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Having children: costs and ideology
The demographic “death spiral” of most European countries has been analyzed and written about for a few years now. In first-world countries it takes an average of 2.1 births per woman to maintain a stable population. More births than that and the population grows, less and it declines. Thirteen European countries are solidly below 2.1 and several are way below.
America’s overall average is 2.08, but some demographic sectors of our society are carrying the freight for the rest - Hispanic women, for example, have a much higher average birth rate than white women.
Why has the birth rate declined so much? Glenn Reynolds has an incisive piece is TCS in which he explores the shrinking American family of a cost-benefit perspective.
Children used to provide cheap labor, and retirement security, all in one. Now they’re pretty much all cost and no return, from a financial perspective. …
There’s also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren’t seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world.
It’s true that raising children is expensive - heck, just getting newborns home from the hospital is pretty expensive! But of the two sides of this coin, the social costs that Glenn talks about are far more important.
[P]arenting has become more expensive in non-financial as well as financial terms. It takes up more time and emotional energy than it used to, and there’s less reward in terms of social approbation. This is like a big social tax on parenting and, as we all know, when things are taxed we get less of them. Yes, people still have children, and some people even have big families. But at the margin, which is where change occurs, people are less likely to do things as they grow more expensive and less rewarded.
There is enormous social pressure on parents to have two kids and stop, especially since most adults have been brainwashed over the last forty years or so to think that the world is badly overpopulated and human beings are a blight upon the planet. As my high-school son told me this school year, the not-very-subtle message of his required block of ecological studies was that there is nothing wrong with earth’s environment that the disappearance of humanity couldn’t solve. As Ronald Bailey wrote in Reason Online,
“Coercive population control has long been an established and widely accepted precept of ideological environmentalism.”
But the anti-human bias of the environmental movement is only one part of the picture. Since 1970 or so the feminist movement has continuously and often rabidly devalued mothering as something successful women do. Motherhood has been propagandized (even demonized) as what losers do when they can’t hold down a real job, or better yet, a profession. The social pressure on young women to “succeed” at something before having children - even before getting married at all - is huge. More and more women who have babies are having them at later ages, and this fact tends to push down the total number of babies a woman will have. A woman whose firstborn comes along when she’s 30 is a lot less likely to have three more kids than a woman who first gives birth at 23.
Some data - births by age, 1970 v. 2003:
1970:
Age 20-24 — 1,418,874
Age 25-29 — 994,904
Age 30-34 — 427,806
Age 35-39 — 180,244
2003:
Age 20-24 — 1,032,337
Age 25-29 — 1,086,898
Age 30-34 — 975,964
Age 35-39 — 467,520
It’s true that advances in prenatal medicine have made it safer for women to give birth at older ages than they could before, but the figures still show that overall, first babies are being born to older women than ever before.
A corresponding social fact of life is that women are getting married much later than before, too, if they get married at all (nationwide, the marriage rate has plunged 43 percent since 1960). Obviously, a lot of women have children without ever being married, but marriage followed by children is still the norm. In place of marriage is cohabitation, which has increased tenfold since 1960. This development was impelled by the Pill, which has served to separate having sex from its reproductive consequences for married and unmarried women alike. In pre-Pill days a married couple might want two children and settle for four, but no longer.
As well, men are affected by the separation sex from fatherhood. I explored this issue from a related angle back in 2002.
Over the last four decades, men have discovered that marriage is no longer the sure way to sex. Women have discovered that men’s sexual and emotional commitment to them isn’t usually gained by giving men sex before marriage. As the old saying goes, “Why buy a cow when milk is so cheap?” If most women offer men sex apart from marriage, then the need for men to commit to sexual loyalty to a particular woman is greatly lessened, even eliminated. Then women look around and wonder why so many men they know all seem to be rotters who aren’t interested in marriage.
The decline of marriage has undoubtedly had a significant effect on the birth rate, although the rate of children born to unmarried parents is rising. But the costs such as Glenn discusses are so high for single parenting that while more unmarried women are giving birth than before, they are having no more children apiece than married women (lots of birth-related stats here).
Update: ShrinkWrapped blog says that widespread “narcissistic pathology” is one reason for the shrinking family. See also Dean Esmay’s observations, echoed by several commenters, that anti-male bias in divorce law and society in general inhibits men from marrying more than before.
Update: Joshua Zeitz, writing in American Heritage magazine, says that the birth rate per woman had fallen to three by 1920, and that the sexual revolution began decades before the Pill, with World War II being a major contributor. “The pill didn’t create America’s sexual revolution, but it may have accelerated it—and that revolution had been a long time in the making.” Link.
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May 17th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Having pride in one’s blood and possessing hope for the future are two important indices which historically have led to large families with the aristocracy and Christian, respectively.
Glenn, and to a lesser extent you, are wonderfully bourgeois. There’s more to life than just that, though. Esp. when looking at this issue. Burghers have traditionally limited family size. It’s a middle class thing.
But children are a blessing from the Lord cf. Psalm 127 (if memory holds).
May 17th, 2006 at 11:43 am
As a divorced, 35 year old full-time working mother of one, I must tell you that I would love to have more children, either after I remarry or live with someone, but the simple costs associated with working full-time, daycare, before/after school care, orthodonists, college, etc. will ensure that I can only afford ONE and still have money for rent, food, car and other bills. I look back now and don’t know how I afforded $700/daycare every month! I can’t imagine having more kids (whether I’m married or not) - the cost to take care of them while working full-time is difficult and daunting.
May 17th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Good analysis. I note that homeschool families tend to be larger than the national averages, and this is true even among non-religious homeschoolers. (To be more precise, religious homeschoolers have more children than other religious parents, and secular homeschoolers have more children than other secular parents.)
This fits nicely with an economic analysis of parenting: if you’re going to devote an entire adult’s productive power to homeschooling one child, you can get 100% more bang for your buck by homeschooling two; 50% more bang by homeschooling three; 33% more with three, etc.
May 17th, 2006 at 11:56 am
[…] over-supervised, over-penalized world of parenting today. UPDATE: Donald Sensing posts a related message, exploring the changing demographics of parentho […]
May 17th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
The issue of death spirally society will not be taken seriously until we can laugh at ala Al Bundy et al. Come creative people- have a go at the DINK and single professional lifestyle choices on both coasts.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Scott,
Thanks for the note about homeschool families. I did not know that; although, it makes sense.
I do have a question about your percentages: If I get 100% more bang for your buck by homeschooling two kids instead of just one, wouldn’t I get 200% for three, etc.? After all, using the same resources (one parent), the number of educated kids increases three times, so my bang for my buck is likewise increasing, not decreasing.
On a related note, there is no doubt that education costs play a large role in the number of children that a family will have. If the local government school is not an option (and for many parents concerned about their childrens education, it is not), then the parents must pay twice to educate their kids: once to the government, and once to either a private school or via homeschooling which, as Scott points out, redirects an entire adult’s productive power from work to school. For large families, I think homeschooler’s have a financial advantage: the cost of private school for three or more kids quickly exceeds the average salary of a working parent, and having a parent at home reduces the income tax burden on the family.
In summary, for a large family of average financial status where a government school is not an option, homeschooling is almost a necessity. Maybe this helps explains Scott’s observation.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
-My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren’t seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world.
This depends on the local culture in which you live, even in America.
It was absolutely true in the San Francisco Bay area, where strangers were rude to pregnant women or women with multiple children in tow. But when my husband and I (at 30 and 33 respectively) moved to the Twin Cities, MN 2 years ago and bought our first house, we were not seen as fully adult members of our neighborhood because we were in our 30s and didn’t have at least 2 children. Now that we are about to have our first, we are received everywhere with more regard-work, neighborhood, church, the coffeeshop, the post office, and everywhere in between. The joy with which we are present on a daily basis is overwhelming. Total strangers beam at (a very pregnant) me, offer to help with my packages, ask when I’m due, congratulate me, tell me stories of their own families. Neighbors offer to help in every way-grocery shopping, lawn mowing, future child care. Supervisors at my work bend over backwards to accommodate my time off; at my husband’s work they insist that he take time off and flex time his schedule, regardless of official paternity leave policy.
When we meet other 30somethings here, invariably they are married and have multiple children already. It is quite common to meet couples with 3 and 4 children at home, with parents under the age of 35-40.
Prof. Reynolds lives in an academic community, and academic communities tend more to the “expulsion from adulthood” attitude with the arrival of children. While he is correct that our society is moving in this direction more and more, I think the influence of the East and West Coasters on the media are showing us a demographic that is not as common as we are led to believe.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
I don’t think it was just feminism that made women feel undervalued as mothers. When you look at movie from the 30’s and 40’s it seems that a brave, quick witted female was a prize catch-maybe because the economy was weak & war was in the air. A man might have had to depend on her income, or simply her smarts at saving money. Think “His Girl Friday” or the heroine in “Its a Wonderful Life”. By the 50’s so many women in movies seemed like complete air heads. Think Marilyn Monroe.
Culture overall during the 50’s seemed to undervalue mothers and women. It wasn’t just the feminists…and I think the effects still linger.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Its a simple matter of Variable Costs versus Fixed costs-
Old days- 2-3 kids per room, mom stayed at home- younger kids wore hand-me-downs, younger kids would inherit balls, bicycles from older.
Today- 1 kid per room, Mom works so each kid involves individual daycare costs, clothes have to be new for each kid, all activities are organized with individual fees.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Not only do environmentalists dream about a world depopulated of humans (themselves excepted), but part of the propaganda is that the U.S. specifically is ‘using more than its share’ of the world’s resources. Therefore it’s doubly important that we decrease our birth rate, compared with third-world countries.
Economic illiteracy is behind a lot of the leftist propaganda that leaves our young people feeling guilty if they have children.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Responding to Allison:
I’m pregnant now with my first (33 years old). Live in downtown Chicago. Most people are nice to me, but the African American community is REALLY, REALLY, nice to me.
Responding to Emas:
We live in a 3 bedroom 1398 square foot condo…its bigger than the house I grew up in, but everyone keeps saying, “You need more room!”
May 17th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
The influence of the lack of stability in marriage must also influence both male and female attitudes towards childbearing. I’ve yet to come across an ordinary woman who doesn’t pretty much want ONE child, at least. But wanting more than one seems to vary, and a serious influence is how much reliance she can put on the father. If she’s fully convinced the child-rearing will be a partnership for the decades it takes, and there is hardly any chance of being left to deal alone, then my feeling is she’s much more likely to consider it.
There are similar influences from the male side, too. If he knows — as today he does — that the chances are much higher than they used to be that at some point before his child is grown, he’ll be sharply severed from the child’s life by divorce and the inevitable custody take-over by mother (not to mention the possibility of mother actively interfering with his influence, which is, alas, commonplace), then he may be less willing to regard a child as his “life’s legacy” rather than, say, his career.
I don’t think it’s something we need to worry about especially, because (1) nothing can be done about widespread attitudes, and (2) the result is simply that the dominant WASP demographic will be replaced by subcultures that have different attitudes. This is already happening in the Southwest, as the Hispanic subculture takes over. Have your children learn Spanish, is my advice.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I currently have no plans on having children…
My sister recently started on the kid-track, has a 3 year old boy and a 1 year old girl.. works full time as a teacher so she knows her way around the littles.. She has no life, spends every waking moment dealing with work or with parenting.. she’s incredibly stressed
why ? It’s a giant pain in the butt, huge finanical drain, and the end of not just my social life but every bit of my life that I currently enjoy…
where’s the upside to it? Sure the kids can be a great experience and are quiet cute until they grow up to hate you, then sorta respect you as they demand more college money… buh my cats are cute, require less maintence and never need to go to college
it’s a testament to our instincive urges that we have children at all
honestly though, I think this is a non-issue.
YES birth rate is going down, but take a look at the medical indusry, life span is going to go up, A LOT.. If things go as they are expected to, people might start regularly waiting until they are 100 to have kids, the investment of 20+- years of your life to bring new life is far less costly to the long lived who have had ~80 years to build up captial
May 17th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
My wife and I have only 4 kids and we occasionally get quizzical looks and sometimes a remark like “were they all planned?” or sometimes my wife gets “do they all have the same daddy?” Haha.
We definitely live a more “old style” life - kids share a room (2 each), lots of hand me downs, don’t eat out so much, don’t go in for tons of paid entertainment, mom stays home.
I have a good job, but it is impossible to keep up with the dual income families. But does our economy depend on the current trend? I don’t know.
On the surface, the dual income, small family, voracious consumption lifestyle is probably much more appealing to young adults starting out in life.
Shucks, it is appealing to me sometimes. There are days when I would gladly trade in my 4 fighting kids for a Caribbean vacation and a little respect. Just kidding DFACS!!! It was a joke!
Anyway - just doing my part to save Social Security
May 17th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
~I can relate to the folks that moved to MN and are welcomed by the community. My wife and I are mid thirties and don’t have children. I can tell you that in our neighborhood we are the odd ducks. We aren’t invited to block parties etc, meet fewer of our neighbors, and have a difficult time ginning up friendships with local folks. Our friends are almost all work related.
The only difference we can see is that we don’t have children running around.
~Another factor is Divorce. My wife went through her parents nasty divorce as a child. She is reluctant to have children in part because she fears being like her parents. Divorce is hurting children as adults, and future generations.
…Thanks, Boomers, your truly selfish generation has helped to destroy the fabric of society.
May 17th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Another angle on the issue of folks only having two children. Children are *expensive* and there is a *big* difference in what you can provide to them by adding resources. I grew up in a family with four children. I had close friends from pre-school forward who grew up in a family with two. Our parents made similar amounts of money, here was the difference in our experience:
1) He went to the top private schools in town all through elementary and high school, I went mostly to the local public school, which simply didn’t provide adequate challenge.
2) He went to Princeton for college, I went to ye olde state school.
3) He had early and adequate access to computers and other enriching tools (this was circa 1980s), I did not.
etc, etc, etc… basically by comparison I was inadequately capitalized, because the same resources split four ways didn’t stretch. This is the big reason I am unlikely to have more than two kids myself. I don’t want to shortchange my kids the way I was shortchanged.
May 17th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
As several others have noted, a BIG reason why expense is an issue is because many parents assume too much needs to be provided to their children. (i.e. Xbox, cell phones, personal TVs, their own car when they turn 16, their own bedroom, the latest in clothing styles). There is a lot of fat that could be trimmed there; after doing so often the couple can get by with a stay-at-home parent or one with just a part-time job.
May 17th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Forgetting Fathers
I see Reverend Sensing has weighed in on the declining birth rate.
It’s interesting to me that he refers to men who want sex w…
May 17th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Cro is on the ball with his word of thanks to the baby boomers in this regard. Much has been said about feminists, environmentalists, and other assorted liberal/lefty movements as causes of low birth rates. Yet even President Bush has only two children, putting the first family below the 2.1 children per woman threshhold “to maintain a stable population” (and they’re twins!). What has yet to come up, at least in this discussion, unless I missed it, is that the more education/degrees etc. a person has, the fewer children he or she is likely to have. Should we therefore encourage people not to pursue higher education so as to increase birthrates? Such a position would fit in well with the anti-intellectualism so prevalent in much of US culture and society, but would seem to be at odds with the necessity of having high skilled workers for the socalled new/information economy. Ah, I can hear the insta-rebuke already: intellectuals, formed in the belly of the liberal university beast, are anti-family, bla, bla, bla. So predictable.
Nonetheless, the common denominator of this overall trend is the US born baby-boomer generation as such, rather than some specific faction of that generation. It seems to me to be intimately related to this generation’s excessive narcissism and obsession with self image. For instance: How many women fear having children because they are afraid it will make them even fatter? I guarantee the number is not insignificant.
Furthermore, let’s not forget that the current familial paradigm, the so-called nuclear family, is a fairly new invention (itself born in the nuclear age, and often associated with the 1950’s), and replaced the older paradigm of the large extended family. Clearly, if the point of a family is to expand the population, the nuclear family has been a startling failure, indeed, just over 50% of such marriages end in divorce.
May 17th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
exhelodrvr
Even without the frivolous, there is still quite a lot that parents need to provide their kids that is expensive… public schools for example get worse and worse every year, college education gets more and more expensive, etc.
May 17th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Donald and the commentators have only brushed by another reason for rapidly declining marriage and child birth rate: the incredibly hostile environment in family court vs. the father in divorce cases.
If kids don’t make financial when you stay married, it’s even worse after divorce, when it’s almost 100% financial cost and 0% emotional return, given how little non-financial involvement men are given with their kids post-divorce.
May 17th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
I think that a lot of the “costs” are self-imposed. I think that more spouses could stay home if the family would forgo some luxuries. Of course, that isn’t the whole picture, but it could make the difference between 2.08 and 2.1+.
May 17th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
I am 50 and grew up in the 60s and 70s as the middle of 9 kids and had a wonderful childhood. Now I only have 3 kids and although I make far more than my dad ever dreamed of, I wish I could provide half as good a childhood as I had. My parents had very little and we spent our vacations camping in a swamp swimming with water moccasins and my parents indoctrinated us to pity those poor kids who had to spend their vacations at some dumb boring resort. All of us went to college. My siblings have had so few kids they will not even replace themselves and their spouses.
We had so little then and lived so well, now we have so much and wish it could be better. Unfortunately, I realized too late in life how much joy my kids gave me so now am unable to have more. Adoption maybe.
May 17th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
With my fourth child now 9 months old, I’m glad to be in Slovakia where lots of nice folk are lower middle-class, the way I was when growing up with my 4 sisters in the 60s.
Material junk is not love, nor time together. The spiritual emptiness of capitalism drives normal folk to know “something is missing”. But it’s not something that can be picked up at the mall, or Wal-Mart. (consume mass quantities).
Nor is it found in endless promiscuity. It’s not love-lust, nor even love-companionship; but it’s a third kind of love-creation. Where two people, a man and a women, join their very essence, their DNA, to create new life (joined by God, which none can tear apart).
Love-creation requires commitment, a choice, not a feeling. Too much getting in touch with feelings, not enough in fulfilling duty — and learning to be happy while doing so.
May 17th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
I have two little boys. They are not particularily expensive simply because my wife and I a) don’t buy kids clothes or toys retail - we thrift, b) we don’t have a television so that the demand/whine cycle is not triggered, c) we have a commitment to spending our time with our children.
Makes for a deeply rewarding, if a bit insular life. But they will get older and more independent. We are homeschooling which will take time. But it will mean our children are learning something and are not simply the passive cogs in an industrial school system.
I suspect we’ll have one more child. We’d have more but I have this crazy ambition to see the last leave the nest before I’m 70 - which, as we know, is the new 50.
May 17th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Something I’ve noticed myself…
In the groups I run in, there’s only two couples I know who have more than one child, and quite a number of couples with none. Over at One Hand Clapping - The vanishing American family the reasons for this…
May 17th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Demographs and birthrates, and why we need to incr
Donald Sensing writes about the problems of declining demographs around the world. Something that the global jihad has also given people something to think about.
May 17th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Anyone who thinks its financially easy to raise kids needs to go thru a divorce. Would I like more kids? Sure Can I afford them? No. I am a single dad paying child support for our oldest daughter who lives full time with me (its not easy or cheap to ask a judge to change it and I bear attorney fees for the whole thing either way. my oldest daughter does not want to live with ex so I won’t spark a change in living arrangements by asking). I pay ex spousal support after 5 years although she is a professional (JD) and elects not to work. She got the house. Swaths of men in the US are in this same situation (so are women I know: it depends who made the $). Its taken one huge segment of people who already want kids out of the child bearing business.
May 17th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
The idea that men only marry for the sex strikes me as being from the “all men are pigs” school of thought, and not particularly fair. I favour the theory that men aren’t marrying because they simply aren’t finding the sort of woman they’d like. Only a whole lot of shoulder-chipped feminists.
Could be our species is gearing up for long life? If the whole SENS thing pans out, a person who has one kid every other decade could end up with a family of fifty.
May 17th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
As to being “shortchanged,” I can only say this:
I was the oldest of six, so I could legitimately wish my parents had quit after my next sister. Quite likely that would have significantly eased the financial troubles they had for many years of trying to get us all to adulthood. We never had the latest toys that our cousins had, minimal extra-curriculars and certainly not a dime left to help pay for my college. I had to do it myself and it took 10 years. What a rip, right??
NEVER
I would not trade my younger brothers and sisters for all the money in the world. Growing up with next to nothing meant we were our own entertainment. They are all amazing and we have become adults with complex and fascinating intersecting relationships. How could I possibly wish I had that wealthier childhood when it would mean that my baby sister and I would not today each be pregnant with our first child -experiencing everything together.
My mother, who went through the enormous strain of keeping us all clothed and fed for all those years, is rewarded with six adults who she calls her best friends.
Money is great, but family is life.
May 17th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
I think that it’s fair to say that in contemporary American society, children are regarded, by law and custom, as the property of the mother. This fact poses a significant disincentive for men to have larger families. You’re basically multiplying your liability in the event of a divorce, and may actually be precipitating one. Considering that a little of 40% of first marriages end in divorce within 15 years, it’s a pronounced risk.
Now this isn’t to say that men sit around tabulating their future potential offspring liabilities. Most of the men I know who have children entered the commitment gladly. But at the same time their wives have changed dramatically, both in personality and appearance, they often aren’t physically intimate with their spouses any longer, and for many the result is a very different marriage arrangement subsequent to the birth of the child. Knowing that the good majority of divorces are instigated by wives, and faced with many of the classic factors precipitating divorce, the consideration of whether additional children may actually harm the marriage is not unreasonable.
May 17th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Julian asks whether our species is gearing up for long life. I doubt it. Seems to me that the ancient Romans had a problem with low fertility and invasive waves of people deemed inferior, yet were more fertile. Did the Romans survive as a species- yes and no. Their language lives on in a vestigal way, and their achievements were eventually even rediscovered. Shame is we had to go through some pretty rough intervening times.
May 17th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
As 36-year old bachelor in New York, I can attest that most of my peers are childless and single. We were raised with a LOT of anti-pregnancy propaganda at school and in the media.Sure it was meant to scare us away from teen pregnancy, but the message has lingered in us. The consensus is that children would be nice “someday”, but we’re not ready to stop living yet. After all, we were shown and told that having a child is a life-crushing calamity that will ruin your life! If you have a baby your place on the middle-class ladder will be fatally compromised.
As for getting married, the idea that marriage guarantees sex seems surreal. Most men that I know assume that getting married means our sex lives wil grind to a halt, with or without children. Having a baby would mean losing a wife and gaining a second mother.
May 17th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Well said Chiara! I like that “money is great, but family is life.”
My most memorable experiences in childhood involve many more frugal events than expensive toys, clothes, or fancy vacations. While I joked earlier about my four kids, it is an absolute joy to sit at a table with my wife and kids eating spaghetti that my kids helped make. It truly is better than going out! Watching and helping one kid grow is fascinating. Seeing the differences in 4 learning and growing is astounding.
As Wallace Stevens wrote:
“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.”
It is life, rich, and beautiful. The more, the merrier!!!
I thank God for my endless blessings of people who love me. My advice: have lots of kids. You can thank me later
May 17th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
“Since 1970 or so the feminist movement has continuously and often rabidly devalued mothering as something successful women do. Motherhood has been propagandized (even demonized) as what losers do when they can’t hold down a real job, or better yet, a profession.”
The evidence for this is apparently one link to a four year old dissertation. Forgive me if I’m not persuaded.
May 17th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Ted, I’m not sure how effective it was, since many of the ideas the feminists offered up have been somewhat rejected by women today, but check out “Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution” by Adrian Rich for one feminist’s views in the 70’s. I’d say it supports Donald’s statement.
Again, I do think much of that thought has been rejected by most American women. Anyway, check it out at your local library.
May 17th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Most of the guys that I know who are married had married in their early to mid twenties. Those who hadn’t got to see the consequences. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a nice family and someone to grow old with. But if not, you end up kowtowing to some self absorbed neurotic who’s convinced that everything wrong with her life is your fault. There really doesn’t seem to be much in between. Contemporary marriage is for the benefit of women and children, and this is what a lot of women expect. It’s just a fact of life.
I’ve fought the culture war and the culture war won.
May 17th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Chiria:
I am happy that your siblings have proven to be such a boon in your life. In that circumstance I might feel differently. Alas, I am not in that circumstance. I paid all of the cost, and got from it essentially no gain. Looking around at my contemporaries from larger families, they tend to be at best amicably distant from their siblings, at worst their siblings are an unending burden on them. Not much of a trade. By way of contrast, I know several children with only one sibling who are quite close to that sibling as adults. They seem to have a very strong bond.
I think the truth of it is that most people just don’t have the strength in themselves to raise more than one or two kids well, all financial issues aside.
May 18th, 2006 at 3:31 am
Whole lot of reasons r responsible for the diminishing American family. We can’t put finger to any particular one. From expenses to pre-marital sex. And moreover who wants to take the responsibility for whole life.
May 18th, 2006 at 6:37 am
Let’s face it, Americans are incredibily self indulgent and selfish and kids are a lot of work. When people are raised into young adulthood and it’s all about them it’s pretty hard for them to accept that it’s all about the kids.
May 18th, 2006 at 10:12 am
A commenter said his/her sister had no life with 3 kids. I had no life b4 my kids-even tho I partied, went out every weekend, was constantly on the guest list of others, had a great job, upward mobility-the boomer dream!!! Problem is, it was all empty crap.
Now my life is very stressful between work and family-but I woudln’t trade a minute of this stress for all the party-career time I had before. This is so much more fulfilling and rewarding.
And yes, my g-g-g-generation (the boomers) has been the worst generation for this nation since its inception. Be a better place when the upcoming generation replaces us.
May 18th, 2006 at 11:59 am
— I had no life b4 my kids–even tho I partied, went out every weekend, was constantly on the guest list of others, had a great job, upward mobility–the boomer dream!!! Problem is, it was all empty crap.
— Now my life is very stressful between work and family–but I woudln’t trade a minute of this stress for all the party-career time I had before. This is so much more fulfilling and rewarding.
Ain’t that the truth. I mean, how many more times did I need to act like the height of my weekend was experiencing Tibetan food? Please-it was MEANINGLESS.
I think the biggest disservice our society (and Boomers in particular) have done to younger generations is to mislead them into thinking there is no JOY in family.
My marriage is filled with a depth of love that is qualitatively and quantitatively different from when I lived with other boyfriends. The joy I feel in having a family, in wanting children, and in sharing that life with my husband outweighs any prior experience in my life. My marriage now that children are in it has more joy than I dreamed possible.
The Boomers taught us that there was no joy in family. The lens of divorce has so deeply jaded them, and their offspring, that people haven’t understood the joy of a marriage that survives hardship. They have no idea what they are missing.
Henry said that there were a variety of reasons for diminishing American family life-from expenses to pre-marital sex-but couldn’t put his finger on one.
I think I can, actually. It’s about control. We’re so constantly trying to play God, to BE God, to replace God. We want to be in control of EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of our lives, even though that kind of control is joylessness. It means we lose sight of the small wonders and miracles that exist in every day life. We have to control our finances (”no kids until we’re financially well enough off”), we have to control our fertility (”we can’t have children until we’re ready”), we have to control our jobs, our careers, are lawns, our childrens’ play habits, our diets, our bodies’ physical stamina and health, etc. etc etc. Nothing can surprise us. Nothing can derail us. The PLAN must be followed, the children must be made perfect, our careers must be without bumps, our lawns manicured, etc.
We’ve lost the willingness to be human. We must be more human than human. We see this as progress, but in fact, it’s a spiritual and demographic death.
May 18th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Re #40- Everyone can be/is selfish regarding their lives, that seems to be the default setting. Not just something limited to Americans, as we can see well from this.
The question is what is more valuable- the pursuit of material ends or less concrete but somehow more satisfying spiritual ends, such as raising a family?
#41 really puts it nicely- it does take a change for you to honestly evaluate your life. Sure, economics is influential in decisionmaking, but it’s culture which makes us value certain things in life. And I don’t see the present cultures, currently experiencing these demographic declines, valuing families like the Great Cultures that lasted through the ages.
We can only do our best.
May 18th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Among the many factors causing people to have children later in life is the prevailing attitude that to have a child prior to owning a house is somehow irresponsible. I lived for the first years of my life in an apartment, as did my eldest daughter when we were getting our start. Neither of us appear to have suffered as a result.
May 18th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
I believe it just has more to do with the development of a country. Impoverished countries have much higher birth rates while developed nations are all lower.
May 18th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
[…] wanted to say something regarding the social costs of parenting topic. Glenn Reynolds and Donald Sensing have both written great pieces about it. The comm […]
May 18th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
This comment from “The Brussels Journal” sums up the issue for me - it is true of Europe (50 years of Socialism), becoming true in Canada (30 years of socialism) and it is a warning to the U.S. - that it could happen to you.
“Europeans have foolishly replaced God by the State as the one on whom they rely to take care of all their needs from cradle to grave. The religious vacuum has led to a demographic vacuum, because those who lose faith in God lose faith in the future as well. A civilization that has created a religious and a demographic vacuum is bound to perish.
The lights are turning out for Europe. If America follows Europe’s example Christendom is lost.
May 19th, 2006 at 3:50 am
One can’t trace the real reason behind the vanishing American family. May be people get what they want out of marriage,so whats the need of getting married or might be seeing some broken families around them.
May 19th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Joy! Yes, thats the word I was looking for…Thanks to #42 for clarifying my point. I have so much more true joy with children than I ever had without. I am a typical baby-boomer male who never wanted to marry, didn’t want to grow up (peter pan syndrome-typical of my whole pitiful generation) and NEVER EVER wanted kids. Then I had one, and the scales fell from my eyes. My soul literally shifted inside the moment I looked directly into the eyes of my first daughter (I now have 3). She looked directly into my eyes and nothing -NOTHING!- had ever reached inside & moved me like that before. My walls crumbled, and I have been in love with her and her sisters and their mother ever since.
Sometimes my life is a living hell, but is is hell with joy, and not the sterilized, false joy of self-involvemnt that crippled my humanity before. I am a better person because of their presence in my life.
May 19th, 2006 at 9:32 am
I have to ditto what DamnWalker said. I missed the BB by one month (I was born in early February, 1965) and for that I am oddly pleased. We had our first child when I was 27, and there was nothing that happened to me in the previous 26 years of my life that prepared me for the intense emotions that followed. I shed tears of joy for 3 days. I have since sired 2 more and had similar feelings about them.
The whole episode changed my life in positive ways I can’t really explain or understand. I no longer keep score with money or stuff. Just being “dad” is pretty much my highest ambition these days. Sometimes we have to scrape when it comes to money, but it’s worth it. To their credit, my kids make the best out of whatever monetary situation they are in. This usually means waiting a little while to get the latest and greatest game console, so it’s not like they are deprived of the necessities.
All-in-all, having kids has been the best thing to ever happen to me, and I cannot imagine an occurence that will ever be able to top it.
May 19th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
It’s true that raising children is expensive - heck, just getting newborns home from the hospital is pretty expensive!
Right thinking.
May 21st, 2006 at 3:43 am
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May 21st, 2006 at 7:45 am
The Vanishing American
Donald Sensing looks at the role of economics, ethnicity and culture in molding the declining American family size. “America’s overall average is 2.08, but some demographic sectors of our society are carrying the freight for the rest - Hispanic wome…
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:15 am
Ya right pre-marital sex plays a very imporant role in vanishing American family. Why one would like to take the responsibility when they are offered sex freely. Its time that men and women should realise how their actions are effecting the system.
May 24th, 2006 at 1:40 am
We’ve lost the willingness to be human. We must be more human than human. We see this as progress, but in fact, it’s a spiritual and demographic death.
May 29th, 2006 at 12:36 am
perhaps women have postponed having children, opted not to have children or limited the number of children they have because being a mother to a gaggle of children — and being happy doing it — is the product of fairy tales and those that would have us believe that women were capable of NOTHING else but exercising their womb! the point of the women’s movement was/is to provide women with the CHOICE of being a full time mother, a full time employee of some endeavor or a combination of both. I have been in all 3 groups and have not experienced the discrimination or “pariah” effect complained of.
however, for those pining with longing for “those were the good old days”, when women stayed home and kept house and had children, women really had no choice: it was marriage and children or nothing — an identity as some guy’s “Mrs.” no brain, no soul, just a baby-bearing appendage. Remember that as a consequence, women did not (and many still do not) have their own “wealth” or means of support in the event of a husband’s death or a divorce — at any age. In 1998, 15.4% of the total female population lived in poverty and 57.2% of the total poverty population were women. In 2003, 35.5% of single mothers LIVED AT OR BELOW THE NATIONAL POVERTY LEVEL, and an estimated additional 30% were just marginally above the poverty level. That poverty level is $14,700 for a family of 3 and $18,800 for a family of 4. 60% of those that live in EXTREME poverty (1/2 or less of the poverty level) were women. Compared to 22 other developed countries in the world, the U.S. has the highest rate of single mothers living in poverty than any other country in the group (30.9% for the U.S., 10.9% average for the group). of course, it’s not just the women who live in abject poverty, but all their children as well. and poverty begets illness, anger and crime.
As the female population ages, the chances that a woman will live in poverty increases exponentially; if a woman has stayed home to raise children and has no means of providing for her “old age”. If a woman is not employed outside the home, they have no retirment plan, no 401(k), no contributions to social security, no independent savings… and as men are more likely to die at an earlier age, the husband’s retirement benefits (if she has a husband) are reduced by 50% or more upon his death. it may not be romantic, but it is reality.
this is not to say that having children is not a wonderful and fulfilling life experience — it is — but you do not have to be the parent(s) of 7 or 10 children to prove it or to enjoy it. we might all have 10 children if it was not economic suicide to do so.
June 3rd, 2006 at 5:37 pm
I’ve fought the culture war and the culture war won.
June 4th, 2006 at 2:42 am
We had so little then and lived so well, now we have so much and wish it could be better. Unfortunately, I realized too late in life how much joy my kids gave me so now am unable to have more. Adoption maybe.
October 20th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Paying women to have children
Through the efforts of journalists such as Mark Steyn and others, the peril of Europe’s low birthrates is becoming better known. An industrialized society must average 2.1 births per woman simply to maintain a level…
May 13th, 2007 at 7:52 am
[…] that American women are having their first children at steadily advancing ages (see “The Vanishing American Family). “Shrinkwrapped,” t […]
November 15th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Methodism’s coming death spiral
I’ve just returned from three days of the Bishop’s Convocation of the Tennessee and Memphis Conferences of the United Methodist Church. The theme of the convocation was “Restoring Methodism.” I’ll not address the content of…