Why Aren't Americans Having Kids?
A review of Timothy Carney's "Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be"
Dear Friends,
A new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be1 considers a constellation of possible cultural causes of America’s declining birthrate, which has now been below replacement level for several years. Author Timothy Carney’s animating question is: Why don’t people have more kids?
This is especially important to consider because of recent studies showing that most American women, at least, have fewer children than they would like to have. It’s not that parents want fewer children than parents did even just twenty years ago; on average, they still want 2-3 children but end up having fewer.
Carney considers a variety of forces at play in this context, from public policy to civilizational mood to declining religious belief. What is so hard (or so wrong) about parenting that so many feel they must forego, limit, or delay it?
Read my review:
“Why Aren’t Americans Having Children?”
Do you agree with the gist of my review?
What about the particulars?
What do you think prevents those who *do* want more children from having them, or from entering parenthood earlier in life?
Do you have experiences or insights to share about the question of how culture affects family size?
And keep an eye out for my friend Ivana Greco ‘s review, which is coming out tomorrow at the same journal. I can’t wait to read her take!
Have a great day!
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I am late to the party, but I wanted to say that we struggled with community/support/"the village" until our oldest was school-aged. It was an isolating time. I knew there had to be others in a similar situation but I did not know how to reach them or form relationships and community with them. I was too scared to start anything myself, because what if I was wrong and there WASN'T another mom struggling with a baby and a toddler, and I was just incompetent?
The isolation caused by suburban modern life cannot really be understated, in my opinion.
Speaking candidly as a married 29 year old with sudden 'baby fever', I have noticed 3 things in my relationship:
1) We acted as if there is a proper order to the way you are supposed to be an adult. Undergrad, then grad school, then career focus for a few years, then enjoy life for a few years, maybe take a year off entirely to travel... Obviously it doesn't work out that way. But that was the main narrative animating life for us. Your life ends when you have kids. So do everything else first.
2) Cost. It's really real. Painfully real. Of course having kids has always meant making financial tradeoffs. But... Man. We have good 'respectable' jobs that we enjoy, working for local institutions in our city. We feel like we make a positive impact through our careers and we are both working in the fields we studied in college. But in order to pay for childcare and feel somewhat financially stable, I think I am going to have to 'sell out' and go work for a larger for-profit company of some sort. I have the skills and experience. It's just not where my heart is. But what else can I do? Really if anyone has suggestions, please tell me.
3) 'Social imaginary'. None of our close friends have kids. Many of our friends don't want kids in the future. Having never seen another person 'become' a parent, how can we imagine it for ourselves? How can we even fathom a baby when neither of us have held one in years? We've always known that we want kids in an abstract way, and I think we assumed there would be others in our life going ahead of us, showing us the path so to speak. But there just hasn't been anyone.