FREERIDERS!
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.
So true--and they have no idea of what they're missing.
My husband's brother is one of those who believes his only job as parent is to provide for his kids physical needs - and once they can minimally care for themselves then his job is done. He called one day to ask what MDG was up to, and my hubby bubbled over with stories of attending basketball games, concerts and sports practices. His brother replied, "I asked what was up with YOUR life, not your kids'". He just doesn't get it.
FREERIDERS!
A professor at Rutgers a few years back once asked his students the question "If you had to choose between saving the lives of your parents or your children, which would you choose." The American students chose their children, while the Korean/Chinese/Japanese students chose their parents, with other nationalities somewhere in between.
“Show children” have been a problem since the rise of the bourgeoisie following the industrial revolution.
Its nice to pass on one's genes, but the 18 year (sometimes more) sentence that goes along with it really isn't worth it.
“My mother always reminded me there was going to be “payback” down the road.”
You are right. It probably is payback.
Why do they call us freeriders? WE are getting stiffed paying taxes to educate the little brats, and have to listen to same brats SCREAM whenever we are out in public.
These threads make me sick. People complaining that kids scream in public, throw tantrums, misbehave, etc...guess what people, that’s part of the deal. STEP UP AND BE A HUMAN BEING!!! I simply cannot fathom not being a father. My wife and two children are my reasons for being.
It is hard work raising children. But for all the tantrums, screaming, crying, toilet-training mishaps, etc. there are moments of utter joy. The first time your child says the entire alphabet. When they repeated climb on your lap with book after book, being enthralled as you read them stories...the laughter, the hugs, their first steps...the list goes on and on.
I’m sorry, but people that don’t like children disgust me. people that look down on other people who have kids disgust me. What if their parenst had felt the same way?! Wake up. The kid crying in the supermarket is annoying? Give me a break.
I left my family for 15 months ( a wonderful diversion in the Iraqi desert). This was the single hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than every combat mission I flew as a UH-60 pilot. No matter what happened to me in the desert, thinking about my wife taking care of my sons alone was torture. She stepped up to the plate in a big way. People always thank me for my service, say their proud of me, etc. I always say thank my wife. If our country didn’t have women like her we would be screwed.
As a final note to this screed, I will add that I’m not a religous person at all. I don’t go to church, have no interest in it. I will not raise my children with a particular religous dogma as part of their lives. The joys of a close-nit family life are all the religon I need. The feelings come naturally. The joys come naturally.
If one is born without the need for these joys, then I consider them to be deformed.
rant/off
“Its nice to pass on one’s genes, but the 18 year (sometimes more) sentence that goes along with it really isn’t worth it.”
You made me laugh at the 18 year sentence! It more like a life sentence.
Hopefully, not all at the same time...
I hate Reason magazine and the whole crowd that reads it. Selfish atheist bastards.
What also knocks me out is when these "parents" act like they're about to lay down the law, but then wimp out with "okay??" at the end...like they need their child's permission or something. GAH!
And I think you've hit on one of the reasons some choose not to have kids anymore: modern society (and liberalism in particular) has made it nearly impossible to control your own children, to raise them with the values and morals you want, etc.
Really, who wants to have kids when there's a very good chance that you will have little opportunity to influence what sort of adults they grow into? That role is increasingly being usurped by the government.
Not true. LOTS OF middle and upper middle income folks having kids where my sister lives in TN (to say nothing of her previous home in SC).
In my neck of the woods (NJ) there is a trend for more affluent people to have 3-5 kids. I will agree that most "working class" folks that I encounter have 1-2, if any.
Here is where it started....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1590865/posts
Epic thread hijack a couple hundred posts in.
Would you like to be on the ping list?
Even the few people I know who are worth in the $100 million to a billion dollar range, spend a significant portion of their income and time on their children - particularly when you consider estate plans. This is because their multiple homes, education, entertainment, travel, and other expenses all tend to scale up along with the degree of wealth and number of children. These days it is not fashionable to have your kids raised mostly by nannies, so even the very rich tend to spend a very large portion of their time with their kids.
The upper middle classes likely spend a greater portion of their net income on their children than the poorest classes. This is because of education, housing, and travel and entertainment expenses are so high for the affluent families with children. The poor don't tend to live in expensive houses or send their kids to private schools, have a household staff, use tutors and therapists for their kids. I know families making several hundred thousand to a million who feel tapped out even though they don't live particularly extravagant lives.
Generally, the more you make, the more expensive kids become. This is true around the world. So as wealth spreads globally, so too do birth rates decline. I am not far sighted enough to see when or how this trend will reverse.
If one’s only adult aspiration is to be “happy,” then, no, children aren’t conducive to that.
That reverence for elders does not seem to translate into higher birth rates, however. Witness Japan which accords great respect for parents and yet has abysmal birth rates.
I’m glad he gave his disclosure (childless by choice). My husband and I have sacrificed so much to have our kids, and they were difficult to make (the article does not go into the high rates of infertility these days).
And I am thrilled to report that having my kids and having intimate parent-child relationships with each of them (thanks to being a stay-at-home parent and homeschooling) is the greatest thing, not just in my life, but life itself.
Children might be difficult to raise to becoming good adults. Caring for them when they are sick or difficult is legion among parental complaints. But the road along the way is filled with a deeply satisfying joy. The love for one’s child makes all other loves mere dress rehearsals.
The saying, “Once you have a child, you go around wearing your heart OUTSIDE your body,” is very true. The risks of being hurt like never before are great: before you have children, the worst thing someone can do to you is to torture you. Once you have a child, even the idea of someone hurting your child is worse than anything anyone could do to your own person.
Here is a little something I have learned being a parent for the last 16 years and having close friends both in the stay-at-home homeschooling and full time employed outside the home varieties. Those who spend the LEAST amount of time with their children end up not enjoying that time. No, cause and effect are NOT reversed (it’s not that they spend less time with their children because they don’t like it). They went back to work tearfully, leaving their infant in other care. What it turns out to be is that they don’t have a deep intimate loving relationship with their children. They are near strangers at school vacations, and they panic. What to DO with my children? They rush from one entertainment source to the next. My friends the homeschoolers enjoy their families and are always together, so that being together is absolutely normal.
I go around in my life for the last 16 years with a little fellow 5 or under by my side (our kids are spaced far apart). They are mostly pretty decent companions, and they learn about life by being by my side until they are ready to strike out on their own. It’s working out really well, and I treasure these years.
Oh, and I do have advanced degrees, sorry to the author.
It’s way more common than should be these days.
Raising well behaved kids is a lot of work. They always test the limits and when you’re tired or not feeling well, nobody wants to deal with it.
IMO, all these people who don’t want kids for that reason shouldn’t have them. They wouldn’t make good parents anyway, and who needs to have to put up with their little darlings obnoxious, out of control behavior.
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