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I want to scream like Annie Edison when nobody has her purple pen when NONE of these articles mention CLIMATE CHANGE! We have heard over and over again that we're past the point of no return, at the very best we could make things ... bearable? And I'm supposed to, as someone who is supposedly more innately loving/gentle/maternal, want to bring someone into that world where they are almost guaranteed to suffer, because no Boomer in Congress wants to appear anti-business? Like you mention in #2 - there is a difference between a "fear" of the end of the world (i.e. the Cold War) and YEARS of actual scientific evidence pointing towards it.
The point about this being a reckoning more than a crisis should reverberate across the world. At the very least it should be repeated over and over. What a great piece this is! I also think we should never stop repeating the obvious fact: plenty of people in power, like several state legislatures, have no interest in women's autonomy. They fundamentally believe women *should* be bearing children and staying home to take care of them, leading to punishing policies that make it ever more difficult to have children, work, and develop a healthy family life that balances everyone's needs. We're struggling against a deep-rooted faith.
It's also telling that'd despite many scientific studies further linking declining fertility rates to chemical load, the idea that our environment might be a factor is rarely discussed. Shanna Swan's book "Countdown" is pretty explicit on this subject: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Count-Down/Shanna-H-Swan/9781982113667
Love that this newsletter addressed the very real class component to the issue (which is of course not the only component). Story after story appears with no mention of the fact that having children is extremely expensive, especially when people have mountains of debt, a barely-stable income, and precarious access to healthcare. It's a similar vibe to a recent piece in NPR that talked about how giving money to people of low socioeconomic status helped their mental health and lowered incidences of depression, stress, and anxiety. Which is to say, do we need *more* in-depth studies of what is very obvious to non-wealthy people? Are we really still pretending that finances isn't one of the many reasons women are delaying or entirely avoiding motherhood?
My hunch is that the media refuses to address class because to do so would mean looking into some very uncomfortable structural inequalities and that it is much easier to look at everything else or blame the individual for what is a systemic issue.
The one daycare near our old apartment in Seattle that listed their prices online is currently $2850/mo for a child between six weeks and 12 months. Our rent in that apartment was $2100. The other daycares near that apartment that I looked up all had "email for more information", which is honestly a barrier for someone looking for information. That place may be godawful expensive with a year-long waitlist, but at least they're honest and up-front. While we lived in that apartment, my entire paychecks went to two things: childcare and our one car payment. It was a third of our monthly income! We moved away because in my hometown, our parents were close enough to provide reliable childcare for free.
This morning I listened to the most recent Pod Save America episode and it has a long interview with Elizabeth Warren, who spent much of it talking about how childcare is an essential part of any infrastructure or jobs plan, because you can't get (let's face it) women into the work force if they don't have reliable childcare. Someone I went to high school with was complaining that he couldn't get anyone to apply to a position he'd posted at $20/hour, and quite a few women were pointing out that they would love to work but can't find childcare, and it's not worth taking a job if childcare is nonexistent or costs more than you make.
I love the pushback against the idea that we should be replicating or expanding our species as the default. Our planet - and our cities - can barely keep up with our population as it is. Some contraction is not necessarily a bad thing.
I gotta drop a book recommendation here - Birth Strike: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41219518-birth-strike I found it very readable and plainspoken about the economic structures behind the falling birthrate. (It was focused on the economic/labor lens at the expense of some very important social/cultural ones IMO, but that narrow focus helped make a very clear case for why the US ruling class can at once believe the falling birthrate is a problem and steadfastly refuse to do anything to make child-rearing better.)
It’s not all about economic factors. I know plenty of millennials who have had children despite the mounting costs and inadequate societal structures, and people like myself who are fully equipped financially and have the support of family but just... aren’t interested, save for the fact that we feel like we’re missing out on some normative activity. We need to talk about how having children is no longer the default, and how that’s OK.
Completely agree with all this analysis, which is why I really wish people left of center would start calling conservatives "bro-birth" or "anti-choice," since they only care about life being created, not nurtured.
Another factor I think that leads to this is technological advancement. America is no longer an agrarian society and large families are no longer needed to tend to farms. But I also think about how we have more capacity than ever before to travel, live in multiple places, or pursue various ambitions. I'm only speaking from myself, but I value my discretionary money and free time over having a baby. Maybe this is because I'm under 30 and single, and maybe this because of career ambitions. But we have more options now to find a source of fulfillment outside of raising a family: I'd rather travel than have kids, personally, and I think social expectations are adapting to at least be more inclusive to this sentiment.
Another component of the role the patriarchy has with declining birthrates, which I have not seen covered anywhere, is about the role heterosexual men play in this. Some articles have written about increasing challenges for heterosexual dating for educated women over 35. It seems interesting that the only demographic with an increasing birthrate is never married women over 40. It does seem like there is a segment of women, who would like to have children but cannot find a partner, and therefore some are becoming "choice moms," a controversial term given the lack of choice many feel as they near the end of their time they can have a child biologically. This is the case with myself and many of my peers, and we are so tired of the rhetoric that women are delaying having children for their education and careers, when we find more and more challenges finding men who are interested in a relationship and family as we advance in those areas.
In part the reaction to this data indicates that many are surprised by the significant drop in birthrates during the pandemic. I remember in the early months people would speculate about a coming baby boom (because people were at home and obviously boning 24-7) but my response to that was "maybe for first kids." The pandemic may be a tipping point or a revelation of how little our employers and societies value families and caregivers. I consider myself an involved dad, and took paternity leave for both our kids, but dealt with backlash both times, and continued sniping about getting to the office at 8:45 instead of 8 since I am taking a kid to school (and it doesn't fucking matter what time I get to the office). Without breaking down this internalized misogyny/patriarchy, there's really very little incentive for anyone to have kids.
I think you missed something critically important. Marriage--and divorce. 'Johnny and Susie sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Susie pushing a baby carriage.' Except, if you don't think marriage works anymore, the baby carriage gets a lot less likely. Momma don't wanna wind up with kids and no daddy and Daddy don't wanna wind up with child support payments and no access. Best way to avoid those conundrums is to skip the whole baby-making enterprise all together. And lots of people do. Build a chart showing divorce rates and birth rates lagged by 20 years. I think you'll see correlations across multiple societies. Children of divorce aren't quite so gung-ho to try what their own parents failed at. In fact, the only people having lots of babies are in the bottom quintile of income, where broken marriages have been the norm for generations already and NOT having babies isn't going to materially improve their situation. Those folks, and third world immigrants. Everyone else looks at the long-term risk/reward associated with adding another child to the family and says 'nah.' Zero, or one or two is enough. There are diminishing rewards and escalating risks to adding to your family. I have one child. The missus was 39 when she was born. We weren't going to roll the Down's Syndrome dice for child number 2.
We no longer live in an age where ANYONE has a great deal of confidence in making life-long commitments, whether that's marriage, childbirth or the clergy, or even things that resemble that like Lions, Elks, Masons, or the bowling team. We are unrooted, and unrooted people do not have children.
I am almost 34 and have a daughter who is almost two years old and she is the light of my life. I am one and done but not entirely by choice. I have chronic health issues - physical and mental - that exploded in my late 20s that made having just her at age 32 very hard. Also, our society doesn't value moms, so having only one child seems like the only way to attempt to "have it all" - family, a fulfilling career, travel, hobbies, domestic life, and time to relax!
I do wish we talked about infertility more - it's unreal to me how many of my friends who started in their late 20s and early 30s needed to have treatments (and how expensive they are!) There's a perception that women that young don't need treatments, which couldn't be further from the truth. I wonder if I had my first earlier if I would have then had a second at age 32 - maybe not, but it would have been more realistic a possibility.
I say maybe not because I think of all of the costs of having a child today - five years of day care plus a minimum of four years of undergrad being the biggest costs. The more children, the more you divide the resources. It wasn't lost on me as a millennial fifteen years ago that me and my white middle class friends from smaller families got more help with college costs than the friends from larger families, and the more kids the less help...and how that set them up for the rest of their lives.
I want to scream like Annie Edison when nobody has her purple pen when NONE of these articles mention CLIMATE CHANGE! We have heard over and over again that we're past the point of no return, at the very best we could make things ... bearable? And I'm supposed to, as someone who is supposedly more innately loving/gentle/maternal, want to bring someone into that world where they are almost guaranteed to suffer, because no Boomer in Congress wants to appear anti-business? Like you mention in #2 - there is a difference between a "fear" of the end of the world (i.e. the Cold War) and YEARS of actual scientific evidence pointing towards it.
The point about this being a reckoning more than a crisis should reverberate across the world. At the very least it should be repeated over and over. What a great piece this is! I also think we should never stop repeating the obvious fact: plenty of people in power, like several state legislatures, have no interest in women's autonomy. They fundamentally believe women *should* be bearing children and staying home to take care of them, leading to punishing policies that make it ever more difficult to have children, work, and develop a healthy family life that balances everyone's needs. We're struggling against a deep-rooted faith.
It's also telling that'd despite many scientific studies further linking declining fertility rates to chemical load, the idea that our environment might be a factor is rarely discussed. Shanna Swan's book "Countdown" is pretty explicit on this subject: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Count-Down/Shanna-H-Swan/9781982113667
Love that this newsletter addressed the very real class component to the issue (which is of course not the only component). Story after story appears with no mention of the fact that having children is extremely expensive, especially when people have mountains of debt, a barely-stable income, and precarious access to healthcare. It's a similar vibe to a recent piece in NPR that talked about how giving money to people of low socioeconomic status helped their mental health and lowered incidences of depression, stress, and anxiety. Which is to say, do we need *more* in-depth studies of what is very obvious to non-wealthy people? Are we really still pretending that finances isn't one of the many reasons women are delaying or entirely avoiding motherhood?
My hunch is that the media refuses to address class because to do so would mean looking into some very uncomfortable structural inequalities and that it is much easier to look at everything else or blame the individual for what is a systemic issue.
The one daycare near our old apartment in Seattle that listed their prices online is currently $2850/mo for a child between six weeks and 12 months. Our rent in that apartment was $2100. The other daycares near that apartment that I looked up all had "email for more information", which is honestly a barrier for someone looking for information. That place may be godawful expensive with a year-long waitlist, but at least they're honest and up-front. While we lived in that apartment, my entire paychecks went to two things: childcare and our one car payment. It was a third of our monthly income! We moved away because in my hometown, our parents were close enough to provide reliable childcare for free.
This morning I listened to the most recent Pod Save America episode and it has a long interview with Elizabeth Warren, who spent much of it talking about how childcare is an essential part of any infrastructure or jobs plan, because you can't get (let's face it) women into the work force if they don't have reliable childcare. Someone I went to high school with was complaining that he couldn't get anyone to apply to a position he'd posted at $20/hour, and quite a few women were pointing out that they would love to work but can't find childcare, and it's not worth taking a job if childcare is nonexistent or costs more than you make.
I love the pushback against the idea that we should be replicating or expanding our species as the default. Our planet - and our cities - can barely keep up with our population as it is. Some contraction is not necessarily a bad thing.
I gotta drop a book recommendation here - Birth Strike: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41219518-birth-strike I found it very readable and plainspoken about the economic structures behind the falling birthrate. (It was focused on the economic/labor lens at the expense of some very important social/cultural ones IMO, but that narrow focus helped make a very clear case for why the US ruling class can at once believe the falling birthrate is a problem and steadfastly refuse to do anything to make child-rearing better.)
It’s not all about economic factors. I know plenty of millennials who have had children despite the mounting costs and inadequate societal structures, and people like myself who are fully equipped financially and have the support of family but just... aren’t interested, save for the fact that we feel like we’re missing out on some normative activity. We need to talk about how having children is no longer the default, and how that’s OK.
Completely agree with all this analysis, which is why I really wish people left of center would start calling conservatives "bro-birth" or "anti-choice," since they only care about life being created, not nurtured.
Another factor I think that leads to this is technological advancement. America is no longer an agrarian society and large families are no longer needed to tend to farms. But I also think about how we have more capacity than ever before to travel, live in multiple places, or pursue various ambitions. I'm only speaking from myself, but I value my discretionary money and free time over having a baby. Maybe this is because I'm under 30 and single, and maybe this because of career ambitions. But we have more options now to find a source of fulfillment outside of raising a family: I'd rather travel than have kids, personally, and I think social expectations are adapting to at least be more inclusive to this sentiment.
Another component of the role the patriarchy has with declining birthrates, which I have not seen covered anywhere, is about the role heterosexual men play in this. Some articles have written about increasing challenges for heterosexual dating for educated women over 35. It seems interesting that the only demographic with an increasing birthrate is never married women over 40. It does seem like there is a segment of women, who would like to have children but cannot find a partner, and therefore some are becoming "choice moms," a controversial term given the lack of choice many feel as they near the end of their time they can have a child biologically. This is the case with myself and many of my peers, and we are so tired of the rhetoric that women are delaying having children for their education and careers, when we find more and more challenges finding men who are interested in a relationship and family as we advance in those areas.
In part the reaction to this data indicates that many are surprised by the significant drop in birthrates during the pandemic. I remember in the early months people would speculate about a coming baby boom (because people were at home and obviously boning 24-7) but my response to that was "maybe for first kids." The pandemic may be a tipping point or a revelation of how little our employers and societies value families and caregivers. I consider myself an involved dad, and took paternity leave for both our kids, but dealt with backlash both times, and continued sniping about getting to the office at 8:45 instead of 8 since I am taking a kid to school (and it doesn't fucking matter what time I get to the office). Without breaking down this internalized misogyny/patriarchy, there's really very little incentive for anyone to have kids.
Yes! Thank you for this. It’s not a crisis. Your points are excellent. Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s perspective on NPR’s weekend edition today felt weird.
I think you missed something critically important. Marriage--and divorce. 'Johnny and Susie sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Susie pushing a baby carriage.' Except, if you don't think marriage works anymore, the baby carriage gets a lot less likely. Momma don't wanna wind up with kids and no daddy and Daddy don't wanna wind up with child support payments and no access. Best way to avoid those conundrums is to skip the whole baby-making enterprise all together. And lots of people do. Build a chart showing divorce rates and birth rates lagged by 20 years. I think you'll see correlations across multiple societies. Children of divorce aren't quite so gung-ho to try what their own parents failed at. In fact, the only people having lots of babies are in the bottom quintile of income, where broken marriages have been the norm for generations already and NOT having babies isn't going to materially improve their situation. Those folks, and third world immigrants. Everyone else looks at the long-term risk/reward associated with adding another child to the family and says 'nah.' Zero, or one or two is enough. There are diminishing rewards and escalating risks to adding to your family. I have one child. The missus was 39 when she was born. We weren't going to roll the Down's Syndrome dice for child number 2.
We no longer live in an age where ANYONE has a great deal of confidence in making life-long commitments, whether that's marriage, childbirth or the clergy, or even things that resemble that like Lions, Elks, Masons, or the bowling team. We are unrooted, and unrooted people do not have children.
Acts 16:31, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, 1 Peter 1:17-21, Revelation 22:18-19
I am almost 34 and have a daughter who is almost two years old and she is the light of my life. I am one and done but not entirely by choice. I have chronic health issues - physical and mental - that exploded in my late 20s that made having just her at age 32 very hard. Also, our society doesn't value moms, so having only one child seems like the only way to attempt to "have it all" - family, a fulfilling career, travel, hobbies, domestic life, and time to relax!
I do wish we talked about infertility more - it's unreal to me how many of my friends who started in their late 20s and early 30s needed to have treatments (and how expensive they are!) There's a perception that women that young don't need treatments, which couldn't be further from the truth. I wonder if I had my first earlier if I would have then had a second at age 32 - maybe not, but it would have been more realistic a possibility.
I say maybe not because I think of all of the costs of having a child today - five years of day care plus a minimum of four years of undergrad being the biggest costs. The more children, the more you divide the resources. It wasn't lost on me as a millennial fifteen years ago that me and my white middle class friends from smaller families got more help with college costs than the friends from larger families, and the more kids the less help...and how that set them up for the rest of their lives.