In a recent interview with NPR, a reporter asked a 20-year-old woman with sickle cell disease what she thought about new treatments on the market, noting that they have side effects such as hair loss and infertility. The woman was almost blinded. It wasn't just because she had a closet full of wigs, she said: “I don't want kids anyway, so it's free birth control.”
The severity of her illness has not diminished—maybe she was just trying to look on the bright side—and how often young women still express their desire to remain childless. And it's amazing how easily he professes it. How the declining birthrate occurred around the world, particularly in the United States and Europe, is complex. But Tim Carney is a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the following book: Not family-friendly: Why our culture makes raising children more difficult than it needs to be.-Provides a readable and nuanced explanation of the phenomenon.
unkind to family It begins with the problems faced by people who actually have children, and then moves back in time to the decisions young people are making about dating, marriage, and having children. Mr. Carney has his six children himself and lives in a community with other extended family members (think he has 10 children or he has 12), but he and Similarly describes the problems faced by his family. Oddly, Mr. Carney is not an investment banker and his finances are at the bottom of the list, even though his wife is at home with the kids.
Rather, he explains how things like travel sports make it harder for parents to enjoy parenting and for kids to enjoy being kids. He compares the current track and field culture, where kids tend to specialize in his one sport, resulting in injury and early burnout, to his own time as a high school athlete. One of his baseball teammates was good enough to go pro, but actually played multiple sports in high school. Parents back then didn't pay high prices for private coaching, and they didn't spend hours in their cars every weekend driving to tournaments far away. They didn't attend every game. “The best team for your child is often the one that practices across the street. …Instead of 'Next Level Lacrosse,' check out the lacrosse next door. Sports and Activities should be done for the family, not for the family,” Carney wrote. vice versa. “
Unfortunately, in sports, like in many other extracurricular activities, there is a race to the top (or bottom). All the parents around you are paying more and spending more time, and even if you just want your child to have fun, your options are shrinking. I know; I've already tried it. When our son was 8 years old, we enrolled him in our town's recreational baseball league. They had to forfeit half of the match because his teammates had a match against another team, but that match conflicted with a rematch.
Parents are spending more time and money supervising their children and driving from place to place — what Carney calls “car hell” — but the fun is gone. decreasing. They worry about being judged by other parents or being investigated by Child Protective Services. They worry that their children won't get into a good university or get a good job. They are alone because there is no one in the neighborhood and everyone is in their cars. They are tired and irritable because their children are anxious and depressed. Ten years ago, Jennifer Sr. wrote a book about parenting: All joy, no funapparently it doesn't need to be updated much.
“The demands of modern parenthood are not dictated by children or human nature,” Carney said. And he says that parenting “should be like sucking a pork shoulder. It's not instantaneous, and you need to check the thermometer from time to time, but you should always open the lid and open it.” “You'll get the best results if you avoid it.” Peck at the meat. ”
But Carney adds that there are reports from the front lines that the parents remain happy and are growing more attached to them. On Friday nights, children from his own community walk to school and synagogues, where families gather in the plaza behind the church to play ball while adults sit and drink beer with minimal supervision. I go to the Orthodox Jewish community next door. Moving from house to house with little supervision, all the way to Idaho, where Mormon children enjoy the same freedom, Carney finds a vision of a joyful family life in action. Not always, of course, but often.
Religious communities can form their own subcultures that are friendly to large families. These subcultures sometimes spill out into the larger culture, as we discovered in Israel, where even secular couples outperform the reproductive rate. For example, cultures that allow their children to roam freely with the expectation that they will walk to school are likely to have fewer children to raise their children, regardless of whether they themselves subscribe to the religious belief that the more children the better. It will be easier for everyone who is there.
There are public policies that make it easier to raise more children. Narrow the roads and widen the sidewalks. Zoning laws that allow smaller homes, smaller yards, and step-family suites (so that young couples can buy and also get help from grandparents to raise their children). Policies to ensure that schools, churches, and businesses are integrated into residential neighborhoods. A free-range parenting method that gives older children more freedom without inviting the prying eyes of government authorities and others.
Sometimes money makes things easier. But Mr. Carney does not ignore the various evidence on this point. First, and most obviously, wealthier people tend to have fewer children. So it's not just a matter of family income. Part of the problem, of course, is that wealthy people have more expensive ambitions for their children. In his 2021 book, little platoon, Matt Feeney covered similar territory to Carney, noting that many of the demands placed on parents (particularly travel sports) may stem from an overemphasis on getting their children into elite universities. He pointed out that there is a gender. In fact, I've heard middle-class parents say they considered having or adopting a child, but were worried they wouldn't be able to afford tuition at another university.
Carney warns against certain types of subsidies. He points out that the family-friendly policies often cited by liberals extolling the virtues of the Nordic countries have not actually made a big difference in birth rates. For example, subsidizing day care would definitely make it easier for women to work. But that's not necessarily what women want. And it seems like she won't have any more children.
Survey after survey shows that women with young children actually want to spend less time at work and more time with their children. Carney found that giving her family cash to spend on child care or subsidizing a woman's desire to stay home produced significantly better fertility outcomes than universal day care. It has been pointed out that But it's not just governments that need to make life more family-friendly. Companies should do the same. Instead of just giving maternity or paternity leave when a child is born, he suggests taking adolescence leave when the child is starting to get a little confused and may need a little more time with their parents. . And these policies shouldn't just be aimed at mothers. He wants to make it normal for fathers to leave the office at a reasonable time to have dinner with their families.
Society, including businesses, benefits when people have more babies. More people are taking care of the elderly, staffing stores, coming up with great innovations and making us all happier. Because despite all the talk about how babies are taking up time from people's travel and sleep, Carney believes that the more children they have, the happier people (including their parents) are. He points out research results that show this.
Optimistic societies have more babies, and babies create more optimistic societies. So we end up in a vicious cycle. There was a small baby boom in 2006, but it quickly faded due to the financial recession. However, even as the economy recovered, the birth rate did not recover. what happened? Carney cited the rise of pessimistic rhetoric about the environment and the country. His ideas that the world is on fire and that our country is irredeemably immoral make a huge impression on young people. “The changes needed to make our culture more family-friendly and pull us out of the demographic valley are all about overcoming grief and embracing our inherent human worth,” Carney wrote. ing.
Carney acknowledges that he approaches the issue from a religious perspective, but says you don't have to be religious to accept his message. While this is true, it makes things even more difficult. In her recent book, never enough, Jennifer Breheny Wallace, who tours all the book clubs in wealthy suburbs, explains why she thinks so many children are suffering from declining mental health. And that's partly because their parents only see them as achievement machines. Their worth seems to be determined by their performance in school, sports, and college admissions. And she advises parents, instead of asking their children for their math test results at the end of the day, to greet them “like a pet dog, with total unabashed joy.” There is.
Carney writes most eloquently about this issue: how our culture has become sterile, how we have moved away from the messy joys and pains of having children. How did we lose sight of the value of each and every life, and how did this problem come about? On the contrary, we are producing fewer human lives. “When we doubt our worth, we need the unconditional love of a little child to remind us, with a smile or just a look, that we are good.”
Not family-friendly: Why our culture makes raising children more difficult than it needs to be.
Written by Timothy P. Carney
Harper, 368 pages, $29.99
Naomi Schaefer Riley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Independent Women's Forum, is the author of the following books: There's no cure for children: How foster care, family courts, and racial activists are ruining young lives.
