Ms. Goldberg: I find it shocking and depressing you do not care about climate change, global warming, lack of housing & homelessness -- all caused DIRECTLY by massive world overpopulation. To encourage people to have more babies, just to win some kind of "biggest nation" contest IS INSANE. We do not need more babies. We need way less babies. We need less immigration and NO illegals at all -- we must deport every illegal and their illegal families and anchor babies. Then maybe we can clawback some semblance of sanity and order and high quality standard of living again in our nation.
25
This sure works in Niger, with its world's highest total fertility rate. No patriarchy in Niger!
26
Goldberg's caveat that we need to keep the birth up to support the older generation is a really lousy argument. First, it is true only for the boomer-post WWII generation when rates soared.
Every generation since has declined and should be encouraged to do so. Earth is a finite resource that is being sucked and bled dry by billions and billions and billions of human beings. We need fewer of them, not more.
Incentivize people to have one kid or even none. Mankind will survive very well, and probably better without Goldberg's genes, mine or the couple's next door making it to the next generation.
Ask any evolutionary biologist--we're not as "unique" as we like to think.
21
It appears you have fallen a bit behind the times. Who, in their right minds would look favorably on bringing more children into this world. Also your economic model is falling on deaf ears. You can't seriously want to entrench women in an employment scheme that is struggling with its last years.
18
This is insane. The real reson is that the UsA does not subsidize dsy care. We pay $2000 per child. Who can afford this? Republicans/Evangelicals (the sane at this point) only protect children (cells really) before they are born. The reall reason: if you really wan to protect children this costs money. Raging against abortion is cheap.
8
Modern American women are just too selfish to let themselves be put out by creating the future. It is all me, me, me and stuff, stuff, stuff. Previous generations had less support and paid a higher price but we are here because they were willing to do it.
5
American women are abandoning their femininity these days. Could the gay male population be growing? Are straight men choosing the company of other men these days? I'm gay so I don't know and only ask the question. I do know there's a lot more action out there for gay men with straight guys. It's a party!
4
Goldberg wrote:
"Right now, America’s fertility rate is still pretty high compared to most European countries; it’s lower than France or Sweden but roughly in line with other countries in Scandinavia."
According to multiple reputable sources, those "facts" are simply wrong. This matters because it is the core of the argument that Goldberg is trying to make. This op-ed is palpitating example of our febrile fascination with quantitative arguments, and how policy can be led astray by the misapplication of numbers.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Birth-rate
USA: #153 (13.66) France: #163 (12.6) Sweden: #193 (10.33)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_ter...
USA: #159 France: #161 Sweden: #167
https://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=25
USA: #157 (12.5) France: #163 (12.2) Sweden: #166 (12.1)
PS & BTW: In a world whose carrying capacity we humans are pressing hard against (https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html) why is a higher birth rate a good thing? Is it some sort of cultural chauvinism, that "we" must perpetuate "our" cultural norms through biological reproduction lest we be overrun by those "other" rapidly reproducing cultures?
12
Isn't there an even bigger problem with overpopulation?
21
What do people want? Total devasttion of the planet?
Unfit to print... and some people should be fired immediately.
Patriarchy -- what a handy term... One hundred years ago... men worked in factories, women did all the housework (few conveniences, worked as teachers,nurses, saleswomen, seamstresses, wig makers0; and there were farms. It was not 2018 in 1918 and in 1818 -- people were dying of starvation and the question of how many people the planet could sustain was already asked: Malthus. There were plenty of children disclaimed by their fathers.
12
We have a lower birthrate than before because we have less socialism than before. Ms. Goldberg finds reaffirmation of her worldview in everything that happens.
6
Why do we want more babies??? The Earth is bursting at the seams with the environmental impacts at 7+ billion -- it doesn't need more. Do you want still *more* traffic when coming home from work or out buying groceries on Saturday morning??
Every baby born in the US increases the mother's carbon footprint by a factor of about six (6).
Can't we do *anything* without thinking about the consequences first??
25
Sperm counts in men have dropped 1% per year over the last 20 or more years. Testosterone levels are showing a similar decline. The reason for these declines has not been identified. Male bass have experienced a massive decline in sperm counts in pristine areas, and there is evidence for a similar decline in amphibians.
6
Declining birth rates is a GOOD thing. We should be celebrating, not trying to figure out a way to solve a ‘problem’ that doesn’t exist.
24
Shockingly irrational, piece that is a shining monument for cognitive dissonance. It prescribes the problem as the solution-- it's like a doctor prescribing more injections of addictive narcotics for a dug addict as the cure.
15
It's clear women will have fewer children if child care and work-life balance remain the hurdles they are today. But can we PLEASE stop fretting about replacing an already way-too-large population? It is always assumed that the ONLY way to pay for social security is by taxing the next generation. There are other ways! (Make banks pay, I say).
25
This planet is overpopulated. This country is overpopulated. The present population is not sustainable. There is not enough water, not enough land.
"...if a shrinking number of workers must support a growing elderly population, even our threadbare social safety net will be strained. An obvious solution is increased immigration"
Another obvious solution is taxing the very rich.
24
Make it easier to be a single parent and the birth rate will increase.
7
Our local opinion writer, a staunch conservative, wrote a column a couple of months ago arguing that the U.S. should NOT provide any family leave time because "if women take leave from work after having a baby, NO company would ever hire women."
5
When my son was born I was an adjunct faculty member. I couldn't give up my position because I'd never get it back if I did. So, I pretty much handed my pay check to the part-time nanny who took care of my child.
Would I have had more children? Sure, if I could pay for them and not be professionally penalized if I did.
19
Patriarchy plus pressure against birth control (including not covering it with medical insurance, failure to provide information on it, and providing false or misleading information on it) constitute the conservative plan to increase the birthrate.
14
I don’t have the right to know my wife is pregnant. US census data shows less than two thirds of children live with both their parents, which means eight out of ten times they don’t live with their father. The chances a child in the US will reach adulthood living with their father is less than half. Brad Pitt went from being one half of Hollywood’s first couple, to sleeping on the couch of a friend. But we need less Patriarchy.
7
Hmmmm. Now why would you feel the need to have a ‘right’ to know if your wife has s pregnant? If she doesn’t tell you herself, then she probably has a good reason. And what would you do with that information, anyway?
7
The author cites France as an example where motherhood+employment policies are the reason that France have higher fertility rates.
The fact is, that France, with about 2,0 child birth per woman is the only European country close to the mentioned simple reproduction rate of 2.1 child per woman.
But while the also mentioned Scandinavian countries are well ahead in gender equality at workplace (and politics) and have thye most comprehensive (and expensive) child and motherhood (and even fatherhood) friendly policies their fertility rates are still far below 2.1, actually around U.S 1.7 child per woman.
The actual and main reason for French Europe-leading fertility rate is their more than few millions strong Muslim population and their high fertility rates. And even author would agree that France and their Muslim community are not exactly shining examples of matriarchy, i.e. opposite of patriarchy.
16
Now don't go popping any ideological balloons with actual facts.
9
Actually, Germany's birthrate is rising and is now at its highest since 1976. That's the result of two factors: First, migration by women who don't have careers and marry early, and, second, that the social policies aimed at gender equality are beginning to bear fruit.
It's a natural experiment, and we will see whether Germany's birthrate will be climbing further when more and more men will take (paid) paternity leave, school no longer ends at noon, and day care becomes more common.
But it's important to remember that we are talking about long-term trends here. It will take at least a decade until we know more.
4
This is exactly the problem. Women are almost 100% responsible for rearing children, even when there is a husband involved. Men who share 50% of the parenting and household responsibilities are exceedingly rare. Is it any wonder that women don't have more children, or choose to go childless? There needs to be an attitude adjustment in this country about the role of men in raising children. They need to understand that they are more than mere sperm donors. And women need to demand that they accept more responsibility. Paying child support does not raise a child. It feeds the child, but it doesn't nourish and raise it.
7
My, not only anecdotal, experience is that - even in well paid professions as medicine - women still "naturally" claim for themselves to be "at least a couple of years" at home parents and resent the fact that their (lesser income having?) husband is "at home parent".
I have dozens of specific examples attesting to that (in general women/mothers being physicians). Women typically resent to be (the main, the only) breadwinner and they want to be at home Mums even when they make (several times) more money.
At home Dad on a playground with kids on sunny morning gets no sympathy from Mums there, as he "denies his wife joys of motherhood."
Then: Women/mothers have very specific ideas how child care and household work has to be done ... i.e. their (or their Mom's) way. I do not see husbands/fathers insisting on peculiarities (what hat a child has to wear today) that much.
5
This article is truly an oversimplification of why certain countries have more or less babies than others.
Patriarchichal societies have higher fertility rates, not the other way around (eg Muslim versus Western). The reason that there is a slight increase in fertility rates in Germany over the last 5 years has to do with foreign (not German) women having many more babies. These are usually women who are more oppressed and who are less likely to work. They are in a patriarchichal relationship and have more babies. So does that mean MORE (not less) patriarchy should be implemented to increase fertility rates?
10
Women should have more support for pregnancy, and both partners should have job security as well as paid leaves. In that respect, the US is well behind other Western countries. But there is no scientific proof that this, and a less paternalistic society (which is good otherwise) will necessarily and automatically increase fertility rates.
7
Unlike the author, your argument is more valid and supported by relevant facts.
4
It's the cost. The cost of caring for and raising a child compared to the amount of money a normal person can earn, in addition to taking care of family, in a 24-hour day. I don't understand why this is confusing to anyone. In my lifetime, I saw my peers grow up in families with 3-4 kids, friends my age have 1 or 2 kids, and many of the people I work with who are younger have no kids. People understand what they can and can't afford.
12
Even the average wage earner can have and raise children successfully, due to better societal support, better health care, etc.
Unfortunately, too many are now more consumption oriented, put too much emphasis on "being able to afford" for kids this and that.
Thus, they are dying out (while the global population continues to explode, namely in Africa and India).
To whom we will pass our culture, history, achievements?
4
There are many reasons for the falling birth rate. Among them is that it is no longer possible to maintain a middle-class life style without both parents earning a full-time wage. Many women would like to have children if they could be at home with them for at least the first 7-10 years, as used to be the case before the mid-1970's or so. Few men now can support a family on an average worker's wage, unless the family lives on the borderline of poverty. And his job is often insecure. In short, couples cannot afford as many children as they would like to have.
11
You write: "Many women would like to have children if they could be at home with them for at least the first 7-10 years ..." and you are right.
But gender studies academia, activists, feminists, media will jump on you instantly as you are promoting "sexist stereotypes", wish women being "barefoot, pregnant and in a kitchen."
Then, as women already represents 62% of college graduates and they still want to "marry up" (or have a partner with "at least" the same education and income) it is obvious that not all of them can have it.
And even when they have high income profession (medicine) they "naturally" demand for themselves that they will be "at home parent" and resent when their lower income husband is.
7
I think it's a good thing that the birth rate is declining. Overpopulation is killing our planet. As the article stated, America's birth rate is still pretty high compared to other industrialized countries, so stop all the gloom and doom - we are finally heading in the right direction.
16
Absolutely! The only reason it's a big issue for those in power is because capitalism needs unchecked growth to survive. The entire global economic model of non-stop growth is suicidal and the bottom-line reason for all the issues we're facing today. We need to stop growing, stop consuming non-stop, and adjust to a system of dynamic equalibrium, just like in nature.
Any closed system that grows unchecked, dies eventually. All successful ecosystems on the planet survive not by unchecked growth but by maintaining a dynamic equilibrium. Humans must start now the transition away from capitalist-fueled non-stop growth, yet no one even talks about it. The issue isn't declining population but economies built on unchecked growth at any cost, even to the closed system of the planet we inhabit!
8
So who will look after you in your old age? How much will the one third in work have to pay in taxes to support the two thirds who are retired?
3
Unfortunately for you, teh Planet, and Western civilization, especially Africa (and to lesser degree other parts of the world) continuing population explosion.
While the West has about 1.5 child births per woman, many countries in Africa have up to 7 or 8 children per woman.
When you do the math, just in two generations you will see truly shocking numbers.
1
This article only mentions the angle of religiosity, but it's intriguing. The Catholic birthrate dropped decades ago. States with lots of evangelicals have fairly low birthrates, although their age at first birth is earlier (in part because of lower education rates among evangelicals). Except for the ultra-religious, Jews seem to have low birthrates.
But Utah, home of the Mormon church, still has the highest birthrate in the country. Utah residents tend to be highly educated, so women face the same trade-offs between work and family. Are Mormons more likely to marry than other religious groups? To have bigger families? To believe that mothers should stay home despite their educations? I can't imagine Utah as a haven for gender equality, so something else clearly is going on.
11
You are making several very important and relevant arguments - supported by relevant evidence - which challenge politically correct narrative the author is presenting here.
7
What about the plain fact children are very expensive to raise (especially if they go to college) and the majority of wages have stagnated?
10
If you (or others) have kids only because it is affordable, than it is (tragically) misguided approach.
1
So how to poor people manage to do it?
1
I am all for better public support for families, and equal participation of men in childrearing.
But it is time to put to rest forever the preposterous notion that having more children is a good thing!
Strip malls - global warming - endless developing-world slums - raging epidemics - subdivisions - destruction of wild lands - light pollution (to the point that there is nowhere in the lower 48 states where the skies are as dark at night as they were in Galileo's day!) - does Ms. Goldberg actually want more of all of these? Because this is assuredly what she would get, were American women all to have the 2.7 children she says they want.
Yes, the changing demographic pattern created by lower fertility will be a "strain." So what? Human history is filled with things that were a strain but that we got through. We'll get through this, too. And, if we're lucky, and people continue to do the sensible thing - that is, have fewer children - we'll get through it with some non-human beauty and wonder intact. It would be a fine thing.
14
Independently of this comment-provoking editorial, I think that every
species on our planet has evolved to function in a hierarchical system. This ensures access to resources and propagation. For humans, that system is patriarchal. I haven’t heard anything to change my thinking.
3
We don't need more babies. We need bees and other decimated insects that now signal eco-collapse, to have sustainable agriculture, healthy oceans with pesticide and plastics-free fish, clean, safe drinking water, and a climate under control. Once we assure the planet will actually be habitable for the next generation, not to mention life in general, then we can start making more of us again. Let's get real and listen to scientists about what we are actually going to bequeath to these children before we bring them into the world and shrug our shoulders at their fate.
16
To all the capitalists arguing that maternity/paternity leave is simply too costly: consider the cost of complete societal collapse due to the fact that the people who would've been considered middle class stopped having children because it got too expensive and now the only people having children are the rich and the poor. There are more of them then there are of you, and they are going to have more babies.
9
Because of the divorce rate in the US and the high cost of living, I believe that many women (even those in stable or married relationships) make a conscious decision to have only the number of children that they themselves can afford to support financially and spend quality time with. For many, that is just one child. Sometimes it is no children. It is especially so for those whose parents struggled financially. Children are wonderful, but they are expensive. A large family is a luxury that many of us dream of but know we cannot have. Until women have much greater support, they will limit the number of children they have.
9
I worked full time and had three children with minimal time off (6 weeks)for each birth. I was a high school teacher and worked way too much. Luckily, I had a hard working supportive husband and we made it work, but I would not recommend it to my own daughter. Women or men who are lucky enough to stay home when kids are small tend to have the larger families from my observation, usually because one partner has a well paying upper middle class professional job. I also observe that people who can't afford children and who are often not married, tend to have more than those in the middle class and ironically are supported by those same people who have limited themselves to one child or none! What this portends for the widening gap in social classes is even more distance.
6
Scandinavia is not a statistically significant sample. Scandinavian countries all have small populations and abundant money. The money is largely a benefit of having small populations. The rest of the world has neither, plus much higher fertility rates and patriarchal societies.
6
“The money is largely a benefit of having a smaller population”
You’ll have to explain that. Surely a smaller tax base means less money taken in by government.
2
I don't think Goldberg's analysis is quite right. Many women like many men WANT to work, and that gets in the way or child rearing. But a large percentage of both men and women work because they HAVE TO work -- it takes two incomes to support a decent lifestyle unless you're in the top 10-20% of the income range (and people in that range tend to have rewarding jobs and often consider children a luxury good). Want to increase the birthrate? Increase wages so that one earner can support a family. Want to not worry about falling birth rates? Increase productivity per worker. That's happening anyway, but workers aren't getting their fair share of the bonus.
10
Aside from the obvious outrageous costs of childcare, abysmal healthcare, housing and so on, many of our young people graduate from college so mired in debt that it is unthinkable to add the most expensive burden to the mix.
Our entire system is predatory and crushing. My heart breaks for this generation of potential parents. Under the present administration, there is nothing but severe worry and angst being ruled by the self entitled inheritor class, know that they do not even think of ordinary people as human.
12
It's a huge, and mistaken, stretch to blame declining birth rates on "patriarchy." The planet is already saturated with billions of people. Environmentally, a birth rate below the replacement rate is a good thing. How many more people does the Earth truly need? Plus, the cost of raising a child is often cited to be currently $250K or more, simply to supply mere basic needs to raise the child to adulthood. That figure doesn't include superior schooling and creating maximum opportunities for a child. What couples, much less single adults, can afford to have multiple children? Policies designed to ensure that children are well-cared for, and have opportunity for optimal health, education, and job training, all make perfect sense. Having a child, and raising a child, is a personal (and economic) decision that the putative father and mother have to make, and it's best that they make that choice before, rather than after, conception. Each should get an equal vote, and equal veto power. That's not patriarchy, or feminism.
7
Yeah, that's patriarchy disguised as victimhood --unless males get veto power.
1
Patriarchy is certainly an issue but the tenuous status of gainful employment and the exorbitant costs of medical care and higher education ($1.48 trillion in student loan debt) have got to figure in.
7
Using the government as a substitute for a family member has been disastrous for our society. We need policies that help people create and maintain happy marriages. When families are strong, intact and extended, all societal problems diminish, including the problem of needing help to raise the kids.
3
But having religion do the job government is doing is even more disastrous. Your statement, "strong, intact, and extended" is the evangelical religious code I grew up with that translates into "women staying home and men ruling society 'as god intended'". No thanks!
I'll take government over religion any day. It works perfectly well in Scandinavian countries. Retreating into a religious past of misogyny, racism, homophobia, and all those good old-fashioned "family values" is the last thing this planet needs.
4
Our economy won't survive a declining population (nor will anyone else's that I know of).
The world (or at least human life) won't survive an increasing population.
Off-hand, I'd say that means we better figure out a new way to operate our economy.
Unfortunately, most babies these days are being produced by our more patriarchal and religious friends. This bodes ill for any progressive agenda. It bodes ill for progress in general.
11
That is if the children even stay religious, which is less and less likely these days. Only 8% of millennials identify as evangelical Christian after many decades of much higher evangelical Christian demographics. My own evangelical Christian parents birthed five girls and every one of us is now a liberal atheist. Once these kids get out into the real world and with more access to education and information than ever before, they often leave religion behind for good. It's just less and less relevant or even useful in the rapidly evolving, science-based modern societies of the future.
3
How about raising wages and salaries to the point where people can afford to have those babies? The cost of housing has risen to the point that it has become unaffordable for most young people. Growing families need housing - along with affordable medical insurance coverage and these costs are rising. Aside from the cost issue is the fact that most people do not want a large family any more. There are many who do not want any children at all. What is wrong with that choice?
6
"But if a shrinking number of workers must support a growing elderly population, even our threadbare social safety net will be strained".
The inter-generational solidarity is the one and only reason to push for high fertiliy rate.
A demographic decline is the best solution to preserve our planet. But many countries, including U.S., will implode if the number of active workers decline.
3
We need to take increasing automation into account when estimating the number of workers who will be required in coming decades. I have read that up to 33% of current jobs will be replaced by sophisticated technology and robotics. New positions will of course be created but will likely require advanced education and training. IMO immigration of unskilled/uneducated persons should be halted. These slots should be absorbed by highly skilled, young and healthy immigrants who will work and pay taxes right away. Large families, which were perhaps an advantage in an agrarian society, have become a luxury at best and a threat to economic security at worst.
3
"We" the common people of the United States don't "want more babies" that we have to play big-government daddy to, get tax shoved back into poverty to support, because irresponsible women have children that they are not economically and psychologically mature enough or decent enough human beings to have a partner to help them to take care of! Rather its our few percent business owner nobility and their economist propagandists that write for this paper that want ever more 'bodies' that they can make profits selling stuff to, and use for slave-wage labor. Even if the 'babies' are allowed to run wild and become tantrum throwing with a gun high school shooters! And then of course the democrats love to buy votes from millions of no high school degree teen moms with just enough food stamps and other gov welfare scraps to keep their kids alive long enough to grow up to become gang members and mass murderers and fill up our prisons. For then all those troubles give 'we feel you pain' democrats the excuse to accuse everyone else who dares disagree with them about virtually anything of being racist, xenophobe, misogamist, anti Semitic, intolerant, disturbing, verbal harassers, micro agressionists … .
5
That's what the world needs more babies. The reason we are having fewer children is that they are the most well protected children in history. The reason they are the most well protected is secondary to patriarchy. The primary instinct in men is to protect their children. So whatever children you have as an American you can thank the patriarchy that protected them.
4
I think the primal instinct of men is to produce children. A woman’s is their care.
1
I agree with Michelle yet her cultural crusade blinds her to biosocial issues that exist independent of the patriarchy.
Kids are inferior goods: income and children are negatively correlated. And socialized childcare is a form of income. Yet women choose to forgo marriage and children (or have less) at a higher rate as income increases. It's here the dynamic becomes more interesting and, depending on your politics, controversial.
Women are richer but men aren't. Combined this with female propensity to mate approximate (or above) to their class, you end up with a lot of single, frustrated women who can't "find their equal." It should balance out when women start marrying down and men are more accepting of household duties.
But, as you can see in birth rates, it takes awhile.
3
I never had kids, never found my marriageable "equal", and am certainly not "frustrated" enough to marry a man that is not my intellectual or social equal. Why would I be? Why should I marry down? Why is it always the women that have to rescale their expectations and not the men? And since when do women have more money than men? That's just patently not true. On average men hold far more of the collective wealth, earn higher incomes, hold more positions of authority, escape the higher costs of physical child custody upon divorce while moving on to a second family with a younger woman, and on and on. Men are still kings in this society and women are just their servants.
2
Michelle has declared open season on theories to explain this phenomenon of low birth rates, so I’ll add one, as well.
The planet may well be grossly overpopulated by humans relative to our ability to maintain such populations sustainably, and this may be merely a species-instinct to reduce population over time to more sustainable levels. The byproducts and wastes of civilization are beginning to threaten our survivability and that is directly related to our sheer numbers. Increasingly, we’re looking for some magic bullet that solves the looming catastrophe to our economies of the creeping obsolescence of human labor to automation … and there simply may BE no magic bullet. If the labor of the vast majority of human beings is soon to offer no real value, then how much better would it be if there were vastly fewer human beings to worry about?
This might turn out to be a very natural consequence of overpopulation. So … what do we do about THAT?
The implications are immense, to all the assumptions that keep economies dependent on consumption-engines functioning. The problem with species-wide instincts is that they rarely pay any attention to assumptions that keep economies dependent on consumption-engines functioning. Could be a wake-up call for us to seriously start envisioning a human population not of ten or twenty billion, but one of two billion, and figuring out what such a global society needs to look like to be viable above subsistence-level.
7
Or … it could be the natural consequence of the REAL ending to Dan Brown’s novel “Inferno”, not the one manufactured for the movie because the real one was thought to be too disturbing.
3
Who is 'we'?
The American white majority is aging and shrinking with a below replacement level birthrate. Along with a decreasing white life expectancy due to alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and suicide.
Of the 33,000 Americans who die of gunshot every year about 2/3rds are suicides and 80 % are white men. There is nothing patriarchal about that.
The notion that having more babies is dependent upon less patriarchy is a white woman feminist privileged delusion. The idea that having more babies matters more than the length and quality of their lives is inhuman and inhumane.
9
Did you know that almost 87% of all statistics are completely made up?
1
If there indeed is a trend for richer and more educated parents to have more kids than the poor and unhappy parents, then that's a good development. With every new child, especially if born in a poor and dysfunctional family (or society), there is a lifetime of suffering.
The pyramid scheme of incentivizing ever more offspring, in order to benefit the older generations, is unsustainable. Something has to give. These dynamics cannot last.
Let automation and AI take over routine and dirty tasks. Humans should do what humans are good for: arts, philosophy, pure mathematics and other intellectually pleasing things, including developing better AI to take over ever more abstract tasks. The next generation will then be more creative, more educated, smarter and happier. And their children will live in cleaner and less populated world. The alternative is suffering, war and hatred.
9
You think child care is expensive now? Wait til child care workers earn $15 an hour, paid sick time, paid family leave, paid maternity, plus the added taxes that will be charged. If you don’t have family to help or are in the top 10 percent, plan on quitting work to raise your own kid. Affordable childcare is an oxymoron.
6
Germany does have its problems with women having children and curtailing their careers. However You can get your job back after having a child for as long as 2 years. Germany also pays kindergeld, child money, directly to parents. Currently just over $200 per month per child. No means testing or other hoops to jump through. They are also lengthening father parental leave.
Where I live there seems to be a bit of a baby boom.
6
If the German birth rate had been sufficient, the Germans wouldn’t have needed to import a million Syrian refugees.
2
Whoa - Michelle Goldberg hit a nerve with this piece, eliciting passionate approval and opposition, sprinkled with some ignorance and self-righteous indignation.
I have born one son in Germany with generous maternity leave and day care, and more recently two sons here. Raising children here is a far greater struggle on all fronts (availability of day care, school quality, costs for child care and education, in particular higher education, health care costs, lack of family support, lack of government support). We are fairly well-off but I am always amazed by the courage of young couples to have children in this country. I have no clue how they manage.
For those concerned with overpopulation - I think Michelle is writing about replacement rates, which are a healthier way to reduce population size and keep societal peace and prosperity than a one-child policy (see China).
For the one commenter doubting Michelle's assertion on Germany - Ms. Goldberg is correct. In fact, she could have used Germany as a good example how child care alters participation of women in the workforce. In the former East, most women worked (child care was provided); in the former West, women were expected to and largely stayed at home after having kids. There was and still is little full-day child care in the West. This division still persists to this day. I had my child in the former East, making is possible to pursue my career.
5
hmmm.... white, upper-middle-class, married women problem- marriage it seems is the new privilege.
you might ask how single/only parents (predominantly women) do it as they have kids AND they HAVE to work.
yeah, you should ask me. but if you're married, I'm probably not included in your social circle because I'd be the odd one out.
5
Social policies for women and families such as affordable daycare, equal pay, a year's maternity leave, free health care for children, public housing, quality public schools in all neighborhoods might marginally increase the birth rate. However, patriarchal families such as those in the Muslim world, sub-Saharan Africa, and immigrants to the U.S. have high rates of birth because of Muslim and Catholic beliefs, cultural traditions, and because children contribute to poor families economically by working. When women become economically independent and middle-class, birth rates decrease. France has good social services for women and children but 1.88 children per woman. Capitalism depends on population growth, but for women and the environment, a falling rate is fine.
70
Partially true. However, Catholic Italy and Spain, have some of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. Secular Scandinavian countries have the highest.
9
You are making exactly thye same arguments I made in my submitted (yet to be published) comment.
While author cites Scandinavian countries and France as examples of less patriarchal, thus more women and motherhood-friendly policies as the reason for those countries higher fertility rates, she (for some reason) chose to ignore a fundamental fact: France, which is with good distance ahead of all European countries with 2.0 child birth per woman (while expensive and very comprehensive, gender sensitive and fair Scandinavian countries can show only about 1.7 child birth per women.
The reason France is European leader (with significant lead) is their Muslim and then African population where women on average have several times higher fertility rates than majority French.
It is thus sad that "newspaper of record' lets be used for an argument (that less patriarchal developed countries are more likely to have higher birth rates) is falling flat in the case of France, European birth rate clear leader. France itself and certainly its Muslim and African community are more patriarchal.
7
"When a woman plucks at what it means to be a woman, she threatens to unravel the entire world." (Kim Chernin)
Patriarchy is nearing its end. Technology will make it so. Women will make it so. Will matriarchy replace it? Or will our technologically advanced progeny come up with something far more equitable? Hope so.
5
In the US approximately 40% of births are to single women. Marriage seems to be in state of decline (people marrying later, no fault divorce, and women having many more options). Although we will continue to have jobs that require manual strength but few skills, these will vastly decrease due to continued relentless automation. The percentage of working age adults actually employed has been falling for the past couple of decades. We should be surprised our birth rate is as high as it is.
1
In 1969 when I was of an age that I urgently wanted to have children. Yet, living with a man who showed no interest in having a stable income or career while I worked minimum wage jobs convinced me that having children would only create more suffering for myself and any child. Living on welfare was not my idea of a wholesome situation. I so badly wanted to be a mother but the economic foundation wasn't there. I've never had a child and have some regrets but the prospect of dire consequences for a child outweighed my desires. I don't know why many other women don't weigh these consequences. Today when I am asked why I've never had a child, I frankly say that I never had the money to provide for one.
17
Only a distorted Planned Parenthood logic and feminist philosophy would blame men for a 1.77 U.S. birthrate. America is in decline because men are no longer head of the household. Indeed, most men don’t even try as can be seen from a 26% rate of marriage in the poorer half of the population. The wealthiest 10% have about 80% of family wealth while the poorer half share just one half of one percent. The drastic loss of family wealth has made men and women desperate and lonely. Promiscuity and birth control have replaced marriage and children.
A man has a right to procreate and a woman has a right to choose who she procreates with. A woman’s choice should not undermine her mate. Consider legislation that gives the natural father the right to consent to abortion. A civil cause of action against the abortion provided (not the mother) would provide compensation to the father for loss of a fetus. Modern DNA testing would make the cause of action easy to prove by requiring that abortions done without paternal consent preserve a DNA sample for potential litigation.
The law imposes an obligation upon the father to support mother and child during pregnancy but lacks reciprocal recognition of men who welcome the natural relationship between intercourse and birth. When the legislature and the courts finally recognize the procreative rights of men, may more will step up to the plate. Our population and happy families will begin to grow.
8
There’s no such thing as the ‘right’ to procreate. Not in nature. Not in society.
1
Your draconian proposal would instead cause women to run for the hills...
No way should a man ever have a right to force a women to carry a pregnancy to term and I would give my life in a war to stop you from fulfilling your sick Gilead fantasy. The planet doesn't need more people and it certainly doesn't need to go back to the patriarchal Dark Ages you celebrate.
3
I'm not sure I'd read too much into that "women want 2.7 kids and only have 1.8." Humans in general tend to desire more than we actually achieve. I'm sure the average person probably wants a salary 40% higher than their real salary, too. I bet a lot of families would like 2.7 cars but only have 1.8. Etc etc. I'd definitely like 40% more vacation days than they give me.
2.7 kids per woman (especially in first-world economies) would also lead to ecological and demographic disaster within another 100 or 150 years, so it's probably good from that point of view that women aren't having as many kids as they "want."
13
While this article was thought provoking I think it was a mistake to only focus on two parent families. A substantial portion of children born today will be raised in a single parent household. It's a real missed opportunity since a comparison of single mother birth rates in the USA vs Sweden, which supports single parenthood to a much greater degree, would have been interesting to see. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the data supported the authors thesis as well.
2
I'm 63, never married, no children, very happy. I think some women and men are just taking a hard, realistic look at whether or not, regardless of the economics, they want to be parents. Perhaps the movement to a more secular society has something to do with it. Call me selfish; I don't care.
22
What Ms. Goldberg writes about I have thought for years, that this country preaches "feminism" but holds off on really giving support to women who have families, need to work, and need to find a balance and help between the two. I have envied those living in countries such as Sweden and Denmark where there is more gender equity, a safety net for parents, even single women and no stigma associated with single motherhood.
3
"If my theory is right, though, it will keep falling unless America invests in paid family leave and subsidized, high-quality child care, while birthrates in France and Scandinavia remain stable."
Maybe.
But if your theory is wrong, then the birthrate will be further suppressed by higher taxes for paid leave forcing people to work longer hours to make more money to pay for subsidizing parental leave.
Also, higher taxes usually leads to higher stress at home and in happier parents.
But then again, Dems don't fret about happiness, its solely about the children and their right to life. isn't it?
6
I clearly understand and agree with Ms. Goldberg's points and despair our reactionary times but, aren't we living on a planet with a growing population and limited resources that is threatened environmentally?
I would sincerely appreciate comments.
4
Bob D, that's important. One answer is that it's the ill-educated who have the most children. Education for girls is a major factor reducing birth rates from 7 or 8 per woman. Societies that oppose education for girls and other rights for females are the ones that have large population growth. (There are small exceptions to this correspondence.) The consequence is exploding population in countries that are least able to care for those people. In some places, universal education is spreading and the result will be a greatly reduced birth rate -- as in India, for example, or so I hope. In other places the infrastructure is not in place or has been destroyed by war, as in much *but not all* of Africa, where the consequences of ruthless exploitation under colonialism have not been overcome.
5
Thanks Thomas, for this information it makes sense to me and gives a reason for measured optimism.
In the Sunday NYT was a long article with a chart that succinctly explained how "About one third of all families with children in 2013 had not wealth, only debt."
The lifelong struggle for parent(s) - and their children - of more than half of this country and close to 100% of other nations is precarious and stressful enough to affect their mental and physical health. That increasingly makes young women reconsider the religious and social pressures to breed, either by accident or giddy narcissism, which are the leading two reasons of how a pregnancy comes to be.
8
Recently conservative columnist George F. Will went on a rant against paid family leave as a calamity that will destroy the nation financially.
He also has been fretting about the dangers of a graying America.
And is one of the most rationale conservatives writing today.
Hostility to assisting the families of working mothers, hostility to immigration that can provide younger workers and what ever level of population maintenance that is desired.
Conservatives rule out all of the solutions to the problems they fear.
15
The obverse...or is it the mirror? of this discussion about not having enough children is the hysteria about abortions. What both have in common is that women are at the center, and are not supported by men (in this case men the patriarchy, in the abortion discussion men as seed producers not taking responsibility for the seed they disseminate.)
The most radical and valuable thing we can do is to educate our boys to be responsible for any seed they produce, and make them aware that patriarchy only works for men until it does not. Not being around in a couple of generations is guaranteed not to work for them.
3
If you want more children then adopt. Worldwide, there are children of all ages who would love to be adopted by you. Otherwise, I hear you asking for something else, and I don't like it.
4
Or, on the other hand, we could embrace the fairly elementary observation, that human populations, like all others, begin to slow their rate of reproduction in the presence of dwindling space and resources, absent other maroeconomic considerations specific to human populations.
14
richard is mistaken about the natural course of populations. The rate of reproduction does not (necessarily) slow (I don't say it can't ever); the rate of population growth slows because of other factors, like starvation and disease that kill off more of the population when there are insufficient resources.
An interesting recent Science Times article discussed a bacterial colony that reproduced to the point where none of its members could survive any longer. The whole colony died. I believe this was in the lab, but it's suggestive.
5
Personally, I'm thankful for the children I have.
2
We are becoming Idiocracy. Intelligent, educated women realize childbearing and child-rearing are a raw deal. The young, ignorant, and can't-be-bothered to get an IUD are left to breed. 50% of births in modern America are now paid for by Medicaid. Most of these women are pregnant due to irresponsibility, poor family-planning, and poor decision-making as part of a culture of hopelessness and poverty. Education is the only way out of this. We can worry about the consequences of becoming Japan after we improve our breeding stock. Educated, conscientious breeders are the only kind our planet can subsidize now. Harsh, but true.
12
Pandora: Blame the "other", please. Judging by your judgements, you don't know anything about their circumstances.
2
As long as Citizens United is the law of the land, corporations will rule and women in the USA will not get equality - it is bad for corporate profits.
We as a society have lost that certain sense of idealism that once led us to be better. Now we are mean spirited and have taken on the every man or woman for him or herself idea as our fall lazy back position.
Stingy, greedy, mean spirited, unkind - this is US.
7
Western societies have had dramatic decreases in birth rates which coincide with many changes over the last 100 years or so. They include big increases in life expectancy especially relating to infant mortality, the decrease in the number of people in agrarian enterprises where large families were a big asset, social security benefits so people need to rely less on their children to guarantee they don't go hungry in old age, reliable and safe birth control, and yes a decrease in patriarchy. Women's rights have expanded in every measurable metric and the increased opportunities other than motherhood have likely also lead to lower birthrates. So arguing that too much patriarchy is the problem seems silly. Angola has 4 times the US birthday and I doubt it is because of less patriarchy.
9
Todd, your last sentence doesn't make sense, but I think you wanted to say Angola has 4 times the U.S. birthrate because it has more patriarchy. I agree. But that is not the kind of society Ms. Goldberg is writing about. She was discussing a society that has room for women to have jobs outside the home. She might have stated that she was discussing advanced economies, but she didn't.
The traditionalist patriarchy in many parts of the world is a different matter.
1
Even you don’t believe this.
4
Amazing what Ed and Ted know about other people's thinking. Mind-reading is so convenient.
1
The world could do well with fewer humans......
14
At nearly 60, I'm happy to say that I look back on my decision not to have children entirely without regret. I'm happily married, but I knew instinctively at a young age that having children meant a level of financial independence I would never have. My parents were teachers and struggled always to afford their 4 children because of the way America regards education and those who try in vain to further it. With a master's degree in English and years of experience as a genetically predisposed musician, I knew the society of which I was part here in the U.S. would never value any of my abilities or accomplishments to the point that I could be financially secure; that's a given for all us non-STEM-field professionals. So I never had children, exclusively and entirely because of my fears of financial hardship. I saw what my parents went through and knew I didn't want that for myself. Way to go, America! My husband - another non-STEMmer - and I are exactly the kind of people who aren't having kids in this stupid country.
168
Could be a form an selective environmental pressure favoring reproduction of geeks at work here.
5
Don't blame this country Sarah. It was your choice to not risk having anything less than the ideal life that you imagined for yourself. Many people in developing countries would consider you well off. They decided to share what meager lives they have with their kids.
15
I believe you made a wonderful choice. At this point overpopulation and the accompanying environmental destruction will kill millions.
21
"Pro-life"? Look at the whole continuum and stop talking out both sides of your mouth.
2
I’m waiting for the progressive office seeker who campaigns on policies of one year paid maternal leave and free day-care. They would get my vote, and I believe many others.
4
Michelle Goldberg, please, go and study up on global warming and overpopulation. We have some real problems here that will be made a whole lot worse if people forget about preserving our hospitable planet.
We think things will continue as they used to be, but there are plenty of signs that they are not going to do so. The trend, which is only just beginning, is for our exploitation and toxifification to increase. We have already set off some tipping points. We are overfishing without regard to consequences, we have droughts and floods in the usual places.
You don't have to go far, either. Just read this paper.
Don't hide your eyes from the biggest problem humanity has faced. We may have already "solved" it by getting a government that thinks armageddon is a good idea, but killing millions and billions in war is the worst way to solve the problem of the world's apex predator.
We are a wholly owned subsidiary of marketing, buying into ideas about shortcuts, privilege and hygiene, the right to comfort (air conditioning, transport, Alexa do all). Common services for everyone are losing out to private schools and private transport, gated communities and a divided society where the poor get poorer and the rich richer.
Though Trump's calls for walls and exclusion are contemptible, the more generous are also building walls around their privilege and lifestyles that are expensive for us all. They may label it "holistic" but it all too often reeks of NIMBYism.
12
Just to be clear (that 1500 character limit), the point about excessive hygiene is important. Along with tapping our phone or telling Alexa to do common chores and take over our autonomy, we want everything we touch to be chemically sterile. We miss that many of those chemicals are toxic, and that cancer and other effects of highly manipulated environments are much worse than specks of dirt and normal microbes.
If you raise a child in a sterile environment, that child will get sick early and often (plenty of evidence, take a look). A normal environment is not sterilized to death. The "solution" is worse than the problem. We all need more rather than less exposure to a normal environment, and far fewer fumes and toxic chemicals in our earth, air, and water. I'm not talking about necessary chemicals that provide us with common clean water (soon to become rare), but about the excess. Health nuts with fancy waters (honestly, shipped from Fiji and in bottles that become carcinogens when heated, what are you thinking?) are just as bad.
Our earth was in a delicate balance and between overpopulation and "dominion" we are in acute trouble. Time to back off and enjoy a few simple unenhanced pleasures before they are all gone. The computers might survive, but we won't, unless we get a grip.
4
Ms. Goldberg, your column is consistent with other articles on this topic as well consistently wrong. Please stop viewing people and population in terms of economic units and instead focus on the individuals needs. At this point in time and history we need less prople on the planet, not more.
15
America's concept of independence requires that a couple or individual set themselves up financially before having children. This is not the concept in the Middle East or many Hispanic cultures where 3 generations live together. In those cultures a women can be married and have a child at 20, leave the baby with relatives and continue to finish school. No child care payments, apartment payments. If a jobs don't pay in their area they can stay home and still eat. Much of what Michelle Goldberg is calling a "career" is in fact just a job that pays all the bills. Getting all the ducks in a row so a woman can afford to have children, means later and less children.
One of the most painful policies is the federal policy of 3 years of financial support and then "Nevermore." Each child is at home for 18 years, not 3. Falling into poverty means not being able to feed a child and a very real situation of homelessness. No one wants to bring a child into that situation.
2
According to the author, a declining birthrate “threatens the future.” Unsustainable population growth threatens the future. Countries with declining birthrates are experiencing the birth pangs of a better, more livable world. Life on a new frontier is always hard, but patience and resourcefulness will see us through.
16
The author uses the term “patriarchy” twice, in the title and in the closing line. So the term doesn’t carry the weight of her argument. She does not use it as a snarl word.
She provides in context an idea of what she means - a lack of support for working mothers is a symptom of patriarchy. I probably don’t agree but it’s not a ridiculous thing to say and it’s complex.
So her column doesn’t necessarily require that we fully understand what the term “patriarchy” means in a world where women can vote, own property, end a bad marriage, receive a full education, and pursue any career.
But the term does open and close the column, and some commenters seem to be implicitly riffing on what the term means to them, so I’ll ask this.
When we mediate our political discussions through broad undefined terms with emotional associations such as “patriarchy”, “progressive”, “conservative”, and “socialism”, do we not put the cart before the horse by appealing to identity?
Did the Swedes and the French discuss the facts of biology and agree that full participation of women in the economy and well-cared for children are public goods? Or did they agree that to smash the patriarchy they must socialize the costs and burdens of bearing and raising children to the extent possible, as they do with public roads and health insurance?
I'm a mom of one - got married on the older side, and found that between working full-time and running the house, I just wouldn't have another piece of myself to give away to another person who needed me. Sometimes I wonder if social media contributes to people not wanting to start a family (and for context, I'm a fan of social media, not a critic). It used to be that unless you were close with parents yourself, the challenges of parenting weren't really discussed, or if you saw a parenting magazine, it was (and remains) a shiny image of frolicsome children and happy moms. For better or worse, now everyone gets to see the messes, read about the tantrums, see the stretch marks, etc. It's a more intimate look at something that you used to have to be part of the "club" to experience - and although I love my son more than anything, let's face it: parenting is hard and messy and often inconvenient. It's sometimes very rewarding but often frustrating or boring. Maybe enough parents share enough of that online, and people think, "No thanks, that's not for me!"
8
Very good centrist article. I think that since society benefits from children (who later become contributing adults), society should help pay for their care and education. Women should have equal opportunity to develop their careers, not only out of fairness but to societies benefit. There might have to be some "give" on the part of corporations to allow men to have reduced work week. For the "give" to occur universally and effectively, it would have to be enforced by the government.
5
I think in this day and age it's incredibly presumptuous to think that women only choose not to have kids, or only choose to have 1 child, because there's not enough support for working mothers. I have known since I was a child that I would not want a child and none of it is because there's a lack of support.
I think as women take more control of what their lives look like and not fall under societal or familial or spousal pressure, many choose not to have a kid because that is not what they envisioned their lives to be. Many of my friends want the freedom to travel, to live the lives they want to live, to not contribute to over population, because they don't feel like society is getting any better and they don't want to bring another person into this kind of society/world, etc. The reasons are endless but I have never heard one say that they weren't going to have a kid, or were only thinking of one, because there's not enough support. Most have moved closer to their parents or in-laws so that they could have the support.
9
Marriage rates are also down. I wonder how much of a factor that is? How many men are deciding to avoid getting their unwed partners pregnant so as to avoid child support for a child they do not get to see? Child support laws are radically different in Sweden from what they are in most US jurisdictions, so those differences could very well be a significant factor in the perceived outcome.
Are 1.8 and 2.7 across-the-board averages, and if so then how many of those would-be 2.7s are actual 0s vs., say, 2s? How many are unwed?
It takes 2 to tango. How much of a factor is male reproductive (or contraceptive) interest in the outcome? I think it would prove useful to understand the male perspective and influence on this issue.
I ask these questions because this opinion only seems to reflect half the story, as if men aren't even involved in the process at all. And, true, with sperm banks they don't always need to be for the physical process of creating a child. But from the standpoint of raising one, any honest parent can tell you that it is easier with two involved parents than with just one.
1
Exactly. For heaven's sake, respect for one's rights is a "human" issue. Barriers are the roadblocks to human progress.
I don't know how you can write a column about birth rates without mentioning the multitude of environmental crises resulting from consumption and destruction of Earth's resources by an ever-growing human population. Since I graduated high school in the early 80's, the US's population has grown by about 100 million people and global population by 3 billion. Some 37 days from now, the world's human population be one New York City's worth of people greater - in one year, 10 New York City's. Global population is projected to grow from 7 billion currently to 11 billion by 2100. It is nothing but good news that the US's fertility rate is declining. Michelle Goldberg seems to be tacitly advocating increased US birth rates. Instead, if US population increase is the goal so that all the old people will be cared for, let's figure out a way bring in immigrants. If we can't figure that out, putting more demands on Earth's resources is no solution.
21
"Outside the United States, the pattern is pretty clear. Developed countries that prioritize gender equality — including Sweden, Norway and France — have higher fertility rates than those that don’t" where is the source for the data that supports this claim.
I went through each of the authors sources. The are only two that contains any link to raw data on the subject. First is "Making it easier to be a mother" by Polly Toynbee published in the Guardians opinion section. That piece refers to (without linking the document) "Old Europe?Demographic Change and Pension Reform" by the MP David Willetts produced for the Center for European Reform.
This piece references average (mean) fertility rates for France, the UK, Germany, and Italy for the periods of 1960-65, 1995-2000, 2000-2005. For France it shows a declining fertility rate going from 2.9 to 1.76 to 1.85. There is no data for Norway or Sweden in this piece.
So this data shows that France in 2005 had a higher fertility rate than the United States did in 2017.
The second is the Lyman Stone article that references a graph for fertility rates, but without providing what every graph should, proper data point labels and a link to the raw data. According to this graph Norway has a lower fertility rate than the United States.
I didn't find a single source linked in this piece that shows the Swedish fertility rate. While I could independently examine data not sourced here, you have a duty as a writer to properly source.
2
The NY times also just published a piece about the Rio Grande drying up -- a river that provides water to a very large section of the U.S. population. And yet, the focus is still: what can we do to grow our society?
The only thing worse than falling birth rate is a society that cannot feed and house it's people -- which is what is catalyzing a lot of the unrest in the world. I would say : "Ask the people of easter island about their thoughts on overpopulation", alas, they are no longer in existence.
17
In the USA a mother should 1) return to work within weeks of delivering; 2) breastfeed her baby for at least a year (ever tried pumping 3x a day at the office?); 3) lose all baby weight overnight with a heroic diet and fitness plan (in all her spare time); 4) keep up with all housework, cooking, and emotional labor for her family; 5) do all of this with student debt and no subsidized health or childcare. Oh and a paycheck that is 30% lower than men.
No wonder women are giving up.
23
Absurd column! There are millions more children being brought up in poverty and desolation all over the world, whose mothers did not have the right to choose when and if and how many children to bear.
As for Germany -- Michelle Goldberg's glib comment that "the country has a tradition of stigmatizing mothers who work outside the home" is false and absurd. German women who are fortunate to be educated and self-sufficient are free to make these choices for themselves -- as should be every woman, all over the world.
7
In our religion, human sexuality is sinful. Making motherhood easy would miss the fundamental(ist) point.
Just today's NYTimes featured stories on what the high cost of education alone is doing to family formation and home ownership. Home ownership rates lowest in nearly 30 years. Improving gender equality means college graduation rates higher for women than men. While young men are living in their parent's basements. This "gig economy" doesn't work. And you say children are expensive? That's just the tip of the iceberg.
4
The US is sliding into high-tech feudalism. My partner and I will not create children who would probably live as serfs.
15
For today's conservative/Republican solution, see "The Handmaid's Tale".
4
Uh, NO. What we need is less OVERPOPULATION!
16
Sorry, but this is speculative tripe. It's cherry picking a few countries and drawing a large sweeping general conclusion. There could be great reasons for "less patriarchy" but dropping the rules of science and reason to support a point does a disservice to the case. I'm disappointed the NYT would publish something like this. Allowing an argument of this kind could let a global warming denialist draw the conclusion it's been the reduction of pirates in the world that caused the heat up. This is worse than that tough. It not only jumps without reason to propose a correlation is a cause. It handpicks a few coinciding examples to establish the correlation to begin with. Shame.
9
We have sadly been seeing that both Democrats and Republicans will deny science whenever it is convenient for them.
6
You would think that the fed and state governments would be more supportive of the children after all they are the future tax payers of this country. NO SUPPORT NO CHILDREN=Abortion
1
This jibes with my obeservations. I’ve traveled to Scandinavia and was struck by what seemed like young couples with young kids everywhere you go. If like much of the developed world you don’t have to worry about crippling student debt, an expensive failing health care system that might bankrupt you, little to no family leave, a resurgent right wing that wants women barefoot in the kitchen, and a celebrated bro culture/potential assaulting creep as a coworker/boss, then having babies would be a lot more appealing. I have two daughters, and they perceive American culture these days as in many ways a hostile place to their personal ambitions and goals and they’re probably right.
8
We should applaud the falling birthrates. It is better for the planet
and Humanity.
It is only bad for capitalism.
Which should tell us something about this rotten system.
M
21
The very last thing the world needs is more people.
You can recycle everything, drive a small electric car, let your home heat up rather than use the air conditioner . . . you cannot possibly make up for the burden placed on the environment by that one additional person's existence.
Anyone who has more than one child and claims to be an environmentalist is a hypocrite.
18
Fascinating article, and especially informative on the statistics of the present reality. A lasting change, I believe, will need to be preceded by the election of more women to legislatures across the nation along with intelligent and understanding men (not yet a majority of the available pool). Self-reflection is not America's best feature, but a dose of it here would be useful. It's the economy, stupid. Think about that, and let's do something about it.
2
The U.S. emits more in per-capita fossil fuels than any other nation on Earth-twice the per-capita rate for Europeans, and often more than ten times the rate of people in developing countries-at a time when we desperately need to curb emissions.
We also stridently refuse to reduce consumption, are buying SUVs and large energy-sucking homes at record levels, and eat massive amounts of meat.
Unfortunately, if low birth rates lead to the gradual decline in the number of Americans it may be the very best thing for the planet. We can find ways to build an economy around gradual contraction. We cannot build a new planet.
10
Was the "terrifying xenophobic backlashes" link an editor's cruel joke on Ms. Goldberg? The very first paragraph of that piece is on how an immigrant terrorist murdered 86 people in Nice on Bastille Day. Yep, I'd say that's pretty terrifying! I'm pretty sure that's why they call it "terrorism."
Not wanting to import more people like this is hardly a xenophobic backlash, and there are far better solutions to taking care of our elderly than dysgenic and financially inane policies like opening our borders, importing unskilled immigrants who are hostile to our very way of life or just not cut out for it, and then paying the poor women among them to be brood mares so they can pop out more low skilled and angry servants of Allah or MS-13.
For instance, why not use tech and robots? These are the kinds of things that actually scale, and represent progress. It's how Japan is facing the same challenges. But Ms. Goldberg doesn't even consider it! She approaches the problem like a 19th century plantation owner. "Not enough work-bodies? Import more cheap work-bodies!" It's ridiculous. It's the very definition of stupidly patriarchal. It's inhumane, and it just doesn't make any sense.
My conclusion? We need more STEM graduates, and fewer feminists whose conception of labor distribution and process efficiencies are limited to what plantation owners had at their disposal.
4
"Not wanting to import more people like this is hardly a xenophobic backlash"
Fortunately in the US we do a great job of nurturing home-grown terrorists.
2
Great column. I don't want more babies until we have a bigger planet but count me as someone who wants quality not quantity.
I watched last Friday's debate and Michelle Goldberg asked the right questions to both Michael Eric Dyson and Jordan Peterson.
I had expected Dr Peterson a self described Socratic to ask questions like "Want More Babies?" and did not expect Michael Eric Dyson to use White as a pejorative but this is Trump world.
Maybe it is time to let people like Michelle Goldberg and Stephen Fry to run the world, they may not have all the answers but they are asking the right questions.
Do we want more babies is a great question and You need less Patriarchy shows the complexity of simple answers. Here in Quebec with Canada's lowest birth rate males are rapidly becoming the main child care givers as women possess the skills needed for the work place (eg 70% of new doctors). Visit our parks on a sunny afternoon and see how few women and children and how many men.
If you want more babies make child rearing the most import and highest prestige male enterprise. This may make for more Patriarchy but it beats the heck out of more Trumpocracies.
3
If only a low birth rate was world wide. We have too many people on this tiny blue speck. Climate change will make it worse.
15
First we have no need to have more children. Most families have two. And some never get married and have none. We do not need social engineering
What happens when populations drop. Smaller towns begin to collapse snd the young migrate to bigger cities. Labor becomes aclittle tigher, and robotization takes the place, demanding higher education
So let’s spend our time getting the kids educated. Less kids make that easier. Hooray
8
“...patriarchy is maladaptive..”
Actually no. Patriarchy is by far the most evolutionarily optimal system, allocating roles according to comparative advantage.
Sweden, the author’s feminist role model, is projected to be 20% Muslim by 2050 under medium assumptions, from 8% in 2016.
http://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/
It is no coincidence that matrilineal/matrifocal societies are relegated to remote corners of the world; these, like feminism, are uncompetitive with patriarchy.
tarkmarg.blogspot.com
6
You literally just "Actuallied" her. :/
2
This opinion piece is completely disconnected from the reality I live in. About half of my friends are not having children -- and for most of us the window of opportunity has nearly closed -- not for the reasons Ms. Goldberg states, but because we care about the fact that environmental destruction is occurring on a mass scale due to human intervention and the surest way to counteract that is by reducing the population dramatically. We prefer to either adopt or foster, or simply not be primary caretakers at all. We work with children through Big Brother and Sister programs and others like them. For us, these options are just as fulfilling. Of all my friends I know of only two women who didn't have children due to economic stress and lack of support.
I believe the statistics Michelle quotes, but I'm wondering if the study somehow missed or bypassed this phenomenon in its sampling.
11
You nailed it, Michelle.
1
Toxic masculinity is expecting a man to work hard all his life to support a wife and children who may come to hate him and that might destroy him in divorce. No thanks.
5
Hmmm. I know *very* few families where the man is the only one who works. The woman also works to support the family.
1
In this formal report on birthrates Ms Goldberg keep referring to children as "kids"; this kind of informality is out of place and jarring in such a serious article. Let us be grammatically precise as long as we can.
2
Why would anyone advocate for more babies, the world is over populated.
14
Tell that to the water managers trying to figure out how to supply 40 million people and tens of millions of irrigated acres in the Colorado River basin, along with cities outside the basin that also use its water (Denver, SLC, Phoenix, Albuquerque). And those numbers growing, in every city.
2
When you limit support to women with children to subsidized childcare and paid leave from work, you limit the group that benefits to working women. Many women living in parts of the country with a lower cost of living choose not to work while raising their children to school age. Sacrificing material gain to better raise their children should be rewarded as well. So while stay-at-home mothers may be despised by Ms. Goldberg and her upper middle class professional friends, support for ALL mothers and All children, rather than just those mothers who work, garners broader political support (including many Republicans), benefits the poor as well as the professional upper middle class, and is likely to produce more children. Of course if the objective is to only benefit the bi-coastal educated elite, stick with your plan as is.
1
Male dominated Muslim countries have a great number of children.
7
Too many children in the world already.
15
So with the election of Trump, only men are experiencing an economic boom. Women are still left behind.
1
Whatever the cause for America's historic low birthrate in 2017, keep it going.
Because the worst thing happening to the U.S. (besides Trump) is OVERPOPULATION.
15
Although from this perspective, Trump is helping neutralize the Democratic Party's advantage in being pro-choice. I.e., by enforcing the bipartisan-enacted immigration laws and seeking the identical immigration reforms suggested by African-American, Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan in the 1990's, Trump is actually helping slow population growth in the United States. Scott Pruitt aside, this is a pro-environment stance.
2
Most women do not make a choice between kids or career...most have to find work just to survive.....high divorce rates = single mothers who still make less $ then their male peers. Wages have been stagnant for some time and expenses continue to rise. It's not a choice, it's a reality of no choice w/ few viable options other then struggle to make ends meet. Children are not status accessories and humans really need to practice birth control. we don't need more people to help pay into Soc Sec, we need fewer people who are highly educated and productive thus generating more $ into our Soc Sec system rather then loads of unskilled minimum wage earners who do not generate sufficient $ to support the system. education is the key and that is also an economic issue that is an obstruction to so many students who desire education, who have aspirations other then having several part time minimum wage jobs supplemented w/ side hustles and of course these jobs do not include health insurance or offer few benefits other then a small discount which is still beyond their budget.
3
This is column is the same warmed over junk. Subsidize some folks for having children. Make their colleagues do their work. Make business pay for their children.
I don't even open Ms. Goldberg's column more than once/month. She is completely uninformative. I would go so far as to say that she is ridiculous most of the time.
7
Amen to that.
3
France and Sweden have higher fertility rates largely due to Muslim immigrants, who tend to promote the “patriarchy” - and traditional family structure- that Goldberg despises.
9
Who wants more babies?
8
Another pro-natalist, pro-immigration column from the nytimes. Why does the nytimes never run well-written columns pointing to the benefits of lower birth rates and less immigration?
11
They have run such columns, very occasionally, perhaps once or twice a year. For example, George Borjas of Harvard was published last year. In general, however, running such columns goes against the "narrative," including the insane evolution of the Democratic Party on immigration over the last 10-15 years.
5
We live in a country where we aren't safe without job sponsored health insurance. Some companies charge spouses high rates; others won't cover them at all. We hear that in order to qualify for healthcare, you should work. Do men have any idea how difficult it is to reenter the workforce after taking time off with children.
Take time off for children, and you lose your ability to contribute to your retirement savings.
Kids are expensive. The less we invest in public education, the more expensive kids become.
Giving birth is expensive.
We do not make it easy for women to have children. I have one child and would love more. I simply can't afford to have more.
12
Women are being punished for being women, and also for having children, Why would anyone sign up to possibly bring another child into the world? So they too can experience misery?
Having many children was a prosperous middle class dream and our billionaires are sucking all available money out of the middle class, thus destroying that dream.
If you want higher birthrates than quit harping on abortion (it is the effect of current policy but not the cause of a lower birthrate) and provide free ob-gyn, free family planning (yeah, actually women should recover fully between children and celibacy is NOT an expected part of marriage), free room and board and free real education for the children and real accommodations in the work place, in other words put your money where your mouth is.
5
Nonsense.
4
How about helicopter-moron American parents equate babies with a $200k price tag each? As in, that is the cost to get them out of the house...EACH. Americans equate having babies with $$$. Especially in expensive Liberal enclaves where you need to doll up your baby because babies are an accessory.
But my personal favorite opinion on it is this fine line of prose written by the Harvey Danger: "Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding. The cretins cloning and feeding."
5
And the world needs more babies why, exactly?
12
Why must all roads lead to “the patriarchy “?? This seems far less an anti-woman issue and far more one about capitalism and America’s abject fear of socialism.
7
No we don’t want more babies just to perpetuate the Ponzi scheme of ever increasing economic growth. Time to focus on quality and income equality and thinking of the future.
18
Many young women — and men — are also concerned about the environmental destruction of our planet. They question whether it is fair to bring children into this world.
10
Planet is totally overpopulated - we're like a cancer. Soon to be 10 billion by 2050. We should be encouraging lower birthrates and welcoming in more immigrants to the US. Let's address the changing economic landscape and worries/threats to job security with solutions that are good for the long-run health of everyone, not some short-sighted efforts to have more babies.
7
Ms. Goldberg conflates "prioritizing gender equality" with policies like paid family leave and government-subsidized child care. But those aren't the same thing. A society could be gender-equal in offering no such support to parents of either sex, or gender-equal in offering lots of such support; or a society could be gender-unequal in offering such support only to mothers.
What Goldberg seems to mean by "gender equality" is the government paying for other people to raise your children so that you can have a career. Whereas the "patriachal" model would be government policies to encourage prosperity and support two-parent families so that people can raise their own damn kids. It is not clear that the "gender equality" model is superior.
6
I will just say that our son is now eight and we are still struggling to pay off the credit card debt that accrued in his baby & toddler years when we couldn't pay for daycare, rent, and medical expenses on both parents' salaries. It sucks but this is the way things are for middle class parents. It's far worse if you're poor and can't access credit so you get evicted or go hungry.
8
One of the worst of Trump's edicts: no birth control aid money for foreign organizations that allow or even talk about abortion.
We have enough water and food for our population, even our immigrants.
But many poor countries do not have enough of anything to allow even adults to survive, much less children.
Birth control is the answer. And women in poor countries have welcomed it so that they could raise at least one child instead of having many children and watching them starve to death.
4
This is about everything EXCEPT gender equality - it's economic, race and class. Career-oriented women postpone child-bearing until later. It's hard to have a career AND children. Unfortunately, our system rewards reckless childbearing by the non-productive underclass while penalizing tax-paying women and their husbands. Until monetary incentives appear that reward responsible family planning, we will continue to nurture a growing, subsidized underclass at the expense of everyone else. This political, social and economic perversion is, I believe, a first in human history.
6
No country has a lower birthrate than Italy. Their paid family leave laws are perhaps the most liberal in the EU, and they have been in place for many years. In fact, all the EU countries have a much lower birthrate than the US. So does Mexico and Canada.
4
Humans up. CO2 up. Battery chickens up.
Lions, tigers, apes, whales, fish, rainforests, etc. down. So, yes, we need more babies. Only 7,000,0000,000 humans, not nearly enough.
15
Mmm, humans. Delicious, delicious humans.
2
Given the environmental demands a larger population makes, I'm not at all sure that a higher fertility rate is something we should want.
10
Interesting thesis: "Perhaps the United States is becoming more like the rest of the industrialized world, where declining birthrates are correlated with a lack of support for working mothers."
"Perhaps" it has more to do with the average man's wage not being adequate enough today to support three children and still have the mother remain in the home till the children head off to begin their own careers and families.
"Perhaps" it has more to do with a cultural ethos that has been savaged by drugs, exported jobs, and "families" without fathers.
"Perhaps" we might want to examine how it was possible for families to prosper during the 1950-1960s without mothers in such great numbers working outside the home.
And "perhaps" Ms Goldberg's thesis is just more expedient NYT cultural Marxism from the Opinion Kingdom on the march.
5
yes,support family creation male and female and any combination.Couples produce more or less whole children.
I can't help but wonder if there was some perverse need to have the four kids that I had, even in the face of the dire warnings of a Population Explosion that were everywhere in my teens. The population didn't explode, but now my four are the among those delaying or limiting parenthood.
Social support for parents is critical no matter what. I don't know how much of an impact it has on how many babies we make, but it seems logical to assume that parental leave and day care availability would make for a happier, healthier society.
I suspect that if we don't kill ourselves via Global Warming, Nuclear Bombs or other acts of stupidity, we will be just fine.
1
How about we have less patriarchy AND less babies?
Before the 'settlers' arrived, it's estimated that North America had perhaps 2.1 to 7 million humans living from the land.
Those were the good old days: The continent was pristine, nearly perfect but for the megafauna these people are said to have hunted to extinction.
In 2018 the USA had blown itself up to nearly 330 million people.
And these are not your normal, natural people, these are greedy, consumeristic, bored, fat, overfed, entitled, self-obsessed people all driven by an addictive cult of disposable consumerist waste, economic, automotive upward-mobility & selfish self-actualization.
These 330 million people did not deserve America the Beautiful to disrespectfully ravage.
In a few generations they destroyed the ancient forests & plowed the pristine landscape, leaving this blasted open-pit of sprawl & waste & global environmental exhaustion.
People don't have babies for the sake of humanity, or for society or some good deed, people have babies because of their own self-interest.
There are now 7.6 Billion people in this world, more than Double since I was born in the mid 60's.
Every one of these people is this amazing but insolubly conflicted, complicated universe, & now each one has their eye on American-style wasteful, toxic, consermerist self-interest & upwardly mobile industrialized affluence.
The patriarchy needs to go down relentlessly. But so does population.
Time to tone it down with the babies.
18
Oh now women have to save society by bearing more children? Isn't it enough that we're charged with bringing in income, maintaining households, raising families, and taking care of elderly parents. Can we leave it up to someone else to fix the difficult social problems in this country?
5
The world doesn’t need more people! We need more justice.
10
Michelle, I hope you're doing well. People actually do want kids, but the threat of unemployment, Climate Change, School shootings, threat to democracy has made me question if I'd want kids in the future.
1
And these policies that correlate with birth rates may aslo foster a cultural climate that, as Philip Auerswald and Joon Yun receently wrote in these pages, fosters things like Trumpism, alas.
1
In striking contrast to Ms Goldbergs hypothesis is the fact that fertility in the US is highest among our poorest populations. The poorest women make the most babies---by a LOT. Poorest have rates in the mid 60's and richest in the low 40's. So it cannot be financial burden that explains it. It must be financial burden compared to material expectations.
But this gives rise to a Republican win-win: They make everyone materially desperate (except the 1%), and we will eventually capitulate to the hopelessness of our financial prospects and get busy making babies. Make everyone else poor, and voila! Problem solved!
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-i...
Most women don't have fabulous jobs at the NYT. For most women a job is a necessity, single incomes used to be sufficient but not anymore. How many women would like to have kids and also raise them instead of hurrying back to a not so fabulous job and leaving them with a stranger at a day care? It is work to raise children and work at a job by definition will always be less important.
The obvious solution is to learn from patriarchy when birthrates were truly higher and gave women the space and time to have children & raise them.
By the way, I had parental leave and fathers are pretty useless in the first year after a child is born. Changing a diaper here and there and running some errands does not require me to be at home 24 hours. Women most cherish the companionship of other women around child birth. Experienced older women and friends. The male instinct during that period is to actually work harder and not spend mostly idle time at home which is almost unbearable. It truly makes a difference that girls play with dolls as children. They learn things that a men never do and never will by absolute lack of interest and inclination.
2
In the past, the US stayed ahead of the demographic curve by welcoming immigrants. Why not follow this common sense path? Yes, the US offers inadequate financial assistance for childcare just as it offers inadequate assistance for healthcare. What can wesay to a Congress and a President in the business of giving charity to ultra rich white men who don't need it? #VOTETHEMOUT
1
You talk about fewer Americans as if it's a bad thing. Most of the world would not agree.
4
Almost everything we are currently doing in the U.S. is endangering the future, with climate change in the forefront of these actions.
I saw a post yesterday from someone in Maine describing the lack of people to fill the jobs that need filling. The post begged for immigrants.
Yet, it seems one of our political parties and their very base base seem to welcome the dysfunction we currently see from the White House and Congress. A substantial number of those supporters actually want to see the end of the world so their mythology might come to pass.
We are full blown inside that Chinese curse about living in interesting times.
2
No! The declining birth rate is a function of education. Check the data. Highly educated people invest more in fewer children.
7
True, but you miss the salient point in this article: educated women would like to have more children than they do. They want to give their children a good quality of like along with educational opportunities that cost a lot. So not only does the American system not allow a reasonable maternity leave, it does not support childcare. It is arbitrary and political decisions that force women to make a choice to have fewer children than they wish - it is in no way a problem that is unsolvable.
5
No you miss the point. Educated women make a choice like we all do. Maternity leave has nothing to do with it. If they decide to go after a career that leaves them less time to raise children. Thus, fewer children with greater investment in those children. Why should the US support childcare if women choose to be mothers instead of going after a career? The whole point here is that other people do not want to pay for other people's choices. That by the way applies equally to men. What men basically understand is that women will sacrifice their careers for their children, men not so much. And that explains the pay scale disparity as well.
2
There's a fundamental flaw in this article. She points to countries like Sweden and Norway as having "gender equality" priorities, and this is true. Providing choice is absolutely necessary. However, it has been shown that these "gender equality" policies have actually exacerbated other types of gender inequality. Namely, there is a trade off to allowing more time off for family care and maternity - namely, that women then choose to remove themselves for longer times from their employment, then suffer from less advancement as a result. Also, when given choices, they tend to choose professions that allow freedom with family more than valuing monetary compensation, thus exacerbating wage inequality.
The moral here is that if you prioritize maternity leave, women will stay out of work longer, and they will then actually fall behind their male colleagues, thus exacerbating other measurements of equality - namely, income and status.
We can't have it both ways. The best thing is to prioritize choice, as Sweden and Norway have done, but to understand that these choices will result in a natural inequality of outcomes, and we need to be OK with that.
3
I liked this article very much, despite noticing that little was said on the remaining American countries, our neighbors. Total fertility rates in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba and Uruguay are not that different from that of the U.S.. Soon Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru will follow in the same direction.
3
Want women to have more children? Try 1) paying a decent wage to all workers, 2) provide low cost daycare in small, numerous locations, 3) treat women who work and have children as contributing more to the business - not less, 4) expand the public health service to incompatible nurses available to assist new mothers for the first year. Fewer babies means a smaller and smaller consumer base. No customers means no sales.
3
The structure of social security should not dictate population growth. For decades the government has taken the social security surplus and dumped it in the general fund using it for everything and anything. If in the future, there aren’t enough payroll deductions to pay for the promised benefits, it’s because of this. We could change social security-eliminating the income limits, for example, so it is less regressive, and make it a flat tax.
I just don’t buy the argument that population decline is a bad thing. And that elderly population overhang is only temporary anyway.
7
I have two children and am contemplating having a third. I live in the UK where I can take up to a year maternity leave (part of it paid), get free at the point of delivery ante and post natal care, and ongoing medical treatment for me (to an extent) and the children, including multi vitamins and vaccinations.
What would make me want to have more is affordable childcare. If I am to continue working (and therefore paying taxes and building my pension in addition to you know, earning a living) I need childcare. It is highly regulated in the UK (good thing), requiring high ratios of staff to children. This means it is VERY expensive, and government funding doesn’t kick in until the child is 3, and even this scheme isn’t widely available as the providers can’t afford it. With two children, it works out cheaper to get a nanny than to have two nursery places, but then you’re liable for their tax and national insurance contributions. Bring in tax breaks for hiring childcare or subsidising early years education and I’ll have a third
2
"Bring in tax breaks for hiring childcare or subsidising early years education and I’ll have a third "
Please, don't! The fundamental cause of climate change is people -- too many of them. Contributing to overpopulation for your personal satisfaction is the ultimate selfishness.
4
This article is right on. I’m 35, and always longed to have kids and a rewarding professional career. I have the career (in a demanding and low paying but extremely rewarding field) but not the kids—I’m putting it off until I feel secure enough at work to professionally survive the demotion and bias I know will come. From observing the experiences of my mentors and peers, I’m expecting that having a child will hurt my career and calculating how to be in a position to survive the damage. Which means I’ll have a child much later than I dreamed of having one, and I will have only one child. I have a supportive, feminist partner, but, lacking wealth, that isn’t enough. True gender parity would have made more fertile decisions possible. I hope the next generation has those options.
5
When visiting Stockholm I was struck by the number of young men pushing strollers (no mom in sight), the couples in the parks with two or three children, and how caim, relaxed and happy they seemed.
4
It's funny how not having to worry about day care, health insurance, and paying for education can do that to people. On the other hand we have religion and guns! Woo!
11
The article mentions where birthrates are lowest, but never mentions where birthrates are highest -- Sub-Saharan Africa and Muslim Asia. Does that conform to the author's theory that high birthrates are associated with low incidence of patriarchy? It is not good empirical practice to take available data, throw out the observations that do not conform to one's preferred political view, and call the result a statistical finding.
10
In the places you mention, the Patriarchy determines that birth control is unimportant and therefore the birth rate is higher.
1
Did you read the entirety of the last sentence?
It says "in the modern world, patriarchy is maladaptive."
Read the entire sentence. Emphasis on "in the modern world." She's obviously referring to developed third-world countries.
1
More precisely, our culture is failing to support parents in general. Framing this issue chiefly as a matter of "patriarchy" misses the point--prospective moms *and* dads need more paid leave, affordable housing, and flexible childcare if they're going to start families and keep them together.
6
While I applaud Ms. Goldberg for highlighting the hostility to families that is unfortunately an inherent feature of American civilization, I take issue with the alarm being raised regarding declining birthrate.
It took millennia for world's population to reach one billion which it did in the first decade of the 19th century. The two billion mark was passed just over a century later, in 1927. The number of people on the planet now is seven billion and assuming current trends continue, it will pass the ten billion mark by 2050.
This growth is occurring at the same technology is eliminating jobs far faster than it is creating them, governments are increasingly reluctant to offer their citizens even the barest social minimums, and climate change is radically altering the environment world wide.
At some point humankind is going to have to confront the implications of all of these developments. We can live without fossil fuels but we can survive without water and that is becoming an ever scarcer resource. Things such as this, it seems to me at least, are what we should be concentrating on rather than wringing our hands about a slight dip in fertility rates.
14
I agree with you Michelle, just a few more thoughts:
- The US is huge. Families are usually scattered around. This is not the case in Sweden, Norway and France. Parents there on average have a bigger support network, often with two sets of grandparents nearby.
- Population expansion is good for GDP growth, but not so much for our planet. We can't have it both ways.
- It's much more accepted to work days or hours from home or leave for a few hours for a parent-teacher meeting in the middle of the day in a more result-oriented job higher up rather than in the lower micro managed jobs. There is unfairness there, too.
10
In my observation, low fertility falls into 2 categories for my social circle — educated, vaguely middle class, 40ish.
Category A is the childless women who may have vaguely planned someday to have children, but did not make it a priority and reached their 40s without being in a stable relationship where having kids became a realistic option. It's obvious to me that many of these women — myself included until the late 30s — de-prioritize children because the overwhelming social message, for our set at least, has been "kids are a crushing burden that destroys your life, so do all the fun/important things you ever needed to get out of the way before procreating." Things like grad school, travel, a fun social life, paying off loans, getting tenure, etc.
Category B is one I'm in: Women who've had just one child, which is most of my parent friends. We limit ourselves to one kid because we'd be overwhelmed, logistically as well as financially, by a second. Most of us live far from supportive family, so a 2nd child means a 2nd round of crushing daycare/preschool bills, more years without a date night, a larger apartment or house we can scarcely afford in a good school catchment, and the opportunity cost of childbirth/newborn care at a moment when we're stabilizing, professionally and financially as well as socially.
It's a lot more complex than "women are focused on careers and don't get enough government/policy support, paid leave, etc".
14
I only wish that all of the articles being published on this issue were as well researched and critcally written as this one. It also gives affirmation to women like myself who are open to having children, highly educated (i.e 2 Masters degrees) and still working jobs that have no benefits. As an African-American, I only wish our demographic group was also included in these publications. Apart from the moving NY Times feature that highlighted the maternal and infant death crisis amongst African-Americans, I have to wonder, are our fertility rates also falling?
3
This is what happens when opinions are treated like facts: nothing is debated, nothing is concluded, and nothing is done.
So peel the numbers back a bit. By income, what’s the rate? By education? Surprises await if you do just a bit of homework.
2
Statistics can be terrible misleading. The article indicates that the conventional understanding of a replacement birthrate per couple is around 2.1. If you consider all the couples that for a myriad reasons will not have kids or not be able to have kids, the actual replacement rate will actually need to approach 3 for those that do have kids and to sustain a healthy population. We are not even close to those numbers. If anything , our population rate was artificially propped up, for the last two decades, by immigration and the very high birthrates among immigrant populations. Both of those
numbers have fallen dramatically over the last few years to reveal an actual birthrate that is low even by developed country standards. It's also pointless to compare ourselves to countries like France and Sweden that also have low birthrates and aging populations. Child care is great for couples that want one child or two and not skip a beat in their careers, it's not going to bring back the large families or yore ( 3 or more kids ).
Also, I hear no mention at all in this article, of what men think about having fewer or more kids. I guess their opinion doesn't really matter. That might have something to do with the problem.
2
Where to begin. I don't want to be rude, but it is your grasp of statistics that is wanting. The 2.1 number refers to all women, and it includes the fact that some women are unable to bear children. The choice not to have children does not change the statistic. Population growth is not the same as the birthrate.
The opinion of men is not an issue ( it is of course- just not in the context of the article) because only women bear children. We would be justified in assuming that a woman who says " I wanted a second child, but chose not to because of the cost and the hit to my career" has talked about this with her partner. The decision for a couple is definitely a negotiation, but the author, I think, is trying to point out that there is little societal support for the decision to have a second or subsequent child. This is not to say that parents should not be responsible for their children as some readers seems to infer, BUT it does say that American society is so individual-focussed that it has no interest in organizing workplaces and employment law to benefit families.
4
Why don't we begin by the fact that you can parse statistics to support just about any argument. The bottom line is that couples that decide to have children ( in other words 100% of people having children ) will need to have closer to three children per couple to sustain a healthy population. My other point is that, economically, it's become necessary for both partners to work to support the family, hence these painful choices. The economics will only get worse in time, no amount of parental leave and day care can change that
Our nation has become an advocate for oligarchy, ignore the middle class and those struggling. It is not going to end well.
5
So true. Patriarchy is a red herring sent to confuse feminists. The real and only issue is here is the oligarchy.
1
It's a design flaw. We need sustainability.
This decline of babies, aka future workers, future tax payers - reveals that our "systems" are not sustainable. If Social Security, Medicare etc are based on population growth then we need to redesign these systems so they are no longer dependent on population growth.
But of course we know that Republican's view sustainability as a terrible expensive evil which should be avoided at all costs.
6
But is it true that countries which have more patriarchy have fewer children?
I could say that there would be more babies if people listened more to Indian classical music (and to Bach and Chopin).
But you would immediately respond, "just because Ludwig wants us to listen to Ravi Shankar and Bach and Chopin does not mean it would work."
So let me ask, "just because Michelle wants less patriarchy, does that mean it would work?"
I grew up in a traditional society where women cooked, and drank tea and gossiped. I never thought I was living in a "patriarchy".
Do take a look at
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
and you will see that there is not much correlation between patriarchy and childbirth. The main difference is rather between Africa and the rest of the world.
4
I can't help thinking: So many of the world's serious problems would be much more solvable if the population were that of 1950 or 1900 or earlier.
18
It seems that two types of societies have a lot of children. Either societies where women have no rights or societies where women have lots of rights, essentially the same as men and are supported in childcare. The middle-ground is not stable. Over time it seems likely that societies with more children will outcompete ones with fewer children. Which kind of society do we want the future humanity to live in?
3
I think a lot of this also has to do with culture, which is briefly touched on here.
I am not willing to procreate unless I know that I will be splitting the responsibility 50/50, at least most of the time.
I'm a 27-year-old, successful, educated woman. You would be surprised how often I meet people who are not okay with that logic.
20
...if you ever do, what’s your plan when your spouse isn’t able to do that for a week? Month? Demand reciprocity later? What’s your plan if you get sick and he’s taking care of the family 100%? You’re too young to understand that what you’ve posted is precisely the opposite of what real partners in life Deal with when fate or luck kicks them very hard with zero warning.
2
@LVBiz - Obviously those would be extenuating circumstances (and the reason I added "most of the time".) All I'm asking is for the relative reciprocity in childcare and homemaking.
And if I am, as you say, "too young to understand, why are people my age having children? Should we wait until we're 40?
4
"But if a shrinking number of workers must support a growing elderly population, even our threadbare social safety net will be strained." - Why is this women's responsibility?
IF motherhood is so important for the future, for the economy, etc why is motherhood treated like such a thankless role?
8
Beyond thankless. Punitive.
2
Because one of our country's favorite past times is extracting unpaid labor out of marginalized groups.
5
I married when I was 21. I still had year and half of college left, I knew having a child at that time would have delayed my graduation. My first job only paid 25k and had no health benefits. My husband made a bit more than me, but had limited health benefits. Again, I knew that we could not afford to pay for any medical cost that would raise during the pregnancy or delivery. By time we were financially stable enough to afford health insurance and child care, we began to have problems within our marriage. Now, I’m 43 and regret not having a child.
9
Adopt.
3
I completely agree that the United States needs to revamp its support for mothers and families in general in order to promote childbearing, not just in terms of money but also gender roles and how our society hasn't done much to encourage equal participation of parents in childrearing. As nice as the change in child tax credit is, it doesn't outweigh the significant cost of raising a child, especially when women are often penalized by their work for becoming pregnant. However, I would also add that the state of our country in general doesn't inspire much hope for future generations in the eyes of those who could create those generations--stagnant wages, divisive politics, and the threat of climate change may all contribute to more women choosing to not have children (The Independent had an article in 2017 stating that according to a US study, 1 in 5 women are not having children at all, and 17% of women born in the 70s are childless compared with 9% of women born in the late 40s). Add to that the student debt crisis, which makes it that much harder for women of childbearing age to have kids. Hard to support a family when you're tens of thousands, sometimes over a hundred thousand, dollars in debt. (According to a Pew Research Study in 2017, 37% of adults 18-29 and 22% of adults 30-44 had student debt, and the average debt for a Bachelor's was $25k, $45k for post-graduate.)
5
I’m in my mid-50s. I was fortunate enough to stay home with children and live on my husband’s salary. No vacations, small savings; we lived within our means, middle-class. All good.
When the third was old enough for school, I realized that if I went back to work, I would never make more than I would spend on programs for after school and the school breaks—Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, the day after Thanksgiving, Winter Break, February Break, Spring Break and two+ months of Summer, snow days off or the late start or early dismissal of other snow days and teacher workshop days. That doesn’t even count that kids get sick and can’t be in school or day care. I got a part time job for a few more years. After that, I had been out of the work force for so long, I was not able to get a foot in the door for another good full time job. I have made do, but never made the money I could have, had I stayed in the work force.
I don’t regret my choice, but today most working couples can’t manage on one salary. That economy is gone except for the highest paid workers. If the mother takes off a few years, she will have a hard time getting back in. Day care is very expensive. The choice is to work to pay for daycare and be exhausted all the time or take a big chance that if you take time off, you will be able to work at a comparable level later. And if women do that, I doubt they will do it more than once.
16
I don't know what to think. I can see that declining population causes economic problems in the short run at least. But having just read a review of David Pilling's "The Growth Delusion", my puzzlement at the idea that growth can just keep on going is reinforced. The bubble or the planet is bound to burst eventually.
23
Your last sentence should be put on a bumper sticker. Truth.
2
i'm 68. Never married, never had kids. I chose a career instead. And believe me, it was a choice -- one or the other -- even though I was born and raised in supposedly sophisticated New York City. Never regretted my choice, and am still suspicious of claims of equality within marriages.
18
I honestly don't understand how anyone raises children in New York City. Young, single people such as myself are having to leave in droves because we can't find any affordable places to live-- and we only have ourselves to worry about!
3
There are too many humans on this planet to begin with. We have overrun the planet and destroy everything we touch. We don't need more people.
21
This article fails to talk about Canadian birthrate which last year 2017 was at 1.6. That’s a country with 12 months paid maternity leave left to be divided up between the two parents, and now it’s possible to get 18 months in 2018. So her main point of this article is rather untrue. Want more babies? Need less patriarchy..... should be more like “Want more babies, need everyday things to cost less”. Where I live in British Columbia, Canada an average new family house cost 750,000$ and even a 30 year old house with some recent Reno’s will cost 400-500,000$. Unless you’re a doctor or a lawyer you need two full time incomes to be able to afford to own a house let alone start a family. Kids cost a lot that’s pretty much given. And me being a fiscally conservative I can’t fathom having 2-3 children (even though I want that) a 600,000 mortgage (even though I accept that as norm) and being able to financially support and maintain my family while my wife is on paid maternity leave, (and all the other tax benefits having dependants gives in Canada). Even with paid maternity leave, The $$$ costs are too great and We’re too responsible to just try and see. Which is why most people have 1 kid or none at all. Also to mention my wife is an Registered Nurse and I’m a software engineer so we both make good money.
17
"...the industrialized world, where declining birthrates are correlated with a lack of support for working mothers...
Bingo...
Irony - even women-led entities have a pre-industrialized view of white-collar work...That everyone needs to be in a big room 9/5, to be most productive...
Variant touches the press...with the communication-links now available, is there still enough ROI in globe-trotting vs collaborating with remotely-sited colleagues...Imagine being at your desk (maybe at home) and using a (camera/mike) drone - credentialed for the locale just as you and a cameraperson would be, with context-specific rules and prohibitions...Might make sense to still have a cameraperson operate the drone...So many reports or statutes first/best available as PDFs on .gov sites...Today, scoops about as useful as rainbows - though they look pretty, if they encircle your building
Last thought - will be days/times when "being for 2" will take a physical or mental toll...This gets conflated into lack of commitment or focus, or stamina, re the job...
Turn this around - at the baseline level, why shouldn't a company hire a fractional admin for pregnant women, just like it does for first-level managers...
We'd all learn what the quantity, efficiency, and appropriateness of the aggregate workload would be - and bake it into the business model...
Cost of one fifth of an admin for a year – less than a tenth of the treatment for some diseases…
Go do the multiplication - it works...
5
Back in the late 1950s when my children were born, I estimated it would cost at least $100,000 to bring each of my two children to maturity. Babysitters were relatively inexpensive and took excellent care of the kids in their charge. I couldn't, and in any event didn't need to go back to work until both my kids were in school all day. Now, carers are hard to find and childcare is hideously expensive. The $100,000 that I put by in a college fund won't even see my grandson through his undergraduate degree — assuming he's not mowed down by some psychopath with a rifle. Given all these pressures I can't think why any woman now would want to bring more than one or two children into this world. Would our government help? Are you kidding?
8
Where is the incentive to become a mother? Young women have eyes and ears and they can read -- they know they will be paid less in the job marketplace, passed over for promotions, and never be able to save as much as their male counterparts/husbands. Then, with the constant drumbeat of conservatives to profitize (read eliminate) social safety nets, there is the very real fear of ending up destitute late in life.
With these realities it seems foolish to risk everything for parenthood.
25
It starts before marriage. The assumption is that career woman will find a partner and that partnership will take her attention, so no need to invest in her or reward her as well as the man.
2
It is understandable that women are not excited to have children. If it's not the high cost of quality child care, the price of higher education and the need to work 2 jobs just to make ends meet, school shootings are a daily threat to the lives of their babies.
6
In my social circle I have noticed the younger women are less likely to want marriage and children than the men do. Perhaps these women have discovered and enjoy the freedom of not being attached and therefore don't produce children.
13
No "perhaps" about it. Young women today have worked too hard and against the forces of our male society in grade school, high school and college to throw their lives under the wheels of the economic bus only to end up eating cat food out of a can at age 65 in return for the joy of breeding expensive kids and marrying a man-child who makes life harder.
6
If you are going to jump on the bandwagon of 'patriarchy is the root of all evil", a counter point would be that women need to go back to being housewives. That will give them all the time they need to raise more kids.
I know how ridiculous that sounds.
So does blaming men and patriarchy for all evils, as well as for women's desire to 'have it all'.
Try selling this to a small business owned by a woman, who needs all hands to stay afloat. Wait, maybe she has been taken hostage by the patriarchy is unfortunately complicit in spite of herself. Right?
4
What an offensive thought:
"An obvious solution is increased immigration, but declining native-born populations tend to react to large influxes of immigrants with terrifying xenophobic backlashes."
You are siding with the white nationalist's policy, not because you agree, but because you don't want to upset them?
Weak.
And your solution to avoid more immigration is be more like Finland and Sweedenn?
It turns out immigrants thrive in America. Immigrants from India, Africa and Haiti outperform native Americans. They make the country better. Even if some people have hissy fits.
3
I *am not* making this post as an authority.
Thanks to better access of contraception including reliable but expensive IUDs through ACA mandates the *unintended* pregnancy rates, which had been about 1 in 2, have been declining.
The modern teen pregnancy rate is at its lowest, half the rate of a decade ago. The federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) which allocated over $100 million to communities also contributes to the declining teen birthrate.
A major reason for the decline in *desired, intended* pregnancies has been the high cost of housing in NYC, SF, Seattle, LA, SD, Boston, and DC. The cause is regressive "rent-seeking" (market inefficiencies) local laws that limit zoning density that create very expensive housing while benefiting wealthy landlords including Trump.
In Japan, there are federal laws that override local zoning density restrictions. In 2014, 140,000 housing units were built compared with about 90,000 for California and 20,000 for NYC.
Unless regressively high housing costs caused by city councilors accepting political funds from wealthy landlords are overridden as in Japan at the state or federal level, there will be a declining birthrate regardless of other programs since people are spending money on rent instead of on families.
Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser (co-writer of 5/24 NYT opinion article) explains the market failures:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1.1913739
7
Correction:
"In 2014, 140,000 housing units were built *in Tokyo* compared with about 90,000 for California and 20,000 for NYC.
3
I am confused. The author cites Sweden, Norway, and France as countries that have higher birth rates than the United States yet according to the CIA World Factbook the birthrates for those countries are 12.10, 12.20, and 12.20 per 1000 citizens respectively as of 2017. The United States however has a birthrate of 12.50 per 1000 citizens. While this is not astronomically higher than those countries, I feel that the comparable birthrates between all these countries shows that the amount of welfare available to the citizens of these countries has a negligible effect on their birthrates. Honestly this is an inevitable trend. As countries get richer people have less children.
Source:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/20...
6
Young adults do not want to bring potential children into THIS terrible situation we have in our country. It's no place for young people. Needless to say, I'm not proud of being an American, today. I'm ashamed.
4
We need less people- not more.
By 2050 there will be, at least, 10 billion people on this planet.
We are already at 410 ppm CO2. We are destroying the planet and our future.
Enough.
21
Several of my well-educated female friends of child-bearing age have forgone parenthood not for worry over career damage or economics, but for how our culture harshly judges parents, mothers in particular. Remember Harambe, the gorilla who had to be shot when a child fell into his habitat at the Cincinnati Zoo? Even Jane Goodall said this was the correct course of action on the part of the zoo. Still, scathing criticism alleging negligent parenting was heaped upon the mother. She had to go into hiding from angry animal rights people. No one bothered to ask where the father was. In reality, children do stupid things and you can't watch them 100% of the time, especially if there is more than one. But mothers are always the target when children are well...children. Maybe if our culture had more of the it-takes-a-village mentality rather than coming after mothers with pitchforks when children act like children more women would entertain the deal.
11
While there are a lot of good points here and I support the overall argument that mothers and those who want to be mothers should have more support from the government, I am surprised Goldberg never once mentions the Voluntary Extinction Movement or the many individuals outside of it with the same basic idea: that the world is dangerously overpopulated already and so we should all either abstain from having kids or only have one kid. I for one choose not to have kids for this reason (among others, but this is my ultimate, #1 reason). I think a lot of women might "want" to be mothers in that they're curious about what it would be like and enjoy the company of children, but ultimately deny themselves what they want because it is bad for the planet and other humans and animals-- the way someone who really likes chicken might nevertheless go vegan. It's not because they didn't "want" chicken-- or because chicken was too expensive. They're being globally-minded. No mention of that here at all!
14
Why do we need more babies? I love them. But maybe some of us are looking at the plastic filling our oceans, the violent storms from climate change, and thinking what I'm thinking. Mother earth wants fewer children.
24
What we lack in our US fertility rate is more than made up for by many other countries in the world. We don't need more people, just wiser and better educated ones.
10
perhaps the idea of the elimination of productive, human-driven jobs and an economy that promotes and praises automation has sunk in... and women realize that the are producing children for a future that will have little or no use for them, except as a form of serfs to feed the big corporate machines, and serve as human automatons to the one percent. work, home and child rearing are hard, exhausting and -- in this country -- almost completely unappreciated by our (mostly white, male) government.
4
Want more babies? Get rid of social security, which forces other people’s children to pay for your retirement. Conversely, Want social security? Pay only more productive people to have more children. Harsh realities which I am sure Western elites will put off facing as long as possible.
6
There is this thing called, individual's choice. Its in the UN Human Rights charter actually.
Expecting everybody else to support your emotional needs of having any number of kids through inflated taxes, is akin and way more expensive than expecting support from society in general for your smoking habit.
We are one human family right, so lets not increase birth rates, lets bring in people from over populated (patriarchical) countries like Egypt and Pakistan and Bangladesh to fill the gap.
4
Patriarchy ? How about personal responsibility ? Teen pregnancy may have declined. But 40% of poor children are being raised by single parents. (And it's 72% for black children.) Goldberg wants to assert some collective responsibility - but how about a recognition that two parents are better than one as almost all the research affirms.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/07/single_motherhood...
"This correlation between feminist social policy and higher fertility is widely recognized throughout the world." Really ? If this is the case, then why is it that prior to the 1960's, when women had many fewer rights (e.g. few women worked outside the home, property rights issues, etc.), yet the fertility rate as much higher ? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that marriage rates were much higher (including for blacks ... In 1965, 76.4 percent of black children were born to married women.)
Face it. This article is simply Hillary's "It takes a Village" appeal dressed up as an attempt to "save the species". "If my theory is right, though, it will keep falling unless America invests in paid family leave and subsidized, high-quality child care, while birthrates in France and Scandinavia remain stable." America had a chance to elect Hillary and continue Obama's push to remake us into France. We rejected it. Children are great. But you should not have them until you are ready.
5
Of course the fertility rate was higher prior to be 1960s; we didn't have The Pill!
Not to mention that one income was enough back then to support a middle class family. With our decades-long wage stagnation, not any more!
9
The world can certainly do with far less patriarchy for a host of reasons, but the last thing the planet needs is 'more babies.'
14
The planet cannot afford more humans, at least not if we consider that other species have a right to a healthy existence.
It would be evil to convert all land and sea to one giant agricultural field, whose sole purpose would be foodstuffs for humans.,
14
Goldberg just assumes that a declining population would be a problem. But in an overpopulated country like the US, lower populations would be a good thing.
12
Sorry Michelle, but you don’t get to have it both ways. Creating a society in which women are encouraged to enter the high echelon professions is simply going to lower the birth rate for these women lawyers and doctors, The truth is that more patriarchy will raise the birth rate in that women will be more inclined to marry and breed. It might not be the best life for these women but they will stay out of the workplace and have kids.
2
I know plenty of educated married women who choose to have 1 or no kids.
I am happy that people are having fewer or no children. That means fewer screaming babies on planes, fewer unruly children in restaurants and stores, and fewer people having kids who don't have the first clue as to how to raise them.
14
The world could do with about six billion fewer people.
13
Especially with such large brains and so many of them, I used to think that humans had sufficient intelligence to thwart armageddon. I used to think that.
5
Hasn't the fertility rate gone down as women gained more rights and independence? Men and women now marry at a later age as well, which contributes to this statistic. Countries with very little women's rights have a much higher fertility rate (such as Niger and Iraq). Seems like a stretch to connect lower fertility rates to the patriarchy.
Her math is wrong, wealthier economies and generous social programs equal lower birth rates. We live in a fantastic time, with improving health care, there are plenty of people in the world and we are about to add another 2 billion in the next 30 years, bringing us to 10 billion. The reason, educated women can make a choice have kids if they want them or don't and use their energy, time and money for other things. The premise of this article is ugly, that all we have to do is pay women off with some cash and they will change their minds and have children. It is not all about money. There are millions of people who would love the chance to emigrate to places with better functioning economies, lets work to make that happen in a legal and controlled way, not trying to bribe people.
3
Less patriarchy is good but not the culprit here. Less developed nations with VERY patriarchal cultures have very high birth rates. The leading nations of the world do not because there is simply too much to know and to enjoy and fundamentally, to consume, in advanced nations, for three plus kids to seem an attractive idea to enough people. Unless you’re very poor, in which case there are incentives to have more kids, or very rich, in which case the work of raising kids can be attractively outsourced.
2
Being very poor is an incentive to have kids? You've lost me.
Well there’s no need to get all moralizing about it but yes right here in my low income neighborhood I have heard with my own ears the following “you don’t understand honey. You just need to have a baby. The government sends you a check!” The veracity and wisdom of her claim can be debated, but in a world where poor people receive Medicaid, section 8 and food stamps, and where conversely their opportunities for self advancement are stark, such are the thoughts of some young girls in my hood. And they are not wrong or immoral or bad in any way for seeing things that way, they’re just seeking fulfillment within their lives like any other person.
I was actually heartened by the news of falling birthrates. The world is already strangled in human overpopulation, which exacerbates climate change, destroys the natural resources like forests and mountains, pollutes the air and water, on and on. In the face of conservative opposition to any restraint on devastating human behavior the last thing we need is more babies. Taper down to 6 billion people, then let's talk about stabilizing at self-replacement. Or, alternatively, let's just destroy our world.
14
Were I a young woman today, I would opt-out for a tubal ligation and invest in a cute puppy or two.
The bill my daughter received for her unanticipated C-section 5 years ago was a bit over $50K. That was in Louisville, KY. Fortunately, She had benefits from where she worked so her portion was only $12K if I remember correctly. Since she worked as an administrative assistant, she made $28K annually. She also had a car payment, apartment payment, etc.. The father of the child was absolutely serious about a relationship with her and the child right up until it was too late to have an abortion. She was irresponsible too. At any rate, the expense begins at birth and continues to climb upward from that point on.
Choosing to have a child is an expensive adventure. Most women who have gone through college realize that. Most women in America do more housework and childcare than the father of the child. Not always, but statistics indicate that is still the norm. The moment a woman becomes pregnant she becomes a lower-tiered employee.
The amount of the medical costs, daycare costs, the lack of daycare, the cost of education, and now school shootings to consider.... well, I would opt out. Smart women are realizing that they are more and want more out of life than to be a breeding cow.
12
When I was newly married an aunt of my Pakistani husband came to visit us in Florida. She soon asked “So? When are you going to have children?” I told her I didn't plan on having any. She smiled sweetly, nodded, and then said, “But you’ll have one.” I repeated politely that no, didn't plan to have any children. She repeated, “Yes, of course, but you’ll have one.”
I realized that, for her, having “only one” was tantamount to no children at all. In Pakistan extended families often live together, and childrearing is a family affair—traditionally women spend the first 40 days after labor in bed, recovering and nursing the baby, while other female family members (sisters, aunts, cousins, in-laws) tend to every other household duty. My Aunty couldn’t possibly imagine the alienating experience of a typical American working family where Mom might return back to work within days of delivery, or if she can stay at home with her baby, she will very likely spend almost all her time alone, with no one to assist her in the exhausting, sleep-deprived work of caring for an infant.
Women in the states know only too well that our national rhetoric of motherhood doesn’t correspond to a scintilla of support in any fashion whatsoever. The sort of familial and social support my Aunty imagined doesn’t exist here. Once you have your baby, you can have all the help you can afford to pay for yourself.
335
Twenty-nine recommenations for “old country” values.
1
Perhaps your aunt was suggesting that plans sometimes fail.
6
This discussion completely leaves out the fact that both the high U.S. births rates is the 2000s and the much lower rates today are functions of Latino immigration. Latino birth rates soared with the construction boom, which disproportionately increased the employment of Latino immigrant men. And the largest decline in US birth rates since the Great Recession occurred among Latinas, accounting for about half of the drop in US births. This drop reflects in large part the dramatic decline in immigration, a decline that occurred during the Obama administration. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/03/u-s-hispanic-population-... Goldberg is right that the low birthrate among middle class Americans reflects the lack of support for parenting, but immigration -- and the lack of jobs for young men -- is a much larger part of the story of changing birth rates over the course of the last decade.
23
Interesting that childcare is always described as something you buy, not something provided for free by older relatives. Maybe that’s part of the problem.
3
Older relatives are working to support themselves. They don't have the time or energy to provide free childcare, too.
7
Sure " free " work, provided by Women. Get back to me when YOU work for Free. Seriously.
4
Women of lower educational attainment have higher birthrates in the US. I doubt these women have found the antidote to patriarchy.
9
Those pundits who call out the lack of support services for families--single parents of both genders and grandparents who have custody are also lacking support services for children--seem to be correct in identifying one cause of a lower birth rate.
Trump's plan to deny access to contraception will certainly have an affect on the birth rate for women in lower income brackets.
An overlooked cause of the declining birth rate is the emphasis by the Republican party and its allies such as the NRA on "fear" drivers to move voters towards a Republican agenda. US voters are divided in many ways, but one important divisiion is those who respond to fear and those who are inspired by hope.
When the leaders of the US are optimistic and inspire confidence that the challenges of our times can be met by working hard with ones family, friends and neighbors for healthier communities, all people involved in creating a child are more likely to do so. When the leader is Trump who creates chaos to cover up his faults, the future seems one big uncertainty which no sane person wants a child to face.
The turn to a "gig" economy is another factor. It takes energy to be a self-employed entrepreneur; the energy which can go into doing the tasks of ones job well must be directed to selling oneself to actually get work. While this is inspirational for some, for many it is just another uncertainty in a world which seems to be without stability. It takes confident people to have babies today.
5
The economy is only better on average. But the benefits all go to the top. At the median, to keep a middle class lifestyle, takes two full-time employed parents - not the one employed parent of my 60's youth - when birth rates were significantly higher.
Parenting is better when it's not absentee. Fix the economics, and it becomes a more attractive option.
6
There is no mystery, when Ronald Reagan declared war on the Working Class, he also declared War on Children. Children cost money, no raises for the working class for 35 years results in a population too poor to raise children. This is not rocket science.
26
Ideally both motherhood and fatherhood really seem to be a lifestyle choice. It is very expensive to be a mother or father as the population grows competition in the marketplace means only very few people are able to make a healthy choice of having offspring.
Expectations are high as adults have children later on in life once they are established and dual income families become the norm as one salary or paycheque really isn't enough. We can blame low wages, looks like supply and demand dictates even parenthood.
6
For the middle class–or what is left of it–children are a luxury and often an unaffordable one. I don’t know exactly how to change that. But I do know that my parents didn’t feel that way, and I’m willing to bet that none of their similarly-situated friends did either.
15 years ago, while still a law professor, Elizabeth Warren co-authored a starkly alarming book mapping out how difficult it had become for average middle-class Americans to have children and give them a home and an education without literally going broke. The project was inspired by the fact that, as a bankruptcy law scholar, she had seen in the data that having children had become the strongest statistical predictor for declaring bankruptcy among middle-income groups. Few paid any attention. Fifteen years on, working, educated Americans of child-rearing age and middle-class backgrounds who are able to add and subtract with precision are opting out of parenthood en mass. There are cultural inhibitors as well of course, most notably the loss of a sense of parity of risk among our peers (you have kids, we have kids, it will be OK…). Today, getting into and staying in the middle class requires a kind of hypervigilance concerning risk.
No one really cared about any of this fifteen or twenty years ago. Generation X is roughly half the size of both the boomers and the millennials and their demographic details are historically underreported. The millennials, of course, suffer no such anonymity. So there is hope.
11
These statistics are highest level of aggregation so obfuscate other factors affecting individuals or subgroups. There is also the unacknowledged 800 lb. gorilla in the room: Outrageous changes in the cost of living for basic necessities that burden people of childbearing age with excessive debt and few prospects. Yeah, employment is on then rise but wages are stagnant. Witness record crowds showing up for minimum wage jobs for N.Y. Transit Authority. Home ownership out of sight because of profiteers. Even education, that redoubtable engine of social mobility, has been commodified so is out of reach for many.
This all adds up to the perception and reality of an insecure present and uncertain future into which to bring a young family. During my decades ago childbearing years, the statistic was cost of rearing a child was $250,000. My husband and I opted for two (luckily a girl and a boy!), because we calculated that even under worst case conditions, a couple of working class, college-educated parents could pull it off. Not so today.
6
This is a perceptive essay by Ms. Goldberg. An advanced economy offers more roles for both women and men, and benefits from having the most competent people in the most demanding roles. From a global perspective, we don’t want more people on the planet than our resources can sustain, and it would be best to have those people born and raised in countries where their lives can be intellectually and emotionally fulfilling.
Women are the humans that can have children, and this puts them at the center of the conflict between biology, personal development, and economic contribution. However, they are not alone there, and addressing this conflict in a female-friendly way will create opportunities for men as well - including men whose injuries or disabilities have deprived them of the work they need to feel pride in their own contributions to family and society.
2
It may not be that culture isn't supporting young families but that they don't WANT more than one or two children. That was certainly the case with my husband and me. We could have afforded more but didn't want more. Before reliable birth control women cranked out kids because they didn't have any other option. TV's '19 and Counting' aside, most couples don't want a lot of kids. Even if housing and feeding them was free, the parents still have to raise them and raising children isn't easy and certainly not most peoples idea of fun. I have numerous friends from large families (8 to 12) and while they loved growing up with so many siblings not a one had more than two children.
15
Sounds like you didn't read far enough to see that the average number of children women *want* is higher than the number they are *having.*
Individual households are not data: I planned on two,and had three. Twins the second pregnancy.
But if women want more than they end up having, the obvious question is: why?
2
Please review the whole article, in it Michelle writes, “gap between the number of children that women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) has risen to the highest level in 40 years.” this negates your point to some extent. According to that stat, women are having less children than the want. That is alarming. Also making a judgement on a single case like your individual choice sheds little light on the issue.
2
I wanted 3 children. My husband wanted to stop at 1. He loves us a lot, but not well. I do 70%+ of the earning, as well as comparable amounts of everything that requires responsibility or effort at home. And the kin-keeping, friend-building, life-engaging management and activities - those are all on me too. He will help if I specifically lay out every detail of what needs to be accomplished, but otherwise he doesn't lift a finger. (My mother-in-law frequently apologizes.)
It's hard for women to justify raising more children when their husbands petulantly cling to being post-adolescent, pre-man creatures.
For the planet's sake we don't need more people.
For the sake of aging populations, we probably do.
What we definitely need less of is a patriarchy that tells men they can be special boys their entire entitled lives while women shoulder all the details.
13
Sorry, I'm not buying the patriarchy argument that you blame for telling men they can remain boys. I have four brothers, two sons, a husband. Not one of them thinks they are exempt from growing up. It's the people around a man that allow it, not the system.
I'm not trying to blame the victim, but your husband's parents were responsible for holding him accountable when he was a child. You are perpetuating their actions by allowing him to continue to carry less responsibility in your partnership. You deserve more support but you're going to have to demand it.
4
The correlation is between wealth and fertility, not women’s rights. Where men take paternity leave I’m sure their wives do go on to have more kids, but that’s probably because the men can afford to take a leave and that’s a proxy for family income and stability not because of the division of household labour.
Goldberg keeps saying that women want to work and have children rather than be traditional moms. Where is she getting this information? Countries like Spain are socially conservative and experiencing a low birth rate, yes, but Spain is also in recession. A year ago 30% of young people in Spain were unemployed. People can’t afford kids. Anecdotally, most of the moms I know want to stay home.
Secondly, is it bad that the birth rate is falling? G. says so because of the burden of supporting the elderly. But do advanced countries really intend to have perpetually rising populations? Maybe the key to this is shorter retirements.
A huge influx of women entered the workforce during the ‘70s and ‘80s. This was during the so-called “demographic dividend” of the baby boom when there were few elderly (proportionally to workers) but also few children to care for. It was a wealthy time. We should not assume that the trends from that era will (or should) continue.
Let’s support the traditional family, not daycares. More job security, less irregular shift work, minimum wages, etc. could all help. Young men need to believe in themselves and the value of work and marriage.
3
You write "Young men need to believe in themselves and the value of work and marriage." What about women? Are you suggesting that "marriage" means that a woman must stay home to raise any children a couple may have? Because that is a patriarchal and oppressive view. But perhaps I am misjudging you - are you perhaps saying that men should stay at home to raise the children?
And Goldberg is getting her opinion from the hundreds of thousands of women who have invested time and effort in gaining a career, who don't wan to have to give it up in order to have children. You should talk to some professional women.
3
What do you want young women to believe in? Asking for a friend.
2
Hi Miner, I ran out a space there. I meant to address the issue that many young men seem to be so-called NEETs — Not in Employment, Education or Training. This is a drain on the economy, a damper on women’s marriage (or partnership) hopes, and even potentially dangerous (when ‘Incels’ start advocating violence).
Overall I believe the traditional family should be given more of a chance. It has proven itself to be robust. Specialization of skills can make earners (usually men) more competitive in the work force, and help mothers bond with their children.
Daycare, in contrast, is expensive and generally has a high turn over of staff. It is the chief risk factor for hospitalization of children under two. The use of nannies is problematic. Here in Canada we are importing Philippine women. The standard of care varies — some nannies are unhappy and that affects their young wards. Not to mention that importing people to live in your basement, away from their own kids, to work for twelve hours a day, sometimes alone, for below minimum wage, seems a recipe for disaster.
Parents and relatives make the best caregivers. Mothers often want to do the job most of all.
Families need support though. Starbucks and Walmart should not be allowed to tell employees their shift the night before — what sort of life is that? Maybe tax breaks for families would help; maybe maternity leave.
But not daycare. And don’t assume that the goal is to get mothers working.
2
Your argument is that, because we need a broad future tax base, we should support having more babies and THAT'S the reason to support working mothers? The 8 billion people crowded into a fixed diameter planet may not agree. Supporting working mothers and childcare is a good thing. And voluntarily declines in population growth may not be so bad.
19
I have read both the column and the comments and it is clear that the commenters want to comment and are not necessarily desirous of reading or listening.
I think more babies on a finite over populated planet is insane but the column is titled.
Want More Babies? You Need Less Patriarchy.
The column poses the question of declining birthrates and is the politics of America's right doing the exact opposite of what it should do to accomplish its goals. Having babies shouldn't be a burden.
2
I would have loved to have had more kids. But even though I wanted to stay home and raise my own children, I had to work, and more kids means more childcare costs, and I could barely afford the childcare costs on just one kid. I remarried, and I still had to work outside the home, whether I wanted to or not, in order to pay the bills and put food on the table. Economics had everything to do with limiting the number of kids I had, and I still missed out on huge parts of their childhoods. I think more women would choose to have kids, or more kids, if they knew that they could stay home and take care of them and socialize them, and the world would be a better place, too. But who would voluntarily have more children if the end result is that they have to hand them over to somebody else to love and raise for ten or more hours a day?
14
Great comment. Totally agree.
Pregnancy, childbirth, babies and children are a lot of 24/7 work and not much fun. Once they are born, there is no option but to erase one's life for the sake of that offspring; not as if you can send them back. Tack on that many never say thanks and forever complain as adults - or wind up victimizing others, in prison or permanently shifting with the tides of poor decision making. Breeding is basic biology and math, not cute clothes, toys and Disney.
8
Hi Mary, that seems a tad negative. Many children do grow up to thank their parents AND care for them in old age. If you have two the odds are in your favour that at least one will love and care for you in the future.
Nor does motherhood have to erase your sense of self. You change, certainly, but motherhood is an expression of the self, especially if you can spend some time with the kids — reading to them, talking to them, teaching them. No it’s not Disney but it’s not all a miserable slog either.
8
Wrong. Having a family is a lot of fun. Having grandchildren is even more fun.
2
I'm not sure this holds water. The author compares the US negatively to most of Europe, only to state late in the piece that our birthrate is "lower than France or Sweden but roughly in line with other countries in Scandinavia." Doesn't that go directly against the thesis here? Also, if we're considering patriarchy v. fertility, shouldn't we also look at the times when the US fertility rate was the highest and see what society looked like then? Not that I'd endorsing it, but I expect that the relationship of patriarchy to fertility might be different than what is set out here.
9
That is exactly what the Republicans are doing. In order to go back to the high birth rate that was before it is necessary to rescind females' access to birth control. You just haven't caught on yet. The name is what Republicans have a problem with; if it was called Family Planning but instead called something like Woman's Continuing Fertility Responsibility Training, there wouldn't be a problem.
2
Our planet already is showing the beginning of the end due to the over population of humans. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to rise over 400ppm resulting in ice melting at the poles, the oceans are warming, more species than ever are facing extinction, there is less and less land impacted by humans and available for wildlife to exist. No, I do not want more babies. I want ZPG, and awareness of inevitable mass die-offs and extinction ever increasing population will bring.
23
Thank you, couldn't have said it better.
3
Since I was born 62 years ago the US has been trying to get its birth rate down to environmentally responsible levels. In that same period our culture has changed from “barefoot and pregnant” to “she decides”. 62 years ago a person my age was worn out, looking at life’s end. Today I am as productive as I was early in my career and looking forward to many more years.
I can’t find any substantiation to this patriarchy theory mentioned in tha article. What I do find is a desperate attempt to narrow one’s view to a certain mode of thinking.
6
There are many of us Americans who are lonely for larger extended families. Patriarchal values combined with extreme capitalism are undermining the joy of living. When a nation recognizes its mission as the well-being of all its citizens, then people create families and prosperity.
Commenters who remark that very patriarchal societies, like Saudi Arabia, have more children, miss the point that women in those cultures have little choice about reproduction. Old Testament mentalities used women as breeders and still do.
16
Children benefit when cared for by their mothers, with whom they bond. Generic "child care" is not a true substitute.
If fathers were paid sufficiently to support their households, mothers might not have to work, except by vocation and choice, and might be free to choose to nurture more children.
The fact that both parents currently require employment outside the home to support a household is the result of economic pressure and the unwillingness of society to pay what the things it uses really cost.
Unremitting social denigration of mothers choosing to stay at home with their children contributes to small family size.
If, however, fathers stayed at home, rather than the mothers who work, family size would remain small.
Arthur Taub, MD PhD
6
In the reality of living in real time, I believe women choose to work...at least those lucky enough to have afforded a higher education. Understanding the worth of one's mind and capabilities is a powerful reason to be productive in the workplace, whether in the private sector or public service. By the time a woman has reached some success in the business world, its late to start a family, and the option for more than one child becomes dim. The best parent would be one with high self-worth, as a demonstration of achievable goals in life. In other words, as some one once said, "who knew it was so complicated?"
3
The Guardian had a recent article depicting the mammalian biomass on the planet as 60% livestock, 36% human and 4% wild mammals. This is all that is left of our wild inheritance. No, Ms Goldberg, we don't want more babies. The world cannot afford more babies.
22
Yup-- so that's 96% human-derived life and only 4% for everyone else. We are a virus. We've spread far enough.
5
Great article and to the point Ms. Goldberg makes, if the US govt. assisted women in their roles w/better choices for childcare, prenatal care, post-birth care and leave for both parents, perhaps the birthrate would rise. There are other social indicators in this country that are reflected in this birthrate decline, but messages about welfare queens and facts about the ranking of the US in infant deaths, of morbitity rates for mothers are part of this story. Making a choice to not have more than one child for couples is reflective of maturity in the face of facts from the Pew Research Center and others.
4
Yes, paid family leave and subsidized child care is important and a big factor. But I also surmise our "booming economy" isn't actually booming where the rubber meets the road. Wages have stagnated while the cost of living--particularly housing--continues to rise, especially in "hot" markets where the jobs are. Our public schools are being starved for money: since the late 70s the anti-tax, small government zealots have successfully lobbied state legislators to continually cut back funding to the detriment of our public school students and their teachers. (Witness the teacher revolt in red states whose pay is appallingly low.) This has deepened the divide between have and have not districts, as parents who can afford it tax themselves to keep school programs up in running. Not in a wealthy district? Tough luck.
And speaking of keeping schools up and running, have I mentioned the legions of school volunteers--primarily moms--who are (a) unpaid teaching assistants, (b) unpaid clerical workers, (c) unpaid drivers to field trips and school athletic events, (d) unpaid fundraisers, and (e) unpaid tutors? You think these realities might also be causing women to reconsider having children? I used to joke--but not really--that the state of California's funding model was forcing working moms out of the workforce. I still believe that.
25
"the “gap between the number of children that women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) . . ."
I've never met a woman who said she wanted 2.7 children. Nor have I ever met a family with 1.8 children.
1
Har, har.
2.7= 2 or 3, with more women saying 3 than 2.
1.8= one or two, with more women having 2.
Couldn't help myself.
I don't know, a lot of the successful young couples that I know what to enjoy their freedom for as long as possible, and are delaying having kids until they finish up the 30's bucket list. Herding elephants in Thailand, sushi in Tokyo, a trek in Tibet. That bucket list that Boomers were hoping to reach in their 70's.
Professional women like professional men want to have the challenging careers, well paid if possible, and balance that against a family. The lifestyles dictate the fertility rate. Children become part of the bucket list. Families are managed.
(Disclosure) We chose to leave lucrative jobs on Wall Street when we were 28 (on '78) and started a family on a mountain homestead in Vermont. Lots of "sacrifices" with used cars, wood heat and "camping" vacations. Two wonderful kids in the process. Good times.
Forget about us college grads/ professionals; there is a huge swath of middle income struggling couples. You would think that the shift of our wealth to the richest would be reflected in the birth rate. But our poorest have bigger families anyway. For instance (2015) birth rate for families under $10,000 annual income 64.74 kids per 100,000, birthrate for families $100,000 to 150,000? 46.96 kids, so about 27% less. The poorer you are, the more kids. A diagonal line forms on the chart. (Statista)
So many factors, how about a study of the effects of the socioeconomic peer groups in making these decisions about child bearing. In other words; expectations.
6
Yes yes. People younger than the Boomers are delaying having kids because of our vacations to Thailand and Tibet. But you also forgot our avocado toasts.
I love that your Boomer Wall Streeter life of "sacrifice" is so far beyond the reach of today's working families that it may as well be fantasy. Used cars, camping trips, a house in Vermont! How did you ever endure the hardship? We own a bike, rent an apartment, and don't GET vacations - not to Thailand, and not to the KOA campground.
11
LF: Thanks for the opportunity to expand my comment. Un-insulated old hunting cabin which we renovated, heated and cooked on a wood stove four years, outhouse the first year, three part time jobs until we figured out our own company. Camping vacations in along the ocean, not KOA. I was referring to the successful young couples that I know, using just 6 of them. The bulk of my comment is that having children is about choices and expectations. Re read my comment and discuss the contradicting data of the statistics; people who have less money (and maybe support, but maybe they have family support) are having more children... Baby boomers had less than their parents, now their children are having less. At least among the college educated... go figure (or do a study)
I'm all for complete equality of the genders. But more people in the US is the last thing we need. The US population is still exploding due to mass immigration, which Pew projects will add another 100 million--five NY State equivalents--to the US population over the next 50 years.
Putting more people in the country with the planet's highest resource use and greenhouse emissions is bad for the US and bad for the world.
The worries about supporting retirees don't take into account the projections--reported both in this newspaper and the NYer--that robots will wipe out about half the jobs over the next 15-20 years.
15
The male-dominated corporate world sees childbearing as inconvenient and expensive, and punishes women who choose to have children with "mommy tracks", sidelines for advancement, and general suspicion that mothers - not, ever, fathers - are "not committed" to the company (as if the company is committed to any of its workers!) and therefore unreliable.
I am a victim of this mindset, as are thousands of other underemployed or unemployed women who laid out a path to balancing work/life only to see it ripped up.
If the country sees a social good in higher fertility rates, it must protect employees' ability to both nurture and provide for those children. Right now, we have a president who says that any men who take care of children are "acting like the wife" and that "I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids", and a corporate elite who not only do the same thing but who structure their companies to punish employees who do otherwise.
19
I only my experience and those of closest friends and relatives, none of whom have more than two children and many only one. Money. This is the deciding factor. Having just one child means that we make financial sacrifices now and are struggling to keep up with retirement saving and investing. Were we to have had a second child, retirement would simply be an impossible dream.
Poor support for working women factors in a bit. We calculated that, with extreme frugality in all decisions, my wife could stay home, her choice, for our son's first two years, but he would have to go to daycare after that. Initially, my wife's salary after returning to work barely seemed to make the costs, financial and emotional, of daycare worth it. And we know we have been fortunate.
17
And you have to factor into that calculation too that a two-year employment gap makes a person toxic on the job market. You cannot take time off to have kids and expect to return to the workforce at anything remotely like your former salary level.
I've seen this play out both ways with friends. I've seen women lose money - paying more in daycare than they earn for years at a time and having their careers stall out because they need to leave right at 5:00 for daycare pickup. And I've seen women take a year off that stretches into five, or six, or seven, because they can't reenter the labor force - not even as entry-level admins after having previously held good professional jobs.
15
Absolutely right, LF. We moved when my wife was pregnant. Knowing she only had a few months of work before giving birth, she had to settle on a very low wage job before birth. When heading back into the workforce, she again had to settle for low wage, part-time work that has only this year increased to a barely competitively compensated full-time position.
2
Yeah, it doesn't even have to be to have kids, either. If you leave the traditional workforce for a year or two for ANY reason, then try to go back, it's like you're back to Square One. Any job you find will hardly be worth the money spent preparing for it and traveling to and from it.
I wish I could show this article to my ex-husband...When he walked out on me, he threw it in my face that we had one child instead of two. I had my reasons: 1) I went back to work at 8 weeks postpartum, and immediately herniated a disc in my back. I was not physically recovered for the work I was expected to perform as an ICU nurse, and 2) I earned an equal income, but did all the housework. We both worked overtime, but picking her up from school was still my job. He had fits of rage when any child care responsibility fell to him. Now tell me, is it my fault that I did not keep up with making white babies?
80
Sounds like you were well out of that relationship.
4
So the solutions to the world's problems always have to involve adding more and more people to our crowded, polluted planet, like a big Ponzi scheme? How about let’s figure out some solutions that allow us to keep our population at a more sustainable level.
On a more personal level, I totally agree that our society and our government should be more supportive to the raising of children, if for no other reason that it is in society's best interest. I find it frustrating and perplexing how hard it seems to be for people to realize this.
And, in general, when women are better educated, when they have the ability to control when they get pregnant, and when they believe their children will survive to adulthood, they HAVE FEWER CHILDREN. Each child is treasured, protected, and provided with the resources they need to be successful. This is the ideal, what we should strive for.
25
Whenever I see a baby, all I can register is inequality, a legacy of human slavery, and antiquated gender roles. Both for the parents and child themselves.
Having a child is horribly unfair for women. Among other inequalities. And it is not up to me to hunt for the rare partner that will be progressive enough to be fair. I am not lifting a finger.
I'm happy with my plants and cat. And I think the world is too.
26
We should be following Japan's example of lower birth rates. Yes, it has slowed down their economy and has an older demographic than many other countries, but in the long-term the country will be better off from both an environmental and economic perspective.
This Ponzi-like mentality is nothing short of suicide in believing that we must continually increase our population to maintain economic growth. This will have a devastating impact on our environment that will be far worse than any damage wrought by fossil fuels.
Furthermore, we are in urgent need of a massive rethink of our social planning and family support systems for our aged populations that include. Much of this can be accomplished without massive economic expansion.
21
This article misses the point altogether. You can read a critique of capitalism in one sentence, and then a rousing endorsement in the next (implying that the only reason to have children - or a certain number of children - is for the sake of economics). And it's not "absurd" to talk about abortion as part of this issue - even if the number of abortions are exactly the same as fifty years ago, we now live in a society that doesn't believe abortion is wrong. In a decade or so we've gone from "safe, legal, and rare" to #shoutyourabortion. This is not a society that values the inherent value of children, or families. Other societies work to live, we live to work. This is a larger existential crisis than people realize.
7
"But if a shrinking number of workers must support a growing elderly population, even our threadbare social safety net will be strained."
This is like saying people on the Titanic would have been happier if only there had been more servants.
The human population is well into the process of causing it's own extinction through overpopulation and the resulting pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction.
With science, we have improved food production, developed vaccines, antibiotics, and life saving surgeries -and human population doubled from 3 billion to 6 billion in 40 years (c. 1960-2000) . We passed 7 billion 12 years later. This is total insanity. In a world where most children survive to adulthood, we need to practice birth control.
This does not mean governments need to enforce small families. As the article points out, in societies where women are respected as fully human, where they can have careers, where both women and men are both expected to need time for children as well as for work, birth rates drop on their own.
In Patriarchal societies where women are not really considered equal to men, and where their only value is producing children (preferably male)- guess what, they have lots of children.
19
I am absolutely amazed at the selfish and specious reasoning being presented for not having children. My suggestion for those who are determined to advocate any of the myriad reasons why they are not having children is to go vacation at a local nursing home.
Regarding the impact on the economy, no civilization has ever built a robust economy by mass producing primarily for geriatric needs, building out capacity for morgues, funeral homes, coffins and digging graves.
I don't understand your point at all, would be willing willing to explain further?
2
Goldberg writes: But if a shrinking number of workers must support a growing elderly population, even our threadbare social safety net will be strained.
The argument is that we need lots of young people to provide for elders. Also known as ripping off the young to support the old (I am one).
This is the same notion that drove the population explosion in the Third World, keeping it at near-subsistance.
Thus, two sly parents have four children: their Social Security plan, with much higher monthly benefits than from two kids. The four children are equally crafty: they have eight children.
This is a Ponzi game, on the knife edge of sustaining itself by expanding its scale. Population will increase as: 2, 4, 8, 16...2 to the n-1th, where n is the number of the generation.
Somewhere before we have 2 square feet per person, the Ponzi game breaks down.
Of course, that's the Third World and irrelevant for us. Or is it? If the trick of ripping off the young to support the old (again: me) leads to disaster elsewhere, should we be so facile about it?
World population has increased fivefold or tenfold in my lifetime. Think of the agonies generated by that expansion. Poverty, crowding, leveled forests, poisoned air, water, soil, the drying Rio Grande (today's NYT), for starters.
The impending apocalypse of global warming.
The cure is to return to a billion people from ten. Policies to increase child-bearing are thus disastrous, for women, just as for men.
18
I am not sure that is what is being advocated in the article. I share your concern about sheer numbers of humans vs. the planet's carrying capacity (we share it with other creatures who also have some rights to habitat) - I took the concern to be about replacement numbers. As a female I would not be persuaded to have more children than I WANT by government policies, but I might be persuaded to have the children I want but would otherwise forego because of costs and career damage.
As a Canadian, I benefited from 6 months of paid leave plus my vacation for a total of 8 month off at 75% of my pay after childbirth. Today, women have a guarantee of 12 month of with varyng amounts of salary replacement depending on employer - IF THEY HAVE A STEADY EMPLOYEE_EMPLOYER job. In the gig-economy, this more generous program cannot be accessed by many women, so they elect to nave fewer children....if infant daycare costs $2500/month, you have to have a very hefty salary to accept that cost more than once.
It's right to be concerned that responsible people are deciding against parenthood, not because they don't want children, but because they are responsible.
4
What shortsighted nonsensical thinking.
With the expected developments in robotics and AI, the future economy will need fewer and fewer workers as the years progress. Also, the earth's population of seven billion plus is far beyond its carrying capacity.
We simply don't need more people, either to be born or to immigrate.
17
This half true.
Don't forget the original feminist (female) program, now running for millions of years: selecting males for male bonding and cooperativity.
We (both genders) are locked into this pattern and will be for millions of years.
The true feminist (gynocentrist is a better term) will support (a) better healthcare and education for children and (b) policies to promote male employment and higher wages. They are not mutually exclusive.
2
Birth rates and total fertility rates (TFR) have been falling in the US and most of developed countries for over 100 years, with two exceptions. The baby boom that peaked in the mid-1950's and a much smaller peak around 1990. These macro trends have occurred while the degree of patriarchy in the US has been declining, albeit not to the extent that many would wish. If you wish to see still extreme high levels of patriarchy, go to just about any country in Africa and the Middle East, where you will also find the World's highest fertility levels. For example; Saudi Arabia which celebrated the "modernity" of recently allowing women to drive has a TFR of 2.6, and Niger of 7.3 children per woman. To put those numbers in perspective, at its peak, the US baby boom TFR was about 3.7.
I am of the belief that our planet would be well served to get to a total population peak well below the 10 billion currently projected for 2050. Continued high fertility in the lesser developed countries goes a long way to explain their lack of economic development and the exodus of migrants looking for a better life. And our aggregate consumption of natural resources for food, clothing, housing and etc. drives the deforestation/habitat loss, bushmeat hunting, over fishing and climate change. Trump's "gag rule" that limits access to family planning is a disaster both for the people and the planet.
All data are from World Population Data Sheet (https://www.prb.org/2017-world-population-data-sheet/)
14
What a load of hooey. The real issue here is parents that want everything without having to make any sacrifices. The “I can have everything” mentality from parents that relies heavily on someone not part of the family unit picking up much of the burden of parents decision to have children. This version of “feminism” is actually just another resource grab by people that want children but want everyone else to have to share the burden of raising their children. Here’s a novel idea - if people chose to have children they should be ready and able to take 100% of the responsibility for raising those children.
5
I agree with your letter. I live in neighborhood where I know the mother is not working outside the home yet there is the nanny pushing the baby carriage down the street while mom walking alongside texting. Wonderful! Then go to a restaurant where the parents bring their toddlers so the rest of the patrons ( whether we like it or not) can help raise their children and the parents ignore their children rudeness.
All I remember is my mother raising the 7 of us and no help and we never went to restaurants
2
Martin, how many people in America have a full-time nanny, do you think? It is bonkers to condemn an entire American generation because you live in a hood full of one-percenters. Get the heck out of Brooklyn occasionally.
1
This is a very short-sighted way to look at things. Society as a whole benefits from our investments in children. When you are old, other people's kids will be paying for your Social Security and changing your diapers.
2
There is definitely a connection between support for working mothers and the birthrate. However, I think housing costs are also to blame, especially in expensive coastal cities. It's hard to think about having another kid when you can barely keep a roof over your head, never mind dream of actually buying your own home. The pillars of the middle class, home ownership and a decent public education, are now scarce resources hoarded by the rich.
6
Children also cost many a financially secure retirement.
Low birth rates reflect a subliminal awareness of overpopulation, and its economic consequences. We don't need a population explosion to the limits of the planet to sustain life. Humans already consume a large chunk of its photosynthetic capacity.
11
I went to the trouble of getting a computer degree, became an engineer only to have these male dominated careers (STEM) have no use for me once I started having children. Child care is ridiculously expensive. After securing part-time in my engineering field (no easy task), the company up and moved to Texas and my career along with it. A society that makes expendable it's highly educated female population is in need of some introspection. Large companies and frankly sexist males are making the unbroken continuation of life for the next generation more of a hardship than it need to be. The family/work-life balance for the millennials is uppermost on their minds. I see them in action and they will demand solutions. I will support and cheer on their much needed efforts.
300
Barbara, isn’t this an argument for young women not going into STEM? Everywhere my daughter is encouraged in the STEM direction but I have a relative who’s an engineer and she’s had a miserable time of it (although I know another woman who loves it but she didn’t have kids).
Shouldn’t we be warning girls about the personal costs of these career decisions? I feel people lie to girls because they want to change the world — make it more “equal” — but the people who will pay are the girls not the advisors. The people doing the advising — teachers, well-meaning adults — what does their idealism and optimism cost them? They have no skin in the game.
15
I'm an older female in a male dominated field...and I agree wholeheartedly.
33
These are definitely issues, but I hate to see such a discouraging view of engineering promoted to girls and women. I've worked as an engineer for 20+ years, and every company I've worked for has had mothers making respected contributions as engineers. I'm currently working part time, by choice, and enjoying my work and the time with my children. The more women who become engineers, the more impetus companies will experience to become more female and family friendly.
40
The LAST thing this world needs is more humans. Humans are destroying this planet, it's non-human inhabitants & it's resources. We should focus on limiting human population, not increasing it.
14
Valid points but I too chalk it up to despair. Not necessarily economics but despair over politics. Who want to have children when Trump is president and one of the major two political parties denies the science of global warming, co-conspires with the authoritarianism of the Trump administration and denies the threat of the NRA?!?
12
Overpopulation is already causing so much trouble to the earth. Global warming and wild life destruction are so high because of over population. Agree that , today's lower birthrate will give rise to higher aging population in near future, it will be a short term problem. And since mostly everything gets automatic, we dont need need more people.The government should provide paid parental leave atleast for 6 months like most of other countries.
8
So true, particularly Goldberg's conclusion that "patriarchy is maladaptive." This is consistent with the classic Marxist dialectical premise that capitalist societies contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. A somewhat less controversial way of pointing that out is, as Goldberg does here, that social systems that privilege some while disadvantaging others are not only bad because they are unethical but because they inevitably lead to ruin all around. Another parallel would be policies that promote sex education and that make contraceptives more available. Such polices would obviously reduce the incidence of abortion, so if you really want to stop abortions, you should promote policies that reduce the need for them. Similarly, if you want the nation to thrive and remain competitive in the global economy, even if you don't care about gender and sex equality, you should support policies that help women because, inevitably, they are good for the nation.
6
Ms. Goldberg cannot be serious with this assertion, as can be evinced in any patriarchal society, whether in Crown Heights or Niger. She is attempting to portray feminism as baby-friendly, which it's not. Go visit feminist-heavy San Francisco, California, and let me know how many moms you see pushing strollers. Then go to Provo, Utah, and find "evidence" that the patriarchy is suppressing the birth rate.
Any demographer can tell you this: you can have your feminism, or you can have your high birth rate, but you can't have both.
5
I disagree. I attended HS in Provo decades ago and all my friends had LOTS of siblings - my dad's boss had 22 children! 4 decades later and those friends (all devout Mormons) had significantly smaller families. Yes, still larger than the national average, but of the dozens I keep in touch with, only one friend had a more than 4 children. She had 5. Just as with traditional Catholic families in previous generations, the cant may be "birth control is against our beliefs" but the proof in this generation is in the numbers.
2
You clearly do not understand what feminism means (it is not un baby-friendly") and I am quite tired of men ( I assume you are a man) telling us what feminism means. And please correct my ignorance: I am unfamiliar with these demographic truths you mention. Could you please direct me to a source?
1
I agree with you. I'd also like to add that children are just plain expensive. I have one child. Granted, we live a certain lifestyle which is not normal. But add up the snowboards, ski suits, pane tickets, vacation hotel costs, summer camps, computers, phones, iPads, soccer clubs... and it's a lot of money. Also I think I can save the 200,000 for college, but no way I can do 400,000 for two kids or 600,000 for three.
Try doing all that, buying a house and retiring. Not just cray, it's cray cray!
9
Why does the mainstream media like the NYT always paint a declining fertility rate as some kind of crisis? There were fewer than 3 billion people on this planet when I was born; today there 2.5 times that number, and we’re rapidly on our way to 9 billion by mid-century. Any news about population growth being slowed and reversed should be roundly celebrated on this small and overburdened planet of ours
Yes, yes, I understand that our current economic model envisions endless economic growth, and endless population growth feeds that. But that’s a flaw in our economic paradigm, not a justification unsustainable and perpetual expansion. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. [Edward Abbey].
I applaud the fact that we’re seeing fewer and smaller families, at last.
15
Always love Michele’s “theories.” It’s wonderfully convenient that every issue shares a common root cause—Evil Men. If we can just get rid of those pesky creatures, the planet will be one harmonious Garden of Eden. Eve and Eve will enjoy that.
1
Men are not evil. But there is plenty of evidence that, in families where both parents work full time, women are still doing the lion's share of housework and childcare. Look at surveys of how men and women spend their time: https://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/household.htm.
Few employers offer paternity leave and I am sure it's harder for most men to leave work early for PTA and doctors appointments. So, work rules and culture make it harder for men to take on more equal shares of the household work. But when they do, they get more sex..and probably more babies. http://time.com/4378502/yes-couples-who-share-chores-have-more-sex/
So, not evil. But it would be awesome if you recognized that we are not evil either, and that women with kids who work are just kind of exhausted and would like some help with that.
2
Michelle--
This is exactly right--exactly.
This is why there are fewer marriages, older mothers and fewer children.
It is just too hard in the United States.It was not so long ago when you had to be on a year long waiting list to get into day care. At that time, the hospital I worked at considered having day care for the female physicians but not for other female employees. At the end of it, nothing happened for anyone.
Other countries have it much, much easier. I never knew until I saw Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" in 2007 and saw how French mothers are supported. I never knew it could have been another way. I wish I would have moved.
5
1) Lack of reasonably priced medical care, 2) lack of reasonably priced day care for working moms, 3) lack of decently paying jobs, so that not many families can survive on one salary, and a larger family means less for all, and 4) lack of reasonably priced education. In a country where 40% -- 40%! -- of people cannot afford the basics of a decent life, despite very low unemployment, you would have to be out of your mind, or part of the upper 10%, to have more than one child.
12
I can't imagine having more than one child. Children are expensive and having one has enabled us to lead the type of life we want to live and give our child the type of education that was not available to her in our public school system which has next to no resources for gifted kids. And its not just the money. My jealous mistress, the law, is demanding and fulfilling. Its more satisfying for me to attend to her than to attend to the needs of another child.
2
Materialism seems to be the bigger factor.
1
We live in San Francisco, where you need to spend $2 million to buy a small home in a decent neighborhood. I have a PhD from Stanford and an MBA from Berkeley. We lived in the ghetto, full of homeless people and heroin needles, until we were in our late 30s. My partner was still in school, trying to finish her doctorate. I had terrible California exchange healthcare. Last year, she finished her training and I finally sold part of my company, got decent healthcare, and we bought a house.
But...it was all too late in a way. We went through four cycles of IVF and managed to have a single successful pregnancy. Hopefully we deliver a healthy girl, but if we don't this is our last chance. Meanwhile, we can't afford day care and we have no family locally, so we are trying to get grandma to come in from Eastern Europe for a few months. Of course, our xenophobic government is making it difficult for grandma to come and help out.
Why isn't our generation having more children is obvious. The math of our economic and educational existence doesn't add up. Our parents finished their training in their 20s and could buy a house right away. My mom could afford to stay home because my dad had good healthcare and made enough to cover a mortgage. You want higher fertility rates? Provide better student loan terms, help young families get into decent housing, and/or provide day care.
Duh!
12
While the issue you bring up is a legit one,
Here are some possible other reasons you will never see covered by the NYTimes.
1-The devaluing and feminization of the American male by modern day feminists. Many men them don't want to get married. I watch them in my area (hipsters), walking alone and beautiful woman(s) go by them and they go out of their way not to look at them. That was unheard of in modern history. I am stunned watching it.
2-The party line to young women by feminists to have everything, party hardy and then at age 35-45, men will flock to you, want to have two kids and everybody lives happily ever after. Only a few things wrong with this. Women have difficulty at this age having children. They are far less physically desirable to men then in their teens/early twenties. Men have been devalued and feminized anyway and are not interested.
1
Quality of life ≠ as quantity. No one needs to breed. It is reckless to produce litters out of the simple function of lust, which bears no relation to the biologic seasonal reproduction seen in flora and fauna.
All of the world's problems, not just wars and crime and now melting ice caps but those that humans create for every other species, the oceans, the air, the soil and soul of Earth, are due to human overpopulation. At what point do humans gain the basic intelligence to simply keep it in their pants? Pro-life means valuing the enhanced goodness and potential within every creature, not bloody torturing and controlling everything into oblivion. No human ought breed who cannot actually feed, clothe, shelter and nurture their offspring. To do otherwise is the textbook definition of senselessly cruel.
1
Since when are human beings the same as "flora and fauna" ... ?
Agree. If I had a husband who was willing to lift even the tiniest little finger to help with child care and household duties (we are now divorced) or a single employer in two decades willing to be flexible about the 50 hours a week I am expected to be staring at a computer, I would happily have had more than one child.
My contribution to the populace is directly related to the lack of support society provides to parents.
8
Single payer healthcare is a contributing factor. I know people who have debt from having their one child. Then you add the child's healthcare costs.
5
Only two nations on the planet have universal/single payer: Taiwan and Canada. Every other country has what the U.S. has - a blended private and public system.
3
Brava! Exactly right.
1
We grandparents have raised our grandson who lives with us since he was two. He is going to be eleven. We are the low cost day care! While in France a couple of years ago I saw lots of children and young famlies. Maybe the pro life folks should put their money where their mouths are and help young mothers to stay at home! France realized they had a problem with not enough babies and solved the problem.
168
France's progressive policies toward child care were actually implemented with encouragement from the United States and the Marshall Plan after World War II. There weren't enough French men after the war so they had to be more proactive to support new families as well as women in the workplace. Ditto, Germany, which was rebuilt by the United States and Britain with a rational healthcare system and other social engineering strategies. Whereas back in the U.S., we don't get any of that. We haven't had a collapse of government since the Civil War and have to put up with incremental change on the backs of outdated systems. At least Britain got the NHS as they started into their decades-long decline.
20
France is (by rather great distance) European bith rate leader not due to best or most comprehensive system to support working mothers and parents but due to its relatively large Muslim (and to lesser degree African) communities where women have at least twice, usually three times higher birth rates than the majority population.
In article quoted as shining example "less patriarchal",working mother-friendly Scandinavian countries have not much to show for by far the most expensive and comprehensive suport system (about 1.7 children per woman versus 1.5 European average).
1
Yes-- but the family policies put into effect in France post WWII might no longer be relevant today. Malthus at the end of the 18th C worried about what happened when children could not be fed. India, Africa, South America and until recently China -- even today horrible slums, shortages of basics -- bread and water.
BTW France not only provides $$ for children, there is all sorts of daycare, after school programs.. and there are after school programs in the USA as well.
3
The most patriarchal societies, in Sub-Saharan Africa, Yemen, and Pakistan, have the HIGHEST birth rates by far. Southern Europe, like Northern Europe, is strongly feminist in the global context. It just has a higher unemployment rate. Women don't have children if they think those children won't be able to find jobs. There are two ways to raise the birth rate, lower unemployment, or have MORE patriarchy. How can Michelle Goldberg write something so obviously counterfactual?
4
18 years ago I paid $25,000 a year for two kids in day care
Every year after that I spent around the same amount for after care, summer camp and college savings
I am still putting that much toward college now and will for the next 8 years- if I can remain employed which is getting harder and harder to do
6
Conservative Republicans like NYT columnist Ross Douthat constantly lament America's falling birth rate. But the solutions they consider acceptable are not solutions to the problem at all. They believe they can force women to give birth to more children by reducing access to birth control and abortion. They think that keeping child-care costs high, making it difficult for mothers to invest in higher education and build successful careers, will force women to stay home raising children, economically dependent on husbands as God intended. And then there's the other old religious standby--shame. Attacking and insulting women who are childless by choice used to work to some extent, but these days that kind of propaganda mostly falls on deaf ears. The bottom line: Negative tactics don't work. Positive incentives do. Michelle Goldberg is right. If keeping the birth rate at replacement level is in the national interest, then public funding for child care and other family-friendly programs is a necessary and wise investment.
19
Excellent, Carson. My thoughts also, but MUCH nicer. Cheers.
1
Or perhaps many young American women (and their mates) realize that the global human population is ALREADY at least twice as large as can be supported sustainably. And that it's time for each of us to adopt and advocate a global "one child per family" policy. In fact, as scientists show us every day, anything otherwise is suicide!
IMHO, a focus on the growing awareness among the Millennial Generation of their diminished prospects for the future -- cf. climate change, resource depletion, the sixth mass extinction -- would be a more useful way to look at the cratering birth rate. Indeed, we should celebrate the US's lower birth rate -- it's a sign of progress!
8
It is possible that there are a lot of women out there, myself included, who have happily chosen not to have children, or at the very least, have chosen not to fall victim to op-eds like this one that suggest a woman's primary concern should be to keep the population bean counters satisfied. A society full of women and men consciously and dare I say conscientiously chosing not to have children or to have fewer children should be cause for celebration not hyperbolic angst.
8
This a rather wishful reading of the data. True, Sweden is third in the EU in terms of birth rate (after France and Ireland) and fellow Scandanavians Denmark and Finland are sixth and eleventh. However, it is speculative at best to suggest that any one aspect of Swedish social policy is the driver for the relatively high (though still below replacement level) birthrate. Sweden's long standing policy of welcoming refugees is as, if not more, likely to be one of the major causes. Sweden is fifth in Europe in terms of net migration, after Luxembourg (which houses a lot of international institutions), Germany and Austria (where mass immigration is a relatively recent phenomenon), and Malta (the closest EU country to the African Coast). Maybe what the US needs to do is to open its southern border, rather than build a wall
On Earth Day’s 30th anniversary in 2000, Gaylord Nelson the Founder said : “Population, global warming and sustainability would be my suggestions for the three most urgent environmental challenges…. Stabilizing U.S. population is a challenge that could be resolved in a relatively short period resulting in significant economic and environmental benefits. At the current rate of population growth, the population of the US will (rise)… to some 530 million within the next 65 to 70 years. If that happens, the negative consequences will be substantial if not, indeed, disastrous. To stabilize our population would require a dramatic reduction in our immigration rate….
3
As a feminist who’s currently pregnant at 37 with our first (and likely, only) child, I agree with much of what the author is saying. However, I’m disturbed by the unquestioned assumption that population growth is good, thinly justified by the ‘need to support and elderly population in the US.’ We won’t be supporting any populations, human or otherwise, if we don’t have population degrowth. We’re stressing Earth’s life support systems in a serious way, and less people is the number one way we can make a meaningful positive impact.
I hope for a world without patriarchy in which women are empowered, mothers (and fathers) are supported, and every child is a very much wanted child, who is able to be provided for. In this scenario, I believe the human population would fall, and after we get through the tough years of supporting an aging peak population (which certain technologies and societal changes should really help with), both humans and our whole ecosystem should be much better off.
“High birthrate = good” is a terrible assumption that we very much need to confront.
20
Empowering people would by definition bar special status for mothers and fathers.
2
"But if a shrinking number of workers must support a growing elderly population, even our threadbare social safety net will be strained. An obvious solution is increased immigration...."
An even more obvious solution is income redistribution. Outside of religious zealots, most pronatalist hand-wringing boils down to the social safety net issue. That can easily be solved, if only we are willing to claw back the obscene amounts of income accruing to (not "earned by") the 1% and use it wisely for social welfare. One only has to read the Times story today about CEO pay compared to that of workers to see the solution at hand.
Impossible? Only if we don't have the will to make it happen. If we do, we can then enjoy the inestimable environmental benefits of a smaller US and global human population.
18
Yes, by all means, soak the rich.
Those so-called 1% and even 10% - who pay for everything the federal government spends are in that income range for a compendium of reasons, some of which is luck but most of which is education and the simple fact they they have 0 to 2 kids, as did their parents and even grandparents. This isn't rocket science. Small families produce happier, loved and well-adjusted offspring with a higher quality of life and real world economic options. Asians know this, as do Europeans. Everyone else - not so much.
1
In a capitalist economy there is never anything obscene about accumulating wealth. In fact, it is the one true yardstick because it measures actual value, while all other measures are merely subjective and thus, useless.
Has it escaped Ms. Goldberg's attention that overpopulation is one of the most serious existential problems that faces humans?
Just how does population growth slow without reduced birthrates?
Can't we successfully deal with the huge problem of gender gender inequality in more helpful ways?
13
For once, I agree with Michelle Goldberg. As long as women have the children, taking care of them better is likely to result in a higher birth rate. Exhortation never got anyone pregnant.
66
An interesting point of view. Certainly less patriarchy is a good thing and women's autonomy in every way is social progress.
But I regret that this column didn't at least give a nod to the inherent problem of world population. However distributed, however empowering or disempowering, the Earth does not need more humans crowding out other species and devastating the natural environment.
Perhaps many women who enjoy relative freedom moderate their biological and social desires with an understanding of the limits of population growth. My wife and I, albeit many years ago, stopped quite intentionally with two children, despite children being at the center of our lives. We decided that we would adopt if our appetite for nurturing was not sated. We didn't, but now we have grandchildren to care for.
Any discussion of fertility rates must take world overpopulation into account.
11
The slim data provided in the article does not support the notion that patriarchy is the cause of low birth rates. The article states that US birth rates are "in line with most other countries in Scandinavia." If those countries, which are known to have the most women and family friendly policies in the world, have the essentially the same birth rate as the US, then what? It could suggest factors other than patriarchy are at work.
Today, women have many more choices and many choose not to have children. It is too simplistic to blame their choices on patriarchy. If anything, patriarchy is associated with high birth rates. The countries with the highest birth rates are those with the most patriarchal with the fewest rights for women.
To be sure, women and with dependent children need more support and investment. It is one of the most important things we can go as a country. Further, low birth rates do pose a real challenge in the long term.
How can we best deal with it? My guess is probably not by using ideologically driven thinking.
6
My 30-something professional daughters are exactly as Ms. Goldberg describes: wanting 2 kids. One went ahead and had the second. She has considered selling their house under the weight of trying to pursue careers challenged by the modern economy, as well as $3000k/mo childcare costs. The pressures on their family life are intense. The other lives locally, with a huge mortgage for a small house. She has two sets of grandparents to provide childcare and the $$ and time to provide the extras. One child is all they can afford. Both families have had a level of support few parents can provide and still their financial struggles have been severe. What would help: the exact policies this editorial recommends. Those who disagree can’t complain when govt retirement and medical benefits have to be cut cuz there aren’t enough of the younger generations to support them.
9
As a biological male it is with fear and trembling that I comment not because one disagrees but rather that so many women are more than willing to support patriarchal institutions (particularly religious) where they are as a class institutionalized disempowered second class participants and political characters and moments that limit them to church, home, children.
If the social struggles of the last century illustrate consistently any one point it is that those with power do not willingly yield therefore what is called for is a radical form of ongoing inclusive feminism in which the equality of multiple genders and other classes are recognized and celebrated not because of falling birth rates but rather because it is in and of itself the right thing to do. Alpha males and females of what ever persuasion are constitutionally incapable of voluntarily relinquishing power and control.
2
I'm confused, it the "Patriarchy" is behind the low birthrate, how come it is not falling in the Middle East or Africa where women on the whole have fewer rights than in the West?
Perhaps, the answer is even more simple: With more opportunity for women today, there is less a need to wed (getting married later), or have a many children.
For the US, immigration has always been the equalizer, which is why our current stance on it is so troubling.
To see this only through the lens of the Patriarchy seems to miss the point. But sadly, that does seem to be the only lens Ms. Goldberg has.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11414064/How-Europe-is-slowly...
5
The reason the Middle East and Africa don't have lowering birth rates is likely because they don't have, or are not allowed to use, birth control.
1
I think you have hit the nail on the head. I had two children but I quit two years in with the first one because of lack of support between work and my husband. I am college educated and had a career mindset, but with the continuing demands at work (and two female managers who were not interested in being flexible), and my husband who was raised to believe his only contributions to the family were financial and his part to make a child, I couldn't take the stress and left the workforce for 13 years. I went back to work once my boys were at a good age and my husband started working from home. I passed off a lot of the interactions with the school to him at that point but I still was responsible for so much more at home. After 10 years back in the workforce, I still struggle with getting him to "help" with chores around the house. Yes, patriarchy played a huge part in my decisions to drop out. But, I must say, I am immensely happy I was able to spend that time raising my own children rather than paying a stranger to do it.
4
My daughter has to work. She and her husband chose to not have children because she didn't feel it fair to a child to be in daycare from birth. In 2000 my husband was earning more per hour than our son-in-law earns now. I was able to be a stay at home mom due to my husband's decent wages in the HVAC industry. Now these companies wages have stagnated and workers are sent home if there is no scheduled work. No work, reduced pay. Daycare is exorbitantly expensive and isn't available if your child is sick or for holidays or at night for those who work 2nd or 3rd shift jobs. Many risk losing their jobs if they need to stay at home with a sick child. What responsible adults would choose to have children when their financial situation is so unstable? Who would choose to have children with the dire predictions of climate change/global warming? As I type my husband is reading an article to me about cities that are facing severe water shortages due to climate change and rising oceans. Miami is one. Children are gunned down in the one place they should be absolutely safe; their schools. We have a crazy, dangerous person "leading" our country and a sycophantic republican congress which does his bidding. Everyday women's rights are being attacked and patriarchal religious extremism is on the rise. Even the sentence from your article gives me chills; "Some on the right have, absurdly, blamed the shrinking birthrate on abortion.." Is forced gestation next? I no longer recognize my country.
22
I would prefer to flip the cause and effect: A low birth rate in a Western country is a symptom, not the actual issue.
Here's what we tell women in America: You have to choose between a career and kids. You can't have it all, silly goose. (Men can.) If you choose to work, expect employment discrimination and mommy tracking. Be back at work before your stitches have healed. Be glared at for running out to daycare pickup, because it closes at 6. Pay your entire net salary for childcare, and be told your income is the one paying for it. Juggle summers off, vacations, and sick days, and be told you have no right to expect free babysitting. Know that having kids is one of the biggest causes of the pay gap. Know that if you have kids during the prime age (25-35) your career will take the biggest hit. Know that it can all come crashing down the minute one of your kids needs extra care.
Or you give up and quit work, which probably, you can't really afford to do. Be told your career will never recover. Take an economic risk on yourself so other people and society can benefit from your unpaid labor.
Or you can opt out of the whole mess and never have kids at all.
And don't forget, whatever you decide? It's your choice, not anyone else's. No one made you have kids. No one made you work. No one will ever ask your husband about his choices.
18
What we call feminism is actually a symptom of the long slow decline of Western Civilization by way of demographics. In all likelihood, we will eventually be out-populated and out-competed by regions of the world that are notably lacking in feminism. One simply need look at the history of empires or the result of our last presidential election.
2
Why in heaven's name would we need more babies? The world is already grossly overpopulated, which makes every other problem worse.
7
I'm not sure that the patriarchy will truly appreciate the decline in the worker-age population until they age back into needing diapers themselves.
4
“All over Manhattan, large families have become a status symbol. Four beautiful children named after kings and pieces of fruit are a way of saying, ‘I can afford a four-bedroom apartment and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in elementary-school tuition fees each year. How you livin’?” Tina Fey
6
Given that the world has far too large a population, any attempts to increase the US birth rate is just another firm of nationalism. Let’s make domestic procreation socially undesirable and use immigration law to cover our needs from ditch diggers to astrophysicists. And since the widespread availability of birth control, there is no reason for an employee to become a mother OR a father anymore.
5
If less patriarchy is the answer, please explain the examples of Orthodox Jews and the Amish. Both groups are classic patriarchies and tons of babies. I think you may have things backwards.
5
And, of course, to make to situation even worse, we're deporting tens of thousands of people many of whom are of child-bearing age, have been here for years, and are working. But, not to worry, the Republicans and their evangelical backers have the answer: take away all access to birth control, family planning and abortion. It's a policy right out "The Hand Maid's Tale."
5
Norway, Sweden and France all have fertility rates comparable to- or lower than- the United States’. And all three rates are in decline. Square peg? Meet round hole.
3
Pretty clear from this article that Republicans are trying to drive women back in the home as breeders. Republicans are against, education, equal opportunities in the work force for men and women, equal pay, abortion AND contraception.
5
7.5 BILLION Humans on the planet, busily destroying natural ecosystems and other species in order to make money or just to live, and you want more Babies!!!
14
The only birth rates we should be worried about are rising ones. With humanity rapidly exceeding the earth's ability to support our current overpopulation a decrease in the birth rate is a cause for celebration. Maybe if we can get organized religion to tone down its baby-making rhetoric for the sake of producing more of the indoctrinated (I'm looking at you Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, evangelicals) and espouse a viable planetary population we won't wipe out humanity for a few more decades yet.
5
US population (round numbers) in 1950: 151,000,000...in 1970: 203,000,000...in 2000: 280,000,000...in 2017 323,000,000...world population growing 3 times in that time...no, we don't need "more babies" than currently having...
6
This is a grossly misleading, and poorly titled piece, not least because it fails to accurately define patriarchy, or use the term in a commonly accepted way.
Patriarchy isn't centrally about childcare or lack thereof, and to form a rallying cry against "patriarchy" to argue for more childcare is the type of untruthful, hyperbolic and attention getting headline that Ms. Goldberg would likely not accept from anyone writing for say, Breitbart or Fox.
In fact, the most patriarchal societies tend to be the ones with the highest birthrates. And while Ms. Goldberg draws our attention to France and Sweden, she conspicuously and irresponsibly fails to discuss the fact the birth rate across communities in those countries are not uniform. While France avoids collecting data on ethnicity, it is well known that in Israel, which does collect such data, that comparatively MORE patriarchal communities (ultra-orthodox Jews, Arabs) tend to have much larger families and more children.
3
>
This world has many problems and needs many, many things, but more human beings is not on any of those lists.
"Think of the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of nonexistence into this... meat, to force a life into this... thresher."
Rustin Cohle, the greatest philosopher of the 21st Century
Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oX2xFo7JA4
3
Who is Michelle Goldberg kidding with this nonsense? Has she not noticed that Orthodox Jews in Israel are having 6.5 babies per mother BECAUSE of patriarchy? Ditto for Muslim mothers in Niger, which has the highest birth rate in the world, with some reasons approaching 8.5. The notion that this is tied to "feminism" is so risible as to not even merit serious consideration.
She inhabits a different planet from the rest of us, at least where the relationship between ideology and reality are concerned.
6
Actually I don't want more babies. Ever hear of overpopulation? If we need more people to keep things running down the line we can open up our borders a bit.
5
I think the author should clarify that patriarchal cultures lead to fewer births in states with developed economies. The nations with the highest birthrates in the world are located in sub-Saharan Africa. Patriarchal cultures are common in many of these nations. Most of these states do not provide strong support for working families. Niger and Somalia have the highest birthrates in the world, far exceeding those of Scandinavian states.
4
Economics dictates that you have to have entry level participants. Babies force people to buy diapers, baby shoes, toys and of course the first home to house the new family. This keeps the economy rolling not the rich but the lower and middle income earners. By their sheer numbers their purchasing needs would drive growth in an economy. Presently all of the US policies punish these families in the most serve ways. A complete lack of strategic economic policies to stimulate the growth of these earners has even infected the most local levels- school budgets. Look at the number of teachers who are on strike to get the most simple things such as books, paper and of course pencils. Americans should rethink the policy ideal that government is the problem because it is becoming apparent it is the voters who have bought this ideal that is the problem.
5
There should have been some discussion of the other factors associated with lower birth rates: economic uncertainty, growing inequality gulf between the 1percenters and middle/working class, religious strife, and worry about environmental devastation. These are also correlated with patriarchy. All work together to depress hope for the future, and desire/ability to have children.
Thanks for this article. Nicely laid out. One question I have is there is no comment on the poor health/quality of men's sperm, their fiances, participation in child rearing and commitment. I would hope that less patriarchy would address some of the above 'man-issues' beyond just the act of fertilizing an egg. Women (and some men) make decisions based on the quality/commitment of their partner. I know of 10 instances of women who choose not to have children because their partner was not "father" material. Also choosing not to have children based on their experiences of the dysfunctional family. And having a partner "in the house" just to have one is not a healthy solution for the child or society.
2
Real patriarchal societies, such as conservative Islamic societies, have tons of children. When women have more choices, they choose less children. That’s not patriarchy, that’s feminism.
175
But as this article points out, there is a gap between the number of children women say they want (2.7) and the number they think they will have (1.8) - so they're not choosing fewer children, they feel unable to have as many as they would ideally like.
56
Bingo. And I'd go so far as to say it's female empowerment of the type preached by feminists 40 years ago.
21
Wrong. The numbers show that American women *want* more children, but aren't having them. I know this is true in my own life - most of my childbearing-aged friends are not having ANY, and usually it has to do with money: the prospect of saving for college when they're still paying off student loans, the cost of child care, the cost of health care, and the possible hit to their present and future earnings. Others who planned to have two or three are deciding after the first child that one is enough.
57
"Developed countries that prioritize gender equality — including Sweden, Norway and France — have higher fertility rates than those that don’t."
I don't know about Sweden and Norway. As to France, it's not gender equality but support for childcare which has mattered.
2
Wages have been stagnant for years, unless you're one of the billionaires Trump just gave a tax break to. If people have to hold two jobs just to support themselves, how in the world would they have the money to support children, too?
9
Michelle and her commenters raise valid points about the declining berthrate and the solutions to it.
The indifference shown by US employers is going to have a profound effect to their profits and growth prospects. There will be less people spending their dollars for the goods and services of those employers.
8
I wish I could recommend this ten times. Who cares about "a time of economic growth" when that growth benefits only owners and shareholders?
5
I admire today's young women who see clearly the responsibilities motherhood entails and are making thoughtful decisions. I come from a generation that put motherhood at the top of the checklist and didn't question the practicality of it. It was tied up with identity. I think today's young women have a better grasp of the work involved in parenting, and want to do it right, or not at all. Perhaps the pro-family patriarchy will realize that women are not just going to reproduce out of some romantic notion of motherhood and be forced to provide greater support.
11
This article misses the point that the planet is overpopulated. In particular it can't sustain more people with an American lifestyle. A declining birthrate is a good thing. Our economy will require adjustment to a changing demography but an ever increasing population is not viable ecologically. Another point that doesn't get enough emphasis is that the major cause of poverty, particularly for women, is children. The more children a woman has the more likely she is to live in poverty. What the US government needs to support, at home and abroad is contraception services.
50
I can only speak for myself, an early 30's, single female. This article hits the main point of why I'm terrified of reproducing: The Costs. I have a more than comfortable salary, but there is little to no way I could see myself having a child on my own. I want two children. I also want to keep moving forward in my career, as I love my job. Without two incomes and actual financial stability at least somewhat protected during the first months after birth and during pregnancy, I don't see how I can afford raising even one child in the major metropolitan area that I currently live in. I'm not moving to small-town, less expensive, USA; I don't know what I'd do for a living in such a place, and, as I mentioned, I love my job.
There's also the problem of finding a partner, and that partner receiving some type of paternity leave either while I received maternity leave or after. From what I've read, several countries have started taking the approach where mothers receive 6+ months paid maternity leave, then their partner receives an additional 6+ months from that.
This is only the beginning of why I don't have a child (as of now at least). The associated costs with education scare the living daylight out of me -- starting with preschool. And that is even if public education were to be utilized.
16
I had my 2 children in my 30s. I was 39 and my husband was 48 when we decided against a third.
How did I juggle a career and children all the way through to retirement? It was an ever-changing, fluid and flexible arrangement, and we adapted over and over. First, Chase Manhattan Bank allowed me to take several months maternity leave, and the type of work I did allowed for me to work from home about two days per week. (This was novel in the late 1980s.) My father had just retired and my parents were finding the new arrangement made them restless, so they offered to come watch my kids the three days I needed to go into the office. My husband was a teacher, arrived home at 3:30, and from that point until bedtime it was 50/50 in terms of housework, cooking, shopping, childcare, etc.
I hit a wall in my 15th year at the bank: my kids were 7 and 3, and my parents began having health issues. I left my job, went back to school, got a teaching license and began my second (and favorite)career as an early childhood teacher. With me also on a school schedule, life was manageable, although teaching is much more physically exhausting than banking. A few years in I went back to school at night for an administrative license. My dear husband held down the fort at home four nights a week. He took a sabbatical that year between my parents needed to stop helping and my youngest starting full time school. When I was offered an administrative position at school he retired and was a full time Dad
16
You brilliantly illustrate one thing the article didn't address and the major thing missing in too may lives: family.
You have a stable relationship - something now rare in the childbearing years - and your parents were around to help out. You didn't simply move your kids in to your parents' house for them to raise, you approached the issue from a multi-generational standpoint. That's what families are supposed to do.
2
Thank you so much for your nice remarks on my marriage and my family. This is the first time I shared our ever-evolving game-plan publicly. Our girls know this about their parents: we did our level best for them, and as health and distance allows, they can count on us to pay it forward when their kids come along. My father died in 2015 and his grandkids mourned him terribly. Their Papa was such a fantastic man. Those preschool years when my parents watched them three days per week were so joyful, and they cherish their memories of the fun they had with him.
So, that being said, our inter-generational game plan may have one additional wild card: with seniors living so much longer now, we may be caring for my mother in her 90s at the same time as we help with any grandchildren who may grace our family! We are both retired now, and just as we did 30 years ago, we just take it all one day at a time.
Without a doubt, nothing is more important than the automatic assumption that, when both parents are home, the work of parenting, housekeeping, laundry, cooking, cleaning, and everything else that supports family life has to be 50/50.
4
Re: "given the link, in developed countries, between higher birthrates and women’s rights"
First, I think the author meant to write "lower birthrates" in that statement.
And... let me mathsplain that correlation does not mean causation (in either direction). In fact, the vast majority of correlations are spurious! Furthermore, correlations over a wide span in a cross sectional study (in this case, say, birthrates from 1 to 10 across widely varying countries) do not necessarily hold within a narrower band within a sub-set of the study (e.g. between 1.8 and 2.3 children in France)
Importantly, seems very dubious to conclude from the link between birth rate and women's rights that having more children would *cause* a decrease in women's rights. In fact, the author writes that "women actually desire more kids than they’re having". If changes in birth rate *caused* changes in women's rights, then we would be saying that women want something that reduces their rights!
3
I think you missed the point entirely. The author was making the point that better recognition of women's rights, and better governmental and societal support of the needs of families (health care, child care, flexible work arrangements) *causes* women to have more confidence in the future and have more children as a result. When the role of motherhood is both respected and women are given the freedom to make choices that aren't either/or, then the society thrives.
7
The differences in fertility rates between various highly developed western countries are fairly negligible, as they all hover at around 1.5. Some have 1.3, some 1.7, and there is no consistent correlation between progressive social policies and birth rate. Meanwhile, virtually all the countries in which birth rates are exploding are hard-core patriarchies in which women have very few opportunities of any kind. In fact, all the evidence points to the opposite conclusion from what Ms. Goldberg suggests: nothing is so good for birth rates as patriarchy.
13
I don't know how mothers juggle everything in the US without paid maternity leaves. As a new mom, it's almost physically impossible to go to work for at least the first 6 months after having a baby. Your body hasn't recovered and your baby is still waking in the middle of the night. Mothers are not "leaning in" because they are sleep deprived! If men could give birth and breastfeed, mat leave and work place policies would be very different!
I do agree that patriarchy plays a role. I have one child with my spouse and will not have another because of his lack of support and assistance. I guess that's the reason why him and his ex-wife only had one kid. Should have known!
31
The effects of sleep deprivation are greatly ignored. It is actual torture. Having to work (and drive!) in that condition is barbaric.
3
The military budget for the U.S in 2018 is in the neighborhood of $700,000,000,000. That's $700 Billion-with-a-B. PER YEAR. This is why we can't have nice things. There is no money for affordable quality child care, universal health care, parental family leave, modern infrastructure and transportation modes, etc...because the warmongers in government want new and improved WEAPONS.
While we are voting the feckless republicans out of office in November let's also remind all of our elected representatives that we want more from our tax dollars than guns. We need butter too.
228
Can't argue with your point. However the actual annual cost of our military system including ancillary costs exceeds $1 Trillion.
29
Yup. The military is America's largest jobs program. Take some of that money and create a jobs program to help repair and improve education and infrastructure. With drones and other technology we do not really need 1.2M active duty military members anyhow.
16
All this, and they still cannot properly pay the soldiers, since there are thousands of military families on SNAP.
"Patriarchy is maladaptive" should be repeated frequently. In addition to the problems at the childcare end of the spectrum are the problems with eldercare. Care, in general, is expected from women specifically, and those staring down the ever-shrinking safety net may rationally conclude that taking care of grandma precludes having children. In Marxian feminist terms, these are costly "social reproduction" issues, and capitalism attempts to get them taken care of for free because they eat at profit. Women collectively striking until men pick up the slack and society fairly compensates/provides for care is fantastic!
17
Eldercare squeeze on millennials:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/biggest-life-event-millennials-dont...
1
I'm happy to see many commenters have already raised the concern about climate change. Every time I read an article (usually by an economist) that fails to take into consideration the actual physical reality that so many scientists (Letter to Humanity) (remember these were the smartest kids in school, right?) have been screaming at us for the last 30 years, I'm bewildered.
Do we want to live (or future humans if we're old) in a Darwinian world? Or do we like the 'easiness' that civilization provides?
10
OK, young couple, welcome to the Gig Economy. I hope you are feeling motivated by the destruction of the social safety net, and are ready to pull yourselves up by your own Exceptional American bootstraps! In spite of the combined $10,000/yr college debt, $15,000/yr. health care cost, rent, car payment ($19,000, average), and the $467,000 (average) it will cost to raise two kids to age 18, now is the time to start putting away an additional $30,000/yr. so your kids can go to college. Don't forget to save for retirement!
If you want more babies, stop teaching people how to add numbers together.
69
Maybe we should stop spending so much taxpayer money on protecting Conoco Oil facilities in Syria so that we can fund things like infrastructure, education, and healthcare. And yes, promoting families through parental leave and insuring the availability of adequate day care.
33
Any government stats you can find show that the birth rate was much higher 100 years ago. So-called patriarchy must've been stronger then as well. Didn't seem to affect birth numbers negatively. The birth rate, however, has been going down relentlessly for as long as we have numbers to show.
11
Don't let facts get in the way of a good narrative. Go out and get those facts you need, twist the ones that don't fit, and leave out the ones you don't like. Then scream at anyone who disagrees. Bigot!
2
The birth rate was higher, but the survival rate was significantly lower, although we are working our way up in the infant mortality sphere now that we don't think that health care and nutrition support are worth as much as giving tax breaks to millionaires...
4
100 years ago, women could not control their fertility. You were constantly pregnant or nursing from the time you started having sex, to the time you hit menopause (or an illness or childbirth killed you or rendered you infertile). There was no choice to not have that 14th kid because the whole family was undernourished and miserable.
Birth control changed a lot of things. So yes, I guess a full-on, Handmaid's Tale theocracy would have the highest birthrate of all, because they would outlaw all forms of birth control. In the world we are in, where women can choose whether or not to have kids (for now), making women's lives miserable makes them not want to bring children into that situation.
2
This country was formed by white men for white men. How much more patriarchy can there be? For everyone else it is an uphill battle to find a place in the culture and try to thrive but many times just survive. THe individualism that has been the main part of the culture has to change to one of collectivism where we all agree we have to support each other to thrive. Thus, it would be that all businesses would as a matter of course offer childcare just as they would have cleaning staff. That the government would have a set of social legislation that is family friendly supporting businesses to offer long family leaves or directly support newly formed families. One could go on and on. But look who is in positions of power, men who pass more laws relating to uteruses that to guns.
8
Anyone who thinks we don't live in a patriarchal society, although it is beginning to change now, should see the documentary RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It traces the extraordinary life of this
amazing woman, working her way through prejudices that faced women in the 50's, quietly succeeding, overcoming the odds and inspiring her to fight for justice and fairness for all. It was familiar to me as I too lived through that era, recall the prejudice I faced at
colleges where women could not enter certain rooms, and being treated like second class citizens. I marched in the 70's with Gloria Steinem and remember too the jeers of men as we walked down fifth Avenue, young and old, heads up high. It still exists, but we
are better off today for the most part - We've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go. Society is always slow to change.
31
And yet for all the things women like you helped us accomplish, people are angrier, more resentful, and feel things are even worse. The things you helped accomplish were not small - the disadvantages women face have been dramatically reduced. Yet many women on the left particularly (and especially on the "new left", with its postmodern emphasis on tearing all things down) seem less positive and claim worse injury and insult than feminist women did 40+ years ago.
4
So, tew, it's why aren't they grateful for crumbs? I'll shut up and show some gratitude at full equality. Not before.
tew: This is a very chaotic and fractured moment in our history. If you're talking about the Me Too movement, we have to reach a balance there. Time will tell. It's hard, I think to equate Harvey Weinstein
with some of the men being exposed for lesser
charges. He is a total pig. The era I noted was of social injustice; being treated like a second class citizen - we never even got to physical abuse, rape, drugs for sex. It's quite different today and back then we weren't considered very positive either.
I am truly gratified that Ms. Goldberg is not commingling militant feminism (as opposed to the serious feminist struggle for full social equality of women and men) with extra marital procreation. The consequence to children raised in single-parent and/or single-gender households are not yet clear, but they are not to be dismissed lightly.
2
Extra marital procreation is something which involves men and women and is extremely popular today, judging by the number of families who remain unmarried (24 million) or 1/3 of American households. Marital procreation does not provide assurance of a linear outcome for child rearing success (half of marriages end in divorce). And finally, since so many of those male female combos end in divorce, it is the single-parent families that are raising the children. I assume you mean there isn't any damning evidence that single parent households are deficient, which is why you so euphemistically said the "consequence to children is unclear." Perhaps a better focus would be equal access to good childcare, decent education, and affordable healthcare for all, which is not based on having the male/female combo.
1
I'm not too concerned that we won't have enough children to support the elderly. The elderly have decided not to support children, and will have to face the consequences of their decisions.
The average senior does quite well, with their ability to reduce the property tax in order to 'age in place' in the large home and the reduced medical costs of the medical plan that comes with a pension. If they wanted their children and grandchildren to have more, they would have made other decisions. Instead, you get senior groups that donate peanut butter and bread to the high school so 'no child goes hungry'. Thanks, Gramps but that doesn't pay for the transportation so the kid can come over and mow your lawn.
14
Nice broad brushstroke. "The elderly", is that like "the blacks"?
Old people have all lost their individual agency. They're in a basket. And they are deplorable!
As an aside, nearly all of the seniors I know worked hard for decades with much less comfort and material wealth than is available to the large majority of younger people today. Many worked at physical jobs.
4
I don't believe you know too many actual elderly. Many elderly are getting by on one meal a day that Meals on Wheels delivers. By the way, Trump wants to eliminate Meal on Wheels.
4
Wow, I didn’t know the elderly are so mean. I assume you are not counting my mother who was a florist for 45 years and provided a pension plan and health insurance for her employees. But hey, nothing like stereotyping.
3
I don't see why this is a problem. Why do we need to replace our population? One of the biggest problems the world is dealing with today is over population. Sure, there will/would be some growing pains with a larger aging population than a young one, but this is the age of technology and we can handle it. Decreasing our population should be a goal; the way things are going now we can't continue with endless growth or even the huge numbers we have now. It's not sustainable.
57
I thought advocacy for ZPG or declining population was a dog whistle for xenophobic anti-immigration sentiment. No? When did we switch?
1
no TEW, Zero Pop Growth is not a dog whistle for xenophobic anti-immigration sentiment. Where were you in the 1970's, when Zero Pop Growth was all the talk?
I'm for ZPG for the planet, our Beautiful Mother Earth. And yes, I'm childfree by choice.
There are many reasons and rationales behind deciding to have children, most of which are being ignored by the People in Power (PiP), but finances are in many cases paramount. Women who want to be educated and establish careers are delaying having children because most universities and places of work ignore their needs for reasonable childcare and parental leave. Having more than one child when one begins that process in one's 30s is difficult at best.
The PiP live in a fantasy world in which Donna Reed represents Motherhood. It was not true in the 60s and it certainly isn't true now. Moreover, the correlation among education, living wages, and stable families that has been shown over and over is also ignored by the PiP.
I agree: patriarchy is one of the main culprits. It is a particularly virulent form found not only here among the PiP but also in Asia, Latin America, Southern Europe, and much of Africa. It has roots not only in misogyny but also racism in those white regions where politicians bewail the growing numbers of people of color and the shrinking of white populations. It blames women for the (limited) choices they make and mansplains that they should simply be incubators for men and everything will be fine.
Patriarchy presumes a zero-sum game: it claims that every man who is not in the lead loses. The PiP use and manipulate this fear in order to maintain their position; true equality of opportunity would destroy their ability to do that.
16
This came a bit too close to home!
"Most women seem to want both jobs and children, and when they’re forced to choose, some will forgo parenthood, or have only one child."
As a woman in her late 30th who has not had a child yet (but wants one [or more]) I agree that the decision regarding when and whether to have children is influenced by worries about a) things I believe the government should provide: health care provision and cost (and continuity of health coverage), maternity leave, affordable/subsidized child care; and b) employers' policies: attitude towards taking time off for maternity leave, flexible or reduced schedules and their long term impact on pay and advancement.
But that decision is also influenced by the changing nature and stress of work - competitive job market in which you need more years of experience to get to a mid-management level within an organization, more mobility in the job market (is it ok for me to go on maternity leave just one year after joining a workplace?), rising cost of living and stagnant wages which mean you want to save more and be more established before having your first child to make ends meet, and the expectation of long work hours in professional jobs.
Yes, universal healthcare and more pro-women and pro-parent work policies will help for sure. But employers' attitudes need to change as well.
28
Employers, including the largest corporations in the world, generally controlled by an ultra-majority of men, are not going to change their policies to be more female and family-friendly until the lack of qualified workers and professionals starts hitting them in the pocketbook. That hasn't happened yet. They just import more cheap workers from China and India.
18
A few other reasons:
1. Student debt, 55%$ of college grads are women and they tend to go to grad school at a higher rate than men, consequently more debt.
2. Unskilled job market, wages for women in this market is higher than for men, making them the key bread winner.
3. Job growth areas favor women. Manual labor jobs are fewer. Factory jobs are more open to women than in the past. Office and health care jobs are growing in traditional women areas.
So the trend toward women being the head of household is growing.
21
Wake up! This is all due to overpopulation.
The U.S. and world human population has DOUBLED since the 1960s. What did everything think would be the result of hyper breeding, particularly in highly religious misogynist 2nd and 3rd world places that already were overpopulation even in the 1960s? This is the taproot of widespread economic migration and illegal immigration all around the world, as well. There are not now 7.6 billion jobs for the 7.6 billion humans. Shall we take a moment to consider that there still will not be 7.6 jobs (or adequate food, clean air and water, safe shelter) when humans who refuse to use common sense and birth control have bloated the planet with 10 to 12 billion more who are destined to cripple and destroy more species, the oceans, rainforests, the air? Humans have always been unnecessary and dangerous to Earth, but just in the last 60 years we've shown our true nature: a garbage dump of unnecessary and wanton reproduction.
8
Absolutely, we do not get enough support when it comes to parenting and our careers. It remains a patriarchal society in which men refuse to relinquish unjustified control over "the little woman." Heavens, just look at the big to-do when Tammy Duckworth brought her new-born to the Old Men's Club of the US Senate? All that fuss just to cast a vote.
But I think our declining birth-rate is multifaceted. Women are getting married later, and many are more educated not only in an academic sense but also in the present paradigm of society's ills and complexities. We are worried for our next generation...how can we afford to send them to college, to have good heath care, or even buy a home for them with a backyard or nearby safe park in which to play. There is fear, too. How can there not be with shocking daily news of our young girls, and boys, being preyed upon by sexual perverts? We are overdue for a deserved change. That is a mission that we must continue to focus on and fight for.
22
Sorry, but your basic thesis is wrong as shown by population data. "Patriarchy" is correlated with high birth rates -- denying women other opportunities to work and education are the hallmarks of high birth rate sexist societies. The more educated women become the fewer children they have. These statistics are well known, hence the emphasis in third world poverty relief and population control on female education and empowerment. This does not excuse or justify or remotely make patriarchy desireable, it just means that having children when a rich array of other life choices are also available naturally leads to fewer women choosing motherhood.
41
The author's choice of the term "Patriarchy" is unfortunate (almost clickbait). Most of the article's thesis, it seems to me, is not actually describing the effects of patriarchy (which, I agree, has no place in modern society) rather, it focuses on the economic forces of capitalism and their effect on both corporate and governmental decisions as well as their relation to individual's family decision making. Bringing nations out of poverty and improving education for all does, indeed, tend to lower birthrates for the very reasons you have described.
8
Although the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has turned our government into his private banana republic, we aren't Venezuela - yet. Third world status does not apply here in the USA - yet.
1
My mother gave me some advice, she said have children when you are young. Like many daughters, I didn't listen to my mother. Women are having children at more advanced ages giving them less fertile years to have children. If you have your first child at 35, you have only a few years left before you lose your fertility. Women are waiting to get married, they are waiting to have children. We have made advances in fertility treatments which make for great stories of having babies at an older age like Senator Duckworh, but cost of fertility treatments are prohibitive for most people. Most health insurance policies do not cover such treatments. I would ask the larger question of why women are waiting to have children. It may be that a lack of supportive work places contribute to the declining birthrate, but there are many social reasons that also contribute including divorce, living far from family support systems and affordable housing. Declining birthrate strikes me as an issue where both the right and the left could find some common ground if there was any actual governing going on these days.
15
My mother had children in her 20s. I had mine in my 30s. Why? Because I was not financially able to support them until later in my career. I would be willing to bet this is the primary reason women wait.
3
The world is too slow to change. My dad believes in women's rights yet he still calls appliances "your mother's washer and dryer" or "your mother's stove." Forty years ago women were still hopeful that the Equal Rights Amendment would become part of the Constitution. It never did. There have been 100 years since women finally got the right to vote, but today are 77 male senators and just 23 female senators. And fewer than 20% of the Congress is female. Will there ever be a day when this country values working women by subsidizing day care or mandating paid sick leave? Maybe, but I doubt it will be in my lifetime.
48
It will happen when the US Congress is 51% women and CEOs number 51% female and ... well, you get the point.
8
Although I very, very strongly agree we need to provide much better societal support for parents regardless of our current birthrate, I am delighted that birthrates in many countries are on the decline.
This is just plain common sense. There are too many people already on this tiny planet and it is just not sustainable.
We are already seeing the devastating effects of climate change.
There will be food and water shortages which pose a threat to global security.
Automation making so many jobs obsolete will create more tension when there are simply not enough jobs for everyone to support themselves.
This is already becoming a global problem. Yes, there are jobs for programmers right now- but when about the folks who only have a high school education that used to be able to work in factories with a decent living wage?
Robotics enable the elimination of many of those jobs. Driverless cars and trucks will eventually take over driver jobs.
Global unrest in failed states will only get worse if there is no food or jobs. Moreover, those conditions are ripe for dictators and not for democracy.
We need less people- not more people on this planet.
We need to promote responsible family planning world wide- not destroy it as the current administration is stupidly doing.
It will be a problem to support current baby boomers as they retire and age.
But looking past the next 30 years, much lower birthrates on a global level is the only way to survive.
79
Many Boomers have economically recovered from the 2008/2009 Big Banking induced collapse and will live out their retirement better than any other generation, save the current Silent Generation, a/k/a The Lucky Few. Demographers have nicknamed those 70-years-old+ that because from 1930-1945 Americans did two things that resulted in the lowest birth rate and subsequent highest quality of life this nation ever produced: close to zero immigration and use of birth control. That generation prior to Boomers got the best of all that America had to offer, with many forging the very civil and humans rights movements that the world now takes for granted. Quality over quantity.
The current looming issue is not Boomers but MILLENNIALS. They are numerically the largest generation ever to walk the planet and they ALL are in their prime breeding years.
3
We don't actually need more babies, as several thoughtful readers observed. And aside from that factor, we need to pay working women as well as their male counterparts and provide healthcare. Patriarchy persists in part because the systems we have hold women down.
49
Anyone who has lived in France can vouch for the enormous boost that generous child support including paid parental leave can make for working mothers to pursue successful and satisfying careers along with a rewarding family life. Our comparative national stinginess decreases American productivity and is deeply misogynistic. Goldberg is also correct that the apparent exception of Germany (and neighboring Switzerland) reflects stifling social roadblocks towards working mothers including the practice in many cities of sending children home for lunch in the middle of the day!
20
The fertility rate in France has been dropping for several years. Probably due to women waiting longer to have children.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/02/17/frances-high-fertility-rate-...
Also, Ireland.
1
It's pretty easy to understand, although Michelle Goldberg won't like the reason. When women were restricted to the home, the labor market was tighter for men, driving up their wages to permit them to support their stay-at-home wives who could then raise their children more economically.
There are, of course, other paths to supporting larger families. For instance, as Goldberg says, outsourcing childcare from parents. Another would be to wipe out the ability of families to geographically diffuse by taking away social net services: if the grandparents are nearby, viola free childcare.
There are lots of way to achieve the "goal" that Goldberg seeks. PS This hand-wringing about growing the population is perverse giving that almost every major social ill we're facing today is driven by over-population.
13
I like your post, but do not think that the majority of social ills are caused by over-population (in the U.S.).
Note: If you really believe that, you should be staunchly against immigration, because reducing immigration would result in less over-population, which would improve social welfare. (Unless, of course, there's a magic asterisk that makes increased population due to immigration "good" but increased population from existing citizens "bad".)
1
It's pretty easy to understand: women have always worked! Even in the 1950s, more than 40% of women with children WORKED for a living, often in dangerous circumstances, for dreadfully low wages and no benefits, and with pernicious constant threats of sexual harassment and rape by males in the workforce.
2
among other reasons, we didn't want children because we believe the outlook for the US and the world is darkening and would be heartbreaking to think of the world our hypothetical children would face.
Also, I think declining birth rates are a good thing in an overpopulated world where there is increasing competition for resources and less and less room left for any wildlife or beautiful natural areas for people to enjoy. And its no issue to support an elderly population wit fewer workers, with automation and AI, fewer workers are and will be needed.
41
If I were still of childbearing age, I would think long and hard about bringing children into a world that shows alarming evidence of climate change. With the current administration doing everything it can to dismantle environmental stewardship, and the uptick in natural disasters nearly everywhere in this country (see yesterday’s Times), prospective parents may be wondering what horrors our planet has in store for future generations. Sad!
26
It is a safe bet in the rural region of Upstate New York to assume that the woman in her 30s standing behind the counter of the local supermarket or convenience store has children. This comes with a wedding band, and if you were to ask how they manage, you might hear: 'I might have done some things differently'.
In The City, this 'accidental' woman of a certain age finds that younger men have children out of wedlock. They look slightly abashed, although you did not ask, express an opinion or blink.
In my era of experience which reads on occasion like 'The Fountainhead', babies were often born and accepted like a new gift kitten in the household. The maternal parent had the burden of finding 'somebody to look after the child', and Dads of 'Mad Men' did not take their offspring to ballet class or a soccer game on Fridays. Some single dads these days are on the verge of suffocating their children, overcompensating or reliving their youth.
The fathers who are mending fences and building roofs will tell you that their overactive five-year old is on sedative pills. With lack of funds, we are discussing how to encourage higher enrollment into local schools for basic education. Some children are taking the initiative and accomplishing a task force to help others.
'A Privileged Child is a Loved One'. On occasion, you might hear from an Elder that while they cared for their parents, 'they never should have had children', and this is more heard from a male messenger.
1
"Patriarchy is maladaptive". It may be so, but the country has adjusted to societal change in the past. The post WWII baby boom of 3.7, then in the mid 60's the "pill" and a slowdown to 2.1. I see us going through another adjustment period, and more women in elected office can help to speed the change to a more adaptive patriarchal society.
So vote this November.
13
My wife and I (lawyer and doctor) have 4 children. We learned very quickly that both parents working full-time isn't viable. In the end, my wife cut back and eventually gave up her career. I understand that choice is a luxury that many don't have. Now that the kids are grown and gone my wife is attempting to re-enter the work force, but it is difficult. The only comfort is that no one lays in their deathbed, thinks back over their life and says "I wish I had spent more time at the office."
PS: she gave up her career for the simple reason that my net income was much higher.
17
Yes your income was higher so she quit...quit to do a job that she would be aged out from. And left with the satisfaction of a family but what of her ambition her drive all that she put into preparing to have s place in the world test herself against the competition. All the things you cherish in your career. The thrill of winning the raise she earned. And you got both. Lucky you by accident of gender truly got to have it all.
Think about Serena Williams. She left tennis to have a baby #1 in the world. Now #453 in just one year’s time and equate that with the cost women pay for time spent in the important job of child rearing and then wonder why your wife did not make as much as you?
7
But they might lie on their deathbed and think, "I wish I could have had the opportunity to be the great lawyer I was meant to be."
6
There is unarguably little support for working mothers.Another element in the declining birth rate could be that women postpone having children for years while they establish careers and make their mark in their chosen endeavors.When they are fifteen or so years into work life they get serious about having children but around 40 the biological clock works against them.They are not likely to have four to six children at that age.Also, the cost of raising children has gone up exponentially.It is not surprising that the birth rate is declining.Both women and children need more favorable treatment to prosper in this society.
20
Why call neoliberalism "patriarchy"? The problem is an economic ideology that dominates the United States, and harms men as much as it harms women.
10
Women make much less than men and do much more work in the home with upkeep and childcare so in fact patriarchy not neoliberalism harms women more than men. Neoliberalism is not the same as patriarchy, which of course has been around for thousands of years and is much more difficult to change than Neoliberalism.
8
"Patriarchy" gets more clicks, cd.
People need to understand too that a woman’s career is not a selfish hobby that she chooses over her children. Most of us have jobs, not fabulous careers. And to give your kids a decent, middle class life, you need two incomes - two full-time incomes from fairly good jobs.
So for an American woman, if you have one kid too many, or if you time it wrong, or if you don’t have enough support at home, you take a career hit that drops your family’s wellbeing and hurts your kids.
The kids we are not having are the kids we couldn’t support properly in this America. Not kids we preferred our jobs over.
174
There is nothing logical about arguing that an unceasing growth of population is a good thing. How many people will fit on our planet -- does anyone know?
Then, there is the reality that jobs are disappearing. One small smart machine does the work of ten humans. On-line purchasing of every from soup to nuts, is closing the doors of retailers on every block in every town. We're running the mounds of stuff in our shopping carts through the automated cashiers and doing our own bagging. The office space that was filled with 50 desks sits empty because everyone is working at home. Self-driving cars. On-line education.
We are in big trouble today; we don't need to keep breeding more.
36
Why on earth would we want more babies on this overpopulated planet. To support the large population of elderly sounds like (and is) a nasty pyramid scheme that's bound to collapse, it already is. And where do you expect to find all of these bodies for those lucrative and fulfilling jobs babysitting the kids of people who want to work, presumably at better jobs. It's at the very least a strong possibility that more people will be wanting childcare then there will be workers who want to do it. Especially at the wages parents want to pay.
23
People need to trust that having a child affords the child as much of a chance for thriving in a safe, healthy, peaceful world as possible. In the current toxic dynamic, that vision is dark indeed. It'a a life, liberty, pursuit of happiness thing, and our leadership is trashing the whole of the country.
19
We don't need more babies. The country's, and the earth's, populations cannot increase forever. Growth has to be something other than ever more young people working to care for ever more old people.
27
Women have always been as intelligent and capable as men. Of course. The difference today is that women are as intelligent and capable as men, AND women are carving greater and greater spaces where their intelligence and capability can be put to productive, remunerated use.
Patriarchy cannot work in a world where equality of ability combines with equality of opportunity.
13
Are we or are we not concerned about the environment? The elemental reason for climate change is too many people. I guess it's easy for many of us to be environmentally conscious when our own sacred cows are not sacrificed.
32
You also did not mention health care. We absolutely need universal health care. I see no other path forward for providing a secure foundation for individuals and families. Health care insecurity is the great anchor on social mobility and development. Of course health care for all is not going to fly with the our white nationalist brethren, aka the Republican Party, for obvious reasons.
40
The double burden on women (working both in the home and outside the home) is an obvious factor. But let's add to that an economy that is creating good average numbers, but numbers that are skewed toward the top.
The median family income still hovers around $59,000, which once was a ticket to the middle class. But that income is strained by debt. This includes mortgages, student loans, car loans and personal loans.
The only way most families reach that income level is when both parents work in the salaried workforce. This reduces time with children and therefore reduces the number of children a typical family feels they can afford.
Today families are forced to choose between a modest middle-class lifestyle or a larger family. At the 1.7 birthrate it's clear many are making the choice based on economics.
23
Love your column, but I take issue with one point here: you keep saying women "want" both jobs and children, as if both were choices on a menu. Fact is, lots of women are like me: the only breadwinner in my household. I don't really have any options when it comes to holding a job. Bread is a need, not a want. Other working women are in two-earner households that can't make ends meet without both incomes. The number of children we have, however, is within our control, and children are wants, not needs. Your larger point, that economic stress impacts our choices, is absolutely correct; I just wish you hadn't phrased our situation as having more options than it does.
50
I have two children and have watched with increasing unease as the economic situation has worsened throughout my working lifetime (1974-2016). The hopes I have that my children will be better off than me have been dashed repeatedly. I see a declining number of workers as perhaps the only way that pay will finally rise. The greed that is the moving force behind the inequality in our society has shown no signs of abatement. The politicians are being legally bribed and those without wealth have no voice. That leaves only votes and given the rate of participation of the less fortunate, it does not bode well for the future of most children brought into the world going forward.
Aside from the quality of life issues that overpopulation brings, it is time to remember the environmental consequences of a world clamoring for the middle-class lifestyle that even in the wealthiest country on earth is becoming further out of reach. Re-ordering priorities to a more inclusive and sustainable state of affairs is more important than insuring a next crop of willing wage-slaves to prop up the status quo.
68
The relationship between overpopulation and environmental damage has been ignored since the 1970's, particularly among fans of the "borderless world" who can't fathom the downside of bringing in several hundred million immigrants from Africa and Asia and turning them into Western consumers.
Conversely, the rise of Asia is the "inclusive re-ordering of affairs" you seek, with outsourcing bringing down Western wage levels and raising Chinese and Indian wages. Inclusivity inevitably means more people will have to share limited resources, and is thus perfectly commensurate with your kids' dim prospects, I am sad to say.
10
Your ideas directly reflect Margaret Sanger's in Woman and the New Race. She's definitely controversial, but you might find it an interesting read given your views on population growth and underpaid labor.
4
It costs too much money to raise a child. There is no support from society. I don't know how people do it unless they have a household income of at least $100,000. When a small home costs $250,000, you have $50,000 in student debt, daycare costs $20,000, a small car costs $25,000, health insurance costs $18,000, how do you make ends meet? What are you supposed to use for money to buy food and clothes?
We put profits over people. It is more important to conservative run society to keep increasing Wall Street profits at the expense of being able to afford to raise a family.
So I disagree that patriarchy is the major cause of low birth rates. It's corporate profits that are driving it down. Men are just as responsible for the babies they create as the mother. It is certainly patriarchal that the financial burdens fall to the mother. But men run the corporations and make the laws. Hopefully, we can change who makes the laws in Nov. But so long as the so called pro family Republican party is in charge, family life will suffer and birth rates will be under pressure.
171
There are numerous problems associated with a declining birth rate, but none are as serious as those associated with a lack of decline. Even with the current global decline in fertility, ten billion people, all of them aspiring to an increased standard of living, will face a converging set of environmental calamities before the century is out.
Children born now have a life expectancy that takes them up to the end of the century. They will be part of a cohort trying to navigate life on a hotter, environmentally depleted Earth losing its coastal cities and suffering waves of human displacement that will make us long for the current ones. Most understand, at some level, the steadily worsening prospects for humanity, especially young people in their reproductive years.
It is true that the U.S. does a horrible job supporting its citizens, women in particular. When will we see an article linking a plea for support for women to the needs of families in an unfolding, increasingly harsh reality? The neoliberal consensus makes it either unthinkable or taboo to discuss a decline as anything but a brief hiccup on the ever-upward path of increasing affluence and technological nirvana.
37
Humans have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet.
3
It is an open secret that humans have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. Slightly less well known is that the carrying capacity declines steadily as the population increases. The combination points to a bad outcome, but that story is less appealing than, say, the self-driving car story. But more essential for people to hear.
Our society is not supportive of stable family life in general. My partner and I would like to adopt but because of the way the economy works, none of our jobs seem to last more than 2-3 years. I'm also working in a city two hours from where I live because that is where the job is, and I frequently have to stay over night there. How is that conducive to raising a child? Capitalism is really horrible for family and community life.
70
Then what do you propose, moving to Cuba? Even the social democracies of Europe require people to move for jobs.
1
You are right about everything, but adopt anyways. No matter what, you will be bringing a child into a better environment than the one he or she is in.The Great Recession sent me to the poverty line, but I don't for a second regret having adopted two kids. And for the record, I think complaining about the low birth rate in a country that has 100,000 plus "social orphans" waiting to be adopted is ridiculous.
12
People between 24 and 34 grew up in the Great Recession, couldn't get jobs, got bad jobs, had no heath care, got Obamacare and then saw it undermined, have large student loans, and now face stagnant wages.
Goldberg is right about lack of support and patriarchy factoring into women's decisions, but everyone in this cohort, men and women, saw what the system can do to individual lives and are now trying to find stability for themselves & their partners. Waiting (sometimes until it's too late) to have children is the cost they bear for living in a broken country.
106
I told my kids that I had 2.0 children and 1.7 wouldn’t do. I’ve taken care of the problem on my end and I suggest you do the same.
1
For one reason or another, probably for a number of reasons conscious and unconscious, the human animal is not sensing conditions conducive to reproduction in the environment.
110
Agreed. And it suggests a very interesting line of inquiry. How much human behavior is deeply, unconsciously instinctual and not consciously calculated at all?
17
We should not be looking to increase birth rates until we have implemented technologies to halt the use of fossil fuels as our principal source of energy. To the contrary, we need stronger campaigns for effective birth control on a global basis, something we aren't getting from the current administration and some major religions.
And even then, the world belongs to every species, not just humans.
And aren't our traffic jams bad enough already?
35
Our decision to have two rather than three children was mostly economic. Child care, medical care, summer care and later on, college are huge financial burdens due to the lack of government funding for basic needs. Neither of us earned enough income as educators to be stay at home parents. My husband and I have always a very egalitarian relationship. The problem was affordability.
82
I grew up in the 60's thinking not to have children because I did not trust the inequality of the family system. My father did not want my mother to work. We had little money. I hear this scenario from many of my friends. I had one children who is the love of my life. Ultimately I became a single mother something that was marginally doable with my education, the price of housing and day care opportunities. With extra jobs, I got her through college. She is raising a child in a world where nothing is safe. The current administration is progressively eroding the livelihood of americana with exorbitant college debt, the raising cost of housing and health insurance and God knows a diminished EPA. I worked near the Love Canal as a young person. Along with the day to day chaos of our government, do we want to live in this alternative world much less bring up children where guns, racial discrimination and a politically divisiveness seeks to disassemble society. And yes, males are often absent, unwilling to support children and or see the overwhelming role of mothers with children. Despite the joy of motherhood, children are a cost many can't afford.
35
A solid piece about how a country that claims to care about higher birthrates does much to disincentivize them.
Where it loses me a bit is at the end, with the discussion about the gap between the number of children women want compared to the number they're actually having. This smacks of the whole modern ethos of "having it all" which, to be clear, is something American women and men alike are culturally groomed to aspire to. But it shouldn't be immune to criticism. Yet, as a pillar of modern American ideology, it seems to always get a pass.
Maybe we do want five children. Maybe we do want to make $900,000 per year plus stock options. Maybe we'd like to live in an "it" city and have a summer house somewhere nice. It might not all be possible. That's okay. Why must we insist in the U.S. that all our wildest (usually material-based) dreams come true? Isn't there some virtue in NOT necessarily "having it all" but still being content, at peace, and able to find comfort pursuing ideals of more immanent value?
I'm afraid this "having it all" worldview has a bit of a toxic side. Individualism run amok...
29
1. How do we know that American women these days would really, given their druthers (short of enough money to hire full-time governesses), want more children? Is it possible that people have gotten pessimistic about the fate of humanity and have said 'enough, already'? Or are there yet alternative explanations besides financial resources?
2. Are Japan's recent steps (also a country with xenophobic fear of immigrants) to reverse it's own rapidly declining population succeeding? And if so would they work here?
10
My casual observation informs me that wealth has become a determining factor in the number of children a family has. In San Francisco where I live, having three or four kids seems like a measure of status, in an area where private schools cost upwards of $40K a year.
135
Agree. Ditto in Manhattan, Chicago, Atlanta, etc. “All over Manhattan, large families have become a status symbol. Four beautiful children named after kings and pieces of fruit are a way of saying, ‘I can afford a four-bedroom apartment and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in elementary-school tuition fees each year. How you livin’?” Tina Fey
35
Yes! Choose between children or career. If you choose both, you will never catch up to your childless peers work wise. You will fight scheduling in schools, medical care for your children, everything as life here is still predicated on one stay at home parent, and will have minimal help from the social network. Childcare is based on 9-6 which does not allow travel time added to a work day. While, your employers will discount your professionalism because you are a mom.
119
Spot on!
8
And, Michelle, what you didn’t say: as a mother of millennials, I can tell you that many of them are doubting wanting to bring children into Trump’s world, into this country. Many are seriously considering moving north (Canada) or east (Europe) if they want to have children. Reasons include economics, culture, and guns. We can’t avoid this situation..
385
Corporate culture has destroyed family values; time for the 99% to demand
Restoration of the 8-hour day for all and other pro-family policies: pay raises now, made possible by by current tax policies- $15/hour is grossly inadequate; tax increases on corporations & the top 20%;universal single payer healthcare; paid parental leave; increased availability of top quality day care & free education through college; affordable care for the disabled & for our aging population. Affordable housing, too.
Time for Democrats to claim & support these family values. Our sustainable future depends on the common good.
87
I am a grandmother of 4 between the ages of 19 and 23. The best thing about my kiddos is their absolute refusal to see color, gender or immigration status and their absolute commitment to their education and the freedom to travel and experience different cultures. They maintain social media contact with friends all over the world. The most difficult thing for me to hear however is that they don't want to bring children into this world of declining opportunity, financial inequity, and the fact that our current leader and those that support him are morally unfit. They are engaged in making the world a better place but not if we don't join them to alter the course of our current trajectory. They give me hope. VOTE
53
Or why boomers are moving in record numbers to Mexico. My 65 year old friend sold her (mortgaged) house in Colorado and moved to Ajijic, Mexico. There she paid cash for (new) very nice, 3 bedroom, 3 bath house. Utilities, electric, propane and water are less than $30.00 a month.
As she said: “if I stay (here in the US) I’ll never be able to afford to retire. My social security won’t even cover my $1,200 mortgage.”
32
Regarding the headline: The term "patriarchy" (originally, of course, meaning simply "rule by fathers") has become used for such a general set of grievances, that it is usually more obscuring than enlightening. One can argue that benefits to society would result from compelling employers to subsidize child-rearing, but I do not see why the path of leaving it to individuals and couples to decide whether an uninterrupted career or parenthood is more important to each of them is "rule by fathers" or more generally, men.
4
Having just read Margaret Sanger's Woman and The New Race this is an extremely interesting piece. Margaret Sanger (widely known as the founder of Planned Parenthood) argued that women should only bear children they can care for (finanically and otherwise) in an effort to eradicate prevalent evils of her time (maternal and infant death rates, child labor, easing of poverty for some examples). Her ideas touched on eugenics at several points similar to those mentioned in this article. It's been 100 years, but it seems the call to restrict childbearing and priotize quality over quantity is come to fruition. I am very curious to see how America actually responds.
I agree with other commentors that population growth is a rampant scourge on the planet. A stable economy and society should not depend on constant growth. Maybe we can work out both more support for mothers and a better system that doesnt need more input than output to sustain itself.
30
Healthcare, college tuition and child care. If these were affordable, people would have more children. If any one of these is beyond the reach of the typical consumer, it will reduce the number of children that people have. The go-it-alone, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps philosophy simply mitigates against having children which are a benefit to society generally and should, therefore, enjoy some support from the same.
83
The cost of housing in a neighborhood with good schools is also a big factor. There's an (increasingly?) limited number of such neighborhoods, and competition for a scarce good always drives up price.
17
It's easy to say that children are a benefit to society when you live in Delaware. Try paying the school taxes in New Jersey and you will become a believer in birth control.
6
We know the economic growth we are seeing right now has done little to help average working people as long as the patriarchy, as rightly pointed out by Ms. Goldberg, dominates politics. As long as that continues we will contine to see women's children's and families' families' needs ignored. Why is it so difficult to equate the need to work full time with an inability to raise a family? We all marched off to work in the seventies and found there was no safety net and never would be as long as the need for decent wages, medical care and child care was ignored? I regret forever that we had only one child, a lonely only, but we would have fallen off of our teetering and fragile economic ladder if I had had to miss work. We're still waiting, for the next generation and the next and I hope not the one after that, for this to become a decent, caring nation.
27
May I just add that European welfare systems and birth rates were structured to support natalism at the expense of women’s rights when the welfare state was established in its current form after Ww2. That is why the wage gap between professional men and women doesn’t decrease in Sweden in spite of long maternity (and also paternity) leave. If these systems now help women balance work and family (still women’s burden), that was not their intention and is not their aim now. Pleas stop romanticizing European social democracy! It is far better for leveling income inequality but at its core supports normative gender roles!
8
It’s all about lack of support and outright discrimination of mothers in the workplace. Childcare if you can find it is expensive. Meanwhile, employers (and not necessarily only male managers) expect women to return to work within a few weeks with no support (initial part time schedules, etc). With no support at all in the US, it no wonder women think long and hard.
35
If you think mothers are discriminated against in the work place, try being single. It's a lot harder to get family leave to care for parents, and there is no care for the elderly unless you are destitute, and they have already stolen your home. I support affordable Pre-K even for the very rich with my taxes. Care for my mother cost about 3 times what the Pre-K costs, even for billionaires.
PS: You can get sick leave to have a kid, but people can't get sick leave if they have cancer.
16
With one in college and one a year from high school my divorce led to my full time care of the younger and the majority of college costs of the older. My ex was making slightly more and got a significant majority of the assets. The younger stayed with me exclusively and the older moved in after graduating from an excellent university out of the country. I took on a second source of income. Usually its the woman who maintains child care and they are increasingly earning the majority of income. Why would one want more children when it increasingly more expensive and househols with only one income earner are losing their ability to to maintain a healthy lifestyle. If women have to work and jobs are stingy with every little benefit we are lucky to have any children. Now, I provide 2 days a week day care for my grandchild and a small amount to his 529. We don't even provide children with the necessary education to become productive contributors to our economy.
30
Population increase and the concept of growth itself are male ideas. Male societies need workers and especially more soldiers to overcome other male societies. Fathers wanted big families to provide more in house labor, a choice of male heirs and to show off their virility. In Nature female form species find balance with other female species. In the human world men seek to displace each other using children as weapons and pawns.
A woman based human society where family names are passed down from mother to daughter would soon find an ecological balance with the natural world. Families would become inclusive nurturing home places instead of competing independent non-sharing entities.
A whole new world right in plain sight, not based on population or economic growth.
53
Interesting theory. Not too sure how reality-based it is.
4
"Reality" is also a male construct tied implicitly to "progress" and "growth".
yeah...no. "Nature" overproduces ALL the time (non-human population explosions) and just lets starvation and strife kill off the excess. On the other hand, human women make rational choices, often driven by a hard look at economic resources.
2
This correlation is a complete stretch and ignores the cultural and other differences that exist between societies. In 1st world nations, Japan has one of the lowest birthrates and hardly a social regime hardly defined as less Patriarchy. China had an imposed restriction on births but once the one child policy was lifted, there has not been a dramatic increase in births because young families are valuing their independence rather than large families, something inconsistent with 4000 years of history. Denmark is considered the most progressive country and yet boasts a birthrate of 1.69. They are running sex campaigns to try and boost the birthrate. In fact, it appears that the real culprit is being in the first world and a level of desire among the enlightened that having small or no families gives the individual more time for themselves, a rather self-centered approach to life afford by circumstances
4
Disagree totally. Very expensive to have kids in the US. My grandson’s day care in affordable Atlanta is $16,000.00 a year. Then add in health care, living in a neighborhood with decent schools( housing premium of $50-100,000.00 extra), food , clothing- kids are very expensive. Actually luxury items. Good employer health insurance does not cover all the expensive of the birth- need an extra $5,000.00 just for the delivery.
25
Patrice, There is no doubt that kids are expensive - I have four. However, societal norms have changed re-prioritizing matters of spend. I see it between the time that I grew up and my kids. Houses have increased in size about 50%, "necessities" now include cell phones, cable TV (many tv's in the house), multiple cars in a HH, afterschool programs and designer everything. I grew up in a comfortable circumstances which included 1 shared car that would last 10 years, no central air, hand me downs from Sears, and virtually nothing you might consider fancy and I was upper middle class. Today, what passes as required for life crowds out children quickly
I would argue that deciding to have children is just as self-centered as deciding not to have children...
6
In the past few years I have become acutely aware of an affluent trend towards large families. Children have become status symbols, like a Range Rover or a Mara Lago membership. Short black school busses (SUVs) with stick figure families brag about fertility and flaunt gigantic carbon footprints.
I appreciate the criticisms that Goldberg raises about US policies on reproduction and child rearing. They are valid concerns, but the underlying question, "Want More Babies?" is disturbing. If we need more money to fund our aging population, adding more to the population is only adding insult to injury. Taxing wealth seems the more prudent answer.
176
Taxing wealth is only possible when wealth is created in the first place. That occurs only through growth, first and foremost population growth.
3
Kids are definitely a luxury item- just to cover basic expenses is hard.
29
HMI - I hope you are not buying into that long-disproven trickle-down "job creators" myth. Plenty of wealth is being, and has been, created and not taxed. Witness the carried interest loophole for the most egregious example. How about a transaction tax which would eliminate day-trade extremely short-term computerized stock gain skimming? How about removing the upper limit on Social Security tax? Untaxed wealth is the root of the income inequality problem we have in this country today. Witness the most recent tax heist by the GOP, which has only aggravated the problem.
2
Parenthood has many huge economic costs. Two of the largest are child care and college education. Then there is the cost of time. activities, medical appointments, sports etc.. Increased population increases the cost of many essentials, particularly housing.
Many articles I've read recently point out that marriage rates are much lower for those without college degrees. Not a mystery since their incomes are very much lower.
It isn't clear to me at all that more babies are a good thing. We have finite natural resources and housing in urban areas has become exceedingly costly. However, if it is desirable to have more babies, our economic priorities have to be drastically altered, a most unlikely possibility.
32
It would be enlightening to see some references to peer-reviewed sociology articles, ones employing robust statistical analyses, as to what the various factors (variables) may be with fluctuations in birthrates, both domestically and globally. Developing a good questionnaire for couples and properly disseminating it would be a fruitful start. For example, I suspect many people simply may not want to bring children into this world at present, regardless of the societal obstacles that they face. I have no way of folding such a possibility into the conclusions of this column.
8
I suspect that lower birth rates in developed countries has to do with the opportunity cost of having a child in your twenties. During their twenties most couples are going to school and establishing careers. Many couples cannot support a child, either economically or lifestyle wise, until their early thirties. By that time it is mathematically difficult to have more than one or two kids before the woman is physically incapable of having more children.
Progressive childcare policies are then likely to raise the birth rate for couples delaying children for purely economic reasons, but shouldn't affect women deferring children for educational/ professional reasons. As education becomes increasingly valuable this trend is likely to continue.
9
Just as automation and AI will force us to rethink the idea that people will work until they retire at 65, lower birthrates will force us to rethink work as the primary source of resource allocation.
We won't have kids to support us, and we won't have jobs either.
Women should not be responsible to bear - and I mean that word literally - the cost of the future. When we have children, we generally bear the cost, in terms of wage stability and wage growth; responsibility for childcare, illness, school work and the overall running of the house. Women who raise kids can't afford to be laid off at 50 because they have timed out economically for an employer. We can only afford ageism or sexism. We can't afford both.
57
Fifty years ago families could afford rent food and transportation on a single salary and a parent could stay home while the kids were young if they so choose. Today something like 40% of families struggle to pay for food, rent and transportation. Day care costs can eat up most of one salary. It’s not about the patriarchy. It’s about wages.
116
Well, 60 years ago my parents did it for a family of 4 on one modest income. Of course, that meant a 3 bedroom ranch house with one small bathroom, one phone line, 7 TV channels for the single TV, one car to drop my father at the station and then go grocery shopping, and staycations with the occasional trip to the beach, and eating out maybe a dozen times a year. I see few eager to re-enlist for this regime in 2018.
29
Ugh, you sound like my mother, who thinks that my financial woes will be solved by canceling Netflix. Yeah, that $10/month is really sinking me.
The problem is that luxuries are cheap now. It's the necessities that are out of reach.
I think Mary, HMI, and Abby all have a point. On one hand, income increases have been heavily tilted to the rich, leaving the working and middle classes struggling more and more to manage to have a basic but decent lifestyle. Unfortunately, at the same time, what is available for us to spend our money on has gone way up. From 1950 to 1959, the average size of new homes was 1112 sq. ft.; from 2005 to 2014, it was 2501 sq. ft. Meanwhile, family size was decreasing, so that the space per person was increasing at an even greater rate. Houses had only one or one and a half baths. There was one telephone per household (and it was black, with a dial); some people still had party lines and long distance calls were reserved for only the most serious news. Vacations were a week to two weeks and were usually taken within a relatively short drive of home; most people had never been on an airplane. At the beginning of the 1950s, only a few people had even one television. Most families had only one car. And as those of us living in older homes can attest, closets were small and limited which confirms there was a lot less "stuff" to put in them. Going out to eat was a special treat.
Our expectations of what a constitutes an ordinary middle class lifestyle have gone up considerably at the same time that wages have been, at best, stagnant for most of us. Meanwhile incomes across our entire population have become more and more unequal. It didn't have to be that way.
It's not the lack of support for working mothers as much as it is the lack of support for people in general. Any young couple that sees they'll need to save an extra $250,000 over the next 18 years so their kid (singular) can go to college might rightly think twice about it. Look on the bright side: fewer people is good news for the overpopulated earth (it's only bad news for our pyramid scheme economy.)
155
A very thorough and accurate analysis, in my opinion, save for one thing: the author's estimation of Prime Minister Abe's 'womenomics' is grossly overstated.
It has been largely a PR campaign with no real substance, let alone ongoing effort, that might change the long standing patriarchal elements of the society. The number of new childcare programs opened up in the last few years hardly scratches the surface of what is needed. There are not any more significant numbers of women in executive or supervisory positions in corporate Japan now than there were a few years ago. Abe himself has not put more women on his Cabinet. Neither has he instructed ministries in his government to promote more women into management positions. Finally, nothing substantial has been done to pay women in a more equal way. They continue to make 70% of what men do. As young mothers returning to work after the birth their child(ren) they continue to get disproportionately hired into lower paying so called temporary part time employment where their benefits and job security are less than that of men.
9
I'm wondering about the interplay between declining birth rate and an increasingly superfluous workforce due to automation. If many of today's jobs (I've seen the estimate of 30%, for example) will disappear in the next 20-30 years, but productivity will stay the same or increase, won't we want a smaller (but more educated, I assume) workforce? (Honest question.)
I'm sure this is a thorny economic problem with lots of uncertainty. One thing that is certain is that our planet strains already to support the population we have. Not sure replacing ourselves should be a goal unto itself (though I'm all for more supportive policies for working mothers).
34
Working for an employer would seem to be an impediment.
3
.... And if you don't, the money comes from where? For most families it takes two parents to pay the bills, if there even is a second parent in the picture.
3
I'm conflicted as I read this piece. On one hand I believe that mankind needs to hit the brakes with respect to population growth. The planet simply can't sustain 7+ billion humans. On the other hand, I'm currently living in Sweden and I see first hand the benefits of a family friendly society & culture. However, I can't see America adopting anything close to Sweden without considerably more women holding public office.
261
Please don’t use the word “mankind”. It’s an outdated and sexist word that assumes men to be the default.
5
So is the birth rate in Sweden going up as a result, or is it just more social comfort due to these policies?
4
A lot of comments about sexism and ageism.
Which one is it? I'm sure it's the males fault the birth rate is so low and if that's the case I'll take the blame.
2
The 3 European countries with the best family support - France, Norway and Sweden, as identified by Ms. Goldberg - all have low birth rates. France is slightly higher than the US, but is at a 40 year low. Norway’s birth rate is lower than that of the US. And Sweden is about the same as we are. Google it yourself if you don’t believe me.
So the premise that good family care encourages births is unproven here. Moreover France is planning to cut benefits because they are breaking the bank.
Based on my daughter and her friends, I would guess that the real problem is that young couples prefer puppies to babies.
18
Why is preferring puppies a problem? Children are destroying the environment. Even Japan had a problem with baby diapers, and we have a real problem with excessive school busing.
1
Exactly. This piece makes no sense. Spain also has great post natal benefits but the lowest birthdate in Europe. What do you say to these facts Michelle?
4
If you look at it objectively and logically, motherhood is not a good deal for women. That becomes very clear to women with the first child. If society wants them to have more than one, then society is going to have to increase support. I don't expect that to be happening any time soon. What I do expect to happen is the historical norm is going to be inverted: the upper classes will have more children and the lower classes will have fewer.
196
It is already happening. The big trend among NYC finance bros is to get yourself a stay at home wife and a nanny to help and sire four, five, six kids. It’s very much a status symbol now in that circle.
31
In the short run, having children is pretty financially devastating. And personally--it's endless labor for years.
In the long run (think, old age) it's nice to have children and grandchildren.
But as a culture, we can't think beyond a couple of months it seems.
14
Assuming that the lower classes have access to cotraception. In trump land that is no longer a certainty.
26
One might imagine that our elected representatives in Congress would consider legislation that improves the lives of average Americans and furthers national causes like maintaining an adequate birth rate to be very important. But one would obviously be wrong to think that. It’s hardly hyperbole to say that in the minds of many of our representatives, corporations have more rights and are more deserving of legislative attention than women are. So don’t hold your breath waiting for greater support for working women. It’s tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts all the time, with no room for concern about families unless there’s political gain to be had by fomenting fear and loathing. That’s why unconstitutional anti-abortion measures will always be more popular in state capitals and Washington than measures that actually help people.
48
Corporations don't care about workers as people, only as slot-fillers to support their needs. A childless person fits their needs better if it means the worker will be less likely to need a few hours off some morning to take the kid to the pediatrician, or to work from home (when that's possible) because the kid has the flu. As such, when a mother complains about the difficulty of being a working mom, or on the impediments placed on her career advancement, it's considered her fault for wanting to have kids rather than devote her life to the corporation.
4
Our decision to have just one child wasn’t as much about the money as it was about managing the logistics. Everything is structured based on the assumption that the mother is home full time - drop off, pick up, parent teacher conferences, half days, summer holidays, and on and on. We made it work for one, but couldn’t imagine it for two!
270
Right on. Schools still take the summers off, there are several vacations during the school year, you have to get to the parent conference at 11 am, etc.
But also, don’t many kids still spend time unsupervised — walking back and forth to school, hanging out with other kids, playing, etc. How does this fit in? What populations are we measuring?
12
We call this "the conspiracy against working mothers". Want to send your kid to summer camp? Pay extra for the early drop off and after camp time (assuming that the extended times will allow you to get to work on time or not force you to leave work early). Want to send your kid to something other than public school? Assuming you can afford it, you will still have the same schedule concerns along with the need to provide daily transportation to and from the school.
I recently gave up my corporate employment and switched to teaching. My pay is about half what it could be, but my vacation schedule is now in sync with my child's school. Changing careers and giving up that much potential income was only possible thanks to 20 years of living well below our income. It also removes an experienced employee from the workforce. I proposed 3/4 time schedules at every place I used to work but never got anywhere with it.
All you said and then add to it the social pressures to take each child to sports, music, dance lessons, etc full time. it's no wonder they were trying to put washing machines in cars. it's crazy today even if you are a stay at home mom. I know. I did it. I only borrowed 12K for college too. It's nearly impossible nowadays.
17
Three things:
1) What you say is of real concern. That said...
2) "[T]he baby bust could be a sign of the same sort of sweeping despair that has been linked to America’s decreasing life expectancy." Maybe. Or it could be linked to America's increasing anxiety over the future. Who wants to bring children into an America overrun by "Mexican rapists," where cities are wastelands of carnage, where climate change is denied and the government turns institutions that once served the public into instruments to harm the public.
Trump is not guilty of a hostile takeover, rather he was chosen to lead a party that has been harming work-a-day Americans for decades, suppressing our wages and recruiting us for non-ending wars.
3) "Several commentators have described the plunge as a mystery, particularly since we’re in a period of economic growth." That is really laughable.
Americans of childbirth age just survived the Great Bush Recession. Their understanding of the world formed during a period in which parents, uncles, aunts, friends lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their dignity. They saw how those responsible on Wall Street prospered while others suffered.
The economic recovery from 2008 has been slow for which Republicans have blamed Democrats who saved the country from a complete economic collapse. Nevertheless, Democrats fought on and the economy recovered...but left the work-a-day American behind.
Economic growth has not meant rising wages, benefits or job security.
288
Democrats did not leave "the work-a-day American behind. " A republican controlled Congress did that and is still doing that and its accelerated with out a Democrat in the WH to slow them down.
50
terrie smith...spot on! Due to the limited space in the NYT and the passion that some op-eds generate, there is not sufficient time to get the wording precise. Thank you for making the clarification.
Along the same line, the economic recovery dragged on and was anemic because Republicans fought President Obama and Democrats.
It is rich that Republicans point to the fact that Democrats could not achieve a more robust recovery when they were in power. Too many Americans, especially Republicans, don't know enough about our government to understand that unless you have a filibuster proof control of Congress you can accomplish little when the party out of control has made it its mission to make you fail. Mitch McConnell is no patriot, nor are Republicans in Congress who have bargained with the devil to change America into a deplorable republic where deplorable people make a mockery of democracy.
I am retired and have had to put my life on hold to live with my daughter and her family to care for my new granddaughter while both her parents work. My daughter told me that they would have to sell their house and move into a small apartment to afford to pay for infant care if I was not helping them. Her and her husband are both college graduates and live in a modest home with only one car. Their lives are soooooo hard and that’s with my help. The USA is short sighted....if we do not help hard working young families to thrive....they will be forced to forgo parenthood. Not willingly.....they will have no choice.
485
In 2010 my wife and I moved 300+ miles in order to live closer to and to be of help to our daughter and son in law in raising their infant daughter. We enjoy many aspects of our new lives here in a larger, more diverse, and more interesting community. And we treasure the relationship we have with our granddaughter. BUT we did it largely in order to help our adult 'kids' continue to pursue their own careers and to financially afford being able to have at least one child. Even with our support and encouragement that we would help with a second child they decided to only have one child. Such is life for many two working adults in life today in the USA.
129
Think of it as an economic means of population control. The 10% can have children, they want the rest of us to vanish.
32
"they will be forced to forgo parenthood"
Exactly what is needed, world wide.
17
The real reason of plunging birth rate is severe economic anxiety coupled with lack of health insurance due to job loss. Trump will get re-elected simply because he has promised more job opportunities for locals with immigration reform. Maybe, with better economic security will come baby boom.
13
Employers are screaming for workers now but guess what they do not want to raise salaries!
You need a very good salary to afford a baby. Remember conservatives do not want to help poor or middle class families. Babies have become a luxury item - look to the rich to have all the babies.
8
When Reagan became president and we realized that it was the beginning of the fall of the US, my husband and I quickly realized that having children would be a horrific mistake for us and them. Best decision we ever made. We were able to retire early with a hefty savings account.
Besides humans have dangerously overpopulated this planet and we will pay dearly for it.
70
Some may desire more in life than retiring early with a hefty savings account. People have different values and goals.
9
The trend is likely to reverse itself if fewer women have access to family planning services due to Trump administration's policies, at least among teenagers and lower SES populations. They will provide
4
Yes that is true but it will be lower income women who will need even more help as any woman of means will leave the country to control her family size
Daycare costs more than my rent! My husband and I both work at organizations without paid parental leave! And did I mention student loans? Like most of our peers, student loan numbers for bachelors plus post-grad degrees are mind numbing. No surprise people are delaying and then having fewer kids.
378
There’s no law against planning ahead. I couldn’t afford Philly for the same reasosns as you. So I moved to Phoenix and I had the kids and I paid off my loans. Maybe the real problem is that you don’t want kids that much.
4
Please. The salary differential in smaller cities, plus the need for each household to own multiple cars, actually makes smaller cities more expensive in most cases. If you have children knowing that you cannot offer them a decent life in a very challenging global economy, maybe you want kids for very selfish reasons.
I agree that supporting women/mothers is important but a falling birth rate isn't an issue! There are ENOUGH people on the planet. The natural world is suffering as a direct result of too many humans and too much of a strain on resources. Instead of hand wringing about a falling birth rate, let's make sure all the children who are hear are well taken care of and reduce our collective impact on the environment.
145
While I do agree with you on the surface - there's just too many people! - there are some serious and difficult economic problems that are tied to falling populations. Deflation being the most catastrophic and unavoidable downward spiral (e.g. Japan in the 90s/aughts). Additionally, when birth rates fall, it typically is the families with the lowest education rates and incomes that continue to have the most children. So not only does our population shrink, but the population also becomes lower income and less educated.
I absolutely agree that we must care for the planet - because it is the medium in which the human race exists. I just would warn against so cavalierly calling for limiting the existence of the human race. I believe that is putting the cart before the horse.
15
What exactly is the downward spiral that has happened in Japan? Are there people dying from malnutrition, disease, etc...? GDP is not an indicator of health. In fact, our drive for growth is a large reason for our current climate crisis.
And lower income and less educated- this gets to the heart of why some are often worried- 'will 'those people' be as good as us?' 'Can 'they' ever rise to the same intellect and material prosperity?'. 'Are 'we' dooming ourselves to destruction because 'they' just don't have it in them?'
Having children or not has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with money. If my husband and I had not had well-paying jobs and (as a result) access to quality child care, there is no way we would have our sons today.
68
For some people, it's about money. For others, it's about their religious beliefs. You cannot extrapolate the reasons for your choices to all other people.
3
Our country is controlled by a party that sells a bill of goods around religious and conservative values, but then in office, legislate only for the whims of the wealthy. Yet many voters choose this false promise in large ratios, year after year. With the recent tax cut, there's no way we will ever be able to fund programs like in Europe. We're dead in the water on this one.
440
The argument for government funded, more expansive child care should be economic first, the same way universal health care should be. Sometimes the government actually does do a more efficient job than the private sector- especially when performing tasks that are very widely needed and fundamentally the same product.
While this article touts the success of governments that provide better services for working mothers, no mention is made of the actual numbers of increased birth rates. I suspect they are modest.
However, human capital is a nation's greatest renewable resource, and services that increase the ability of talented mothers to perform in the workforce, while also allowing the raising of well adjusted children is a huge bonus for the economy as well as social well-being.
If we fail in the U.S. to produce enough babies to sustain the economy, at least there are still a lot of people from other lands willing to fill the vacancies. Gee, so maybe immigration really helps native born Americans.
That being said, I will be happy if our human population has peaked in the U.S. Enough is enough- lets leave some room for the other creatures that make this land their home. The best way to save the planet is to reduce the human population that plagues it.
161
You want talented mothers in the work force raising well adjusted children. Dads are not mentioned. I guess they lack talent and are poorly adjusted, so they should stay out of the way.
12
Have to agree with you. Why is the Trump administration so intent upon closing Planned Parent facilities? Who is going to care for and educate all these babies? I'm in favor of good, universal child care, early education and medical care, but not because it will permit people to have more children than they would otherwise. We need to care for the children we have, regardless of parentage.
25
michjas writes, "Dads are not mentioned. I guess they lack talent and are poorly adjusted,"
Dad's are not mentioned because to this day most of the burden of child care falls on mothers, including working mothers.
Your comment suggests insecurity about the future of men in our society. I know how you feel- I'm feeling pretty guilty about the results of male hierarchy lately too- it looks like it's time for an Icelandic feminist revolution in the good old USA.
Probably our only hope.