More babies: men have a role to play, too

Men will not commit to relationships, let alone to having children, by Sushi Das.

Some aspects of our lives we can control - for example, which career we want. But other things we cannot control - like when we will meet the person with whom we will have children.

Last Friday on this page, my colleague Pamela Bone wrote that because of the declining birthrate, men and women need to consider having children earlier than their 30s.

Bone raises some valid points. But I fear her solution does not account for the full range of human experience.

To urge people to have children earlier is unrealistic in today's environment where many men and women are struggling simply to meet the right person. People do not have enough control over their lives to plan exactly when they have children.

Sure, some people are lucky and meet their partners early. But not all childless women in their 30s have chosen to forgo having children so they can have a career. For many, childlessness is a result of not meeting the right person - of not finding "a suitable boy", as my father would put it.

Bone concedes that young men are often less anxious than women to commit to parenthood. This is a key issue: how do we get men to accept having children earlier? Many won't commit even to a long-term relationship, let alone one that involves children.

Some young men are too self-absorbed, too career-oriented, or stuck in a sort of ill-groomed, selfish immaturity, for a woman to feel they would be able to provide a stable and loving environment in which to bring up children. Put bluntly, some men just don't measure up. These men are unwilling to shoulder the collective responsibility of a declining birthrate.

In the culture of the 1950s, many men understood themselves to be providers, taking on a mortgage that could be serviced on one income, and accepting children as the natural consequence of marriage. But it's a different world now.

These days there is a greater value put on individual fulfilment. Men often want to achieve things in life, travel and build assets before they think they can make a serious commitment to having children.

Bone goes on to warn that people who don't have more children, or any children, may regret it for the rest of their lives.

Many do. But it is also fair to say that many women believe that by having children early, they sacrificed their own desires to do more with their lives.

My mother was 20 when she gave birth to me. Many times she has told me that while she loves all three of her children, devoting her life to them robbed her of her youth, and the chance to see the world and enrich her life with more experiences. She tells me she will take her unfulfilled dreams to the grave.

Bone also says women should be able to have a career and children, and that "climbing the career ladder has no biological time limit on it".

There is indeed ample evidence that a woman may be able to drop out of the workforce for a while to have children - but there is no guarantee she can catch up with the experience gained by her colleagues who remain in work. And often coming back full-time is simply not viable.

Of course, some women do have children and return to work to climb the corporate hierarchy, but it is not easy.

Essentially, to reverse the declining birthrate we must have a debate that engages men as well as women. Even if workplaces and universities were to become more flexible to allow women to study/work and have children, the job is only partially complete.

There also needs to be a corresponding shift in the mindset of men, to acknowledge the rapid cultural changes that are taking place.

In the past 30 or so years women's lives have changed considerably. I am 39. Women in my age group grew up in a world where we did not have to fight to be equal. We always believed we were.

I grew up understanding that I cannot expect a man to provide for me. It is my responsibility to earn a living to pay for a roof over my head and food on the table.

The opportunity to have a career was not just a dream to fulfil my personal desires, it was a means to earn a living.

And it is natural for women like me to believe that having children is as much a man's responsibility as it is a woman's.

Being equal does not just mean women are free to pursue careers. Being equal also means we expect men to shoulder some of the responsibility for having children at a time that is safe and sensible for women.

Young men should make their voices heard in this debate. How do some of them account for their lack of commitment to relationships that involve children? And what level of responsibility do they accept in sharing the burden of a declining birthrate?

We cannot always have babies on cue. It's one of those aspects of our lives over which we do not have complete control.

I was brought up to believe that having a child is a privilege - a privilege that is granted by the opposite sex. I think it is important not to forget that.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1086104/postsHow about having babies earlier?
The Age ^ | feb 27 2004 | Pamela Bone

Posted on 02/26/2004 12:49:18 PM PST by Eurotwit

Older feminists should spread the word: careers can wait but biology can't. By Pamela Bone.

Surely only the most extreme environmentalist could think it a good thing for the population to decrease by a quarter in each generation. Yet this is what must happen when the average number of births per woman is 1.5. In Australia now it is 1.75. In Melbourne it's about 1.6.

Of course immigration, whether controlled or uncontrolled, will ensure populations in Australia and other Western countries don't drop this suddenly - at least until women across the world start having as few children as we do. While in some regions the birth rate is still high, globally it is less than half the level it was a few decades ago.

Governments worry about the effect of the declining fertility rates on their economies (the term "fertility rate" seems to me wrong; it's not fertility that's declining, it's the willingness to use it), which is why Treasurer Peter Costello is urging us all to defer our retirements.

I would rather worry about the effect on collective and individual happiness: collective happiness because I believe a society in which children are rare will be a lonelier, sadder and more selfish society, and there are already signs of that. Individual happiness because - well, do you know many people who say they wish they'd never had children?

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This is not about trying to persuade women who have decided to be child-free to change their minds. There have always been those who preferred not to have children, as is their absolute right. In the early part of last century about a third of women never married, which meant then that they didn't have children either.

The difference in the past was that women who did have children had more of them. And they had more mainly because they started having them early. If you don't have your first child until you are 35 you are almost certain to have fewer than if you start at 25.

If we want to reverse declining birth rates we need to turn around the idea that the time to start thinking about babies is in the late 30s. This is what I hear all the time from friends nearing 50: I wish I had started earlier and had more children.

If we want to reverse declining birth rates we need to turn around the idea that the time to start thinking about having babies is in the late 30s. Adolescence may now linger through the 20s, and 50 may be the new 40, but biology tends not to take notice of cultural change.

The old expectation that women will not be part of the paid workforce will not and should not return. (It's interesting that the most conservative prime minister in recent history and one of the people least likely to call himself a feminist is now forced to deal with the great social changes wrought by feminism.)

But what if it were possible to combine tertiary education or some other form of workplace training and having children? Rather than juggle work and babies, juggle study and babies; have the babies first, then begin the career? What if you never had to make the agonising decision about when to take the break to have children, because you already had them?

It seems to me that universities could be far more flexible than many workplaces. Most universities already have creches. You could defer subjects for a semester (or two or three) when you needed to. No, not everyone wants or (these days) can afford to go to university. But having children in itself is valuable workplace training. If employers only realised it, someone who has been looking after children for a few years is a considerable asset, having been forced to be organised and flexible and to consider the needs of others.

Having said all this, I have not much idea about how this can be done. There's the small problem of how to manage financially while you are having children and being educated. Another is that young men are often even less anxious to commit themselves to parenthood than young women.

Men need to realise that late parenthood imposes burdens on them too. I know men who are at an age where they would like to start winding down, but can't because their children are about to go into the most expensive years of their education.

Late parenthood means parents are the age grandparents used to be. It means people becoming grandparents in their 70s rather than in their 50s. Sixty may be the new 50 (I'm telling myself it is), but energy levels do wane.

I don't know how the necessary social change can be brought about to allow it to happen, but I know it is possible to have children first, career later, because I did it. As did many other women around my age. I wasn't going to say so, because I don't want to be telling people they should do as I did. But there are women (such as Virginia Hausegger, on this page a while ago) who complain bitterly that their feminist mothers were too busy urging them to get a career to remind them to also have children.

Well here's one who is reminding: have both; but while climbing the career ladder has no biological time limit on it, you can't safely and easily have children once you are much past 40. We need all those things we've been pushing for - adequately paid parental leave, flexible workplaces, part-time work that is secure and respected, and for men to take a more equal share in looking after children. But while biology is not destiny, it still has to be respected.

It probably is good for us to keep working longer. But while keeping older people in the workforce may help the economy, it won't make up for the regrets people feel that they didn't have more, or any, children.

Which must surely be the most painful of all regrets.

Seriously, I am very interested in the topic. I am a 29 year old male who somehow both arguments count to some degree.

I do think the media culture has brought with it a a certain shallowness. But, I think that cuts both ways. Many people, myself included, have run away from a relationship prematurely on purely shallow reasons. So, I do agree with the author of this piece that this is a debate that both sexes should engage in.

The decling (at least in Europe) importance of christianity probably plays some part. Then again, in Norway it is hard to meet a woman who is a conservative. I was actually on a date yesterday, and the poor girl stated that she thought Bush was worse than Hitler. Well, that was the end of that ;-)

So I guess my confused opinion is that I do think it is preferable to meet your chosen one early and have children relatively early (At least in you 25-35 range). But, there is no given line of approach for every person. I think there is a line of thought that is prevalent these days in the consumer society, that everything should be perfect at all times. If it's not we just get a new product. The perfect house, the perfect car, the perfect friends and the perfect partner. Many people probably miss out on their actual "perfect" lifetime compantion whilst chasing this illusionarry perfectness.

More generally, I belive strongly in marriage and belive that it should be a wow and it should last forever. Some people these days seem to be too much guided by short-term selfish impulses.

I think that's the best I can do at the moment. You seem to really be a great woman in a great relationship. For that you should be grateful. Many people are not that lucky. I guess all I can really say is that I really like most of the Freeper girls here :-)

Have a good one.

Cheers!

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