily fluids! And then the propensity of young children to find creative ways to kill themselves.
2 One issue across most if not all advanced economies is that women’s increase in education, rights, and earning power (and related media cheerleading) also elevated their expectations regarding “progress” in gender norms which has in many respects not happened. Consider the fact that couples where the woman is the primary earner have such discomfort about that that they typically take steps to hide that. And that’s before getting to the fact that higher earning women really are less marriageable. From the Atlantic:
The economist Na’ama Shenhav has shown that a 10 percent increase in women’s wages relative to men’s wages produces a three-percentage-point increase in the share of never-married women and a two-percentage-point increase in the share of divorced women.
3 My father tore his hair trying to get good data on typical long term care usage and came up short. Information may admittedly be better now. He came up with women on average needing three years of care and could not find any info on men. He bet correctly, getting a good long-term care policy only for my mother (he figured he would not linger, which turned out to be correct) for a total amount that indeed wound up covering the 25 months of expenses my mother incurred. And she had about 10 months left at her then-current burn rate. But a big part of why the money went as far as it did was I moved down, so she needed only 13, not 20 or 24 hour coverage, proving there was some value in kids as old age insurance.
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One other reason not to have child is the risk of having to raise a disabled child. The rate of disabilities such as autism is high. I have an adult son suffering from autism that lives with my wife and me. One can find some help with disabled children but it is very difficult and almost certainly inadequate. Not just financially of course, the emotional pain can be very soul-consuming. I occasionally remind people Bridget Jones’ mother’s line from the “Diary of Bridget Jones” that the joy of having a child is not really true. I am lucky enough to cover financial costs but emotionally I have been a bit drained and at my worst moments, I cannot help but think how much easier like could have been without children. My 10 cents worth of life experience, for whom that might care.
That is a very salient point, thank you for sharing. I have met many parents with children who have severe disabilities, and you can see in their eyes the fear of what might happen to their children should they be gone. They know full well the meatgrinder of capitalism will consume their babies if they’re not around to support them, whether they have the vocabulary to put it in those terms or not.
I’m lucky enough to have two healthy, happy kids. No regrets, here.
But, yes, I was terrified of dealing with something like autism or downs syndrome. A lot of the joy of parenting comes from watching them grow and learn to do things themselves. When they’re disabled, that gets stripped away.
I’ve got friends with one kid who has some mental health complications and they’re pretty stressed. But, they also have serious housing issues, too. It’s awful in the Boston area.
I think it’s hard to separate the housing problem from the birth rate. Especially with the steep increase in both prices and rents, post-pandemic.
“The first is that bringing up children, even before getting to elevated contemporary notions as to what that should amount to, is inherently not gratifying work.”
The only advice I give to expecting, new or ANY parent is this: “If you have children to hear ‘thank you’ or expect gratitude, you will be disappointed.’
It is clear the neo-liberal thinking does not value children as a gift but a cost (or inconvenience). In a society that measures EVERYTHING in dollars; joy, love, and laughter are not part of the equation.
Look at the bright side, animal shelters will be empty and dogs will have homes.
Note that China has an even worse time with the population shrinking due
to lack of children. The former ‘one child’ policy backfired on them big time.
Fear of having disabled kids has been big for me.
I think pollution is one widely underrated issue. Endocrine disruptors like plastics can affect peoples’ sexual or reproductive capabilities, potentially affecting peoples’ ability to conceive as well as increasing the risk of childhood disabilities.
MC, thanks for sharing your story. My heart goes out to you and your family.
Thank you for your frankness.
Back in the early ’80s, the experiences of two co-workers, who became good friends for several years, made a strong impression on me. Both had seriously handicapped children, and it totally dominated their lives afterwards. In one case, the couple never had any additional children, and they were able to devote their two professional salaries to ensuring every possible support for their child, who was eventually able to live independently. In the other case, the couple went on to have two more children who were healthy and “normal”. I’ve been out of touch with them for more than 20 years, so I don’t know how things ultimately worked out.
In both cases, these couples were, as far as I could tell, very devoted to their children’s well-being, and spared no effort to do what was necessary. It was heroic, and I admired their unselfishness. But I would never have had the nerve to ask them if they would have chosen a different path for their lives if they’d been able to see into the future before they started their families.
Most of us probably don’t have their strength of character, if we’re honest about it. So I get a bit grumpy when I see disability advocates decrying genetic testing during pregnancy as a means of avoiding the birth of children with various congenital conditions (e.g. Downs). This just seems to be peak IDpol – how dare anyone presume to block the ability of potential parents to prevent a misfortune that would otherwise dominate the rest of their lives.
I have autism (high functioning), and am stuck living with parents. When teachers brought up the possibility of developmental disorders in HS, my parents got mad…at me. When I had trouble with school, they pulled me out.
I have an associate’s degree, but no job in my chosen field. I had to pay for getting autism testing, and just got diagnosed about a month ago. I’m looking for any job that lets me afford to get my own place.
Based on my experience with my parents, I have no plans to have children.
A few quick comments on this:
1) The article alluded to the economic costs of providing “enriched” childhoods, but the enriched childhood goes well beyond economics. I think it is safe to say that parents today are – and are expected to be – much more involved in their children’s daily activities than when this Gen X-er was five years old. I do not recall my parents or older siblings doing anything to teach me letters, numbers, etc. It all fell on the school system, and I do not think I was any different than my peers in that regard.
2) As for this quote: “So if a married woman has a child, she faces much higher odds than in the 1950s and 1960s of having her husband leave her..” Per this article, 69% of divorces were filed by the wife, but that might be drastically different when you look at the subset of couples with kids aged 2-8.
https://divorce.com/blog/who-initiates-divorce-more/
This is very true. Look at the very popular show Bluey. It shows two patents very involved. As a parent of toddlers I see many parents who are very involved, but most of these are super middle class parents who have more free time. Also well pointed out, the school system was better.
>>>The article acknowledges the time cost of helicopter parenting.
from my ancedotal POV….the most important “opportunity cost” is time, period. Even without helicopter parenting-style.
I am a big fan of 85% “Montessori” plus 15% “light-hearted Socratic Method” education for little kids—but that takes time. Time for someone to take them to the pool and watch to make sure they don’t drown–even if they are good swimmers and there are lifeguards, time for someone to sit on the bench w/the kids play/make new friends at the playground, time to interact w/educational games etc.
IMO for ages 0 to 6, the best outcome is if one parent (regardless of gender) stays home to raise the kid.
But for the vast majority of families this is impossible as even if the “net profit” (minus childcare, takeout food, commuting costs, etc) of the 2nd parent going back to work is only $10,000 per year—-usually that $10,000 is absolutely necessary for the family to make ends meet.
Which is a shame because (IMO) the non-monetary value of having a parent providing intellectual stimulation, physical stimulation, etc is priceless. —but alas intellectual stimulation doesn’t pay the mortgage.
That kind of nurturing also requires the ability to do it, which many parents lack even if they had the money and time.
I consider it an adaptation to a system focused on extracting higher and higher rents of many variations.
I think, at least here in the states, that there’s also a general sense that our society is really a pretty lousy one to be a kid in too. Parents can’t and shouldn’t try to meet all of their children’s physical, mental, emotional, and social needs, but with institutions dropping balls left and right, or just selling out completely and becoming outright predatory, often their only option is to do their best and, in a frightening percentage of cases, watch it not be enough.
MC, I wanted to respond and let you know I am sorry it’s been so hard for you and your family. I have an autistic child too, and I know how relentlessly difficult this life can be. It’s hard every day and can be very lonely. I have found there is a huge divide between us and formerly close friends of ours whose kids are neurotypical.
I don’t know where you live, or if state benefits are an option for your family. But if you’re in the U.S., some states, including NY, have benefits for autistic youth. Not surprisingly, obtaining them involves an arduous process. But my spouse and I have found that the respite care benefits in particular are a big help. If you haven’t gone this route yet, perhaps these benefits could be useful to your family.
Dear Asteri, thank you for the kind advice. We’ve been dealing with autism in Virginia for more than 20 years so we are pretty experienced parents. I apologize that my comment focused more on myself and was darker than I intended. My main point was that disability was another concern regarding having children or not. Anecdotal only, but most of the younger people/couples I met know of families with disabled children, some as close as their own because they grew up with injured siblings, and the knowledge makes them at least hesitate before having their own children. In fact my own younger son, who actually wants to have his own, is quite nervous of the risk. My best wishes to you. MC
Big difference between sustaining a population and sustaining a population rate.
It’s an entirely different way of looking at people.
Yves, you’ve listed 5 possibilities, and climate change is the big one within my circles, but I think there’s possibly a 6th – having the emotional maturity and self-awareness to know that one wouldn’t make a good parent and shouldn’t try, or the circumstances, while basic needs such as employment or housing are met, are not ideal.
I’ve known a few parents who, too late in life, admitted they should never have had kids, were just not suited for it, had issues they’ve now imposed on the children. Or had the kind of existing family one really shouldn’t bring ones kids into, or where there is a cycle of violence or otherwise unhealthy behaviour which needs to be disrupted. The children are brought into the world already burdened with weight, guilt and responsibility.
The world has a lot of damaged people and we’re at a point where many are aware enough to weigh that as a decision factor rather than take it as given that they must follow the social script and pop out kids.
I wouldn’t bring kids into the world if my mom were Marjorie Taylor Green. Or grandad was pussy grabbing Trump. Or pedo Joe with his predilection for little girls? In the old days people would say whatcanyado, Joe will be Joe, but now people just say no, have the power to do so.
So much to think about.
One more thought to add – I wouldn’t bring kids into the world if I were wealthy. Their needs would be more than met, they would be well positioned to succeed, but the wealth would nevertheless destroy them.
For one thing, they’d have the wrong kind of pride, by default would consider themselves better than others. By virtue of considering themselves better than others, would think they were entitled to everything, owned others, would grow up being all about acquisition of people and things, or else they’d grow up considering themselves the chosen ones and everyone else an outsider to be kept at a distance, class difference in other words. So really, perhaps we shouldn’t be perplexed that people are chosing not to have kids despite having the ideal economic factors. Thanks to Hollywood, we are all first hand witness to what wealth does to people – why raise more of that. But I wonder if it’s that we intuitively understand this and this is influencing number the decrease in births.
IMHO the question of poor parenting relates strongly to mobility and nuclear families.
Many kids suffer from bad parenting but it is often only one parent. When it is both, children often are able to find a grandparent or other older family relative to provide at least some of the missing nurturing and modeling. Other possible surrogates are the parents of friends and teachers.
If you don’t have any contact with extended family and move a lot, you are bereft of possible compensating mechanisms.
I was just remembering something someone said to me once. That they had had their kids because they owed, felt a debt to, their ancestors. This was rather alien and perplexing to me. Just guessing, but I think such may be exclusive to those who come from nice loving families full of good people who feel endearment for those gone before. Someone from a more broken or nasty family may not feel such obligations. So I think I would concur that good or poor parenting is probably a large part of it.
This makes more sense as you hit middle-age. Especially, if you’re historically minded, and start asking yourself those hard questions, like, “what’s life all about, anyway?”
If you think of yourself as part of a wider community that doesn’t just exist across physical space, like a neighborhood…but also across time. We’re all engaged in this distinctly human project of civilization that spans generations. This sort of thinking seems alien to our culture, which considers a 5 year time horizon to be ‘long term’. However, it’s much more common outside the US, and especially outside the west.
In recent years, since I turned fifty, it’s like I can hear my late grandfather, who was a peasant from southern Italy, talking inside my head, telling me I let the side down. From his perspective, there are but two things in the world that matter: land, and family. Everything else is nonsense.
I have not lived my life according to his values. Sometimes I wonder about it.
So it turns out neoliberalism is so inimical to human flourishing that it functions as an abortifacient.
This is what civilizational failure looks like.
100% agree. Imperial decadency and sepsis has many faces.
Not only agree, but think this needs to be on a t-shirt
ahahahahahaahah
1. Pre-Bio Entities are self build to self preservation.
2. Bio Entities has one feature more: self-reproduction (yes, XY and XX are just one)
3. Homo Sapiens Sapiens has an addition feature more: self-perpetuation [where do you think the Legacy Thing, the God Thing come from? :) ]
4.1. It is about time we start to use our conscience and to stop to be constrained by 2. and 3.
4.2. If we live in the moment of history/geography that in our best assessment we are not creating a problem for the ones we are bringing to the world it is fine. However, if we do not live in such moment then we have to exercise wisdom and do not be slave of 2) and 3).
4.3. I suggest you pamper your Goddess as much as you can because in a world with the current global warming level and with existence of nuclear weapons & similar ran by a socio-economical-financial system absolutely detached with the reality it is absolutely lunacy to bring MORE children to the slaughter. house.
Paleontologists refer to Cro-Magnon people as “Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH).
The so called-“Cave People” lived a couple hundred thousand
years ago. To us, that seems like a long time ago, but in terms of evolution, that
length of time is insufficient. We are still they. Genetically, there have been changes,
of course- the ability to see the color blue as a separate hue, the ability to plan
further in the future, for example, but we are still the old beings of the past. Still
resource hungry in a massively destructive way, still tribal, still searching to explain
and dominate the world. Technology is wonderful, in its way, but always seems to
take a one-step forwards, two steps back approach. Still the same old dreams,
of immortality, of invisibility, of unaided flying. A behaviorist would take the approach
that humans are nothing but electric bags of water, that is, capacitors, susceptable
to the sunspot cycle, cosmic rays and the like, or mere hormone changes that
govern love or hate. Bonobo or Chimp, lovers or fighters. Nature or nurture.
Detached from Reality? This is not possible. Each of us represents an aspect
of “Reality”. A minor example. Long ago, the Canary Islands were so overpopulated
that men and women had separate paths across the islands. If a man or woman
was found on the wrong path, they would be executed. Humans are infinitely
malleable, they can adapt to extreme wealth or desperate poverty. Locusts ate
your crop? Eat the locusts! But we live in human time, not geological time.
When the average lifespan of people was 35 years, you had to live very intensely.
We will survive the climate crisis. The Antarctic once had palm trees and dinosaurs.
Northern Canada will be the breadbasket of the world, and England will be famous
for it’s fine champagne. But the great unknown will be the social changes
that will enable the species to survive.
People who grew up in small families probably tend to have small families themselves. My wife and I were both only children, hence our two sons have no first cousins, aunts or uncles, and it turns out they don’t have any family feelings toward our own first cousins who always lived far away. Neither son is about to get married or have children, so no grandchildren are in prospect either. There is simply no pressure to have children like there was before, just like there is no pressure to get married anymore.
I’m in agreement with you louis. I knew I didn’t want kids when I was still a kid. My parents were divorced. A very ugly divorce. We ended up moving completely across country to get away from my Dad. I lived with the fear he would kidnap one of us from school. My mother remarried. He was one of the best people I have ever known in my entire life. I loved him nearly if not more than my mother. Great dad. First off I just didn’t realize there was such a thing as a happy marriage. Until my mother and step dad married. I really thought I would get sick of a husband, and then what? I usually got tired of any boyfriend after a few months
And sent them packing. I liked things on my own. I saw all the sacrifices made by my parents to keep a roof over our heads. They both worked hard 6 days week. I had to watch the other two kids, when I was 10 years old. All summer we were alone all day. I had to be responsible. This was wrong and horrible. To this day, they hate me because I made them help with housework, clean, do laundry, cut the grass and generally clean house. We had knock down drag out fights. These two have still taken no responsibility for anything. They have kids, who are shiftless and spoiled. They are the same way, no money as they spend it as soon as they get it.nothing saved. No college for their kids. They are still paying mortgages after 30 years. My house was paid off after 25 years, I have money in the bank.
My cars are paid for, I owe only for utilities and a couple of credit cards with very low balances.
If I’d had kids, I would not have this much paid for and would have had to work. A stranger
Taking care of my kids was not for me. I have always had pets. I take very good care of them.
I plan on leaving everything to animal charities. I have been happily married for 42 years.
I haven’t missed not having kids. Took a lot of crap from people over having no kids. Complete strangers telling me that we were selfish. Yes, I am. I have enjoyed my life, my youth was great. I have missed out on nothing. With the horrible world we live in now.
I too feared environmental disaster, nuclear war, various Heath issues like autism etc.
A person has no help with something like that going on.
I am glad I’m old nearly 70. I don’t regret a thing, I’ve had a great life. My fondest memories
Are Rolling Stones concerts and vacations with my pets. My favorite dog place was Carmel
Ca. The Doris Day hotel, the beach and long enjoyable walks my dogs included. I now have two cats, rescued from outside. When they are gone they will be the last.
Life was good.
>>>>helicopter parenting.
an urban planning aspect that I totally take for granted…in much of the country (usually built post-1975), the idea of having a convenient local library and expansive park district providing high-quality services is a fantasy—even in upscale McMansion subdivisions.
So nearly everything kid-related is defacto privitized and more $$$$$: child care, early learning, sports, arts, etc.
Compare contrast a 75th percentile in wealth northern old railroad suburb with a 90th percentile California or Florida suburb. Usually the older area will have legacy institutions from the Carnegie Library and New Deal era.
Not having children is the labor strike that can’t be crushed. Neoliberalism is inimical to flourishing and indeed life. What a profoundly evil system we have.
Yes! Although the Supremes and, if we are unlucky, JD Vance will do their best to find a way to crush this one too.
Well . . . if enough people decide to teach the Democrats a lesson and give them their comeuppance, we will get JD Vance.
It may be a price worth paying in order to teach the Democrats a lesson and give them their comeuppance. The only way to know is to try it and see how it works out.
It may lead to a new birth of States Rights . . . . Liberal States Rights. And perhaps the Liberal States Rights States might start investing in State Guards to protect themselves against a risingly New Right JD Vancian Federal Government. Perhaps the birthrate will stay low in those states.
This. Furnishing slaves to a deranged and malevolent oligarchy is contraindicated in all scenarios. Piano lessons won’t help.
In flyover, people avoid reproduction because they don’t want to be homeless, i.e., “experience homelessness”. That’s the main lifestyle thing here in shiny city.
The “decision to have children” precludes any recognition of desire to have children. Some folks just never develop that desire and I think it’s a fairly good practice not to have children unless you want them.
Widely accepted or pretty much inevitable? Women have been trying for birth control forever and bodily autonomy. We haven’t really had it.
“The remaining $8,000 [per month]or so—much of which they assume would have been eaten up by child-rearing—goes primarily toward enjoying their lives.”
My houshold makes a bit less than that per month and I am the only one working. It is true that our wants are small, but all our needs are fulfilled, except being forever young and healthy. I cannot imagine the levels of excess and self pampering one gets into with an excess of $4,000 per person per month to indulge with.
After the demographic transition from high birth – high death to low birth – low death (with the middle stage of high birth – low death giving a massive expansion of population) births has been low and often falling below replacement rate.
To get more babies (and future soldiers or tax payers) a state needs to institute a division of burdens of raising children, like cash payments, free or subsidised child care, programs to ensure cheap housing, free or subsidised health care for mother and children, free or subsidised care of disabled children. It also needs to provide decent prospects for the future. All of this was compatible with the full employment policies of the post war era, they are not very compatible with neoliberalism.
I would say this is well known since the 1930ies.
Knowledge of reproductive health is a factor in bringing birth numbers down during the demographic transition, among many other factors. I don’t think banning abortions will have a large numerical influence on the number of children per woman considering that abortions as a rule were banned when births came down to begin with (19th century to early 20th century in Europe and its colonies), though it will undoubtably produce lots of individual tragedies.
Something that does work locally to bring number of children up is religious groups that consider getting lots of kids a religious duty, but they are often unstable with kids leaving the religion and having an average number of kids themselves.
It might be interesting to know how many people 100 years ago came into being by accident. Or as the song goes: “that’s what you get folks / for making whoopee.” Nature has a plan and while abortion has always been around modern contraception has changed the picture somewhat.
But the prob is that we are subverting Nature in other ways and most of all by changing the climate. So perhaps a slowdown in world population increase or US population increase should be encouraged rather than worried about. Americans are rich and the elderly likely won’t starve as a result. And in a world of over 8 billion people we likely won’t run out of those either.
In the 1920ies, in the US, women on average had three children, down from seven children in 1800. Just a decade later in 1930ies that number was down to two because the economic crisis made people postpone babies. Nature may have a plan, but humans are resourceful even without modern contraceptives.
I pulled the numbers from Gapminder.org, and they should be accurate because modern states has been good at counting people.
(chuckles) The one thing we know about our forebearers is that they all made to to
puberty.
Can’t find it, but I recently saw a reference to the situation in Rome when leaders observed that, deprived of land, Roman men were showing no interest in joining the army or starting families. I think it was Plutarch describing the attempted reforms of Gracchus.
Falling enlistments and family formation. Rome chose to bring in foreign manpower rather than break up fortunes to redistribute.
Correct but they first tried to punish women that were childless. Jules Cezar had laws against such women, couldn’t carry jewelry, taxes and other incentives, but it failed in the end, the meek inherited the world.
Fertility also was low in late Roman Empire. Infanticide was widespread, even when towns were shrinking, and area under cultivation was contracting. i.e. absolute resource availability was not the problem. What started in the upper classes, became general.
Calhoun’s rodent experiments can be debated, but it looks like he was on to something. Changes in social behaviour can cause a population crash, even in the absence of other factors. The plunge might not stop, even when the population has declined past the point where crowding is no longer an issue. The story didn’t end with the war of every mouse against every other mouse. Mostly, the mice just stopped mating. Self-grooming became more important than courtship.
Or perhaps, unnoticed by the human observer, the mice attained enlightenment, and relinquished their attachments to this world.
Uh, are you referring to the old mouse-driven experiments in population sinks
of the 1950’s, Skinner et al, behaviorism,etc?
I’ve read somewhere that having children is like giving hostages to fortune. For me though it’s really simple, why deal with poop if you can improve yourself through continuous learning? I am currently learning Chinese and Japanese among other things, and although my Japanese is not good enough to read books and academic papers, I have not had to resort to speaking English on my last three trips to Japan, and yes I have had long conversations with inn keepers and AirBnb hosts about a variety of topics. It’s hard to describe the exhilaration one feels from one’s studies paying off.
Today’s Chinese idiom is 春风化雨, the literal translation being spring wind turning into rain, and is used to describe the long term effects of a solid education. Compare the beautiful image arising from that sentence with poop, and there’s really no competition.
TLDR; the Internet has made it so much easier to realize one kind of self actualization, and I am taking advantage of it.
Speaking about costs though, a colleague once said that in the future it’s more likely that parents will end up helping children than the other way around, and I think that’s pretty prescient.
This rather begs the question of why the marriages end. The mother might also leave a deadbeat dad, for example. A more neutral way of putting it would be to state that the mother faces higher odds of having to raise offspring alone.
Bad form to reply to oneself, perhaps, but my comment came before I read schmoe’s upthread, which provides a link asserting that in some cases, 68% of the divorces are woman-initiated. That definitely feels about right to me. Thanks, schmoe.
I don’t think deadbeatism is the main main impetus. In the 1950s comparison, remember men were under pressure to be good providers.
IMHO the big drivers are men cheating and the wife being unwilling to tolerate that and women wanting to escape physical or emotional abuse.
Or maybe it is that marriage creates a lot more work for women. This addresses the time spent on chores: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/201906/single-moms-less-housework-more-leisure-married-moms
But what about emotional work? Not sure about documentation for that, but it tracks for me. If a woman can pay the bills with her job, does most of the work raising the kids anyway, and will get fewer chores and less emotional work after a divorce? Her husband should be doing more to support her, not creating more work for her.
I noticed that a rather large proportion of divorce/breakups in my acquaintances happening within a year of the birth of the first kid. In every case I know, the father was already noted as being immature and unreliable, but it took the stress of caring for a new born for the mom to realize they can’t deal with two babies in their life. I think most professional class women nowadays know better than to attach themselves to cheaters, but they often tolerated job instability, selfishness, and immaturity in their partners for way too long.
When I was a kid, the large families were Roman Catholic. In my neighborhood today, the families exceeding replacement rate are LDS.
The RC’s prohibited contraception (sin) and divorce. While the LDS extols large family directly. (Polygamy was openly promoted, in the past.)
All the points made seem relevant to the low birth rate dynamic. I would add as a point not mentioned above that our educational systems are not synergistic with women’s biology. The college/university system was developed by men, for men, and a specific class of men at that. For a man in the old order to postpone marriage until his early to mid-thirties after getting degree’s and establishing himself in a career was doable with male biology. Not so much for women. By the time women are finished university, then graduate school (seemingly more necessary every year to stay competitive), and then establishing a career for when they are finally “ready” to have children economically, the biological window is quickly closing. And that is not even counting how much of that college debt that would need to be paid off before a woman feels comfortable being able to economically support children. Solving this would require a reworking of the entire education system that would take these factors into account. Maybe a post-high school system where it is part work and part college with generous social support for young families along the way. Something that could help people get established earlier. I really don’t have a solution, just one more obstacle to point out.
Aye. I was going to mention the absence of student loans in the WSJ article, but you beat me to the punch. They are particularly problematic because they hit right after graduation, when young people are struggling to get themselves established. And for women in particular, by the time they’ve gotten the student loan burden off their backs, they’re rapidly approaching their mid-30s and are already seeing reduced fertility rates. We ignore human biology at our peril.
An important, yet unexplored thread. Debt hits people early, often and hard these days. Yves mentioned that you could buy a beater cheap back in the day and that would get you around adequately. Moreover, you might be able to fix it yourself or find a friend to help you. Try fixing a car these days. Now a young person may have to go into considerable debt for a 150K mile clunker and look forward to a $300 tab for a new starter.
So, in addition to seeing the monthly from VISA/MC, you have a couple grand in rent, a student loan and an auto loan. If by devine intervention you, or you and your spouse can manage a 20% down payment on a bubble-house or condo the rent goes away, but you are saddled with another even bigger debt. It’s like living in the company store.
Maybe non-affluent young people are hip to the mountain of debt awaiting them and know that the “loan burden” may never get off their backs so they take the more singular path. On a macro scale this leads to debt-deflation…taboo talk to the neoliberals. On a micro scale, your-on-your-own leads to population deflation. Rational choice theory in action. The Fed must keep pumping up the volume.
best case scenario of parenting: it’s the toughest job you’ll ever love
just like the old Peace Corps advert. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PmLJz0j3g0U&pp=
No wonder it’s being killed off by 998 little cuts and 2 to 3 big cuts.
Once you have children your personal level of happiness can never be higher than that of your unhappiest child.
Unless you’re the child of a narcissist, that is.
MSBP: it’s a lot of fun, trust me.
I suspect unwanted pregnancies and births are far less prevalent than they were 20+ years ago. Today’s birth control patches and commonly used methods are nearly foolproof.
Something to look forward to: we haven’t yet seen the impact of Covid (or avian flu) on fertility. I know there have been studies and people were half joking that masking should be marketed to men as a way to keep from shooting blanks. Kids who have Covid multiple times before puberty? Probably not gonna help.
>>>the question is why are fewer deciding to have children
This phenom. is not new….it has been happening since the Gerald Ford years as the first boomers hit their mid-20s. (both in the US and Western Europe).
In the US, immigration and higher birth rates of said women obfuscated the decline among native-born Americans.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINUSA
A big factor might just be how people would answer the question: are things getting better or worse, now and in the foreseeable future? If many people have the sense that things are getting worse and that there’s no obvious way to turn that around, why would they want to bring children into that worse future world? Otherwise, if things are stable or improving, people’s innate optimism may take over and encourage them to have children.
Despite the multiple dumpster fires in the world and the US, it’s a terrific time to raise a kid(s)….w/lots of caveats of course.
I’m on Team Dickens….it was the best of times, the worst of times….we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…
Correct me if I’m wrong. But having babies is sort of a natural inclination for many women, no? Who else can do it? It seems that making the conditions of child-rearing more attractive is the first step to increasing the preferred outcome. Somehow a coherent social setting is essential here.
The problem with neat theories about demographic changes, is that as soon as someone comes up with what seems like a neat explanation, some counter example pops up. The reality is that there is a very rapid drop in childbirths worldwide from what was seen as the ‘norm’, and it seems independent of almost any societal, economic or cultural variable you can use to apply as an explanation. Even the middle east, the last non-poor area of the world to maintain a high childbirth rate, has recently gone into what seems like a very steep and probably permanent decline (even if birth rates there are still relatively high compared to the rest of the world). The only parts of the world with ‘healthy’ birth rates are those were everything else about the region is very unhealthy (i.e. sub-saharan Africa, some parts of South Asia).
The one thing that seems to keep rates relatively higher for longer is religion. Those religions that extol a high birth rate (catholicism, islam) seems capable of keeping birthrates higher than the heathens around them, but only temporarily, and only in relative terms.
One point on Japan – while marriage is tough for Japanese women in many ways, it also has what might seem to be perfect policies for a higher birth rate. It is one of the few developed countries where it is considered perfectly acceptable for a woman to simply quite working after marriage (many do so), basic social protections are relatively strong, and perhaps most importantly, housing is relatively cheap. And yet Japanese women still refuse to have more than a minimal number of children. There are examples in Europe of countries (such as in Scandinavia and Germany), which also have good housing policies, reasonably good maternal benefits and so on, and yet there is little to show for it in terms of birth rates,especially if you exclude the fertility of recent immigrants. Russia has tried very hard to increase its birth rates since the catastrophic drop in the 1990’s, but at best its just about hitting a minimal replacement rate. China is similarly trying to reverse its collapse in birth rate with no evidence that its having an impact. South Korea and Taiwan are pretty much in a population death spiral already.
Its hard to avoid the conclusion that given the choice, most people want few or no children, and that historically it has been a process of societal pressure, economic needs, and biological practicality (i.e. difficult contraception) that has led to high birthrates. If it is the reality that no amount of economic or cultural incentives will encourage people to have more children, then the worlds population will enter a period of very rapid contraction as a generation of children who themselves were raised in very small families of reluctant parents follow their lead. This is no bad thing for the planet, but it will lead to a very painful transition.
I can’t find a reference, I’m afraid, but I recall a study by INPS that claimed there was a small correlation between the reddito di cittadinanza and an increase in the birthrate. Needless to say, FDI has eliminated the former, while talking about the need to increase the latter.
Perhaps, contrary to the pestering gaslighting of some parents, having kids just kind of sucks, many people in fact do not have any particular deep desire to have any (‘it’s a natural, inescapable urge’ some will insist. In my experience: nope) and when presented with the prospect of a life where having kids to later take care of you as a kind of retirement contingency isn’t needed, many people just…don’t. I can imagine many women in particular being very receptive to not having to do any of it being a valid option.
I don’t view any of this as a bad thing. If ‘just don’t have kids’ is a socially valid option, then maybe it can also help function as a great filter to ensure that people who really insist on having them are more likely to actually be committed to it and good at it. I’ve met plenty of people, across a spectrum of incomes, who were simply not serious people and who had no business being parents, but who went and had kids all the same, because that’s just the thing you’re expected to do.
It was years ago, but Psychology Today published a study that showed, on average, childless couples were more satisfied with their lives than couples with children. The highs were higher and the lows lower among couples with children. It was notable because, at the time, the result was counterintuitive.
Educating girls, growing up to become fertile women, is the most important factor influencing number of children born pr woman, reducing the average number of children pr couple to two, from 6 around 1800, progressively fewer children with more education/family income. Very rich and very poor may still have more children, mainly on account of available resources.
See Hans Rosling’s book Factfulness, with son Ola R and wife AnnaRR, a rich source of statistical facts. Enlightening. Also optimistic, from 2018 … Wars – extremely dangerous for children and women, and the young men, as Ukraine and Gaza ought to have reminded warmongers in high places – mostly men, women too – in politics –
Not setting homework (!) but has anybody seen any data on the socioeconomic distribution of childlessness?
Looking among our contemporaries at the school gates:
– there is a handful of only children
– many two child families
– quite a few three child families (as many or more than there are only children)
– one friend has four (the fourth was a pandemic baby)
– we have met two parents of nine along the way but they don’t have time to be friends!
This is in PMC territory and self-selectingly among the child-favouring because of the school environment.
However, if we look wider at our straight friends from school and college days, there are very few who are childless. A colleague (infertility) and one or two women and one man, out of several dozen people. Very few of them with more than two children (one very old money family and one very orthodox Jewish family).
Is childlessness a feature of certain income / wealth rungs or occupations, other than the PMC?
Maybe such studies exist, but every demographic study I’ve seen has used pretty crude classes (usually based on census data) to identify socioeconomic backgrounds, and these usually don’t catch the subtleties of modern class distinctions.
On a purely anecdotal basis, the small number of PMC types within my family and wider circle are relatively fertile, mostly going for the replacement rate of 2-3 kids, although I do know a handful of quite wealthy, highly educated, and voluntarily childless couples. On the other side of things, the working class/rural people I know tend to still have kids, albeit far fewer than they would have had a generation ago. By far the biggest number of childless or one child families I know are in what would once have been called the lower middle to middle class (B and C’s in old marketing parlance).
There are though quite a few anomalies who really defy easy characterisation or analysis. I know a few dedicated ‘I will never have a child’ women who ended up having one or more relatively late in life. One friend of mine from years back who swore she would never have a child ended up adopting three African children. One gay friend who married into Judaism (very unusual for an Irish catholic) adopted a girl in Israel to the general astonishment of everyone who knows him. Back in the 1990’s my social circle in England were mostly hard core lefty/Green types of the sort you’d expect not to have children, but on the odd occasions we meet up I’m always surprised at the sheer number of teenagers and millennials I’m introduced to, many from more than one marriage.
In my own family of five (four sibs), I’ve a total of 8 nieces and nephews (3 more if you count step-children), recently expanded by four ‘great’ nieces and nephs, which I suppose puts us just below the replacement rate so far.
None of the above fall into any neat theories – I’m continually surprised by who has chosen to have children, and who seem content not to bother. So… I hesitate to buy into any particular theories.
Ah, picking up Max’s comment below, I didn’t mention age. All of our college contemporaries were late to have children, stating in their mid 30’s onward (with one or two exceptions, surprise non-infertility for one couple, affair with a married celebrity for another). Whereas at the school gates (mixture of local entrepreneurs and down-from-London professionals), my spouse and I are outliers having started so late, many of the couples are a good ten years younger.
I wonder if age of first child increases with education and/or social bracket?
I suspect that a later first age of having children is a common thing in the professional classes – there is huge pressure to ‘establish yourself’ in the professions before having a child, and that usually takes 10 years or so. I mentioned earlier my niece who had taken a year out of neurology to have a baby. When she returns she will have an enormous amount of work to do to ensure she is not overtaken by others when it comes to prime consultancy posts. She is very young and capable of it (she was one of the youngest ever in her college to graduate in medicine), but its still an unacceptable strain to put on a family.
Just an anecdote – I had a conversation years back with a HR person who works in the public sector. She said there was a well known phenomenon of professional women establishing themselves in the private sector, then transitioning to the public sector in their mid 30’s to take advantage of better maternity rights, and then sometimes transitioning back out later in their career. She mentioned it as a big issue for some public sector bodies as every time they recruited experienced professionals, a disproportionate number then promptly disappeared for a couple of years of child rearing.
I know a few examples of women who had children very early (often following very chaotic early lives), raised them, and then developed successful careers from their 40’s onwards as their children left home. I’ve seen a number of conservative commentators suggest that the way to solve the ‘problem’ of demographic decline is to work out some way to allow young people to ‘skip’ their career building in their 20’s in order to have children young, and then restart careers without penalty for those ‘lost’ years. They never of course follow through on the logic of needing strong government housing and other supports to allow this to happen. In reality, the economies of nearly all advanced societies are structured for exactly the opposite. We penalise educated people who want children early, but make it easier when its later, they have lower energy levels and fertility.
To address this problem would need a very radical overhaul of how we educate and employ people.
PS: “One gay friend who married into Judaism (very unusual for an Irish catholic)”
is Dave Allen levels of dry ambiguity!
The ratio of the number of children born in families has not changed much. That is the proportion of families with one, two or three etc children is about the same as it was, say, 70 years ago. What has increased in almost all countries is the proportion of the population who have decided to have no children.
Erm, what? Say what? I doubt it. Looked at housing prices, at general wages, at inflation, at general economic wage/pay effects?
Hate to go on with a current GOP thingy, because you know, but on the other hand, when the current economy makes life unbearable for the lower economic classes, what then. What then?
Population Europe –
Childlessness – What’s Old, What’s New, What’s Innovative
So, in other terms: no, that is incorrect.
Anecdotal, but I know several couples who struggled with infertility. It also seems like of the couples in my cohort (PMC, mid-30s) who wanted kids, they did not start trying in earnest until they were relatively settled and stable in careers, so maybe aged 30-35.
Childcare sounds extremely expensive. When I was a kid, my mom worked part time. Today, it seems like the options are either long hours, or stay home completely as I can’t imagine well-paying part time work is easy to find.
Something I have heard several friends mention – anxiety over school shootings.
We did this. I was the higher earner , but we decided I would become a SAHM until my only child started pre-school at age 3.5 (church based 3 mornings/week). Then I worked part-time until he started first grade at age 5.5 (public school). We could do it because we had no debt, had significant savings, my husband’s job was stable and provided decent medical insurance, and we lived very frugally. We had planned ahead to do this for several years. It was the best thing for our family and I don’t regret it. We paid a price economically. I was lucky that I had contacts to get part-time work in my field so that my actual “out if the job market” time was only about 3 years. When I was able to go back to full-time work, I took a 30% pay cut because I didn’t want to do all the travel and 60 hour work weeks that my earlier career required. I needed to be a parent which means time.
To note, many are unwilling to have kids, but, thanks to covid, many cannot have kids:
Fact-check: Erectile dysfunction, swollen testicles and sperm count after COVID-19 vaccination or infection
In summary: COVID-19 vaccines do not affect men’s fertility, but COVID-19 infection does
To sum up what we know so far:
•COVID-19 vaccines are not linked to swollen testicles, erectile dysfunction or lower sperm counts
•Billions of COVID-19 vaccines have been given worldwide. If a link between fertility and vaccination exists, where is the clinical evidence?
•COVID-19 infection can cause swollen testicles, erectile dysfunction and lower sperm counts
https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/fact-check-erectile-dysfunction-swollen-testicles-and-sperm-count-after-covid-19-vaccination-or
PKun» “The reality is that there is a very rapid drop in childbirths worldwide from what was seen as the ‘norm’, and it seems independent of almost any societal, economic or cultural variable you can use to apply as an explanation.”
Except for secondary and tertiary education. The school-leaving in the UK was raised from 14 to 16 in the mid-sixties. Previous to that, in the period of full employment which produced the “baby boom”, a young man could find a job, and gather together enough social standing to attract a young woman to set up a home together and have their first children by his early to mid-twenties.
That may apply in the UK and other countries, but there are plenty of examples worldwide where the opposite is true (China and Japan being two examples). In both those cases the drop in birth rates mirrored a generally raised expectation of jobs and housing conditions.
I once visited Twin Oaks, an intentional community of semi-hippies. It was a true village of about 100 people where children roamed freely and everyone looked out for them. They were curious about what was going on and everyone was willing to interact with them. The end result was that no adult was overburdened and interacting with the kids was fun and rewarding.
That’s what children need. And it’s almost impossible to give that in big cities. Almost every parent in a big city I know thinks their a failure because they see their child’s deeper needs aren’t met and they feel helpless.
It could be possible to build a society and economy that works to create happy kids, but it would have to make vast changes in individualism, trust, and city layouts.
1) “The first is that bringing up children….But there IS sacrifice” Us Americans like to sit away in our castle’s devoid of community and purpose. We forget that those who give away the most are often still very happy.
2) “A second factor is that…is a lot less active help from relatives now” Absolutely spot on. My wife and I are extremely fortunate to have had lots of support, we wouldn’t have had our kids without support. Or at least not 2.
3) “Third is that the responsibility for bringing up the child, by default, is the mother’s duty; men have an option as to how much task support” Spot on again, But again this is also about community support. Much of the world will whoop a fathers butt if they try to leave, some places they’ll even lynch him to make an example. Of course this does nothing to prevent the internal dynamics of a household from being faulty, but a sense of duty is important. We cannot have community without it (i’m getting at a theme here).
4) “Fourth is climate change and the (potentially internalized as opposed to articulated) concerns about social and political stability in light of greater competition for resources.” Okay people have been born into much worse situations throughout history. The notion that the world is decaying (whether its physically or socially) is one of the social pendulums that swings one direction but then back again.
5) “Finally I suspect but cannot prove…In the 1960s, a typical working person could generate enough discretionary income to buy a low-end car outright in a matter of months. No longer” I think this point has been belabored way too much in American society. We have to remember that may have been one of the most prosperous times in human history, in the most prosperous county (empire) ever. For many today it is still even better (the have’s vs have not’s) but instead, like those later points in the article, they fall to societal pressure of needing to spend a literal fortune to raise a kid. It’s like some version of keeping up with the Jone’s. Raising a kid is really much simpler than its let on to be. I really think this sentiment will die off with the boomers, and it’s probably for the better. There is no realistic way back to the 50’s or 60’s and that is still a good thing. I didn’t live in those times but it seems like it was the beginnings or our terrible Neoliberal/Consumer culture.
I think one of the underlying theme’s of this article, at least for the American’s, is how our Society has robbed us of Culture and Community. I’m not demeaning any of those other points in the article, it think they are great. But if I had to simplify it even further it would be “it takes a village”. We no longer have that village and it’s only getting worse with time. Heck its not even an argument any more about having kids but whether the next generation can even find a partner. They are locked in on their screens and if they do find somebody it might just be a tinder date so they can get their genitals wet.
We know we all feel it around us, fake relationships everywhere we go. Staying so “busy” we forget simple interactions face to face with other humans are the essence of life. “They” want us in our houses locked away consuming as much as we can. “They” just didn’t realize consumption was on some sort of optimization curve, and that by locking us away they killed the golden goose laying their eggs. Now “they” have to push a narrative that the world will end if we don’t have more kids.
There is another factor that was not said because people don’t want to talk about it in polite company, but it needs to be said. Men are selfish and have too much control in the society. White men in particular. The reality is that they will be in long term relationships holding off marrying as long as they can because they want a prolonged adolescence. Meanwhile the biological clock is ticking and when push comes to shove the relationship ends as women gets desperate. In the end the most fertile years for many women are wasted and women are in their 30’s scrambling. I have seen this happen over and over again to dozens of almost exclusively white women, it’s a damn shame and no one wants to talk about it.
I have a young acquaintance who solved that problem by having her IUD removed without telling her boyfriend. They did get married after the baby was born, but the marriage didn’t last. She didn’t much care, since she had the kid she wanted.
I can empathize with people, male or female, who want a prolonged adolescence. If that is what a person prefers, and they are honest about it, what is the problem with that? Male or female, they are not obliged to help someone else reproduce; it is not selfish to not want to reproduce oneself.
The problem is that the men are not forthcoming about it and they lead their partners on. One of the major issues is the societal norms around getting married before having children. So instead of the woman getting to the root issue which is fertility, they are stuck on the discussion about marriage.
Alas, men who fail to have children lose their bid for immortality.
Not that you care.
Those desperate white women should talk to the manager, and demand their money back.