Continuing the debate over fertility and decadence that Matthew Schmitz has mentioned on this blog, Samuel Goldman suggests that underlying the low birth rates of wealthy nations is not just selfishness but a very high estimation of the requirements of parenting. The occasion for his post is a report on the low birthrate of Germany. Goldman writes:
While Germans expect relatively small personal and social benefits from childbearing, they see childrearing as an extremely intensive activity. That makes family a low-reward, high-investment arrangement. With these attitudes, it’s no wonder that they have few children.
However, he continues:
It’s not that Germans don’t care enough about the future to have babies. In a sense, the problem is that they care too much: children seem like an unacceptable burden precisely because Germans (especially German women) place so much emphasis on being good parents.
He then examines the changing standards for parenting in the United States and concludes:
If high expectations for responsible parenting are important obstacles to reproduction, the social changes needed to promote fertility might be counterintuitive. Rather than encouraging people to value children more highly, advocates for family like Douthat might have more success if they argued that children are not such a big deal.
Research on fertility and parenting styles in the U.S. suggests that Goldman could be right: Declining fertility rates not just in Germany but also here may be partially explained by an ever-rising standard of parenting.
It seems significant (though correlation is not causation, etc.) that more educated women have fewer children and that middle-class parents spend more time and energy on their kids than working-class and poor parents do. Judging by the articles on parenting—like this one (language warning)—that my friends share on Facebook, people struggle to live up to today’s high-intensity ideal.
So Goldman’s suggestion that family advocates should argue that “children are not such a big deal” seems wise. One resource for making this argument would be economist Bryan Caplan’s recent book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. In his Wall Street Journal review of the book, Jonathan Last provided this summary:
Analyzing scads of research on the effects of nature and nurture in child-rearing, [Caplan] determines that, as a matter of both time and money, “children cost far less than parents pay, because parents overcharge themselves.” Parents take it upon themselves to constantly entertain and “enrich” their kids with a course-catalog of activities (Capoeira, violin, Mandarin lessons) in a desperate effort to give them “the best” and set them on the path to a triumphant adulthood. But it turns out that parenting has almost no effect on children’s life expectancy, intelligence, happiness or success. . . .
[Moreover,] if you are a reasonably well-adjusted and happy person, your kids probably will be, too. All of which means that parents don’t need to invest nearly as much time and energy in parenting as they think they need to.
Social conservatives and natalists, take note: Instead of accusing your fellow Americans of selfishness, convince them that raising kids may be less difficult than they think.
December 19th, 2012 | 3:55 pm
“convince them that raising kids may be less difficult than they think.”
It would be very difficult to convince any parent that has kids that this is the case. Raising kids is incredibly difficult. The difficulty has nothing to do with keeping up with the Jones family.
As a parent, you get up in the morning. You get yourself ready for work. You get your kids ready for school which requires feeding and dressing them. You go to work. You work 8–10 hours. You go home. You talk with your kids. You make dinner. You help them with homework. You play with them. You put them to bed.
After this, you might have 30 minutes to an hour of time before you get yourself to bed to start this over again.
You can obviously scrimp time here and there away from the talking, praying with and playing with the kids by putting them in front of a television, video game, or other time waster. But you do so to the detriment of your kids. That’s the hard part.
If you become a parent, you really need to transform your life to be about someone else. You need to enjoy being with your child, because you’ll not have a lot of time to enjoy other things until they are old enough to enjoy those things with you or do their own things. This is just a fact. This is what makes it hard to be a parent, not some silly notion of competitive parenting.
December 19th, 2012 | 4:17 pm
It depends on the age. our kids our elementary school age, and go to bed at 8, while I go down at 10 and get up at 6. So I have 2 hours. As they get older, they will stay up later, but when I was a kid my parents didn’t help me with my homework or play with me on school nights. If I had extra time, they sent me outside to find something to do. We talked and prayed, but there was no intensive hours-long burden at least from my perspective. Maybe we are putting these expectations on ourselves, instead of perceiving them in our kids?
December 19th, 2012 | 4:36 pm
And so that I’m not just complaining; the better solution for letting people know how important it is to have children is to show the love you have for your children and the love they have for you. This love is a reflection of God’s love and a love that everyone desires.
There is no better advertisement than that.
December 19th, 2012 | 4:51 pm
As a parent of five, I’ll say that what is often overlooked is the transformative effect the first child has on the new parents and their worldview. I liken my own before & after selves to a larva and a butterfly: not just change, but metamorphosis. Being a parent seemed like a much bigger deal before I became a parent.
December 19th, 2012 | 4:53 pm
Martin Luther: “But the greatest good in married life, that which makes all suffering and labor worth while, is that God grants offspring and commands that they be brought up to worship and serve him. In all the world this is the noblest and most precious work, because to God there can be nothing dearer than the salvation of souls.”
December 19th, 2012 | 5:22 pm
I agree. I think the same holds true for getting married to begin with – people are so concerned with finding the perfect person that they get paralyzed. Or perhaps selfishness and perfectionism go together – people may be aware that parenting “properly” will demand more of them than they care to give. But I agree with Christian that transformation is a positive thing. Fun fact – the final chapter of the book “A Clockwork Orange” has Alex having a child and having his entire worldview transformed. (Something that the movie adaptation conveniently left out, ending instead on a note of totally selfish indulgence.)
December 19th, 2012 | 5:25 pm
It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: if more people had more than one or two children, the expectations of helicoptering over their every move and driving them to multiple official functions (mainly so they can spend time with other kids) would be less prevalent.
December 19th, 2012 | 5:44 pm
“Social conservatives and natalists, take note: Instead of accusing your fellow Americans of selfishness, convince them that raising kids may be less difficult than they think.”
If someone wants to have more people in the United States, all one has to do is make it easier for individuals who want to immigrate to this country to do so, not to mention legalizing all the illegal ones who are currently in the US.
The current natality discourse in many Western countries is horrendous – it’s like hearing some speech on needing more Aryan babies, while insisting on excluding from society the (sub-human) Others.
And it’s one more example underscoring what an international apartheid system we live in.
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Also, I totally agree with the description given of how Germans view parenting, which goes for many Europeans, and other Westernized adults elsewhere.
Not only are people very concerned with the personal and time investment they will need to make in raising their children, there is also the financial question.
Many urban, middle-class people I know of want to provide a lot for their children (stretching their possibilities as much as possible, and sometimes the reason why the mom also works). And that means, as the kids grow older, they get more and more expensive “things” (not only objects, but education, travel, as well as things). For these parents, very entrenched in an urban, consumerist lifestyle, not providing all these expensive things for their kids would cause enormous anguish. Many people are very conscious of long-term costs for raising kids.
And for so many middle-class families, the parents see their kids during the weekend and a little each day – that’s it. Especially when the children are small, I find this so little; the parents are missing so much in terms of spending time together with their kids. But that is the very norm and what is normal for millions of families today.
December 19th, 2012 | 11:19 pm
Except of course that Heather’s views are wrong — the dark-skinned people are not, in fact, merrily going on reproducing at the old rate so we can exploit them to our heart’s content. Their birth rate is collapsing, too.
Horrendous would be the word I would apply to the view that dark-skinned people will always be sufficient for pale-skinned people to exploit.
December 19th, 2012 | 11:25 pm
“The current natality discourse in many Western countries is horrendous – it’s like hearing some speech on needing more Aryan babies, while insisting on excluding from society the (sub-human) Others.”
Sorry, that’s a ridiculous comment. All Western societies have experienced (and allowed) mass migrations from the “south” over the last 25 years. On the other hand, it is perfectly reasonable for people to be concerned that their culture is disappearing, and that our countries will be populated by impoverished old people (because, in any case, the amount of immigration needed to support the retirement system in many European countries is absolutely unrealistic).
December 20th, 2012 | 7:51 am
I agree with Petro above. This is not easy any way you slice it. I know it is my own fault, but when you soak in selfishness long enough it becomes very hard to change. The root of this is still selfishness and control – fear of losing control over one’s life to another.
December 20th, 2012 | 8:40 am
Petro @ 12/19 3:55 and others. I wouldn’t say that “raising kids is incredibly difficult.” It’s actually incredibly easy, or at least no more difficult than any other path of virtue. The key is to drastically lower your ambitions and expectations both for your children and yourself. I think that’s the author’s point when he says child-rearing isn’t that big a deal. First you have to dial down your ambitions for their worldly success. Second you have to realize that their spiritual “success” doesn’t depend on you at all, so that takes the pressure off immensely. All you have to do (I think… I hope… that’s my theory, anyway… ) is put your children in the way of grace and try not to be too bad of an example for them as to how live a life of Christian virtue as a parent/spouse/citizen. But that’s no more difficult than any life of virtue in any vocation. There’s nothing peculiarly difficult about child-rearing.
December 20th, 2012 | 9:35 am
Well put, Mattmugg — it’s labor intensive, yes. It requires sacrifice, yes. But “incredibly hard” implies that it’s almost unachievable for most people, and that certainly isn’t the case. Building it up as this thing that only superheroes or people with an extraordinary, almost unheard of, level of commitment and energy can achieve is what’s being objected to, not the idea that yes, it takes a fairly large effort to get done.
December 20th, 2012 | 10:07 am
The picture Petro paints is not one to attract much of anybody. If it’s as he says, why do it at all? There are all sorts of unpleasant, unrewarding, soul-sucking activities one may choose not to engage in, precisely because one perceives them in this light–is it selfish to avoid them? Is forgoing any available form of suffering a species of selfishness?
If not, then it won’t do to hammer upon how burdensome a parent’s lot is, and then turn one’s nose up at people who take you at your word and make according choices–much less call a choice “selfish” that you yourself have helped to look merely sane. The “love you have for your children and the love they have for you,” etc., etc. … these are airy abstractions about as-yet nonexistent creatures whom you have just finished painting as a dismal burden to end all dismal burdens.
It also won’t do to go on about how much they change one’s life. Part of the problem that Williams ably describes is the high-pressure parenting culture that afflicts Western middle classes. Its hallmark is parenting that is attentive & scrupulous to the point of neurosis; many parents live for their children to a degree that deforms their characters and makes them less than adults; it harms families as badly as some kinds of neglect can. And that’s the sort of thing childless people envision when they’re told how fundamentally children will change their lives. Given those preconceptions, it’s not necessarily selfish or unwise to reject the notion of having them.
So if we want more children in the world, it seems essential to stop the modern Western assumption that rearing them is some kind of artisanal, wholly life-consuming pursuit that must be done to perfection, and leaves no room for being an adult human being with thoughts of or time for anything else.
(It also wouldn’t hurt to re-popularize the sort of parental discipline that once made children and civilization look like something other than an either/or proposition.)
December 20th, 2012 | 10:46 am
“Social conservatives and natalists, take note: Instead of accusing your fellow Americans of selfishness, convince them that raising kids may be less difficult than they think.”
In part I agree with this this, because selfishness is not the only operative cause here. I suspect, based on experience very few people plan to have no children (ever) and if they do, it’s because of some fear (inadequacy, genetic issues, Malthusianism, etc) rather than autocentricity.
There’s a difference between planning to have no children and not planning (or planning to delay) to have children, one is an act of commission, the other omission.
The culture is antinatal. Our health insurance laws (long before Obamacare) demand treatment for pregnancy-but often with an explicit reasoning that it is a “disease”. Tax laws contain a variety of “marriage penalties”. Civil law provides for equity of divorce, but not in marriage.
I know several young couples-two following a familiar path-the necessary precursors of “starting a family” are completing college, establishing a career (whatever that means) and then spending a few years where marriage is a joint venture in free-spirited economic indulgence. Somehow, the years get out of control, a “careeer” is not an uninterrupted experience in income escalation, and suddenly you are 30 (or worse) 40 and tomorrow is today and worse, yesterday.
Worse, the most thoughtful might be the most hesitant, because they realize their best efforts at raising children to be responsible, independent, sober, chaste-”God-fearing” if you will, are going to be undercut by a culture that seems to tempt with everything but.
However, assuming one can be persuaded to have kids, having a message that ignores a (not the) factor, will just make selfish childless couples into the selfish parents we read about all of the time, whose subordinate the primacy of their children’s needs to their own.
The idea that people can’t be told they are selfish is spawned from the same ideology as the one that tells Johnny 2+2=5 is ok and gives ribbons and trophies for trying. Since our “leaders” constantly chastise us for being “selfish” when we don’t want to “contribute” to their latest scheme and they obtain working political majorities doing so, I’m not even sure it’s that unpalatable.
There are times in our lives when we need to be confronted with the errors, not only of our ways, but the thinking that motivates them.
December 20th, 2012 | 12:46 pm
Life for anyone below the upper middle class in this county is filthy, miserable and ignorant. I don’t anything like that to touch my sons, so I had only the number of children I can properly care for. I never expected conservatives to argue in favor of negligent parenting, which is what I read here.
December 20th, 2012 | 1:44 pm
Parents putting more pressure on themselves I think is a reflection on potential psrebts’ view of a retrograde society. It’s true raising a child takes a village, but the steady erosion of the community have left us all much less trusting in that village. This puts more pressure on adults to be more for their future children than past geberations’ parents.
December 20th, 2012 | 1:55 pm
“Life for anyone below the upper middle class in this county is filthy, miserable and ignorant.”
You don’t get out much, do you, Karen?
For all the talk by OWS of the “1%”, the most enlightening point I heard was that on a world-wide scale virtually all of Americans are in the 1%.
December 20th, 2012 | 3:32 pm
I don’t agree with Karen that life “is filthy, miserable and ignorant” for so many people. But I suspect that she would find my life “filthy, miserable and ignorant”, and maybe even confront me with the assertion that it would have been better had I never been born, the eighth child in my family. But maybe she doesn’t see her comment as mean-spirited.:(
December 20th, 2012 | 4:01 pm
“Life for anyone below the upper middle class in this county is filthy, miserable and ignorant.”
Well, it’s nice to know, then, isn’t it, that filthy, miserable, and ignorant aren’t as bad as they’re cracked up to be? Here we are, educating our five children, living in a comfortable home, eating well, etc., and all below “upper middle class.” So filthy, miserable, and ignorant can apparently still be clean, happy, and educated.
Does it take some effort to stay clean, happy, and educated on our income? Sure. Does it involve making some choices and sacrifices our upper class friends don’t have to make? You betcha. But it’s really actually pretty bearable. In fact, just now, sitting next to the Christmas tree with some gifts under it, having finished some shopping today to prepare for our feast, and looking forward to the occasional outburst of intelligent multi-syllabic conversation from our offspring, I’d say it’s pretty darn good.
December 20th, 2012 | 4:07 pm
“Life for anyone below the upper middle class in this county is filthy, miserable and ignorant.”
I’m not sure what county, you live in, I mean there’s 67 in my state alonebut if that’s true, then we’re making progress. Life was said to be “nasty brutish and short” for everybody just a couple centuries ago.
Of course, I’d take the filth, misery and “ignorance” of the middle-middle class over the moral squalor, nihilism and derangement of the upper middle class and above.
December 20th, 2012 | 6:41 pm
Mary wrote: Except of course that Heather’s views are wrong — the dark-skinned people are not, in fact, merrily going on reproducing at the old rate so we can exploit them to our heart’s content. Their birth rate is collapsing, too.
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I know, just look at India. In a five years’ time, I fear they will be all but extinct.
“India’s high population growth results in increasingly impoverished and sub-standard conditions for growing segments of the Indian population. ”
How lovely, the natalists must be happy.
Especially by keeping those starving millions outside their white-picket fence neighborhoods and shooting anyone who tries to cross into the US in order to escape horrible living conditions abroad.
December 21st, 2012 | 9:25 am
I have three points to contribute in no particular order:
1. Malthusianism is alive and well (see Heather and Karen), a particular intellectual malady of the rich.
2. There is no immigration rate which is politically and socially possible to compensate for a very low native birth rate.
3. It is easier to convince a couple with two children to have a third, than to convince a couple with one child to have two. It is almost impossible to convince a couple with zero children to have one.
December 21st, 2012 | 10:06 am
I’m entirely secular, but my wife and I have four kids. One thing I haven’t seen mentioned here yet – and I think at least Pentamom would agree with this – is that the major change is going from zero kids to one kid.
The change from one to two is large, but nowhere near double the change from the first child. Three kids is not three times as hard as one kid, and four kids isn’t twice as hard as two kids. In my experience, it almost plateaus.
Of course, we don’t have any children with major disabilities, but still… a lot of people do have an inflated idea of the difficulties involved.
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