Noah Millman has offered a thoughtful, clarifying reply to Ross Douthat’s column on declining fertility. Among a host of helpful qualifications and questions, Millman wonders if it really makes sense to speak of a “child-centered” family life:
Douthat talks about a cultural shift away from “child-centered” family life, but again I suspect he’s got causality backwards. How “child-centered” was family life in the 18th century, the period when children were apprenticed out as soon as they were old enough to physically manage the work? And yet, this was a period of phenomenal fertility in America – because arable land was extraordinarily cheap. Douthat tracks a change from 1990 to 2007 in people’s attitudes toward the importance of children for a successful marriage, but American fertility hasn’t declined precipitously since 1990; it has fluctuated around a relatively stable level since the mid-1970s. Instead, what’s happened is that the culture has, over time, adjusted to the way people are actually living. And they are living with smaller families, on average.
Millman has a point. The classical Protestant, bourgeois, American family that passed down to us maxims like “Children should be seen and not heard” would probably hesitate to call itself “child-centered.” Christ-centered, maybe (at least in more devout quarters). Devoted to the mother and respectful of the father, definitely. But child-centered, probably not.
It’s also true that fertility has fallen more or less steadily since the colonial period. The introduction of the pill, as much as it altered our public mores, didn’t do much to alter demographic trends. Between 1800 and 1900 fertility for whites is estimated to have dropped from 7 percent to about 3.5 percent. From 1900 to 2000—the era that saw the introduction of the pill, rock’n'roll, and all that—the birth rate dropped only another 1.5 percentage points, to slightly above 2 percent. So, not more or less over time, but rather less full stop.
Yet in focusing on the phrase “child-centered,” I think Millman is missing Ross’ more basic point. Declining fertility means not just fewer children, but much less rich and complex family structures in general. A culture in which one’s parents have one or no siblings is one very nearly without aunts and uncles. The University of Maine’s Robert Milardo has called these “the forgotten kin” arguing that “aunts and uncles complement the work of parents, sometimes act as second parents, and sometimes form entirely unique brands of intimacy.”
It will also be a culture in which children are likely to see less of their grandparents. Parents in high-fertility cultures have more reason to stay close to grandparents whose uncompensated (but nonetheless rewarding, yes?) work babysitting becomes much less necessary if there are only one or two well-timed grandchildren.
And this oversight is what makes possible Millman’s suggestion—perfectly reasonable given his views, but nonetheless stunning—that for a nation facing declining fertility “the most obvious solution is to export its elderly to retirement colonies in countries with a large and substantially under-employed youthful labor force, such as India.”
Millman is proposing, in the parlance of the Republican primary, self-deporting seniors. Now, this isn’t necessarily as radical as it first appears. After all, if grandma and grandpa have already moved from Poughkeepsie to Miami-Dade, would it make much difference if they went a couple hundred more miles to, say, a liberalized Cuba? Well, yes. As the Euro crisis has shown, whether logically or not, national borders define our circle of solidarity. To send one’s elders overseas makes plain and explicit a kind of neglect with which we may already have become too comfortable.
That we are even entertaining such proposals, let alone calling them “the most obvious solution” reveals a massive blindspot in the neoliberal view to which Millman ascribes. Meaning in life derives not just from wealth achieved by the efficient allocation of resources, or of retirees. It also comes from the network of relations with those older and younger that gives us a sense of continuity and community. This is not to say that with bigger families life is necessarily happier, but instead that it is richer, denser. What happiness we have will be more widely and immediately shared, as with our sorrow. One need not think this the highest or only value to be alarmed at how utterly absent it is from the neoliberal view.
December 7th, 2012 | 12:12 pm
“How “child-centered” was family life in the 18th century, the period when children were apprenticed out as soon as they were old enough to physically manage the work?”
Far more child-centered than our times when childhood is thought to extend interminably and you have people in their 20′s who are still unfamilliar with employment, and this is so prevalent that “children” are mandated to be eligible to remain on their parent’s health insurance until age 26.
Nobody questions a bear’s devotion to it’s young, but when reared, it still dispatches its cubs up a tree to attain independence.
“Children should be seen and not heard”
That’s a (largely ideal and illusory) standard of deportment, and a statement of authority, rather than some general indifference to children.
December 7th, 2012 | 1:31 pm
I would say we’ve become more “inner-child” centered.
December 7th, 2012 | 1:47 pm
This reminds me of conversations that I have had about the significance of “place” in our lives. Of how, for instance, from where I now stand I can point in every direction and each direction has played a role in my life. My Mother lives there, thats where I met MaryLou, that’s where I grew up, went to school, camped, had my first job. That way is where my sister, brother ,best friend etc. lived and live and there is where my Father and Brother are buried. There is a geography to life that helps us make sense of our lives and in a way is an extention of ourselves.
I am sure that this notion is stifling to some and some make great efforts to escape it however for most I would think there is comfort, whether recognized or not, in knowing where one is. We are not potted plants whose needs are : a warm spot in the sun and someone to water us.
An aside, we are a highly mobile society and we are an angst filled society. I wonder if there is a relationship between the two.
December 7th, 2012 | 2:52 pm
“A child should always say what’s true
and speak when he is spoken to
and behave mannerly at table
at least so far as he is able.”
“When I am grown to man’s estate
I shall be very proud and great
and tell the other girls and boys
not to meddle with my toys.”
Robert Louis Stevenson – whose childhood was far, far from perfect but who was able to make sense of life through his experiences in the small, deeply flawed but still his human civilization that is the natural family.
December 7th, 2012 | 6:13 pm
The eighteenth century family wasn’t monolithic anymore than today’s is. Culture makes a difference. Quakers tended to value children very much. Puritans, which he seems to be talking about maybe to exclusion, were maybe a tad more suspicious of children. Temperament also makes a difference. Some parents were indifferent to kids or only cared about them in terms of having more workers. Others were more loving.
I do think he’s likely right that calling it “child-centered” is somewhat misleading or at least the phrase calls to mind ideas mostly of the modern age. “Family centered” or even “Parent centered” might be more appropriate. Children were part of the family. They rarely or never ruled it and the role their part took could, at times, be more like that of employees in our parlance. Children were not as rare or expensive as today so generally I think they were not glorified quite as much. But the idea of family as the center of things was pretty common to universal in much of the world until maybe the 1920s.
December 7th, 2012 | 8:38 pm
[...] sometimes act as second parents, and sometimes form entirely unique brands of intimacy.”–more /* /* Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: children will listen, I don't believe in modern [...]
December 9th, 2012 | 9:12 pm
> It’s also true that fertility has fallen more or less steadily since the colonial period. The introduction of the pill, as much as it altered our public mores, didn’t do much to alter demographic trends. Between 1800 and 1900 fertility for whites is estimated to have dropped from 7 percent to about 3.5 percent. From 1900 to 2000—the era that saw the introduction of the pill, rock’n’roll, and all that—the birth rate dropped only another 1.5 percentage points, to slightly above 2 percent. So, not more or less over time, but rather less full stop.
According to the linked study, these rates are not percentages but rather expected births per woman (see footnote c on Table 1). I don’t think this has a huge impact on Matthew’s argument, but it does weaken it — 1.5 births per woman is rather larger than a 1.5% shift in some fertility rate.
December 12th, 2012 | 2:52 pm
[...] Matthew Schmitz puts it, “it is not that with bigger families life is necessarily happier, but instead that it is [...]
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