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.
Send ‘em to me and he’ll be returned fixed with no observable marks.
Don’t tempt me. Oh wait, go ahead and tempt me. I like when you do that. bwa ha haha!
Out of curiositiy, what ping list is this? I guess you can go ahead and add me.
It’s the FREERIDER ping list. A merry bunch of childfree malcontents who cause mischief on threads like this.
If you still want on, let me know. It’s pretty low volume.
I doubt that the "demographic winter" portends economic collapse or social deterioration . . .
Bailey apparently doesn't realize that modern welfare states can't function without a large pool of workers who pay the taxes that finance the entitlements that these states hand out to people who don't work. As the birthrate declines, the population ages; the pool of workers shrinks as the pool of retirees increases. This kind of situation cannot continue indefinitely.
It seems like such a “smart” and “modern” choice to remain childless but, of course, it is really a kind of suicide. When this couple dies, they and their idiotic ideas will quickly be forgotten. Those of us who have children will live on through them and their descendants.
Hehe... okay, go ahead and put me on your ping list. Thanks.
So the crap flies both ways. I don't see much tolerance from those types of people, and frankly I'm glad to not associate with them.
Alouette has 9 kids and 20 grandkids. Ha ha, I pWn3d the future!
WTF? Just a wee bit snarky, aren't you?
In California, a fairly high proportion of libertarians don't have kids, but that was not the case when I lived in Colorado or Tennessee, and my gut feeling is that libertarians in most other states have families (at least where they're able to meet and mate with people similar to themselves).
I'm a libertarian. Children are not an "existential threat" (whatever the h3ll that means); but nowadays they are a choice, not a duty. Remember, this is the 21st century? We have such modern contrivances as contraception. We don't *have* to have a kid every nine months or so.
For those who want kids, having and raising them is a job, a hard job, and sometimes a joyous job, and I wish them well. For those who don't want kids, they can be a burden.
And for those of us who'd like to be able to go to restaurants without having to deal with continuously screaming children whose parents won't shush them or stop them from running around, other people's kids are a pain in the @$$, not a joy.
I'd wager that Bailey does know all this. What you might not realize is that Bailey does not advocate a welfare state, but probably rather a state rolled back to its constitutional limits... in other words, not a welfare state.
Have more kids yourself. What I do is none of your business. That’s my culture.
I just hope it will be in suffiecient numbers to tend the Nation. Otherwise, the races that breed like rats will inherit all of this nice real estate.
I have raised five children. They are the most rewarding part of life.
I feel sorry for your shallow and probably materialistic life. As pointed out previously, it is far better that your kind doesn't raise children. Youd's just drive them into the river when they interfered with your next marriage anyway.
The last bastion of individuality should respect this.
Well said and very worthy of a repeat.
Perhaps I can clarify, at least somewhat, why some of us are childless.
Some people feel dedicated to a calling other than being a parent. Often times this calling actually stands in the way of being a good parent.
Some people have serious medical or psychological issues that they don't want to pass on to their children.
Some people just don't feel the "need". Sure, they might "learn to love it" when they jump into parenthood, but that's too big a risk to take when creating an innocent human life.
Some people have serious personal problems and they realize they would make terrible parents, even if they wanted and loved their child.
And a lot of these people don't scorn parents and don't hate children. They simply don't see parenthood as the path in life they are meant to take.
Personally, I don't think these people are immature or somehow "less human" than others.
I don't pay much attention to desires of ranting children. That is how I successfully raised five. One has to be an adult in order to raise children, you know.
Why does my opinion matter so much to you? I thought your whole way of life was given unto yourself. Or do you, deep down, really care what adults think of you?
In other words, you'd like to see more of us breed so we can stave off the swarming racial "others" and protect the Fatherla- er, "Nation".
Sorry, that's not my game.
I don’t give one good g==damn about your opinion. I simply enjoy playing mind monkey with inferior minds. You’re one of the best around tonight. And, even worse is than your general idiotic nature is that you want us to commune with you. I think those with that opinion generally hang out at DU.
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