Yes. Reminds me of religious folks who love to say that being a mother is "the most important job in the world" while simultaneously not giving any real clout or practical support to mothering. As if mothering itself, along with that sentimental comment, is enough. I've long been annoyed by this.
I do get something of a soldier’s honor when I go out with my 3 young kids in my city with a birth rate of 0.7. It feels as though people see childbearing as good, but better you than me, and thanks for doing my part. But honestly, if I didn’t already want kids and decided I’d have them no matter the circumstances, I don’t know that the prospect of that honor would have moved the needle. I don’t know if that makes me unusual or not. Maybe others are different. But collectivist appeals just don’t move me at all. I have weathered many collectivist appeals in being the cousin who is often skipping out on family vacations planned without my input despite appeals of “we really miss you and counted on your coming”. Nope.
All else being equal, yes, raising the status of parents would help birth rates. But I think there are much more potent and intransigent factors keeping fertility low. The perceived cost of children, the compulsion to intensively parent (I feel it myself, no shade. I see my friends with only children investing so much in their extracurriculars and feel a pang of guilt I can’t do the same), while maintaining career progression, possibility of travel, big house, being able to work on hobbies, etc. People have higher expectations of both their own lives and that of their children.
I’m not convinced any government measure or rhetoric can help would-be parents meet those high expectations. Governments can’t afford it. You would have to hoodwink people into not wanting what they want, or stop seeing the Malthusian math of “if I have X kids, I will have to give up Y things I enjoy.” I almost wonder if people had more kids in the past because they didn’t count on going on a long trip every year, or something. Because that was only for the ultra rich back then. And you could also demand more from your children back then.
Thank you for sharing this! To be clear, I think there is a LOT going on when it comes to why fertility is falling and what it would take to reverse it. It's interesting to hear people's (varied, of course!) perspectives on what motivated them to have kids--for me personally, the fact that I believed so strongly that motherhood was a good, deeply valuable way to use my talents in order to contribute to society was absolutely a motivating factor. Probably THE motivating factor. But I'm sure that has something to do with my disposition/personality. It's pretty much impossible for me to imagine life without my kids now that I have them, but before becoming a parent I never felt like I personally required children to be happy. Maybe this is because so many people in my extended family and social circles were nuns/priests/religious growing up, but it always seemed perfectly plausible to me to carve out a happy, meaningful life without kids. Even the relatives I have who never managed to have children of their own don't seem hopelessly miserable to me. I think I could be happy without kids. But I'm really glad I took the path I did. One, because I love my kids in particular. But also because I still believe, as I always have, that I'm devoting myself to work that is really important.
I think the high divorce rate is another cause for lower birth rates. People don't want to risk being a single parent of a lot of children. And that risk is an existential threat for many... except those with very reliable spouses.
"People have higher expectations of both their own lives and that of their children." Yep. I think these pressures won't be moved much at all. (Tim Carney lays these things out well in his book Family Unfriendly.)
Like you said, the intrinsic motivation has to be there to some extent, even though I do understand the collectivist framework!! For instance, my husband's coworkers think he's wild for expecting our fourth child as 33 year-olds. It's partly a whole worldview and religious difference of the value of children and the purpose of our marriage. We don't have the lifestyles of his coworkers because of it. That's a sacrifice his professional colleagues just won't change on a whim, and choose to do over and over again to apparently no reward.
There's a reason religious folks have more children on average, even as I wish children were seen as a *collective* good (and need) for society, regardless of faith practices.
Anyways, so many things are at play here simultaneously and I'm thankful Stephanie recognizes it! haha It all just seems so defeating when it comes down to it IRL.
Wow congratulations! Are you guys forging ahead with more kids after this one? I do think at #3 we may be at capacity. We are currently stressing about how we’re going to get 3 kids over to America (so, other side of the world) every year. The travel alone obliterates our savings but we don’t want to give up on seeing the family who lives there. Unless something drastic changes, there’s really no way we can have more kids and afford to see them.
Housing is also so expensive we’re looking at having 3 girls to a room. Either that or we’d have to rent a lot bigger. We’d also like the option of sending our kids to private school if that’s what suits them. That’s our family’s Malthusian arithmetic. Ideally we’d like 4. But I’m paywalling it behind my husband and I starting a wildly successful business before I’m 35 🤣
ha, one can dream about a wildly successful business!!
The travel costs in that situation is a whole thing. We had some friends back in Long Island who visit family regularly in the Dominican Republic and that's an entire consideration on its own. But seeing family is huge.
I could have written this! We are expecting #4 at 33/34 and everyone my husband has told at work has been floored. We don’t see it as crazy, and we weren’t “surprised” either lol
Thank you for this. I’ve recently seen the elder care end of this more starkly, as you pointed out. The problem of people aging with few or no family to support them will only accelerate in the coming years. And that accelerating will lead more people to realize the extent of the problem, but as people in a passenger car realize the front of the train has just derailed. They’re next in line for the crash, but there’s nothing they can do to stop it.
Except maybe the generations behind these will be motivated to avoid what they’ve seen or, better, to risk a different kind of life (a pronatalist one) because it’s worth doing. I hope and pray that young people will see our family (8 living children) and catch a glimmer of possibility that might also be theirs and that of their future society.
Totally. I just commented above about the reaction from my husband’s patients and colleagues when he tells them we are expecting #4- they’re all shocked. Meanwhile they’re all working in a primary care clinic within a medical system totally overburdened by a lack of doctors to replace the retiring boomers, and caring for elderly patients who often don’t have the support they need from their children and family.
Congratulations on your fourth! Our fourth was such a gift. A wonderful, laid back baby. He’s still great (I’m currently at a violin lesson with him—he’s 11 now :-)).
But the reaction to multiple children that you’ve experienced is so sad. We have eight living children. Friends have nine, other friends (multiple families) have seven. We have a friend staying with us now whose wife is expecting their ninth. It’s about understanding children as gifts. And the work-intensive stages are short. The older I get, the more I see how when the day-to-day is hard, looking forward 20 (or 40 or more) years is so helpful.
Luckily our friends and family are all supportive! We have lots of friends who are ahead of us in this journey which is encouraging. In my husband’s job he just gets exposure to a wide swath of humanity who are not in our “open to/used to big families” bubble. You’re right that taking the long view is so necessary!
Emily, thank you for this comment. I appreciate your clear expression of the future problems awaiting us. I often wonder if anyone is paying attention to these things. And any time I see a family willing to stretch and grow beyond what seems feasible in today's society -- say, vehicles and car seats -- I am incredibly encouraged. I'm sure those around you are, or will be one day if they aren't yet. ;)
Oh, wow — this was great. Material reality directly impacts culture. I keep thinking about this line from the original article: “As long as the United States’ threadbare safety net gives people so far to fall, it may not be possible to temper the country’s intensive-parenting culture.”
I recently wrote a personal essay about opting out of extracurriculars for a year. But your piece had me thinking — the reason I felt generally comfortable doing that is because of privilege. I’m not terribly worried about my children “making it” in the future, not in the same way that someone with more precarity might worry. Successfully opting out of intensive parenting is its own sort of privilege.
I love that you tie in Israel (via that Public Discourse piece) toward the end. Their whole system in all its facets is entirely unrecognizable and perhaps unrepeatable on a wide scale for us in America. But the model is there!
This also pairs well with Louise Perry's piece in First Things a while back on modernity self-destructing. Like yes, we uh do in fact NEED parents to create literal people for society. The ignorance of this is astounding.
I love the nuance of this opinion. It also reminds me of a line I heard from an older co-worker: “Parenting kids is easy. Parenting future adults is hard.” But that’s also the reward. I’ve always been quietly suspect of the whole “parents aren’t having as many kids as they want” argument. Now I have an idea why
Such a great piece, Stephanie-- thank you for sharing it here! I love how you framed this conversation and I hope that it reaches the widest audience possible!
This is great, Stephanie. I think there's a lot to say about the negative effects of radical individualism on society, falling birth rates and the lack of respect for parenthood being some of them.
"There is a line of obligation that connects us to those who gave us what we have; and our concern for the future is an extension of that line. We take the future of our community into account not by fictitious cost-benefit calculations, but more concretely, by seeing ourselves as inheriting benefits and passing them on. Concern for future generations is a non-specific outgrowth of gratitude. ... [C]ontempt for the dead leads to the disenfranchisement of the unborn. ... Radical individualists enter the world without social capital of their own, and they consume all that they find."
-- Roger Scruton, Conservatism, analyzing Burke's response to the French Revolution
I'm way out of my league reading this book -- mother and nurse, not a *credentialed* philosopher -- but I cannot express how much this touched on my low-key grief as I try to raise my five, hopefully more, children in a world that doesn't value the endeavor. Gratitude for the past is....laughably absent from our society. Unsurprisingly, then, we have little concern for future generations.
Most people who become soldiers or doctors do it for their own love for their work. And because society doesn’t harass them for the consequences of doing that work. If a doctor has a crazy schedule and gains weight after not sleeping for 24 hours straight no one is shaming them. A doctors hectic life is respected. A soldiers life is respected even in the civilian world.
Moms are never respected nor are they well paid no r compensated, in fact they are dehumanised by society. And even though they may find love and honor in their work - it starts getting pretty degrading once they realize no one else does.
I agree with your points about the hypocrisy of the pronatalist position, but think you overstate the impact of declining fertility.
Yes, the near-term impacts revolve around pensions and growth-assumption economic models, because we are not anywhere CLOSE to having so few children that society will collapse. The global population is still growing by tens of millions of people per year.
As I note in the piece, there is plenty of disagreement among researchers about how far fertility can fall and for how long before it causes issues. It is true some believe it could remain below replacement for quite a while before standards of living take a hit.
Excellent article! You make a great point. While it's a complex issue, this tracks well with some of my thoughts on the Amish and how they maintain their large family norms.
"In my opinion, the underlying problem is that the lag time between anti-social behavior and its consequences has been inflated by the Industrial Revolution to the point that the social institutions meant to punish anti-social behavior have collapsed, and the short-term incentive structures now point away from parenthood."
This tracks with your comment that society needs parents as much as ever, but that might not be as obvious today as it once was. And I think that might be the crux of the problem.
It's easy to feel the value in having children when every elderly person you know is being supported and cared for by their children, except for the unfortunate few who don't have any. Whereas today, what's the value in having children when many of the entitled Boomers are living it up on pensions, Social Security, and retirement savings while any children they might have want nothing to do with them? And calling their descendants lazy and worthless for their failure to thrive?
Nobody can see through that mess and realize that we actually do need parents after all, not until the pensions, Social Security, stock market, real estate market, and health and elder care systems all collapse due to lack of young people to support them.
Someone saying that they're a mom because they love it isn't an "argument", though. I think the issue I have with this comment is that you seem to be conflating pronatalism as a cause with the desires and motivations of individual moms. A mom is well within her right to say she's a mom because she loves it! She doesn't have to be having children for "a cause" or to be able to articulate a reason for having kids that "helps vulnerable mothers". If you're talking about pronatalists then I can understand and agree with your point, but we can't (and shouldn't, I'd say) conflate moms with pronatalists. For one, I'd argue it adds additional pressure on them to be able to articulately "argue" a case for having kids... Moms can just have kids for whatever reason and that be that..! Obviously it's another matter for pronatalists, and I think this article addresses well what the issues are.
I see what you're saying, and I'd put myself in the same boat as you for sure! But I also see among my circle of mom friends that none of them would even have heard of pronatalism or would ever have thought about the "value" of having kids abstractly... They just have kids because they personally want them and there's no more to it than that! But you're right, if that's the only reason brought up as a "reason" to have kids within pronatalist discussions, then it doesn't really do the job so well...
Yes. Reminds me of religious folks who love to say that being a mother is "the most important job in the world" while simultaneously not giving any real clout or practical support to mothering. As if mothering itself, along with that sentimental comment, is enough. I've long been annoyed by this.
I do get something of a soldier’s honor when I go out with my 3 young kids in my city with a birth rate of 0.7. It feels as though people see childbearing as good, but better you than me, and thanks for doing my part. But honestly, if I didn’t already want kids and decided I’d have them no matter the circumstances, I don’t know that the prospect of that honor would have moved the needle. I don’t know if that makes me unusual or not. Maybe others are different. But collectivist appeals just don’t move me at all. I have weathered many collectivist appeals in being the cousin who is often skipping out on family vacations planned without my input despite appeals of “we really miss you and counted on your coming”. Nope.
All else being equal, yes, raising the status of parents would help birth rates. But I think there are much more potent and intransigent factors keeping fertility low. The perceived cost of children, the compulsion to intensively parent (I feel it myself, no shade. I see my friends with only children investing so much in their extracurriculars and feel a pang of guilt I can’t do the same), while maintaining career progression, possibility of travel, big house, being able to work on hobbies, etc. People have higher expectations of both their own lives and that of their children.
I’m not convinced any government measure or rhetoric can help would-be parents meet those high expectations. Governments can’t afford it. You would have to hoodwink people into not wanting what they want, or stop seeing the Malthusian math of “if I have X kids, I will have to give up Y things I enjoy.” I almost wonder if people had more kids in the past because they didn’t count on going on a long trip every year, or something. Because that was only for the ultra rich back then. And you could also demand more from your children back then.
Thank you for sharing this! To be clear, I think there is a LOT going on when it comes to why fertility is falling and what it would take to reverse it. It's interesting to hear people's (varied, of course!) perspectives on what motivated them to have kids--for me personally, the fact that I believed so strongly that motherhood was a good, deeply valuable way to use my talents in order to contribute to society was absolutely a motivating factor. Probably THE motivating factor. But I'm sure that has something to do with my disposition/personality. It's pretty much impossible for me to imagine life without my kids now that I have them, but before becoming a parent I never felt like I personally required children to be happy. Maybe this is because so many people in my extended family and social circles were nuns/priests/religious growing up, but it always seemed perfectly plausible to me to carve out a happy, meaningful life without kids. Even the relatives I have who never managed to have children of their own don't seem hopelessly miserable to me. I think I could be happy without kids. But I'm really glad I took the path I did. One, because I love my kids in particular. But also because I still believe, as I always have, that I'm devoting myself to work that is really important.
I think the high divorce rate is another cause for lower birth rates. People don't want to risk being a single parent of a lot of children. And that risk is an existential threat for many... except those with very reliable spouses.
"People have higher expectations of both their own lives and that of their children." Yep. I think these pressures won't be moved much at all. (Tim Carney lays these things out well in his book Family Unfriendly.)
Like you said, the intrinsic motivation has to be there to some extent, even though I do understand the collectivist framework!! For instance, my husband's coworkers think he's wild for expecting our fourth child as 33 year-olds. It's partly a whole worldview and religious difference of the value of children and the purpose of our marriage. We don't have the lifestyles of his coworkers because of it. That's a sacrifice his professional colleagues just won't change on a whim, and choose to do over and over again to apparently no reward.
There's a reason religious folks have more children on average, even as I wish children were seen as a *collective* good (and need) for society, regardless of faith practices.
Anyways, so many things are at play here simultaneously and I'm thankful Stephanie recognizes it! haha It all just seems so defeating when it comes down to it IRL.
Wow congratulations! Are you guys forging ahead with more kids after this one? I do think at #3 we may be at capacity. We are currently stressing about how we’re going to get 3 kids over to America (so, other side of the world) every year. The travel alone obliterates our savings but we don’t want to give up on seeing the family who lives there. Unless something drastic changes, there’s really no way we can have more kids and afford to see them.
Housing is also so expensive we’re looking at having 3 girls to a room. Either that or we’d have to rent a lot bigger. We’d also like the option of sending our kids to private school if that’s what suits them. That’s our family’s Malthusian arithmetic. Ideally we’d like 4. But I’m paywalling it behind my husband and I starting a wildly successful business before I’m 35 🤣
ha, one can dream about a wildly successful business!!
The travel costs in that situation is a whole thing. We had some friends back in Long Island who visit family regularly in the Dominican Republic and that's an entire consideration on its own. But seeing family is huge.
And we're taking them one at a time. :)
I could have written this! We are expecting #4 at 33/34 and everyone my husband has told at work has been floored. We don’t see it as crazy, and we weren’t “surprised” either lol
Thank you for this. I’ve recently seen the elder care end of this more starkly, as you pointed out. The problem of people aging with few or no family to support them will only accelerate in the coming years. And that accelerating will lead more people to realize the extent of the problem, but as people in a passenger car realize the front of the train has just derailed. They’re next in line for the crash, but there’s nothing they can do to stop it.
Except maybe the generations behind these will be motivated to avoid what they’ve seen or, better, to risk a different kind of life (a pronatalist one) because it’s worth doing. I hope and pray that young people will see our family (8 living children) and catch a glimmer of possibility that might also be theirs and that of their future society.
Totally. I just commented above about the reaction from my husband’s patients and colleagues when he tells them we are expecting #4- they’re all shocked. Meanwhile they’re all working in a primary care clinic within a medical system totally overburdened by a lack of doctors to replace the retiring boomers, and caring for elderly patients who often don’t have the support they need from their children and family.
Congratulations on your fourth! Our fourth was such a gift. A wonderful, laid back baby. He’s still great (I’m currently at a violin lesson with him—he’s 11 now :-)).
But the reaction to multiple children that you’ve experienced is so sad. We have eight living children. Friends have nine, other friends (multiple families) have seven. We have a friend staying with us now whose wife is expecting their ninth. It’s about understanding children as gifts. And the work-intensive stages are short. The older I get, the more I see how when the day-to-day is hard, looking forward 20 (or 40 or more) years is so helpful.
Luckily our friends and family are all supportive! We have lots of friends who are ahead of us in this journey which is encouraging. In my husband’s job he just gets exposure to a wide swath of humanity who are not in our “open to/used to big families” bubble. You’re right that taking the long view is so necessary!
Emily, thank you for this comment. I appreciate your clear expression of the future problems awaiting us. I often wonder if anyone is paying attention to these things. And any time I see a family willing to stretch and grow beyond what seems feasible in today's society -- say, vehicles and car seats -- I am incredibly encouraged. I'm sure those around you are, or will be one day if they aren't yet. ;)
Yes yes yes
Oh, wow — this was great. Material reality directly impacts culture. I keep thinking about this line from the original article: “As long as the United States’ threadbare safety net gives people so far to fall, it may not be possible to temper the country’s intensive-parenting culture.”
I recently wrote a personal essay about opting out of extracurriculars for a year. But your piece had me thinking — the reason I felt generally comfortable doing that is because of privilege. I’m not terribly worried about my children “making it” in the future, not in the same way that someone with more precarity might worry. Successfully opting out of intensive parenting is its own sort of privilege.
I love that you tie in Israel (via that Public Discourse piece) toward the end. Their whole system in all its facets is entirely unrecognizable and perhaps unrepeatable on a wide scale for us in America. But the model is there!
This also pairs well with Louise Perry's piece in First Things a while back on modernity self-destructing. Like yes, we uh do in fact NEED parents to create literal people for society. The ignorance of this is astounding.
I love the nuance of this opinion. It also reminds me of a line I heard from an older co-worker: “Parenting kids is easy. Parenting future adults is hard.” But that’s also the reward. I’ve always been quietly suspect of the whole “parents aren’t having as many kids as they want” argument. Now I have an idea why
Such a great piece, Stephanie-- thank you for sharing it here! I love how you framed this conversation and I hope that it reaches the widest audience possible!
This is great, Stephanie. I think there's a lot to say about the negative effects of radical individualism on society, falling birth rates and the lack of respect for parenthood being some of them.
"There is a line of obligation that connects us to those who gave us what we have; and our concern for the future is an extension of that line. We take the future of our community into account not by fictitious cost-benefit calculations, but more concretely, by seeing ourselves as inheriting benefits and passing them on. Concern for future generations is a non-specific outgrowth of gratitude. ... [C]ontempt for the dead leads to the disenfranchisement of the unborn. ... Radical individualists enter the world without social capital of their own, and they consume all that they find."
-- Roger Scruton, Conservatism, analyzing Burke's response to the French Revolution
I'm way out of my league reading this book -- mother and nurse, not a *credentialed* philosopher -- but I cannot express how much this touched on my low-key grief as I try to raise my five, hopefully more, children in a world that doesn't value the endeavor. Gratitude for the past is....laughably absent from our society. Unsurprisingly, then, we have little concern for future generations.
I am 33 and currently on the fence. I so appreciate this angle and also really enjoyed reading the comments!
Hey Stephanie! I wrote an excessively long response here: https://open.substack.com/pub/lymanstone/p/you-want-babies-so-you-should-get?r=5b6e5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Most people who become soldiers or doctors do it for their own love for their work. And because society doesn’t harass them for the consequences of doing that work. If a doctor has a crazy schedule and gains weight after not sleeping for 24 hours straight no one is shaming them. A doctors hectic life is respected. A soldiers life is respected even in the civilian world.
Moms are never respected nor are they well paid no r compensated, in fact they are dehumanised by society. And even though they may find love and honor in their work - it starts getting pretty degrading once they realize no one else does.
Hey Stephanie, do you have children?
I agree with your points about the hypocrisy of the pronatalist position, but think you overstate the impact of declining fertility.
Yes, the near-term impacts revolve around pensions and growth-assumption economic models, because we are not anywhere CLOSE to having so few children that society will collapse. The global population is still growing by tens of millions of people per year.
As I note in the piece, there is plenty of disagreement among researchers about how far fertility can fall and for how long before it causes issues. It is true some believe it could remain below replacement for quite a while before standards of living take a hit.
Excellent article! You make a great point. While it's a complex issue, this tracks well with some of my thoughts on the Amish and how they maintain their large family norms.
https://www.f0xr.com/p/the-amish-fertility-miracle-part-a19
"In my opinion, the underlying problem is that the lag time between anti-social behavior and its consequences has been inflated by the Industrial Revolution to the point that the social institutions meant to punish anti-social behavior have collapsed, and the short-term incentive structures now point away from parenthood."
This tracks with your comment that society needs parents as much as ever, but that might not be as obvious today as it once was. And I think that might be the crux of the problem.
It's easy to feel the value in having children when every elderly person you know is being supported and cared for by their children, except for the unfortunate few who don't have any. Whereas today, what's the value in having children when many of the entitled Boomers are living it up on pensions, Social Security, and retirement savings while any children they might have want nothing to do with them? And calling their descendants lazy and worthless for their failure to thrive?
Nobody can see through that mess and realize that we actually do need parents after all, not until the pensions, Social Security, stock market, real estate market, and health and elder care systems all collapse due to lack of young people to support them.
Someone saying that they're a mom because they love it isn't an "argument", though. I think the issue I have with this comment is that you seem to be conflating pronatalism as a cause with the desires and motivations of individual moms. A mom is well within her right to say she's a mom because she loves it! She doesn't have to be having children for "a cause" or to be able to articulate a reason for having kids that "helps vulnerable mothers". If you're talking about pronatalists then I can understand and agree with your point, but we can't (and shouldn't, I'd say) conflate moms with pronatalists. For one, I'd argue it adds additional pressure on them to be able to articulately "argue" a case for having kids... Moms can just have kids for whatever reason and that be that..! Obviously it's another matter for pronatalists, and I think this article addresses well what the issues are.
I see what you're saying, and I'd put myself in the same boat as you for sure! But I also see among my circle of mom friends that none of them would even have heard of pronatalism or would ever have thought about the "value" of having kids abstractly... They just have kids because they personally want them and there's no more to it than that! But you're right, if that's the only reason brought up as a "reason" to have kids within pronatalist discussions, then it doesn't really do the job so well...