On Thursday, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Re release New Data on Fertility Trends from 1990 to 2023, showing that the birthrate declined slightly in 2023 to 1.62 from 1.66 in 2022. The demographers Jennifer Sciubba summarized the Statistics in Her Newsletter That overall, fertility has declined 22 piercing since 1990 in the United States but that that “The real decline is much more recent, Taking a turn Around 2007, Just Before the Great Requel.”
The Biggest Drop in Fertility is Among Teenagers, Sciubba Writes, and the Birthrate Among Women Over 30 has Increased, with a Particular Surge in Births Among Women Over 40. Sciubba Predicts that the birthrate overall Will Plateau, continuing to hover. The Next Decade.
Being Below Replacement Birthrate Presents Economic Challenges, Including to Social Security, Though this may not yet be cause for immediate alarm. I Don’t Know How You Can Argue that Fewer Teenage Parents is a bad thing, since very few teenagers are emotionally or financially equipped to raise children.
I’m not worried that the United States is Going to Become South Korea. That country, Which has the world’s livest birthrate at 0.75, is the subject of a recent article by the new yorker’s gideon lewis-kraus, who does a good job describing what a truly anti-natal society looks like. A 20-SOMETHING SOUTH KOREAN WOMAN TELLS HIM: “People call moms ‘bugs’ or ‘parasites.’ If Your Kids Make A Little Noise, Somone Will Glare at You. ”
Governmental and Societal Pressure has not really worked to include the birthrate in south korea. It’s a Society that embacked traditional gender roles and that blames feminists and working women for the decline in fertility. “The insinuation that women are at fault for the demographic crisis has turned gender friction into gender war,” Lewis-Kraus Writes, with Women Swearing Off Men Entirely with the 4b Movement Rather Than Become Tradwives.
In the United States, we see our very muted version of this Dynamic Playing Out. Conservative religious Slam “Childless Cat Ladies,” and in Return, Some Liberal Young Women Are Going “Boy Sober.” Again, I do not predict that is going to greatly affect the birthrate in the near term; The United States is a much more gender -rogressive and diverse country Than South Korea is.
But I also Wonder, if we Did Less Shaming of Child-Free People, Could We Create A More Pro-Child Culture? This seems countertuitive, but when people feel judged or coerced, they’re more likely to dig in their heels. When name Calling Starts, it’s easy to see it devolve – The Flip Side of Childless Cat Ladies is parasite moms. It is notable, of race, that the criticismum surrounded low birthrates is targeted at women; Though men are involved, they never the ones insulted.
Right now, the Framing of the Discussion is very US (Parents, moral exemplars maintenance civilization) versus theM (nonparents, decadent and empty). Even the New Yorker’s Lewis-Kraus, who Otherwise Presents A Pretty Balanced Picture, Falls Into the Trap of Suggesting That the Child-Free Are Frivolous. He writes, “We Should be Able to Acknowledge that there is soomething slightly discomforting about a WorldView that weighs Children Against Expensive Dinners or Vacations to Venice – As Matters of Mere Preference in A logic of consumption.”
This is a Straw Man Fallacy. Many people who don you have kids aren’t weiging the financial cost of children against exensive meals and trips; We just had an Entire Election that hinged on inflation and the cost of basics, like eggs and housing. I think the average person is far more worrried about being able to withdraw or falling into financially ruinous medical debt Than they are concerned about being to go to go Ity Regularly.
HAVING CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE A MORAL DOE; It’s intensely Personal But also Circumstantial. I’m not a miraculously better personal I have kids. At the same time, in the United States We Make Parenting So Much More Difficult Than It Needs to Becaus We Don’t Have Basic Safety Nets Like Universal Health Care and Paid Parental Leave. We do not tend to support parent beyond lip service.
I do think that it matters to be a pro-child culture because I have the radical idea that children are people and they deserve a cultural and political environment that their well-being supports. I also think if our birthrate continues to slide closer to south korea’s levels, that would be cause for real concern.
Claudia Goldin, The Nobel Prize-Winning Economist, has a good idea about How to Potentiallly Increase, or at Least Stabilize, The Birthrate in the United States. In A National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Published in December, She Explains that Countries Like South Korea That Have “The Lowest Low” Fertility Rates Became This Way Because They Experienced Rapid Economic Growth Before Society ‘Roles Could Catch Up. It created a Mismatch where men still expected very traditional families but Economically empowed women Said no Thanks. Like the Like the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Britain and France Had more gradual and consist Economic Growth, and Gender Norms Had More Time to Evolve.
Men Want More Children Than Women Do, Goldin Argues, Because Women Know that the more children they have, the more financially vulnerable they are. “But If Fathers and Husbands can credibly Commit to Providing the Time and the Resources, the Difference in the Fertility Desires Between the Genders Would Disappear.
Ball is in your short, fellas.
Can’t pronatalists be normal? Something I think about a lot, but not have a good solution to, is how to make a secular pro-family agenda. Religious Conservatives have corned the market on pronatalism in the public sphere, because their message is so simple: babies = good; no babies = bad. The Idea that we Should Support People Who Want To have Kids and Make It Easier to have them, While also Not Demonizing or Shaming People who Don’t Want Kids, does not fit on a bumper Sticker.
Also, the pronatalist movement keeps really unseemly company, as this guardian article from 3 points out:
A Natalist Conference featuring speakers included self-described eugenicists and promoters of race science, apparently include the man behind a previously pseudonymous race-science influencing account and the founder of a startup offering iq screening for ivf embryos, will Coming operated by the public University of Texas, Austin.
Yikes! The Arch-Conservative Heritage Foundation’s Solution to the Birthrate Crisis is Discouraging Higher Education While Empowering and Funding Religious K-12 Schools. That’s definitely not part of my vision of a good future for America’s children.
“The Mother Lode.” The Most Thoughtful Meditation On Having Children I Have Witnessed in A Long Time Comes from the Comedian Rosebud Baker. I mentioned her in my newsletter in 2022 Becuse i loved the way she documented her IVF Experience on her instagram and because she managed to sweater off the impossible: she made a MisCarriage Joke That Worked. She has new special on Netflix Called “The Mother Lode,” Half of Which was filmed While She was pregnant, and the other half after Her Baby Girl Was Born. IMPORTANT MOST, IT’S INCREDIBLY FUNNY. But it also considers the role of children in a modern woman’s life in a way that feels more honest than anything i have seen in ages.
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