That's your cue, people.
[My $0.02: Breed, schmeed. The important part is to let the kitten pick YOU.]
Posted on 02/27/2008 7:06:01 AM PST by Uncledave
Why are People Having Fewer Kids?
Perhaps it's because they don't like them very much.
Ronald Bailey | February 26, 2008
The "demographic winter" is coming. So warns a new documentary of the same name. What is the demographic winter? The phrase, according to the film's promotional materials, "denotes the worldwide decline in birthrates, also referred to as the 'birth dearth,' and what that portends." The first half of Demographic Winter was previewed at the conservative Heritage Foundation a couple of weeks ago. According the film, the demographic winter augurs little good, e.g., economic collapse and social deterioration. If current trends continue world population should begin a steep decline sometime around the middle of the 21st century. Why?
Because total fertility rates (TFRs) are plummeting around the world. Population stability is achieved when each woman bears an average of 2.1 kids over the course of her lifetime—one for her, one for her male partner, and a little overage to make up to childhood deaths. Today, there are sixty countries in which TFRs are below 2.1. For example, the European Union's TFR is 1.5 and no EU member state has a TFR at replacement or above. Even high population developing countries have seen steep declines in fertility. Since 1970, China's TFR fell from 5.8 to 1.6; India's from 5.8 to 2.9; Indonesia from 5.6 to 2.4; Japan's from 2.0 to 1.3; Mexico's from 6.8 to 2.4; Brazil's from 5.4 to 2.3; and South Africa's from 5.9 to 2.7. The U.S. TFR dropped from 2.55 in 1970 to around 2.1 today, largely because of the influx of higher fertility immigrants. However, the fertility of second generation Americans drops to the level of longer established Americans.
I doubt that the "demographic winter" portends economic collapse or social deterioration, but let us set that aside for this column, and instead ask why people are choosing to have fewer children? After all, voluntary childlessness seems to violate the Darwinian premise that our genes dispose us, like all other creatures, to try to reproduce.
However, demographic data are undercutting the notion that there is some kind of sociobiological nurturing imperative, economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt noted during the question period following the documentary. As evidence, he pointed to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where 30 percent of women are childless and that Hong Kong's TFR has been below 1 birth per woman for at least a decade.
Demographic Winter asserts that "every aspect of modernity works against family life and in favor of singleness and small families or voluntary childlessness." And surely they are right. Modern societies offer people many other satisfactions and choices outside of the family. In particular women find that their time becomes more highly valued in occupations outside the home. There are no iron laws of demography, but one that comes pretty close is that the more educated women are, the fewer children they tend to have. Eberstadt also noted the best predictor of fertility levels is the desired family size as reported by women. And finally, the most profound event of the 20th century may have been the sexual revolution's drive toward gender equality, enabled by modern contraception. Unlike other creatures, people can have the fun of sex without the side effect of parenthood.
So, modernity essentially transforms children from capital goods that produce family income into consumption items to be enjoyed for their own sakes, more akin to sculptures, paintings, or theatre. But that's just the problem—according to happiness researchers, people don't really enjoy rearing children.
"Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact," reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Daniel Gilbert. In addition, the more children a person has the less happy they are. According to Gilbert, researchers have found that people derive more satisfaction from eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television than taking care of their kids. "Indeed, looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework," asserts Gilbert in his bestselling, Stumbling on Happiness (2006).
Of course, that's not what most parents say when asked. For instance, in a 2007 Pew Research Center survey people insisted that their relationships with their little darlings are of the greatest importance to their personal happiness and fulfillment. However, the same survey also found "by a margin of nearly three-to-one, Americans say that the main purpose of marriage is the 'mutual happiness and fulfillment' of adults rather than the 'bearing and raising of children.'"
Gilbert suggests that people claim their kids are their chief source of happiness largely because it's what they are expected to say. In addition, Gilbert observes that the more people pay for an item, the more highly they tend to value it and children are expensive, even if you don't throw in piano lessons, soccer camps, orthodonture, and college tuitions. Gilbert further notes that the more children people have, the less happy they tend to be. Since that is the case, it is not surprising that people are choosing to have fewer children. And if people with fewer children are happier, then people with no children must be happiest, right? Not exactly, but the data do suggest that voluntarily childless women and men are not less happy than parents. And they sure do have more money to squander as they try to pursue what happiness they can and strive to somehow fill up their allegedly empty lives.
Disclosure: My wife and I try not to flaunt our voluntarily childless lifestyle too much.
Ronald Bailey is reason's science correspondent. His most recent book, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution, is available from Prometheus Books.
I had always figured I would have kids one day - I mean, it’s just what you do when you grow up, right? Well, here I am at 40, never married, and it just never happened. At this point in my life I just can’t see starting down that road - I’m too set in my ways, and given my family history I’d just as soon not have children and not live long enough to see them graduate high school.
Am I to be criticized for this? I support my mother, I pay taxes hand over fist to pay for social programs for other people of all ages. Do I have a duty to produce children to pay for my or my parents’ generation in retirement? Personally, I’m planning to take care of myself, financially at least. I have nothing against children, particularly - I’ve enjoyed spending time with various friends’ children, even when they were wailing, pooping, puking babies. I envy my friends who have kids, actually, even though they sometimes envy me for my freedom and disposable income.
I have been wondering about this lately, and I agree with many of the comments people have posted. One more thought - women who don’t have relatives (parents or in-laws) nearby have fewer children. What I think people fail to appreciate is just how grueling and somewhat lonely it can be to be a stay-at-home mom. Having female relatives in close proximity is a definite plus, so when our society became more mobile and people moved far from parents and other relatives, they had fewer children.
Oh, that will be sad when your last baby goes to school! (Maybe time to have one more??? ;))
That's fine by me. As I see it, the problem is those who don't want the responsibility of children and yet continue to have them.
"Indeed, looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework," asserts Gilbert in his bestselling, Stumbling on Happiness (2006). Of course, that's not what most parents say when asked.
So the researchers proved their conclusions... how?
“Whoah. Do the kids know that’s how you feel?”
Nope! I just put up with their stuff and stay quiet.
I guess I am the odd man out. I love my kids and can’t imagine a life without them. Maybe it is because I am still a kid myself. At 54 i skateboard with my youngest, have my own healies, coach softball and basketball.
I raised a great son who now is 25 and very succesfully employed as a programmer. I bought my first computer when he was born (I am a software designer) so I joke that we have always been joined at the CPU. But we also back-pack out for 2 to 3 days at a stretch. We are also very good friends and now “hang together”, excahnge DVD’s and send “guy stuff” e-mail to each other.
But we might just be different. We are hybrid home-schoolers. Big time campers. Into Geo-Caching and our house has always been Kid central for the neighborhood. As an older parent, I am financially more secure than the young parents and I AM NOT in a rush to get my kids out of the house.
If I am asked if i like being a parent, I say “Yes” because it is the truth.
It’s not an irrational experiment. It is people responding to external pressures against having a family. Schools are a joke, daycare is a mortgage payment, alimony plus child support = poverty for many fathers, divorce rate is at 50%.
Agree with your premise.
Decades of Spockism have had an effect I think.
Oy! I never said (nor do I believe) that non-church goers don’t have children or that church-goers do. I do believe there is a connection, however (key word = connection).
Believers are more likely to marry and have children. I bet the stats back it up. They are more likely to have more children too. Most people I know that have a lot of kids are very religious (orthodox Jews, devout Evangelicals).
Glad you came to the Lord though, my brother!
That’s great! Ya gotta love kids! Glad he’s doing well.
Thanks
“So parents say one thing, but Gilbert knows they’re lying.... How does he know that?”
I agree. Parents I know think that kids are the best thing to happen to them. Me included. I wish I had 10 more.
When this Freerider dies, Mogen David Adom and/or Best Friends get some nice checks. I am perfectly capable of disposing of my estate.
That's your cue, people.
[My $0.02: Breed, schmeed. The important part is to let the kitten pick YOU.]
Auction, friends, or landfill. What good is it to me when I'm dead?
Well, my question is, "Why don't they care?" But please note that this is an issue that I've had to deal with in several ways, from childless aunts and an uncle (including a pair of never-married aunts now having trouble taking care of themselves who now lean heavily on myself and my two cousins when things go bad) and a friend who recently died young and childless, with two childless siblings, whose family has given me first dibs on whatever I want to take from his belongings, some of which I want to try to keep in his family via a little cousin that he liked if that part of his family wants it. In addition, I recently talked to my father-in-law about one of his co-workers who, childless and facing failing health, killed himself with no obvious heirs. And then there were the years visiting my grandparents in a nursing home, seeing old people (including those with children, sadly) who never got visiters and were desperate to talk to someone -- anyone -- walking down the hallway. So I don't know about you but I'm seeing this starting to happen around me and find it a bit heartbreaking, especially since one of the great benefits of childlessness is supposed to be the extra money that people can spend on themselves, spending that will ultimately wind up in the ground with them (experiences) or in a dumpster or on Ebay (items). Consider the third ghost that visited Scrooge. Contrary to all of those Baby Boomer retirement account commercials, most people won't be windsurfing through their 80s.
And please note that I'm not saying that one person not having children is a bad thing. My childless aunts and uncle have nephews and nieces to leave their things to and some people become honorary members of another family. But the overall lack of children and smaller number of children means that only children (I'm one) don't have siblings to give them nephews and nieces and you won't get nephews and nieces if your siblings don't have children, either. Sure, some families are dysfunctional and some people find adoptive families but it's not the individual cases that are a problem so much as the overall pattern. One person walking on the grass isn't going to leave a rut but thousands are. One person deciding not to have children isn't going to wreck society (there have always been people who don't have children for various reasons, including an inability to do so) but large numbers taking that route and a birthrate well below replacement just might.
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