I loved your ending. Perhaps young women should be told that a meaningful life matters more than a successful life - and that a meaningful life generally includes children.
I would also tell them that putting their fertility on hold until their late 30s is often a mistake. And to think of a career that can accommodate children.
The message in the UK to young women is to have relationships but to remember their contraception. And that if they have children, they should return to work as soon as possible, leaving their babies in all day state childcare.
How sad and wrong such messaging is. No wonder young women are unhappy.
I got a degree from Cambridge, then married and had 8 children. The fabled career never got going - but my children got a lot of care and attention and as I read to them constantly they are very literate (!)
Ah, no, repeated studies have found that having children doesn't make anyone profoundly happy!
Only after children are grown up and left home do parents achieve parity of happiness with their childless peers. In other words, they regain good levels of happiness only after the child raising job has concluded.
Damn statistics. I’ve never met an unhappy parent with young children and I have seen many. Overworked? Yes. Frustrated? Yes. Feel like a milking machine? Yes. Those are things studies capture but studies that conclude that this makes women unhappy miss the point of the data. It’s just part of the whole wonderful process. And my wife had post-partum depression with suicidal ideation.
Maybe in the far more conservative and Christian dominated culture of the US those very old fashioned values held true for Gen X, not so in other countries.
As an adult in that era, no one was espousing marriage or babies as a path to fulfillment for women.
In Australia, nearly 20 percent of Gen X women haven't had children.
Up to 43 percent - and increasing - of women with a university education don't have children (again, Australian figures). Childlessness has long ago stopped being unusual here.
The single reliable predictor of childlessness or fewer children is the education level of women. This holds true in first world or third world countries and everything in between.
Give a woman other options, via formal education, and having children becomes a lesser priority. Education is a way out. This was established many decades ago . Childlessness has a long tail, and it always comes back to level of education and access to alternative opportunities.
The trad wife movement seems to entirely miss how the modern economy has changed the economies of households. Traditionally (painting with a broad brush here), men went out to the fields and forests and brought home raw materials that women then processed into finished goods in the household, with the help of their growing children. Men and women were both engaged in important, complex, productive labor, which together built up the wealth of the household. And the labor of their children also contributed to the household wealth and ensured continuity of income for the family as the parents aged, making children an economic asset rather than a liability.
A modern household still requires maintenance work, but it is not the site of productive labor (except in the sense of doing office work from home). It consumes finished goods brought from outside and paid for with money earned from outside work.
There is no going back to the traditional economy that provided women with productive and challenging work in the home. At least, not without returning to the levels of poverty that pertained for most of history. This leaves a real problem for modern women who naturally want to be productive and also naturally want to have children and raise them at home. For the first time in history, they can't do both these things in the same place.
An excellent summary of how men and women worked together in the past. Modern life has unbalanced the situation leaving mothers under-appreciated, and missing out on a lifestyle that is considered productive and generates wealth.
Some observations: 1) the degree of satsfaction one gains from a project depends critically (not solely) on the degree of skill one brings to it. Raising children is one of the most skill-dependent activities humans undertake, best learned through apprenticeship under those who are themselves skilled, in a context where their work and skill is valued. Those skills havem’t been valued, and they’ve been eroding for generations. As Stephen Paugh (above) points ouut, “There is nothing worse than a bad relationship with a child.” 2) The author and those she references give rather too much weight to what people are ‘told’ and not enough to what they experience and observe. A woman whose mother treated her as an encumbrance is not going to view maternity in a postive light. and 3) It isnt the nuclear famil that we need to restore but the extended family, the moiety, the clan, the village.
As FP below, I thought your last paragraph was great. Certainly women should not be shamed for not having children. To me it's an individual's choice about how to live her life. If she wants kids, great. If not, also fine. In my view, there is no such thing as a duty to have kids. Again, it's up the individual.
It's good they have the choice but they should try not to be influenced by social pressure from either the left or the right when making that choice for themselves.
I always see a real gap between the 2 sides of the argument between the so-called trad wife movement and the disdain for the sacrifice of child-rearing. Self- actualization and having children are not mutually exclusive. Nowhere is it discussed that, if someone is able to stay home with their small children, and I wish I'd been able to, a solution for additional family income and use of brains and talent is self employment.
It’s topical, as well as supportive of Liza’s core thesis, to look at Viktor Orban’s policies in Hungary here. These optically produced a “baby-boom” a few years ago, but that now looks like a statistical artefact and birth rates are back to where they were.
Orban’s government spent 5% of GDP(!) on subsidies and tax breaks, but in a very trad-wife way. “We would like our daughters to consider bearing us grandchildren as the highest form of self-realization” Orban’s Speaker of Parliament (in)famously said. You had to be married of course – no tax breaks for single, co-habiting or (gasp) same-sex relationships. And the subsidies really kicked in after your fourth child. Where I am in the UK only 10% women return to the workplace after their fourth child.
Orban’s government didn’t make any improvements to maternity leave, maternity pay or workplace flexibility. Nor did they increase paternity leave or shared parental leave. All these remained at the EU-mandated minimum.
My wife and I passed the baton of primary-carer back and forth a couple times as our children grew. I’m very grateful to her for the time I’ve been able to spend with the kids – more than many other Dads. She has been able to “have it all” as the cliché goes, although she rightly points out that being married to me is a significant downside.
Bringing up our family is the best thing we've done together. Although I would say mileage may vary on "life filled with utter joy" :)
Great post Lisa, and you can see from the comments that it’s struck a nerve. I note a common theme in the responses — the need for larger communities and the damage done by American individualism. I think the most problematic factor is the commercialization of happiness - the idea from the ‘80s that “whoever dies with the most toys wins”. It should never have lasted this long. You’re absolutely right that we need to fight back with a happiness prescription to replace it.
An interesting discussion. First, I must mention that for women to be able to use contraception and choose if they want children is a modern, extraordinary privilege. And not available worldwide.
As a woman in her 60s, with an adopted child, I agree that having a child limits your options. I did not love the tasks involved in being a mother, but I love my child, and she has brought joy and new experiences into my life. The experience of being a mother has also made me a better person. But my career suffered.
I agree that a mother’s limited options are mostly because they are based on traditional values. We must redefine the education and workplace experience. Even more importantly we must improve the status of mothers - having children ensures our future, and should be an integral part of our society, instead of mothers being pushed into the background.
I'm very pro-natalist, even as a leftist, for exactly the reasons you've mentioned. Most anti-natalists sound very bitter and pessimistic. I just can't understand why they hate people so much lol. That being said, I still don't want to have children but I hope all my female friends do.
you do realise that women still face so many structural barriers which drives them to the point of having to pick one over the other? saying that it doesn't have to be either/or is good in theory but deeply idealistic once you realise that women still get laid off due to pregnancy and even taken less seriously in job interviews if they're married/plan to have children. What we actually need is better policy that actually helps women lead the two lifestyles together without bleeding themselves dry because you can't just blindly claim it's a personal responsibility. Yes, but have you truly questioned the factors that drive this behaviour and anti-natalism rather than just acknowledge them? It is no woman's fault that we live in an individualistic society (thanks to capitalism). The gender pay gap is also very real and all you do in this article is say that women can do both but you fail to go into the how of it and what changes it would require our society at large to implement. This idea is not new or groundbreaking, and at the end of the day, it's just an idea.
Secondly you claim that having children should be framed as a personal joy, and to that I will just say it is the individual's decision what will bring them joy and varies from person to person with their specific experiences and circumstances. You can not generalise this by saying it has been true all of human history. Women have also been forced to give birth and raped and opressed all of human history. Having a child with anyone is still a risk because you never know if the person you married turns out to be a rapist or a cheater. It is not society's job to tell anyone what will bring them joy and it is not society's job to encourage OR discourage women to give birth.
I loved your ending. Perhaps young women should be told that a meaningful life matters more than a successful life - and that a meaningful life generally includes children.
I would also tell them that putting their fertility on hold until their late 30s is often a mistake. And to think of a career that can accommodate children.
The message in the UK to young women is to have relationships but to remember their contraception. And that if they have children, they should return to work as soon as possible, leaving their babies in all day state childcare.
How sad and wrong such messaging is. No wonder young women are unhappy.
I got a degree from Cambridge, then married and had 8 children. The fabled career never got going - but my children got a lot of care and attention and as I read to them constantly they are very literate (!)
Ah, no, repeated studies have found that having children doesn't make anyone profoundly happy!
Only after children are grown up and left home do parents achieve parity of happiness with their childless peers. In other words, they regain good levels of happiness only after the child raising job has concluded.
Damn statistics. I’ve never met an unhappy parent with young children and I have seen many. Overworked? Yes. Frustrated? Yes. Feel like a milking machine? Yes. Those are things studies capture but studies that conclude that this makes women unhappy miss the point of the data. It’s just part of the whole wonderful process. And my wife had post-partum depression with suicidal ideation.
I agree but I suspect older people with children are happier than single people.
Maybe in the far more conservative and Christian dominated culture of the US those very old fashioned values held true for Gen X, not so in other countries.
As an adult in that era, no one was espousing marriage or babies as a path to fulfillment for women.
In Australia, nearly 20 percent of Gen X women haven't had children.
Up to 43 percent - and increasing - of women with a university education don't have children (again, Australian figures). Childlessness has long ago stopped being unusual here.
The single reliable predictor of childlessness or fewer children is the education level of women. This holds true in first world or third world countries and everything in between.
Give a woman other options, via formal education, and having children becomes a lesser priority. Education is a way out. This was established many decades ago . Childlessness has a long tail, and it always comes back to level of education and access to alternative opportunities.
The trad wife movement seems to entirely miss how the modern economy has changed the economies of households. Traditionally (painting with a broad brush here), men went out to the fields and forests and brought home raw materials that women then processed into finished goods in the household, with the help of their growing children. Men and women were both engaged in important, complex, productive labor, which together built up the wealth of the household. And the labor of their children also contributed to the household wealth and ensured continuity of income for the family as the parents aged, making children an economic asset rather than a liability.
A modern household still requires maintenance work, but it is not the site of productive labor (except in the sense of doing office work from home). It consumes finished goods brought from outside and paid for with money earned from outside work.
There is no going back to the traditional economy that provided women with productive and challenging work in the home. At least, not without returning to the levels of poverty that pertained for most of history. This leaves a real problem for modern women who naturally want to be productive and also naturally want to have children and raise them at home. For the first time in history, they can't do both these things in the same place.
An excellent summary of how men and women worked together in the past. Modern life has unbalanced the situation leaving mothers under-appreciated, and missing out on a lifestyle that is considered productive and generates wealth.
Some observations: 1) the degree of satsfaction one gains from a project depends critically (not solely) on the degree of skill one brings to it. Raising children is one of the most skill-dependent activities humans undertake, best learned through apprenticeship under those who are themselves skilled, in a context where their work and skill is valued. Those skills havem’t been valued, and they’ve been eroding for generations. As Stephen Paugh (above) points ouut, “There is nothing worse than a bad relationship with a child.” 2) The author and those she references give rather too much weight to what people are ‘told’ and not enough to what they experience and observe. A woman whose mother treated her as an encumbrance is not going to view maternity in a postive light. and 3) It isnt the nuclear famil that we need to restore but the extended family, the moiety, the clan, the village.
Well put. I agree completely.
Excellent except…”glorification of abortion in many leftist circles.” No one glorifies abortion.
Yes, I also thought that was a very strange and inaccurate characterization.
As FP below, I thought your last paragraph was great. Certainly women should not be shamed for not having children. To me it's an individual's choice about how to live her life. If she wants kids, great. If not, also fine. In my view, there is no such thing as a duty to have kids. Again, it's up the individual.
Women are fortunate to have the choice whether or not to have children. There are still places where women don't have this choice.
It's good they have the choice but they should try not to be influenced by social pressure from either the left or the right when making that choice for themselves.
Generation X was from between 1964 and 1980. Anyone born after 1980 is Millennial.
There is nothing better than a loving relationship with a child but we live in a fiercely individualistic culture where loving isn't trusted.
There is nothing worse than a bad relationship with a child.
I always see a real gap between the 2 sides of the argument between the so-called trad wife movement and the disdain for the sacrifice of child-rearing. Self- actualization and having children are not mutually exclusive. Nowhere is it discussed that, if someone is able to stay home with their small children, and I wish I'd been able to, a solution for additional family income and use of brains and talent is self employment.
And, the push for tiny families started in the 70s with zero population growth
It’s topical, as well as supportive of Liza’s core thesis, to look at Viktor Orban’s policies in Hungary here. These optically produced a “baby-boom” a few years ago, but that now looks like a statistical artefact and birth rates are back to where they were.
Orban’s government spent 5% of GDP(!) on subsidies and tax breaks, but in a very trad-wife way. “We would like our daughters to consider bearing us grandchildren as the highest form of self-realization” Orban’s Speaker of Parliament (in)famously said. You had to be married of course – no tax breaks for single, co-habiting or (gasp) same-sex relationships. And the subsidies really kicked in after your fourth child. Where I am in the UK only 10% women return to the workplace after their fourth child.
Orban’s government didn’t make any improvements to maternity leave, maternity pay or workplace flexibility. Nor did they increase paternity leave or shared parental leave. All these remained at the EU-mandated minimum.
My wife and I passed the baton of primary-carer back and forth a couple times as our children grew. I’m very grateful to her for the time I’ve been able to spend with the kids – more than many other Dads. She has been able to “have it all” as the cliché goes, although she rightly points out that being married to me is a significant downside.
Bringing up our family is the best thing we've done together. Although I would say mileage may vary on "life filled with utter joy" :)
Great post Lisa, and you can see from the comments that it’s struck a nerve. I note a common theme in the responses — the need for larger communities and the damage done by American individualism. I think the most problematic factor is the commercialization of happiness - the idea from the ‘80s that “whoever dies with the most toys wins”. It should never have lasted this long. You’re absolutely right that we need to fight back with a happiness prescription to replace it.
An interesting discussion. First, I must mention that for women to be able to use contraception and choose if they want children is a modern, extraordinary privilege. And not available worldwide.
As a woman in her 60s, with an adopted child, I agree that having a child limits your options. I did not love the tasks involved in being a mother, but I love my child, and she has brought joy and new experiences into my life. The experience of being a mother has also made me a better person. But my career suffered.
I agree that a mother’s limited options are mostly because they are based on traditional values. We must redefine the education and workplace experience. Even more importantly we must improve the status of mothers - having children ensures our future, and should be an integral part of our society, instead of mothers being pushed into the background.
I'm very pro-natalist, even as a leftist, for exactly the reasons you've mentioned. Most anti-natalists sound very bitter and pessimistic. I just can't understand why they hate people so much lol. That being said, I still don't want to have children but I hope all my female friends do.
you do realise that women still face so many structural barriers which drives them to the point of having to pick one over the other? saying that it doesn't have to be either/or is good in theory but deeply idealistic once you realise that women still get laid off due to pregnancy and even taken less seriously in job interviews if they're married/plan to have children. What we actually need is better policy that actually helps women lead the two lifestyles together without bleeding themselves dry because you can't just blindly claim it's a personal responsibility. Yes, but have you truly questioned the factors that drive this behaviour and anti-natalism rather than just acknowledge them? It is no woman's fault that we live in an individualistic society (thanks to capitalism). The gender pay gap is also very real and all you do in this article is say that women can do both but you fail to go into the how of it and what changes it would require our society at large to implement. This idea is not new or groundbreaking, and at the end of the day, it's just an idea.
Secondly you claim that having children should be framed as a personal joy, and to that I will just say it is the individual's decision what will bring them joy and varies from person to person with their specific experiences and circumstances. You can not generalise this by saying it has been true all of human history. Women have also been forced to give birth and raped and opressed all of human history. Having a child with anyone is still a risk because you never know if the person you married turns out to be a rapist or a cheater. It is not society's job to tell anyone what will bring them joy and it is not society's job to encourage OR discourage women to give birth.