I am expecting our eighth. Today I took our toddler out shopping while her siblings were at school. I'm treated so much more nicely when I seem to have only one child that it's scandalous. There is no amount of money that would compensate for that.
Yeah, this is incredibly true. I'll give you another example.
I live in a rural town (<20K in the whole county of three cities) right now, and both my immediate neighbors are 'hicks' so-to-speak. (I put that in quotes because they both demonstrate a pretty high level of cultural acumen for what I would have expected being so wonder bread.)
The neighbor to my north has three kids – maybe a fourth on the way? can't really tell if the wife has just become fat or not – and the husband is almost never at home from 4am-6pm, since he (who works for an electric company) can only get regular work in the city 60 miles away.
Anyway, one the day, the kids were out of school early, so they were playing in the yard and making a lot of noise (as kids do when riding tricycles and jumping on the trampoline). I felt rather annoyed, but, whatever, kids are kids; they should be outside and have fun.
Then, I stepped out into my carport to drive somewhere, and I saw a couple of the tots & their friends playing in my yard. The mom looked mortified as if I was going to scold her for letting this happen, but I was like, 'Nah, it's fine, just as long as they pick up after themselves, I don't want a mess on my lawn, no big deal.'
The amount of palpable relief she felt at hearing that could have flooded the whole block. And, I'm not even particularly pro-natalist; she was just apparently used to hearing how she should always keep her kids out of sight and out of mind in public.
These folks are chuds, so mostly likely not liberal in any sense, and even then – in the middle of Bible country – they feel this effect. I've even heard the husband and wife get into arguments sometimes (I try not to eavesdrop), and a good 40% of it is precisely this problem; she has no status and gets no respect, and she takes it out on him, and he can't do jackshit about it and kinda-sorta just tells her to toughen up.
There is absolutely no way he is earning enough by himself to get her the dignity she desires, and they both know it.
That is so disheartening. We should be treating women with multiple children with respect and thanks, instead of snarky e-thots online with half naked profile pics.
Very good article that draws all the right conclusions.
If you want more mothers, your society must give them the corresponding high status. Or have such strict social rules that encourage numerous births.
That was the case in the Roman Empire, where Christians had a much higher fertility rate than everyone else - because their faith forbade them from committing infanticide.
There is also a fairly recent study, the name of which I unfortunately can't remember, according to which conservatives in the USA are said to have a 40-something% higher fertility rate than liberals. Because they have different values when it comes to having children.
So, I want to push back hard on this. Not because I don't think values matter, but because I think the denigration of financial incentives is mostly selfishness. For liberals because they don't want to pay (and feel guilty). For conservatives because they don't want to put a price on their status of breeders even if that means extinction.
The benefits included:
"5-figure cash bonus, no questions asked, upon childbirth"
Divide by 18 years and worthless, especially at that income level.
"Extended, flexible, and shared parental leave"
Divide by 18 years and worthless
"Full range of fertility treatments covered (IVF, egg freezing, hormone therapy, even surrogacy)"
Divide by 18 years and worthless
"Excellent private healthcare insurance"
What is new?
Greater latitude to work from home as a parent;
"How much? Quantify it. Divide by 18 years."
"Flexible working hours"
How much? Quantify it. Divide by 18 years.
‘Take as much holiday as you want’;
How much? Quantify it. Divide by 18 years.
"Childcare credits with large providers."
How much? Quantify it. Divide by 18 years.
Lok bro, put a number on this shit. Compare it to the actual cost of raising a kid to 18 (or 22, most of our kids are going to college). The most generous program in the world today *ISN'T EVEN CLOSE*
Wake me up when parents get the equivalent of what olds get in retirement from the government.
The CASH cost to raise a kid to 18 is 330k according to the USDA. That doesn't include free parental labor and college. Let's say Vance passes 5k CTC. That is 18 x 5 = 90k. PATHETIC.
I agree that if the government paid more than the $420k per child that your calculations show to parents, the birthrate would go up. If they paid $1m per child it would go up even more! Unfortunately these are fantasy numbers that no government could ever afford, so this is purely imaginative act. This means that financial incentives will never actually raise the birthrate, which is the point of this essay.
According to the USDA it costs $330k to raise a child to 18.
That's $18k/year (9x the current benefit).
73M children x $18k = $1.3T.
For reference Social Security, just one of the big three old age benefits, costs $1.35T a year.
The US economy is 30T. So about 4.3%.
Direct COVID spending was worth three years of that child benefit. Iraq and Afghanistan cost six years of the benefit.
Also, from age 5-18 WE ALREADY SPEND THE $18K/kid. However, instead of giving it to parents we give it the K-12 school system, so we get a lot less value back then we spend. Simply giving this money directly to parents would make a huge difference and cost nothing additional.
The money is there. It's always been there. It's not even DIFFICULT financially. The problem is political and only political. Kids can't vote.
I like how big you're thinking. Maybe it's possible. The other hurdles are that if you really did make payments this large a) the number of children would go up significantly from the 73m there are currently; and b) labor force participation would go down significantly as people (particularly women) elected to raise their children instead. Neither of these things are bad as such - but they would raise the effective cost to the government far beyond the $1.3T you cite. I don't think it's ultimately sustainable (at least, without other massive alterations to the US economy).
If people start having more kids it will pay for itself. It's not as if SS/Medicare/Medicaid are going to go away, so we are going to end up with big bills and not enough people to pay them if we do nothing.
My rule of thumb is that the bare minimum society can do is to give to people under age 18 at least as much as we give to people over 65. Any society not doing that feels fundamentally unhealthy to me. In insurance terms, you are incentivizing a death spiral.
Yes, the tech companies are offering enormous financial benefits. But having kids is still expensive. Plus, the type of woman to be employed at this company is likely not going to be a “bare minimum” parent - her children will be enrolled in private school (or at least, she’ll buy a house in a premium school district), they’ll take private piano and tennis and golf and Mandarin lessons, they’ll get a car when they turn 16, they’ll go to a top college on Mom and Dad’s dime (probably grad school, too), they’ll have a luxury wedding and a down payment for a first home as a gift, etc…
FAANG parental benefits don’t come close.
With this in mind, maybe it is about money after all.
I appreciate the approach, but I’m still not really convinced. I grew up with 4 brothers and I know my parents weren’t dropping 150k/yr on us. They were lower middle class meaning they weren’t getting a lot of benefits and most was out of pocket. It just meant we shared a lot and didn’t get showered with gifts or something.
While the old age entitlement programs are more of a problem than something to replicate for the young; sticky unsustainable programs originally designed to win votes by spending massive public treasure is hardly the model I want to work with going forward lol.
Let's say we didn't have education at all and parents were only responsible for daycare. It matters not if one parent gives up their job to do the daycare for free, that's still a cost.
Summer camp for our kids, which had no educational component and was just them hanging out in a big gym, was $330/week. 50 weeks of that is $16,500 per kid. So I don't think $18k/year is that off.
I just renewed my health benefits. Mine is mostly covered by the company but I'm paying full cost for each dependent. It's $440 a pay period or $942 a month. That's $2,800 a year per dependent. Of course, I still have deductibles and cost shares on top of that. I pay each time I bring them to the pediatrician, etc.
We used to get by with a CR-V but with three kids we needed a Minivan, that's more money.
The kind of house that accommodates a large family versus a small family in my area (not the most expensive in the country) is worth $200k additional or so. The additional mortgage and property tax cost is around $1,500 a month or $18,000 a year.
I would also note that you basically give up on having a townhome when you've got a really big family and have to go single detached, which limits housing options and usually has much higher maintenance costs.
Education beyond daycare? College? Sports equipment? Food? Travel? Etc.
Even if you economize all these items, my kids wear hand me downs and buy their toys are the resale shop, it's still nickel and dime-ing you all the time with each kid. And some stuff just can't be economized (a plane ticket to see grandma costs the same per person, and the only way I can economize is to argue with my wife for months about how we can't afford it).
So I don't think $18k per kid per year is that off. I think when people say it costs less they aren't factoring in the foregone earnings of a parent that did a lot of that work for "free".
14.1% of US households have an income of $25k or less. If it did cost $18k a year to look after a child, they would all be childless. And they are not.
There are 20,902,000 women in the US on 0-149% of the federal poverty level, which for an individual is USD14,891 annually - so they're on $0-22,188. Of those, 73.2% or 15.3 million have at least one child.
"It's not possible!" you and the USDA say. And yet people are doing it, somehow.
Money's not the issue. How much would we have to pay for Cardi B to be a surrogate mother?
If you're a single mom with two kids you are consuming around $70k in resources, half or more provided by the government. On top of what is in the chart if your kids go to K-12 schools the government will spend another $17k a year or so on each of them, so another $34k on top of that.
If your single mom lives in NYC they will spend $39k/kid for K-12 in fiscal year 2025. So Cheryl and her brood of three costs the state almost $120k a year before we even touch "welfare".
If the care you need to provide for a child at 17 is the same you need to provide for them at 3 months, you have badly failed as a parent. They don't have 18 years of infancy, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. "Divide by 18 years" is stupid.
As income rises, birth rates drop. This is true both between countries and within them. Karen from the posh suburbs on $200k says she's too poor to afford children, meanwhile Cheryl the single mum from the poor suburbs on $45k has three children by two different fathers.
Money isn't the issue. It's social status, and the fact that women in general are left alone to look after children - the less-educated and poorer women are accustomed to being left out in the cold by society, so put up with it, but the well-educated and well-off women are used to comfort and privilege, so won't put up with being left alone with a baby.
The point is that kids are ongoing expenses. Yes, they are more expensive as infants. But they still need an education (costs money), space to live, transport, and other things in life when they are 5, 8, 10, 15, etc.
The issue isn't "affordability". It's how you are doing relative to your peers.
Karen A from the suburbs with three kids HAS LESS RESOURCES than Karen B from the suburbs with 1 kid. Then when Karen B gets old Karen A's kids pay for her social security and medicare. It's a wealth transfer from Karen A to Karen B filtered through retirement programs, and Karen A responds to that incentive structure by having fewer kids (cutting off the subsidy to Karen B).
Cheryl A the Single mom with three children has the SAME (or more) resources as Cheryl B with one child. The marginal cost of her two extra children are born ENTIRELY by the government. They are no cost to her, she can sometimes even COME OUT AHEAD on the welfare calculations with more children. Thus she responds to this incentive structure by having more children.
Fertility starts dropping RIGHT AFTER YOU ARE TOO WELL OFF FOR MEDICAID. As in right when having another child costs you rather then makes you money.
And then it picks up when people are so rich that they don't care about the marginal cost of another kid. Margo whose husband is a successful investment banker and who lives in a brownstone and doesn't have to work is having three kids and quite happy about it.
The government can change the incentive structure of the middle class to look more like the upper or lower classes (where not having kids isn't some cheat code to having your consumption subsidized by the breeders).
“how you're doing relative to your peers” is status. As we've said.
By definition, we cannot have more than half of all people do better than their peers. So unless he half doing better have 4+ children, the overall fertility rate will drop below replacement.
This process is inevitable in a consumerist culture. As is resource depletion, climate change, endless losing wars and so on.
Frankly, the people who don't want kids don't want the lifestyle change. This isn't just about "making parents whole financially". You could do that, at great cost. But you can't preserve the lifestyle. No kids, go wherever you want, buy whatever you want. Do whatever you want. Add even a dog and that changes; you can't go on vacation without boarding your dog somewhere and that already adds up (I'm in both mom and dog groups. Some of the conversations are remarkably similar). And dogs are so needy if you give them a good life, dog owners start comparing themselves to human parents. So a lot of childfree people also don't like dogs much, preferring lower maintenance pets like cats; you can pay a neighbor to come over and feed and water and play with that everyday and that's more or less sufficient.
One kid, you will have to pay $10-30 per hour (depends if you're hiring an adult pro or a teenager I suppose) to go on a date night. The date night activity would presumably also need to be paid for. Let's say, $50-70 for a decent meal in the US. If you were gone for 3 hours, maybe $60 goes to your babysitter. Some amount to gas. $60 to your restaurant bill. That's $120. You're not going to do it that often, but if you have a good income that's still feasible. Have two kids, maybe your sitter rate goes up.
If you have 3+, depending on the age of your kids (My three are all three and under), you might not trust one babysitter to handle them all. So you might hire two. Or more. Date nights are starting to become logistical and financial challenges. And not to even mention travel or extended trips, which many of these childfree people cannot live without. Long road trips with young kid sare famously... Claustrophobic.
Even if they could afford flights for all their kids plus themselves, the activities you do on those trips are extremely different from what they might naturally want to do (which might include, stay in seedy hotels and get drunk with strangers. And plus, as I myself have found, parenting two toddlers through RSV in an AirBnB in on an overseas trip (we didn't do anything in the four days we were in that destination, because sick toddlers- we were also quite sick), often, traveling is just parenting in somebody else's house. It's not your house, with your stuff. Nothing feels ergonomic.
So yeah, these people are not gonna have children. You can't throw money at this. (Ok, maybe you can. Maybe you can also pay to give these parents a butler and a governess to handle all that logistics for them, and also vacation sitters. But we're veering off to lalaland here. No government would do that)
The estimates I’ve seen put liberal TFR around 1.1-1.2 right now and right wing around 1.7-1.8. That’s a big comparative advantage. These are estimates based on correlated location with voting patterns, so not direct surveys, but probably reasonably accurate.
In Catherine Pakaluk's excellent read on this topic "Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth" she notes that it appears financial incentives provide only a small, short-term increase in the birth rate. This is likely due to people who were planning to have kids having kids sooner to take advantage of financial incentives, thus the incentives do not influence the actual number of children born.
Personally, I am aware that this is not a solution. But my wife and I plan to have a large family, so it would be good for us even though it has no societal benefits.
I think being good for parents does have societal benefits. We got a small cash bonus (nothing like the kind being suggested here) and while it doesn't do anything long term, it has really helped offset my third baby's unexpected medical bills. It's probably good for society that we, and by extension our other children, are not going hungry to pay for it. After all, this isn't just a new iPad or whatever. Yes, it easily could have been just a new iPad and that wouldn't do much for society. But this bonus was timely and highly necessary in our case. But yeah, it won't encourage more kids.
Behind the fertility drop hids the lack of meaningful relationships, the inexistence of a strong network, and the takeover of the medical realm that makes you think that they own your child. This is my take, as a single, lonely and childless unsuccessful 47 years old woman.
Definitely something I see as well. My brother had his second daughter. Both times the parents had family help watch kids, baby showers give them lots of supplies and materials for raising them, the church come help with meals, even helping with things like lawn care, painting, and furniture.
A solid community will make raising kids much more manageable.
This. My parents are urging us to invite them on vacation as vacation sitters while they're still young lol. This actually makes going on vacation with kids a lot more appealing than it otherwise would be. (Yes, I made them young grandparents. They grouched at me for being irresponsible but now they see the light haha) Family support makes such a huge difference in quality of life.
I think another aspect is: if you're high status, you expect your kids to be high status as well. You invest a ton of time, effort, and money into private schooling, summer activities, after-school activities, sports, etc. These people would rather not have a kid at all than have an "ordinary" or low-achieving kid.
My wife is like this. She is from China, where this is a widespread view - especially during the One-Child policy. If you can only have one or two kids, they are the family's future and you make damn sure to give them as much advantage as you possibly can. Both her mom and grandmother had abortions, not because they couldn't physically afford the kid, but because they thought they couldn't give the kid a high enough life quality to make it worthwhile.
I wonder if the fertility rate will go up now that the return on investment in the conventional system is getting lower all the time. We have so many baristas and taxi drivers with advanced degrees that it’s a mockery of what a degree is supposed to stand for.
For us at least, we are not worried about putting all of our kids through elite colleges just because we see less and less value in this route. AI seems to be automating white collar jobs, such as writing and low level number crunching such as accounting. Those all require bachelor degrees to get a job in these fields. We will need fewer but more elite people to solve wicked problems that do not come with predefined parameters (all of THOSE are easy for AI to do).
We basically assume our kids will have to find their way outside of the status quo. I wonder if that will take pressure off parents.
Totally can relate and provide anecdotal evidence.
I have a white collar writing job and I remember when I started using Chat gpt I knew my job would be eventually obselete. My boss is definitely against AI taking my job, however I know that long term his business model is not viable compared to competitors.
When I had this realisation I kinda had a mini mental breakdown, but the other side of my life was working out a lot better - recently bought a home and gotten married. I thought, well I'm pivoting from caterer to motherhood for now.
My husband and I are (well, I was, as of three years ago. Now I am a SAHM) software engineers and we see our field going this way too. AI isn’t even in the game writing real software, and already we can start a web app with a few lines in the terminal. You used to need a team for that. I want to dip back in the field and help my husband out. We want to start a business. But honestly we think there are not that many years left in the field for a lot of engineers. And we want to make what money there is to make and set our family up with a safety net, buy a house, etc. Then we’d have to pivot too. Everyone has to pivot soon. Our degrees have long lost their relevance honestly, even though we have traditionally “high ROI” STEM degrees.
I hope you're right. But I suspect it'll just mean people stay in university to get Masters or PhDs. Credential inflation is like currency inflation, people's response is to try to get more.
In the animal world, the two basic reproductive strategies are to have a zillion babies and neglect them (like dogs etc), or to have a few and coddle them (chimps, elephants etc).
But within a species, this behaviour changes depending on circumstances. That's one reason it's so hard to get animals to mate in a zoo compared to the wild - they're too comfortable.
> “They had been taught to understand and value themselves as employees, not parents.”
To rephrase: people are willingly ending their bloodlines to further the goals of businesses or organizations (but may lay them off a week before Christmas).
People don’t see it that way because they’ve been taught a perversion of true freedom.
Right. That's why I'm not persuaded by the childfree argument that after children you just spend yourself and be run ragged by your children, and maybe not even get much in return. First of all, I'm going to ignore the getting stuff in return bit; that's not worth an argument with these people. But secondly, you're going spend yourself anyway (and if you aren't exerting yourself... are you even living for anything? I mean we all die in the end. You don't get to hoard your youth and good health). Eventually. Who would you rather it be for? Corporations? Or your family?
Some economic interventions could potentially raise status. In this Scandinavian country, the number one concern for young people is getting on the property ladder. If your parents aren't well-off home owners who can help out with a down payment, getting a mortgage is hard enough even without kids. Add child in the mix, and you can expect the bank to cut the maximum loan amount by some $150k. Thus having a family at a young age means you're likely to miss out on the most important status marker — owning your own home in an attractive location.
So what if the state offered no-down payment mortgages to young parents, not to make housing more affordable per se, but allowing those who have kids early them to skip ahead of their childless peers in the grand status game of home ownership? (This would also be much cheaper than other proposals, since the long-term costs of the policy would be limited to cover defaults.)
As a Canadian (and finally a homeowner with 3 kids, mainly due to good fortune, still watching more deserving friends of ours struggling to buy *anything* for their families to live in) this is actually a very smart idea. Good thinking.
I am a part-time psychologist with a background in clinical medicine and a significant number of my clients are women between 25 and 40 years old. They are usually from IT, management or finance and sometimes from medicine. They often contemplate having kids but children don’t really fit into their career plan. And by the time they sorted the work out (usually at 37-39) they have other limitations:
1) low fertility due to reproductive system aging that accelerates past 35
2) a structured and comfortable life that they are simply afraid to abandon in order to have kids and learn to care about them
3) strained relationships with their men due to in-family power struggles that make them afraid that men will abandon them in favor of a younger girl should the pregnancy take its toll on their beauty.
Also, while this is less of an issue in umc and richer families, by the age of 40 their parents are often past their prime and are not really a viable source of stability and care for the grandchildren in the long run.
I tried to argue this point once on a thread from a Substack that is essentially trying to redeem the term "feminism." The argument from the author was basically if you subsidized having children more people could afford them. I was, and remain, unconvinced. My limited experience living in middle America pretty much my whole life is that it's not the finances holding women back from having more children. It's the inconvenience to desired lifestyle and/or lack of a supportive spouse (whose main objection is most often inconvenience to desired lifestyle). The women I know would be far more likely to take any child credit payouts and put them towards travel team expenses or an annual trip to Disney than have another child.
Also in my experience, SAHMs, which are more or less necessary for having a larger family at least at some point in the process, get a lot of lip service but are seen as a position of both luxury and choice so there's not a lot of support. There is far more sisterhood and support in the working mom arena which then bleeds further into the social sphere. As in, every social activity seems to revolve around spending money. My husband and I have made a lot of sacrifices to live on one income and be open to children because we value them. It's not an easy position to take, but definitely doable generally speaking, if your lifestyle expectations are modified and you have both partners willing to put in the work to make it happen.
As a preface, I have two offspring, now in their thirties. "The Pill" was new when I was in high school.
I think the "deep social beliefs" is half right. And I think reproductive control is the other half. When I was a child, couples simply got married and had children. It was normal and expected. Mothers had a status -- not equal, but a clear status. For women, and to a lesser extent men, having children was a necessary milestone of status in a society. "Old Maids" and "Bachelors" had low status. Pregnancy was hard for most couples to avoid, even if they want to. The general tenor was that children were an expected part of a family, and children bestowed some status on the family. In some US subcultures (Mexican American in particular) having children was both a way to cement your status as an adult, and escape your family control. It was sought after.
With effective birth control this began to change (70's to 2000). The ability to maintain sexual activity, but forgo children seemed to erase the status of having children. Once couples had the choice, many choose their desires over surrendering their desires to some (possible) children's needs. Many parents will tell you children bring joy and happiness far in excess of their "cost" or "loss of status". But you don't have that experience unless you have a child. So for many couples the sweet spot was two children. The marginal benefit of more children wasn't worth the marginal cost.
During this same period (70s to 2000) there was a huge emphasis on "reducing teen pregnancy" It was very effective. It also was effective in reducing overall US fertility rates. It seemed that women who had children when young went on to have more children overall - for reasons that are not clear.
Practically, I think making birth control illegal would "solve" the fertility problem. I also think it is an ethically terrible idea. I do think solving the physical part of the problem is going to be easier than solving the societal image problems.
Historically, people practiced infanticide to combat the effects not having effective birth control or safe abortion. Our society is definitely secular enough that people may very well resort to that en masse. People used to rationalize infanticide in much the same way we currently rationalize abortion, like neonates are not fully human, etc. Beyond the fact that murder is wrong, it may nominally help the “birth rate” but that won’t result in more adults. I’ve read that if you take natural fertility rate then look at the Roman census, every Roman household has committed one infanticide, more or less.
Bang on. I would also add that governments simply DO NOT HAVE enough money to offset the costs of childrearing, the way most people aspire to raise their kids (which is, in a word, EXPENSIVE). My government started an initiative of giving 20k HKD for every newborn born in a span of 3 years. When that policy came out, most people laughed. Parents laughed because we know it would not pay for more than a quarter's tuition for even a modestly priced private preschool. Non-parents laughed because, well, it was simply not persuasive. Is 20k going to hire a night nanny? Not for a significant amount of time. Even the very low income people can make that much in a few months. Would 20k alleviate the psychological pain of status loss from motherhood? Not beyond the cold comfort of a luxury handbag... and there is so much more to status than nice handbags. And it's become something of a meme that to raise a kid through college in our city, it takes more than a million. So what's 20k going to do? Now that I've had my third child, every little bit helps and I do appreciate the money. Especially as she has been in and out of the hospital for her first month of life. But I did not have her just to get my hands on that money.
To have a child/not is a weighty decision that fundamentally alters the course of your life. I wouldn't even have a fourth child just for that money, even though I've already made a lot of the lifestyle changes to accommodate children. A fourth child is never just a fourth child. It might represent a new house, a different mode of transportation, how often we see family, what education choices we make, etc. Let alone people going from 0 to 1. I mean, what would someone have to pay you to radically alter your vision of life, if it originally didn't include children? Whatever that number is, I would wager the government can't afford it.
Your experience very much mirrors my own (in a different high cost of living city). You describe it very well. I hope and pray your daughter spends less time in hospital soon - I know what that's like.
I hope this doesn't come across too preachy, but doesn't our revealed preference for personal status and affluence over intrinsic goods like love of family reflect poorly on us? What's the point of status if all you have to look forward to is another promotion at work and more luxurious consumption? What's the point of status if you don't have a family to share it with?
How does one avoid becoming too discouraged by such backwards values being *the norm*?
Status - when pursued virtuously - is actually a social good. For example, if a person is highly competent at a task, it is good if that is widely recognized, so that he can be given that task in important circumstances. Likewise, if someone is held in high esteem because they have acted justly and made sacrifices for the group, that's good. It helps order society correctly, and gives us a shared understanding of how to relate to one another.
However, when the assignment of status becomes untethered from virtue (which I believe has happened in modernity) we're in a bad place
I agree that status can be a real good when paired with virtue – I just find it a sad indictment of our culture that when they *are* untethered, we seem to abandon the latter much more readily than the former.
You are correct about economic incentives, they do not and will not work. However, I fear that you are too optimistic or reticent in your proscriptions and discussions of status. Across the world, we see a decline in birthrates concomitant with greater women's rights. The most immediate examples that come to mind are your country with the abolition of coverture in the 19th century and Japan after WWII when a new constitution was imposed upon them (but this also happened to Rome etc.). Coming to terms with this is highly unpalatable stuff and a non-starter in a world of universal adult franchise.
I think the demographic collapse will continue over many decades. Certainly, being a trad or at least trad-adjacent Catholic (as you seem to be) your children should at least find themselves in an environment that will not stack the deck against them (though boil off is always a concern). However, addressing these concerns on a societal level require solutions that are nowhere near feasible right now, they will happen (I exclude extinction on the basis of supernatural promises) only after we get to a state of emergency.
The fact is that we have no need of women qua engineers, mathematicians, philosophers, or theologians; we need them as mothers and religious. Pride exists as a terrible obstacle to grappling with this fact. Nothing suggests the West is prepared to accept this, but these things only go on until they cannot.
Postscript: Discussions of marriage in the historical context seem ridiculous to me. Marriage was for almost all time primarily an economic institution, from the industrial revolution until the 1960s (per Lasch in Haven from a Heartless World) about nurturing , now it is an at-will luxury. In the West, everywhere outside of neo-primitives like the Amish, it is at best a hybrid of the 2nd and 3rd iteration. The sacramental substance aside, it is categorically different than most of the past. The future belongs to those who show up and time will tell who, if anyone, finds a durable adaptation.
I agree. Our entire conception of femininity, the sacramental nature of marriage, the ends of marriage, etc. are so warped that it makes frank discussion incredibly challenging. My current priority is to at least create space for alternative social structures to emerge and survive.
Just give it time. The religious shall inherit the earth, since they are the only ones having kids.
We'll get our trad Catholic country in four generations if we can keep our birth rates high, reduce bleed off to the mainstream, and avoid being genocided.
Fair enough and I think the arc of your work is a breath of fresh air when so much trad material (at least in the states) encourages the best young men go to our new Catholic trade school or the like. We need an elite and within tradish Catholic world, it is notably absent or sad/hyper-parochial.
The problem is that unlike subsidies, attempting to change the status of having children causes an immediate confrontation. See the reaction to Vance's "childless cat ladies" remark, the childless identified that remark as an attack on their status and responded aggressively.
To be fair, this is the spiritual equivalent of grabbing them by the neck and forcing them to gaze deeply into the abyss. Existential terror can be disconcerting, or so I am told.
I am not sure I can write a quick reply to this. Several things occur to me. When I read your earlier article about status (and the lack of it) in motherhood, I found it very perceptive and although I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, I strongly agreed with it.
However I’m discouraged that you seem to be saying here that no measures to try to improve birth rate / make life even a bit easier financially for parents of young kids are worth it.
It’s true that small improvements and offers might not change the minds of those who are anti natalists or ambivalent or who have partners who aren’t ready or whose lives are just too exciting without kids (holidays, nice house, whatever) but they could make a different r a couple wondering whether to stop at two or go for a third, or having to wait for their first to be at school before they can contemplate a second etc. Win the people you can win, not the people you can’t.
I also think that this situation has built up over a number of years, and smaller families or no-kid partnerships are getting commoner, more normalised, even as cost of living has gone up, and (in the UK) cost of housing. So you won’t necessarily see a quick turn round.
I would suggest a multi pronged approach. Help people to help each other.
I have two children - the biggest thing that would have made a difference to me would have been having more extended family help.
To be clear - I would greatly welcome more family support from the state. The excellent discussion on this front was one of the reasons I enjoyed the podcast I linked in the first paragraph. I am very familiar with the financial burdens held by families!
However, my point in this essay is that, while we should provide families this kind of relief, we should not convince ourselves that we are solving the fertility crisis in the process. It will make people's life easier but all the signs are that it will not increase total family formation in a meaningful way.
Agreed. Underlying values and sense of purpose in life matter - and social status offered either goes with these or makes a big difference where these are wanting. I do think the maternal instinct is still strong in a lot of people - several of my childless female friends (we are all now turning fifty) would have liked kids, but either this instinct didn’t get much support from partners, or circumstances (ie finances or not finding a husband or partner young enough) prevented. Anecdotal I know!
I think the problem is that any program that the government can afford is just not going to be material to people with means. And these days governments are spending vast sums on supporting the elderly, so children just get the scraps.
However, I still think we should consider what we could do to make life easier for parents: schools that function, safer streets, free or inexpensive extracurriculars, nice parks, reasonably priced housing… right now it feels like parents just have to do everything.
I also think one thing governments and corporations could do is have re-entry programs for women who have been out of the work world for a decade or two. If there was some preferential hiring and opportunity to move up quickly, women could feel safer dropping out for a few years. Right now in a lot of careers there is no way back once you’re out a few years. You could also count child rearing years towards eligibility for early retirement and other benefits.
I am expecting our eighth. Today I took our toddler out shopping while her siblings were at school. I'm treated so much more nicely when I seem to have only one child that it's scandalous. There is no amount of money that would compensate for that.
Very sad. But you’re doing a great thing!
I’m so sorry they treat you that way. :(
Yeah, this is incredibly true. I'll give you another example.
I live in a rural town (<20K in the whole county of three cities) right now, and both my immediate neighbors are 'hicks' so-to-speak. (I put that in quotes because they both demonstrate a pretty high level of cultural acumen for what I would have expected being so wonder bread.)
The neighbor to my north has three kids – maybe a fourth on the way? can't really tell if the wife has just become fat or not – and the husband is almost never at home from 4am-6pm, since he (who works for an electric company) can only get regular work in the city 60 miles away.
Anyway, one the day, the kids were out of school early, so they were playing in the yard and making a lot of noise (as kids do when riding tricycles and jumping on the trampoline). I felt rather annoyed, but, whatever, kids are kids; they should be outside and have fun.
Then, I stepped out into my carport to drive somewhere, and I saw a couple of the tots & their friends playing in my yard. The mom looked mortified as if I was going to scold her for letting this happen, but I was like, 'Nah, it's fine, just as long as they pick up after themselves, I don't want a mess on my lawn, no big deal.'
The amount of palpable relief she felt at hearing that could have flooded the whole block. And, I'm not even particularly pro-natalist; she was just apparently used to hearing how she should always keep her kids out of sight and out of mind in public.
These folks are chuds, so mostly likely not liberal in any sense, and even then – in the middle of Bible country – they feel this effect. I've even heard the husband and wife get into arguments sometimes (I try not to eavesdrop), and a good 40% of it is precisely this problem; she has no status and gets no respect, and she takes it out on him, and he can't do jackshit about it and kinda-sorta just tells her to toughen up.
There is absolutely no way he is earning enough by himself to get her the dignity she desires, and they both know it.
That is so disheartening. We should be treating women with multiple children with respect and thanks, instead of snarky e-thots online with half naked profile pics.
Very good article that draws all the right conclusions.
If you want more mothers, your society must give them the corresponding high status. Or have such strict social rules that encourage numerous births.
That was the case in the Roman Empire, where Christians had a much higher fertility rate than everyone else - because their faith forbade them from committing infanticide.
There is also a fairly recent study, the name of which I unfortunately can't remember, according to which conservatives in the USA are said to have a 40-something% higher fertility rate than liberals. Because they have different values when it comes to having children.
Quite right!
So, I want to push back hard on this. Not because I don't think values matter, but because I think the denigration of financial incentives is mostly selfishness. For liberals because they don't want to pay (and feel guilty). For conservatives because they don't want to put a price on their status of breeders even if that means extinction.
The benefits included:
"5-figure cash bonus, no questions asked, upon childbirth"
Divide by 18 years and worthless, especially at that income level.
"Extended, flexible, and shared parental leave"
Divide by 18 years and worthless
"Full range of fertility treatments covered (IVF, egg freezing, hormone therapy, even surrogacy)"
Divide by 18 years and worthless
"Excellent private healthcare insurance"
What is new?
Greater latitude to work from home as a parent;
"How much? Quantify it. Divide by 18 years."
"Flexible working hours"
How much? Quantify it. Divide by 18 years.
‘Take as much holiday as you want’;
How much? Quantify it. Divide by 18 years.
"Childcare credits with large providers."
How much? Quantify it. Divide by 18 years.
Lok bro, put a number on this shit. Compare it to the actual cost of raising a kid to 18 (or 22, most of our kids are going to college). The most generous program in the world today *ISN'T EVEN CLOSE*
Wake me up when parents get the equivalent of what olds get in retirement from the government.
The CASH cost to raise a kid to 18 is 330k according to the USDA. That doesn't include free parental labor and college. Let's say Vance passes 5k CTC. That is 18 x 5 = 90k. PATHETIC.
You get what you pay for.
I agree that if the government paid more than the $420k per child that your calculations show to parents, the birthrate would go up. If they paid $1m per child it would go up even more! Unfortunately these are fantasy numbers that no government could ever afford, so this is purely imaginative act. This means that financial incentives will never actually raise the birthrate, which is the point of this essay.
According to the USDA it costs $330k to raise a child to 18.
That's $18k/year (9x the current benefit).
73M children x $18k = $1.3T.
For reference Social Security, just one of the big three old age benefits, costs $1.35T a year.
The US economy is 30T. So about 4.3%.
Direct COVID spending was worth three years of that child benefit. Iraq and Afghanistan cost six years of the benefit.
Also, from age 5-18 WE ALREADY SPEND THE $18K/kid. However, instead of giving it to parents we give it the K-12 school system, so we get a lot less value back then we spend. Simply giving this money directly to parents would make a huge difference and cost nothing additional.
The money is there. It's always been there. It's not even DIFFICULT financially. The problem is political and only political. Kids can't vote.
I like how big you're thinking. Maybe it's possible. The other hurdles are that if you really did make payments this large a) the number of children would go up significantly from the 73m there are currently; and b) labor force participation would go down significantly as people (particularly women) elected to raise their children instead. Neither of these things are bad as such - but they would raise the effective cost to the government far beyond the $1.3T you cite. I don't think it's ultimately sustainable (at least, without other massive alterations to the US economy).
Thanks.
If people start having more kids it will pay for itself. It's not as if SS/Medicare/Medicaid are going to go away, so we are going to end up with big bills and not enough people to pay them if we do nothing.
My rule of thumb is that the bare minimum society can do is to give to people under age 18 at least as much as we give to people over 65. Any society not doing that feels fundamentally unhealthy to me. In insurance terms, you are incentivizing a death spiral.
This is a really good point.
Yes, the tech companies are offering enormous financial benefits. But having kids is still expensive. Plus, the type of woman to be employed at this company is likely not going to be a “bare minimum” parent - her children will be enrolled in private school (or at least, she’ll buy a house in a premium school district), they’ll take private piano and tennis and golf and Mandarin lessons, they’ll get a car when they turn 16, they’ll go to a top college on Mom and Dad’s dime (probably grad school, too), they’ll have a luxury wedding and a down payment for a first home as a gift, etc…
FAANG parental benefits don’t come close.
With this in mind, maybe it is about money after all.
I appreciate the approach, but I’m still not really convinced. I grew up with 4 brothers and I know my parents weren’t dropping 150k/yr on us. They were lower middle class meaning they weren’t getting a lot of benefits and most was out of pocket. It just meant we shared a lot and didn’t get showered with gifts or something.
While the old age entitlement programs are more of a problem than something to replicate for the young; sticky unsustainable programs originally designed to win votes by spending massive public treasure is hardly the model I want to work with going forward lol.
Let's say we didn't have education at all and parents were only responsible for daycare. It matters not if one parent gives up their job to do the daycare for free, that's still a cost.
Summer camp for our kids, which had no educational component and was just them hanging out in a big gym, was $330/week. 50 weeks of that is $16,500 per kid. So I don't think $18k/year is that off.
I just renewed my health benefits. Mine is mostly covered by the company but I'm paying full cost for each dependent. It's $440 a pay period or $942 a month. That's $2,800 a year per dependent. Of course, I still have deductibles and cost shares on top of that. I pay each time I bring them to the pediatrician, etc.
We used to get by with a CR-V but with three kids we needed a Minivan, that's more money.
The kind of house that accommodates a large family versus a small family in my area (not the most expensive in the country) is worth $200k additional or so. The additional mortgage and property tax cost is around $1,500 a month or $18,000 a year.
I would also note that you basically give up on having a townhome when you've got a really big family and have to go single detached, which limits housing options and usually has much higher maintenance costs.
Education beyond daycare? College? Sports equipment? Food? Travel? Etc.
Even if you economize all these items, my kids wear hand me downs and buy their toys are the resale shop, it's still nickel and dime-ing you all the time with each kid. And some stuff just can't be economized (a plane ticket to see grandma costs the same per person, and the only way I can economize is to argue with my wife for months about how we can't afford it).
So I don't think $18k per kid per year is that off. I think when people say it costs less they aren't factoring in the foregone earnings of a parent that did a lot of that work for "free".
14.1% of US households have an income of $25k or less. If it did cost $18k a year to look after a child, they would all be childless. And they are not.
There are 20,902,000 women in the US on 0-149% of the federal poverty level, which for an individual is USD14,891 annually - so they're on $0-22,188. Of those, 73.2% or 15.3 million have at least one child.
"It's not possible!" you and the USDA say. And yet people are doing it, somehow.
Money's not the issue. How much would we have to pay for Cardi B to be a surrogate mother?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf
The US government puts a floor on every families "income" of like 100k.
https://allianceforopportunity.com/focus/safety-nets/exit-to-independence/attachment-chart-2/
If you're a single mom with two kids you are consuming around $70k in resources, half or more provided by the government. On top of what is in the chart if your kids go to K-12 schools the government will spend another $17k a year or so on each of them, so another $34k on top of that.
If your single mom lives in NYC they will spend $39k/kid for K-12 in fiscal year 2025. So Cheryl and her brood of three costs the state almost $120k a year before we even touch "welfare".
If the care you need to provide for a child at 17 is the same you need to provide for them at 3 months, you have badly failed as a parent. They don't have 18 years of infancy, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. "Divide by 18 years" is stupid.
As income rises, birth rates drop. This is true both between countries and within them. Karen from the posh suburbs on $200k says she's too poor to afford children, meanwhile Cheryl the single mum from the poor suburbs on $45k has three children by two different fathers.
Money isn't the issue. It's social status, and the fact that women in general are left alone to look after children - the less-educated and poorer women are accustomed to being left out in the cold by society, so put up with it, but the well-educated and well-off women are used to comfort and privilege, so won't put up with being left alone with a baby.
The point is that kids are ongoing expenses. Yes, they are more expensive as infants. But they still need an education (costs money), space to live, transport, and other things in life when they are 5, 8, 10, 15, etc.
The issue isn't "affordability". It's how you are doing relative to your peers.
Karen A from the suburbs with three kids HAS LESS RESOURCES than Karen B from the suburbs with 1 kid. Then when Karen B gets old Karen A's kids pay for her social security and medicare. It's a wealth transfer from Karen A to Karen B filtered through retirement programs, and Karen A responds to that incentive structure by having fewer kids (cutting off the subsidy to Karen B).
Cheryl A the Single mom with three children has the SAME (or more) resources as Cheryl B with one child. The marginal cost of her two extra children are born ENTIRELY by the government. They are no cost to her, she can sometimes even COME OUT AHEAD on the welfare calculations with more children. Thus she responds to this incentive structure by having more children.
Fertility starts dropping RIGHT AFTER YOU ARE TOO WELL OFF FOR MEDICAID. As in right when having another child costs you rather then makes you money.
And then it picks up when people are so rich that they don't care about the marginal cost of another kid. Margo whose husband is a successful investment banker and who lives in a brownstone and doesn't have to work is having three kids and quite happy about it.
The government can change the incentive structure of the middle class to look more like the upper or lower classes (where not having kids isn't some cheat code to having your consumption subsidized by the breeders).
“how you're doing relative to your peers” is status. As we've said.
By definition, we cannot have more than half of all people do better than their peers. So unless he half doing better have 4+ children, the overall fertility rate will drop below replacement.
This process is inevitable in a consumerist culture. As is resource depletion, climate change, endless losing wars and so on.
Right. Doesn't include free parental labor.
Frankly, the people who don't want kids don't want the lifestyle change. This isn't just about "making parents whole financially". You could do that, at great cost. But you can't preserve the lifestyle. No kids, go wherever you want, buy whatever you want. Do whatever you want. Add even a dog and that changes; you can't go on vacation without boarding your dog somewhere and that already adds up (I'm in both mom and dog groups. Some of the conversations are remarkably similar). And dogs are so needy if you give them a good life, dog owners start comparing themselves to human parents. So a lot of childfree people also don't like dogs much, preferring lower maintenance pets like cats; you can pay a neighbor to come over and feed and water and play with that everyday and that's more or less sufficient.
One kid, you will have to pay $10-30 per hour (depends if you're hiring an adult pro or a teenager I suppose) to go on a date night. The date night activity would presumably also need to be paid for. Let's say, $50-70 for a decent meal in the US. If you were gone for 3 hours, maybe $60 goes to your babysitter. Some amount to gas. $60 to your restaurant bill. That's $120. You're not going to do it that often, but if you have a good income that's still feasible. Have two kids, maybe your sitter rate goes up.
If you have 3+, depending on the age of your kids (My three are all three and under), you might not trust one babysitter to handle them all. So you might hire two. Or more. Date nights are starting to become logistical and financial challenges. And not to even mention travel or extended trips, which many of these childfree people cannot live without. Long road trips with young kid sare famously... Claustrophobic.
Even if they could afford flights for all their kids plus themselves, the activities you do on those trips are extremely different from what they might naturally want to do (which might include, stay in seedy hotels and get drunk with strangers. And plus, as I myself have found, parenting two toddlers through RSV in an AirBnB in on an overseas trip (we didn't do anything in the four days we were in that destination, because sick toddlers- we were also quite sick), often, traveling is just parenting in somebody else's house. It's not your house, with your stuff. Nothing feels ergonomic.
So yeah, these people are not gonna have children. You can't throw money at this. (Ok, maybe you can. Maybe you can also pay to give these parents a butler and a governess to handle all that logistics for them, and also vacation sitters. But we're veering off to lalaland here. No government would do that)
The estimates I’ve seen put liberal TFR around 1.1-1.2 right now and right wing around 1.7-1.8. That’s a big comparative advantage. These are estimates based on correlated location with voting patterns, so not direct surveys, but probably reasonably accurate.
Having children is illiberal, as Johann remarked a while ago.
In Catherine Pakaluk's excellent read on this topic "Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth" she notes that it appears financial incentives provide only a small, short-term increase in the birth rate. This is likely due to people who were planning to have kids having kids sooner to take advantage of financial incentives, thus the incentives do not influence the actual number of children born.
Personally, I am aware that this is not a solution. But my wife and I plan to have a large family, so it would be good for us even though it has no societal benefits.
Ah the having kids sooner aspect makes sense
I think being good for parents does have societal benefits. We got a small cash bonus (nothing like the kind being suggested here) and while it doesn't do anything long term, it has really helped offset my third baby's unexpected medical bills. It's probably good for society that we, and by extension our other children, are not going hungry to pay for it. After all, this isn't just a new iPad or whatever. Yes, it easily could have been just a new iPad and that wouldn't do much for society. But this bonus was timely and highly necessary in our case. But yeah, it won't encourage more kids.
Behind the fertility drop hids the lack of meaningful relationships, the inexistence of a strong network, and the takeover of the medical realm that makes you think that they own your child. This is my take, as a single, lonely and childless unsuccessful 47 years old woman.
I hope you find the relationships you're looking for Audrey. Will pray for you.
Thank you Johann.
Yeah. The lack of social/community support/connections/network is daunting and exhausting.
Definitely something I see as well. My brother had his second daughter. Both times the parents had family help watch kids, baby showers give them lots of supplies and materials for raising them, the church come help with meals, even helping with things like lawn care, painting, and furniture.
A solid community will make raising kids much more manageable.
This. My parents are urging us to invite them on vacation as vacation sitters while they're still young lol. This actually makes going on vacation with kids a lot more appealing than it otherwise would be. (Yes, I made them young grandparents. They grouched at me for being irresponsible but now they see the light haha) Family support makes such a huge difference in quality of life.
I think another aspect is: if you're high status, you expect your kids to be high status as well. You invest a ton of time, effort, and money into private schooling, summer activities, after-school activities, sports, etc. These people would rather not have a kid at all than have an "ordinary" or low-achieving kid.
For sure
My wife is like this. She is from China, where this is a widespread view - especially during the One-Child policy. If you can only have one or two kids, they are the family's future and you make damn sure to give them as much advantage as you possibly can. Both her mom and grandmother had abortions, not because they couldn't physically afford the kid, but because they thought they couldn't give the kid a high enough life quality to make it worthwhile.
Yeah. My diagnosis for the decline in Korea (discussed in ‘it’s embarrassing to be a stay-at-home-mom’) runs along these lines too
I wonder if the fertility rate will go up now that the return on investment in the conventional system is getting lower all the time. We have so many baristas and taxi drivers with advanced degrees that it’s a mockery of what a degree is supposed to stand for.
For us at least, we are not worried about putting all of our kids through elite colleges just because we see less and less value in this route. AI seems to be automating white collar jobs, such as writing and low level number crunching such as accounting. Those all require bachelor degrees to get a job in these fields. We will need fewer but more elite people to solve wicked problems that do not come with predefined parameters (all of THOSE are easy for AI to do).
We basically assume our kids will have to find their way outside of the status quo. I wonder if that will take pressure off parents.
Totally can relate and provide anecdotal evidence.
I have a white collar writing job and I remember when I started using Chat gpt I knew my job would be eventually obselete. My boss is definitely against AI taking my job, however I know that long term his business model is not viable compared to competitors.
When I had this realisation I kinda had a mini mental breakdown, but the other side of my life was working out a lot better - recently bought a home and gotten married. I thought, well I'm pivoting from caterer to motherhood for now.
My husband and I are (well, I was, as of three years ago. Now I am a SAHM) software engineers and we see our field going this way too. AI isn’t even in the game writing real software, and already we can start a web app with a few lines in the terminal. You used to need a team for that. I want to dip back in the field and help my husband out. We want to start a business. But honestly we think there are not that many years left in the field for a lot of engineers. And we want to make what money there is to make and set our family up with a safety net, buy a house, etc. Then we’d have to pivot too. Everyone has to pivot soon. Our degrees have long lost their relevance honestly, even though we have traditionally “high ROI” STEM degrees.
I hope you're right. But I suspect it'll just mean people stay in university to get Masters or PhDs. Credential inflation is like currency inflation, people's response is to try to get more.
I think you're right.
In the animal world, the two basic reproductive strategies are to have a zillion babies and neglect them (like dogs etc), or to have a few and coddle them (chimps, elephants etc).
But within a species, this behaviour changes depending on circumstances. That's one reason it's so hard to get animals to mate in a zoo compared to the wild - they're too comfortable.
> “They had been taught to understand and value themselves as employees, not parents.”
To rephrase: people are willingly ending their bloodlines to further the goals of businesses or organizations (but may lay them off a week before Christmas).
People don’t see it that way because they’ve been taught a perversion of true freedom.
Pretty much
Right. That's why I'm not persuaded by the childfree argument that after children you just spend yourself and be run ragged by your children, and maybe not even get much in return. First of all, I'm going to ignore the getting stuff in return bit; that's not worth an argument with these people. But secondly, you're going spend yourself anyway (and if you aren't exerting yourself... are you even living for anything? I mean we all die in the end. You don't get to hoard your youth and good health). Eventually. Who would you rather it be for? Corporations? Or your family?
Some economic interventions could potentially raise status. In this Scandinavian country, the number one concern for young people is getting on the property ladder. If your parents aren't well-off home owners who can help out with a down payment, getting a mortgage is hard enough even without kids. Add child in the mix, and you can expect the bank to cut the maximum loan amount by some $150k. Thus having a family at a young age means you're likely to miss out on the most important status marker — owning your own home in an attractive location.
So what if the state offered no-down payment mortgages to young parents, not to make housing more affordable per se, but allowing those who have kids early them to skip ahead of their childless peers in the grand status game of home ownership? (This would also be much cheaper than other proposals, since the long-term costs of the policy would be limited to cover defaults.)
Sounds like an attractive idea, would like to see it tried!
As a Canadian (and finally a homeowner with 3 kids, mainly due to good fortune, still watching more deserving friends of ours struggling to buy *anything* for their families to live in) this is actually a very smart idea. Good thinking.
I am a part-time psychologist with a background in clinical medicine and a significant number of my clients are women between 25 and 40 years old. They are usually from IT, management or finance and sometimes from medicine. They often contemplate having kids but children don’t really fit into their career plan. And by the time they sorted the work out (usually at 37-39) they have other limitations:
1) low fertility due to reproductive system aging that accelerates past 35
2) a structured and comfortable life that they are simply afraid to abandon in order to have kids and learn to care about them
3) strained relationships with their men due to in-family power struggles that make them afraid that men will abandon them in favor of a younger girl should the pregnancy take its toll on their beauty.
Also, while this is less of an issue in umc and richer families, by the age of 40 their parents are often past their prime and are not really a viable source of stability and care for the grandchildren in the long run.
I tried to argue this point once on a thread from a Substack that is essentially trying to redeem the term "feminism." The argument from the author was basically if you subsidized having children more people could afford them. I was, and remain, unconvinced. My limited experience living in middle America pretty much my whole life is that it's not the finances holding women back from having more children. It's the inconvenience to desired lifestyle and/or lack of a supportive spouse (whose main objection is most often inconvenience to desired lifestyle). The women I know would be far more likely to take any child credit payouts and put them towards travel team expenses or an annual trip to Disney than have another child.
Also in my experience, SAHMs, which are more or less necessary for having a larger family at least at some point in the process, get a lot of lip service but are seen as a position of both luxury and choice so there's not a lot of support. There is far more sisterhood and support in the working mom arena which then bleeds further into the social sphere. As in, every social activity seems to revolve around spending money. My husband and I have made a lot of sacrifices to live on one income and be open to children because we value them. It's not an easy position to take, but definitely doable generally speaking, if your lifestyle expectations are modified and you have both partners willing to put in the work to make it happen.
Excellently put.
As a preface, I have two offspring, now in their thirties. "The Pill" was new when I was in high school.
I think the "deep social beliefs" is half right. And I think reproductive control is the other half. When I was a child, couples simply got married and had children. It was normal and expected. Mothers had a status -- not equal, but a clear status. For women, and to a lesser extent men, having children was a necessary milestone of status in a society. "Old Maids" and "Bachelors" had low status. Pregnancy was hard for most couples to avoid, even if they want to. The general tenor was that children were an expected part of a family, and children bestowed some status on the family. In some US subcultures (Mexican American in particular) having children was both a way to cement your status as an adult, and escape your family control. It was sought after.
With effective birth control this began to change (70's to 2000). The ability to maintain sexual activity, but forgo children seemed to erase the status of having children. Once couples had the choice, many choose their desires over surrendering their desires to some (possible) children's needs. Many parents will tell you children bring joy and happiness far in excess of their "cost" or "loss of status". But you don't have that experience unless you have a child. So for many couples the sweet spot was two children. The marginal benefit of more children wasn't worth the marginal cost.
During this same period (70s to 2000) there was a huge emphasis on "reducing teen pregnancy" It was very effective. It also was effective in reducing overall US fertility rates. It seemed that women who had children when young went on to have more children overall - for reasons that are not clear.
Practically, I think making birth control illegal would "solve" the fertility problem. I also think it is an ethically terrible idea. I do think solving the physical part of the problem is going to be easier than solving the societal image problems.
Thanks for the writeup.
The problem with the contraceptives explanation is that the decline in birth rates far predates the advent of modern contraceptives.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/
However, I absolutely agree that 'teen pregnancy education' coding pregnancy as low status has been a disaster for family formation!
Historically, people practiced infanticide to combat the effects not having effective birth control or safe abortion. Our society is definitely secular enough that people may very well resort to that en masse. People used to rationalize infanticide in much the same way we currently rationalize abortion, like neonates are not fully human, etc. Beyond the fact that murder is wrong, it may nominally help the “birth rate” but that won’t result in more adults. I’ve read that if you take natural fertility rate then look at the Roman census, every Roman household has committed one infanticide, more or less.
A more recent example being China's "one child" policy resulting in 120 male births to 100 female births.
Compare the PRC's birth rate and that of Taiwan ROC. Taiwan is around .87, the PRC's first-tier cities somewhat higher.
Bang on. I would also add that governments simply DO NOT HAVE enough money to offset the costs of childrearing, the way most people aspire to raise their kids (which is, in a word, EXPENSIVE). My government started an initiative of giving 20k HKD for every newborn born in a span of 3 years. When that policy came out, most people laughed. Parents laughed because we know it would not pay for more than a quarter's tuition for even a modestly priced private preschool. Non-parents laughed because, well, it was simply not persuasive. Is 20k going to hire a night nanny? Not for a significant amount of time. Even the very low income people can make that much in a few months. Would 20k alleviate the psychological pain of status loss from motherhood? Not beyond the cold comfort of a luxury handbag... and there is so much more to status than nice handbags. And it's become something of a meme that to raise a kid through college in our city, it takes more than a million. So what's 20k going to do? Now that I've had my third child, every little bit helps and I do appreciate the money. Especially as she has been in and out of the hospital for her first month of life. But I did not have her just to get my hands on that money.
To have a child/not is a weighty decision that fundamentally alters the course of your life. I wouldn't even have a fourth child just for that money, even though I've already made a lot of the lifestyle changes to accommodate children. A fourth child is never just a fourth child. It might represent a new house, a different mode of transportation, how often we see family, what education choices we make, etc. Let alone people going from 0 to 1. I mean, what would someone have to pay you to radically alter your vision of life, if it originally didn't include children? Whatever that number is, I would wager the government can't afford it.
Your experience very much mirrors my own (in a different high cost of living city). You describe it very well. I hope and pray your daughter spends less time in hospital soon - I know what that's like.
I hope this doesn't come across too preachy, but doesn't our revealed preference for personal status and affluence over intrinsic goods like love of family reflect poorly on us? What's the point of status if all you have to look forward to is another promotion at work and more luxurious consumption? What's the point of status if you don't have a family to share it with?
How does one avoid becoming too discouraged by such backwards values being *the norm*?
Status - when pursued virtuously - is actually a social good. For example, if a person is highly competent at a task, it is good if that is widely recognized, so that he can be given that task in important circumstances. Likewise, if someone is held in high esteem because they have acted justly and made sacrifices for the group, that's good. It helps order society correctly, and gives us a shared understanding of how to relate to one another.
However, when the assignment of status becomes untethered from virtue (which I believe has happened in modernity) we're in a bad place
Thanks for your reply.
I agree that status can be a real good when paired with virtue – I just find it a sad indictment of our culture that when they *are* untethered, we seem to abandon the latter much more readily than the former.
You are correct about economic incentives, they do not and will not work. However, I fear that you are too optimistic or reticent in your proscriptions and discussions of status. Across the world, we see a decline in birthrates concomitant with greater women's rights. The most immediate examples that come to mind are your country with the abolition of coverture in the 19th century and Japan after WWII when a new constitution was imposed upon them (but this also happened to Rome etc.). Coming to terms with this is highly unpalatable stuff and a non-starter in a world of universal adult franchise.
I think the demographic collapse will continue over many decades. Certainly, being a trad or at least trad-adjacent Catholic (as you seem to be) your children should at least find themselves in an environment that will not stack the deck against them (though boil off is always a concern). However, addressing these concerns on a societal level require solutions that are nowhere near feasible right now, they will happen (I exclude extinction on the basis of supernatural promises) only after we get to a state of emergency.
The fact is that we have no need of women qua engineers, mathematicians, philosophers, or theologians; we need them as mothers and religious. Pride exists as a terrible obstacle to grappling with this fact. Nothing suggests the West is prepared to accept this, but these things only go on until they cannot.
Postscript: Discussions of marriage in the historical context seem ridiculous to me. Marriage was for almost all time primarily an economic institution, from the industrial revolution until the 1960s (per Lasch in Haven from a Heartless World) about nurturing , now it is an at-will luxury. In the West, everywhere outside of neo-primitives like the Amish, it is at best a hybrid of the 2nd and 3rd iteration. The sacramental substance aside, it is categorically different than most of the past. The future belongs to those who show up and time will tell who, if anyone, finds a durable adaptation.
I agree. Our entire conception of femininity, the sacramental nature of marriage, the ends of marriage, etc. are so warped that it makes frank discussion incredibly challenging. My current priority is to at least create space for alternative social structures to emerge and survive.
Just give it time. The religious shall inherit the earth, since they are the only ones having kids.
We'll get our trad Catholic country in four generations if we can keep our birth rates high, reduce bleed off to the mainstream, and avoid being genocided.
Fair enough and I think the arc of your work is a breath of fresh air when so much trad material (at least in the states) encourages the best young men go to our new Catholic trade school or the like. We need an elite and within tradish Catholic world, it is notably absent or sad/hyper-parochial.
The problem is that unlike subsidies, attempting to change the status of having children causes an immediate confrontation. See the reaction to Vance's "childless cat ladies" remark, the childless identified that remark as an attack on their status and responded aggressively.
To be fair, this is the spiritual equivalent of grabbing them by the neck and forcing them to gaze deeply into the abyss. Existential terror can be disconcerting, or so I am told.
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Truly.
Amen to that
Everyone’s lifestyle choices must be “equally” valid, as if we, like every other creature, don’t have an existential imperative to reproduce.
Equality of status = disordered social priorities.
I am not sure I can write a quick reply to this. Several things occur to me. When I read your earlier article about status (and the lack of it) in motherhood, I found it very perceptive and although I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, I strongly agreed with it.
However I’m discouraged that you seem to be saying here that no measures to try to improve birth rate / make life even a bit easier financially for parents of young kids are worth it.
It’s true that small improvements and offers might not change the minds of those who are anti natalists or ambivalent or who have partners who aren’t ready or whose lives are just too exciting without kids (holidays, nice house, whatever) but they could make a different r a couple wondering whether to stop at two or go for a third, or having to wait for their first to be at school before they can contemplate a second etc. Win the people you can win, not the people you can’t.
I also think that this situation has built up over a number of years, and smaller families or no-kid partnerships are getting commoner, more normalised, even as cost of living has gone up, and (in the UK) cost of housing. So you won’t necessarily see a quick turn round.
I would suggest a multi pronged approach. Help people to help each other.
I have two children - the biggest thing that would have made a difference to me would have been having more extended family help.
To be clear - I would greatly welcome more family support from the state. The excellent discussion on this front was one of the reasons I enjoyed the podcast I linked in the first paragraph. I am very familiar with the financial burdens held by families!
However, my point in this essay is that, while we should provide families this kind of relief, we should not convince ourselves that we are solving the fertility crisis in the process. It will make people's life easier but all the signs are that it will not increase total family formation in a meaningful way.
Agreed. Underlying values and sense of purpose in life matter - and social status offered either goes with these or makes a big difference where these are wanting. I do think the maternal instinct is still strong in a lot of people - several of my childless female friends (we are all now turning fifty) would have liked kids, but either this instinct didn’t get much support from partners, or circumstances (ie finances or not finding a husband or partner young enough) prevented. Anecdotal I know!
I think the problem is that any program that the government can afford is just not going to be material to people with means. And these days governments are spending vast sums on supporting the elderly, so children just get the scraps.
However, I still think we should consider what we could do to make life easier for parents: schools that function, safer streets, free or inexpensive extracurriculars, nice parks, reasonably priced housing… right now it feels like parents just have to do everything.
I also think one thing governments and corporations could do is have re-entry programs for women who have been out of the work world for a decade or two. If there was some preferential hiring and opportunity to move up quickly, women could feel safer dropping out for a few years. Right now in a lot of careers there is no way back once you’re out a few years. You could also count child rearing years towards eligibility for early retirement and other benefits.