I haven’t read this book but this topic is very important to me. In my experience, the second point seems to carry more weight when it comes to the reasons people give for remaining childless — the view human life as not inherently worth it and meaningful. A large number of the female friends I had in my twenties don’t want children and their reasons are usually things like “I don’t want the responsibility,” “I don’t want to be up all night,” or “travel is the only thing that makes me happy.” They simply aren’t seeing what having a child means or does or is, at all. It’s very heartbreaking.
I would have had kids sooner if I had met my husband sooner. Wanting kids was a roadblock for me in my previous long term relationship. I think a lot of women (probably men, too) struggle to find a spouse who also wants kids right now in time to have as many as they would have liked (or any at all).
I think the contraceptive mentality (and our materialism) have convinced many, especially well-educated and middle/upper class, that it’s only responsible to bring children into the world under certain extremely restrictive conditions and that children “deserve” certain levels of attention/enrichment/material goods that are very difficult to scale up. I think you see the same phenomenon writ large in China, where they’ve been unable to get people to have more children after lifting the one child policy because there is now this strong cultural impetus to produce this incredible hothouse child and that style of parenting is too intensive (and expensive) to extend to more offspring.
I haven't read it yet. Unsure if I have time but my first thoughts are that in America. It became all about "what I want, consumerism, less focus on family, stay young forever" when the Baby Boomers were young and it's been trickling down ever since. I was told to wait until after I have a degree, job and husband. I waited until 25 to get married and 27 first kid, and now 2nd at 29. It's so rare to be able to have kids young now unless you join the military or get a really good job or depend on welfare/relatives. Looking forward to the article.
Expense is such a difficult part of family life, particularly in the last couple years, and especially for families trying to live on a single income. I wouldn’t do anything differently with my own little family (and we have no plans to slow down our baby production 😂), but I understand how people, especially those in their 20s, can find it frightening to try to start/grow a family when basic living expenses are soaring. There absolutely are many more and deeper issues at play in America’s falling birth rate, but the economy is an issue that in many ways is out of our control.
Very interesting article. I agree with the gist and think it hits the nail on the head.
"Our culture subsidizes abortion" but wants to increase fertility. That really stands out. We live in a "culture of death," that is hedonistic and degenerative at the same time. If you don't believe in God and his power over the earth, why have kids? I live close to Seattle, it's a spiritual wasteland. The environment isn't that bad, but the people are beaten.
Government can't replace God.
If someone sees the joy and love that children bring. I think they'll have a few. But that means they have to find the right person and be able to afford it. It all cycles back to an unfriendly, I like "culture of death," pretty sure a prominent Catholic coined that. I don't take credit.
"They make working easier, not parenting." That's it. That's the whole thing with most policies that aren't, as you mention, tax breaks or subsidies. The UK is a total mess in this regard, and one of the biggest problems is what notion of "family" the government wants to shape its policies to support.
Do married couples with children get different things than single people with children? Do adults caring for children or other adults in their families get recognised, fiscally, by the government? Do people who share a mortgage get something different than people who just rent from the same landlord?
Here in the UK, if you are a mother with small children, the government will pay for childcare/ nursery school (varied hours by age, etc.) But *you* are not given that money - rather the gov't will pay a daycare on your behalf. Which means that if you wanted your grandmother or niece or sister-in-law to help watch your kids, and she isn't registered with the government as an officially-inspected provider, they won't help you pay her. Nor, if you wanted to stay home with your own children, would you get that money. So the gov't claims it is a family-friendly policy, but really, it's a pro working-outside-the home-mother policy.
Married couples can only file taxes as individuals: there is no such thing, truly, as a 'household income'. So you take home *more* money (by paying fewer taxes) if both mother and father work, say each earning £35k/ year, than if one worked to earn £70k/ year. The former are taxed at a much lower rate. I know many families where it just isn't possible here for mothers to step out of the paid work force, and that's precisely because of the policies that shape tax law, benefits, etc. here.
“cultural sadness” - i’ve heard that a lot, especially when i was younger. people would say, “why would i want to bring a child into a world like this?” i would have to add, i think secular feminism has a huge role to play here. as women, the culture teaches us from the earliest age that everything about our biology is to be controlled, destroyed, feared, repressed - every single aspect of our fertility in particular, from monthly cycles to breastfeeding. when our fundamental role as life-giver is no longer respected - when we are conditioned to think, or at least very strongly encouraged to think - that having a career and being sexually appealing are more important than giving life, it’s very difficult to take on the already-daunting challenges of motherhood. and on the other side of that, secular feminism has also taught men that they are not valued *for being men.*
i will never forget an incident where i was downtown in a big city, right in the heart of a business district, with my oldest, maybe a year old. *every single woman* i came across that day glared at us. every single one. the men were delighted - held doors open, helped me lift the stroller up & down stairs … it was a really interesting experience!
I haven't read the book (but would like to!) and I've added it to my list. My thought to add is related to the concept of "village" and it ties in to the note that I tagged you in recently Dixie - with smaller family sizes and a society more and more stratified by age and class, more and more people are less able to visualize what it means to have children and to live a life that includes parenting. My colleague who wanted to help a coworker by coming over to hold their baby honestly did not know that this was a thing you can offer, and that it is a helpful and good offer! They asked me if the baby being two weeks old was "too soon" and my response was, "This is prime time! Wash your hands when you arrive, bring snacks, and they will never forget your kindness!" And this person sent me this text because they knew (because I am not shy about it) that I am a mom. I think living the vocation to family life in our culture involves showing people that it can be done, because too many people nowadays are being told otherwise.
Yes, I think I can pretty much co-sign the points here. I find the points about increasing GDP vs. actually supporting families particularly salient. I think this also applies to any sort of broader care network (I’m specifically thinking of family care — how hard it is to pay a family member to care for another elderly family member for example). And I know Ivana and others have written about this too, but the huge amount of force behind the ideas of “real” work and ?? (fake work??). Despite the video that circulates each Mother’s Day with the totally absurd job description that no one would take that is revealed to be “mom”, we still don’t value care work because we don’t get paid for it.
When I was reading “The Outsourced Self” (which I can’t find! Did the baby carry it off?) she talks about the movement of parental advice seeking from the clergy to the pediatrician and how the locus for family advice becomes “science”. But then this becomes tied to products, and things you can sell people quite quickly. And as cynical as it makes me sound, a healthy family with strong social networks is not a very good consumer. They don’t need a lot….
And of course there’s the fundamental breakdown between sex and the possibility of children. I think the fact that we see children as completely optional and separate has done so much damage. It allows so many people in my generation to see the damage caused by their own parents and decide to “opt out” without any thought as to what would have happened if any prior generation had opted out. The fact is that despite everyone’s woes about economy, etc… etc… we are NOT in worse shape than so many times in history. I’m not advocating for poor conditions, but it’s just an argument that is very short sighted and also presumes to know that us saving children from existing is magnanimous. I think it speaks to the profound lack of hope that is prevalent though. Ok, now I’ve typed on long enough… I’ll have to get the book :)
Maybe it’s the phones? A week ago, I read an article called “It’s the phones, people”. In this article, the author made the case that people are literally connecting less (and having sex less) due to phones. I do think that phones and social media have magnified our fears- including fears around parenting. The author was talking about how as a society we have traded real life for online life. I think that applies to having children as well. Phones cause us to have tunnel vision instead of being able to grasp the bigger picture of what is really important in life. Social media influencers of ALL kinds get us right where we are afraid, with so many different versions of “the end is coming.” It’s hard to cut the noise and declare: Life is good, God has made it good, the earth, creation is good and worth protecting. To live that and affirm that every day is counter cultural. Link to original article below. 👇
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.
I got the book in the mail yesterday! So pumped to read it. Though my husband grabbed it and cracked it before I had the chance so we’ll see😅 Heading to read your thoughts now!
I went to a relatively prestigious university and we live in an affluent area. I think a focus on higher education/career + lifestyle creep in the 20s/early 30s is a huge deterrent for having kids (in upper middle class circles). I spent most of my 20s having back-to-back babies. We had to move to the absolute boonies to buy a fixer upper, lived off one income, no vacations/eating out etc. I remember the highlight of the week for many years was splitting a frozen pizza and a couple of beers after the kids were in bed (which is still my idea of a good time, ha!). This was all fine & freely chosen but I acutely felt how stark of a contrast my life was to most people I knew. Most of my college peers/friends were pursuing grad degrees and then building careers, living downtown in expensive condos or investing in 500k- 1 mil dream houses, taking yearly international vacations, dining out at Michelin star restaurants. If that is your baseline for a decade+, I think it would be VERY hard to suddenly decide I’m going to sacrifice some of those things to start a family.
“People are good.” Excellent.
I haven’t read this book but this topic is very important to me. In my experience, the second point seems to carry more weight when it comes to the reasons people give for remaining childless — the view human life as not inherently worth it and meaningful. A large number of the female friends I had in my twenties don’t want children and their reasons are usually things like “I don’t want the responsibility,” “I don’t want to be up all night,” or “travel is the only thing that makes me happy.” They simply aren’t seeing what having a child means or does or is, at all. It’s very heartbreaking.
I would have had kids sooner if I had met my husband sooner. Wanting kids was a roadblock for me in my previous long term relationship. I think a lot of women (probably men, too) struggle to find a spouse who also wants kids right now in time to have as many as they would have liked (or any at all).
I think the contraceptive mentality (and our materialism) have convinced many, especially well-educated and middle/upper class, that it’s only responsible to bring children into the world under certain extremely restrictive conditions and that children “deserve” certain levels of attention/enrichment/material goods that are very difficult to scale up. I think you see the same phenomenon writ large in China, where they’ve been unable to get people to have more children after lifting the one child policy because there is now this strong cultural impetus to produce this incredible hothouse child and that style of parenting is too intensive (and expensive) to extend to more offspring.
I haven't read it yet. Unsure if I have time but my first thoughts are that in America. It became all about "what I want, consumerism, less focus on family, stay young forever" when the Baby Boomers were young and it's been trickling down ever since. I was told to wait until after I have a degree, job and husband. I waited until 25 to get married and 27 first kid, and now 2nd at 29. It's so rare to be able to have kids young now unless you join the military or get a really good job or depend on welfare/relatives. Looking forward to the article.
Expense is such a difficult part of family life, particularly in the last couple years, and especially for families trying to live on a single income. I wouldn’t do anything differently with my own little family (and we have no plans to slow down our baby production 😂), but I understand how people, especially those in their 20s, can find it frightening to try to start/grow a family when basic living expenses are soaring. There absolutely are many more and deeper issues at play in America’s falling birth rate, but the economy is an issue that in many ways is out of our control.
Very interesting article. I agree with the gist and think it hits the nail on the head.
"Our culture subsidizes abortion" but wants to increase fertility. That really stands out. We live in a "culture of death," that is hedonistic and degenerative at the same time. If you don't believe in God and his power over the earth, why have kids? I live close to Seattle, it's a spiritual wasteland. The environment isn't that bad, but the people are beaten.
Government can't replace God.
If someone sees the joy and love that children bring. I think they'll have a few. But that means they have to find the right person and be able to afford it. It all cycles back to an unfriendly, I like "culture of death," pretty sure a prominent Catholic coined that. I don't take credit.
Good review Dixie!
"They make working easier, not parenting." That's it. That's the whole thing with most policies that aren't, as you mention, tax breaks or subsidies. The UK is a total mess in this regard, and one of the biggest problems is what notion of "family" the government wants to shape its policies to support.
Do married couples with children get different things than single people with children? Do adults caring for children or other adults in their families get recognised, fiscally, by the government? Do people who share a mortgage get something different than people who just rent from the same landlord?
Here in the UK, if you are a mother with small children, the government will pay for childcare/ nursery school (varied hours by age, etc.) But *you* are not given that money - rather the gov't will pay a daycare on your behalf. Which means that if you wanted your grandmother or niece or sister-in-law to help watch your kids, and she isn't registered with the government as an officially-inspected provider, they won't help you pay her. Nor, if you wanted to stay home with your own children, would you get that money. So the gov't claims it is a family-friendly policy, but really, it's a pro working-outside-the home-mother policy.
Married couples can only file taxes as individuals: there is no such thing, truly, as a 'household income'. So you take home *more* money (by paying fewer taxes) if both mother and father work, say each earning £35k/ year, than if one worked to earn £70k/ year. The former are taxed at a much lower rate. I know many families where it just isn't possible here for mothers to step out of the paid work force, and that's precisely because of the policies that shape tax law, benefits, etc. here.
“cultural sadness” - i’ve heard that a lot, especially when i was younger. people would say, “why would i want to bring a child into a world like this?” i would have to add, i think secular feminism has a huge role to play here. as women, the culture teaches us from the earliest age that everything about our biology is to be controlled, destroyed, feared, repressed - every single aspect of our fertility in particular, from monthly cycles to breastfeeding. when our fundamental role as life-giver is no longer respected - when we are conditioned to think, or at least very strongly encouraged to think - that having a career and being sexually appealing are more important than giving life, it’s very difficult to take on the already-daunting challenges of motherhood. and on the other side of that, secular feminism has also taught men that they are not valued *for being men.*
i will never forget an incident where i was downtown in a big city, right in the heart of a business district, with my oldest, maybe a year old. *every single woman* i came across that day glared at us. every single one. the men were delighted - held doors open, helped me lift the stroller up & down stairs … it was a really interesting experience!
I'm reading the book literally right now for another review... so I'll probably be back to read and respond. :)
I haven't read the book (but would like to!) and I've added it to my list. My thought to add is related to the concept of "village" and it ties in to the note that I tagged you in recently Dixie - with smaller family sizes and a society more and more stratified by age and class, more and more people are less able to visualize what it means to have children and to live a life that includes parenting. My colleague who wanted to help a coworker by coming over to hold their baby honestly did not know that this was a thing you can offer, and that it is a helpful and good offer! They asked me if the baby being two weeks old was "too soon" and my response was, "This is prime time! Wash your hands when you arrive, bring snacks, and they will never forget your kindness!" And this person sent me this text because they knew (because I am not shy about it) that I am a mom. I think living the vocation to family life in our culture involves showing people that it can be done, because too many people nowadays are being told otherwise.
Yes, I think I can pretty much co-sign the points here. I find the points about increasing GDP vs. actually supporting families particularly salient. I think this also applies to any sort of broader care network (I’m specifically thinking of family care — how hard it is to pay a family member to care for another elderly family member for example). And I know Ivana and others have written about this too, but the huge amount of force behind the ideas of “real” work and ?? (fake work??). Despite the video that circulates each Mother’s Day with the totally absurd job description that no one would take that is revealed to be “mom”, we still don’t value care work because we don’t get paid for it.
When I was reading “The Outsourced Self” (which I can’t find! Did the baby carry it off?) she talks about the movement of parental advice seeking from the clergy to the pediatrician and how the locus for family advice becomes “science”. But then this becomes tied to products, and things you can sell people quite quickly. And as cynical as it makes me sound, a healthy family with strong social networks is not a very good consumer. They don’t need a lot….
And of course there’s the fundamental breakdown between sex and the possibility of children. I think the fact that we see children as completely optional and separate has done so much damage. It allows so many people in my generation to see the damage caused by their own parents and decide to “opt out” without any thought as to what would have happened if any prior generation had opted out. The fact is that despite everyone’s woes about economy, etc… etc… we are NOT in worse shape than so many times in history. I’m not advocating for poor conditions, but it’s just an argument that is very short sighted and also presumes to know that us saving children from existing is magnanimous. I think it speaks to the profound lack of hope that is prevalent though. Ok, now I’ve typed on long enough… I’ll have to get the book :)
Maybe it’s the phones? A week ago, I read an article called “It’s the phones, people”. In this article, the author made the case that people are literally connecting less (and having sex less) due to phones. I do think that phones and social media have magnified our fears- including fears around parenting. The author was talking about how as a society we have traded real life for online life. I think that applies to having children as well. Phones cause us to have tunnel vision instead of being able to grasp the bigger picture of what is really important in life. Social media influencers of ALL kinds get us right where we are afraid, with so many different versions of “the end is coming.” It’s hard to cut the noise and declare: Life is good, God has made it good, the earth, creation is good and worth protecting. To live that and affirm that every day is counter cultural. Link to original article below. 👇
https://open.substack.com/pub/magdalene/p/its-obviously-the-phones?r=1k5wlf&utm_medium=ios
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.
I got the book in the mail yesterday! So pumped to read it. Though my husband grabbed it and cracked it before I had the chance so we’ll see😅 Heading to read your thoughts now!
I went to a relatively prestigious university and we live in an affluent area. I think a focus on higher education/career + lifestyle creep in the 20s/early 30s is a huge deterrent for having kids (in upper middle class circles). I spent most of my 20s having back-to-back babies. We had to move to the absolute boonies to buy a fixer upper, lived off one income, no vacations/eating out etc. I remember the highlight of the week for many years was splitting a frozen pizza and a couple of beers after the kids were in bed (which is still my idea of a good time, ha!). This was all fine & freely chosen but I acutely felt how stark of a contrast my life was to most people I knew. Most of my college peers/friends were pursuing grad degrees and then building careers, living downtown in expensive condos or investing in 500k- 1 mil dream houses, taking yearly international vacations, dining out at Michelin star restaurants. If that is your baseline for a decade+, I think it would be VERY hard to suddenly decide I’m going to sacrifice some of those things to start a family.