here is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is "natalism."Posted on 12/07/2004 3:51:25 PM PST by RWR8189
here is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is "natalism."
All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling - in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.
They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.
In a world that often makes it hard to raise large families, many are willing to move to find places that are congenial to natalist values. The fastest-growing regions of the country tend to have the highest concentrations of children. Young families move away from what they perceive as disorder, vulgarity and danger and move to places like Douglas County in Colorado (which is the fastest-growing county in the country and has one of the highest concentrations of kids). Some people see these exurbs as sprawling, materialistic wastelands, but many natalists see them as clean, orderly and affordable places where they can nurture children.
If you wanted a one-sentence explanation for the explosive growth of far-flung suburbs, it would be that when people get money, one of the first things they do is use it to try to protect their children from bad influences.
So there are significant fertility inequalities across regions. People on the Great Plains and in the Southwest are much more fertile than people in New England or on the Pacific coast.
You can see surprising political correlations. As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates.
In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe, "Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."
Politicians will try to pander to this group. They should know this is a spiritual movement, not a political one. The people who are having big families are explicitly rejecting materialistic incentives and hyperindividualism. It costs a middle-class family upward of $200,000 to raise a child. These people are saying money and ambition will not be their gods.
Natalists resist the declining fertility trends not because of income, education or other socioeconomic characteristics. It's attitudes. People with larger families tend to attend religious services more often, and tend to have more traditional gender roles.
I draw attention to natalists because they're an important feature of our national life. Because of them, the U.S. stands out in all sorts of demographic and cultural categories. But I do it also because when we talk about the divide on values in this country, caricatured in the red and blue maps, it's important that we understand the true motive forces behind it.
Natalists are associated with red America, but they're not launching a jihad. The differences between them and people on the other side of the cultural or political divide are differences of degree, not kind. Like most Americans, but perhaps more anxiously, they try to shepherd their kids through supermarket checkouts lined with screaming Cosmo or Maxim cover lines. Like most Americans, but maybe more so, they suspect that we won't solve our social problems or see improvements in our schools as long as many kids are growing up in barely functioning families.
Like most Americans, and maybe more so because they tend to marry earlier, they find themselves confronting the consequences of divorce. Like most Americans, they wonder how we can be tolerant of diverse lifestyles while still preserving the family institutions that are under threat.
What they cherish, like most Americans, is the self-sacrificial love shown by parents. People who have enough kids for a basketball team are too busy to fight a culture war.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
Thank you! Now that she is 13 months she does not stand for any hats we call her "a dead end kid".
Our babies don't like to wear their hats, either. It's a drag ... their little bald heads get sunburned!
Pish-tosh! People who have enough kids for a baseball team are breeding their own private cultural army! I could tell you stories ...
And David Brooks is a conservative like I'm a redhead ... in exactly the right light, if you don't look at the roots *too* closely ...
Blue America has veered so far off course, it doesn't realize that Red America is the way America has always been. Blue and Red America remind me of the Eastern and Western Roman empires. The Western empire decayed and fell in 440 A.D., but the Eastern empire flourished and lasted another 1000 years.
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How do you feel about hormone crazed, surly, recalcitrant teens? That's what those cute little critters become (for a while at least).
What I figure is that foundations dictate the shape of a house, so we've been strict with our two. We scold them, spank them when appropriate, demand "yes sir"s and no buts. Hubby and I want to get all the really tough groundwork laid by the age of six, on the principle that they can't hate us for what they can't remember LOL!
We also give out copious hugs and kisses, tell them we love them twenty times a day, and keep them well occcupied. It's working so far :)
I hope it works. Good luck and remember, even if one gives you grief it won't last too long.
Good for you. I really want to adopt a child, as well.
I just couldn't make it past this asinine statement. These people have no clue and likely never will.
I can buy a DVD of a sophisticated movie ... "Casablanca," for example, or "Double Indemnity," for $6 at Wal-mart. Or I can check it out of the library for free!
We were blessed with only one child, as well. She has been the joy and light of our lives.
Yes, those freaks having babies, we better keep an eye on 'em!
Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies...
I'll put up Toy Story 2 as being as funny and meaningful as any art-house piece of crap produced by some drug-addled sexually-ambivalent Manhattanite...
...restaurant dining...
Yes, I really want to pay $18.95 for eight ounces of pasta that cost 12 cents, and a few overcooked pieces of squash or whatever spread over top, and $6.50 for a glass of wine which is no better than the stuff we can get at Costco for $5 a bottle.
...and foreign travel...
Why would a citizen of the greatest country on earth, with some of the most diverse and breath-taking scenery and wonderful tourist and historical attractions, want to spend large amounts of money to go to some pissant "country" such as France and be subjected to smelly, provincial, arrogant people who are jealous of our power and lifestyle and try to hide that through a veneer of rudeness and hostility?
...let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.
Gee, I guess writing ignorant articles for a disgraced and dying rag such as the New York Times and having money to waste on restaurants and abortions is so much more important and rewarding than raising the next generation of human beings!
And hopefully it won't be too long before your productive Indiana has more electoral votes than most of the blue states! God bless you Hoosier natalists!!!
Remember this -- the liberal who killed two of her children because she did not want to shop at CostCo?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1176144/posts
Why would a citizen of the greatest country on earth, with some of the most diverse and breath-taking scenery and wonderful tourist and historical attractions, want to spend large amounts of money to go to some pissant "country" such as France and be subjected to smelly, provincial, arrogant people who are jealous of our power and lifestyle and try to hide that through a veneer of rudeness and hostility?
The best answer to that question was posted yesterday by Huck:
I finally did leave the USA this year for a few hours, but that was just to get a better view of the USA. I was at Niagara Falls. So while I can no longer say I have never left the country, I can say the only time I did leave, was to get a better vantage point from which to view the USA. I love my country.
Owl_Eagle
”You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being”-Hillary Clinton
(Yes, she really said that
Peggy Noonan
The Case Against Hillary Clinton, pg 55)
I remember that, and I still feel sick when I think of all the couples I know who are waiting to adopt children. No one has to bring up a child they don't want to. They just use that as an excuse, because it sounds better than saying, "I want to kill!"
What a cute little guy!
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