Many moons ago I happily chased the American dream across the pond, driven by adventure, opportunity and a willingness to do my very best to succeed...the stuffy, tired and static European old world of the late 70's simply paled in comparison to the new promised land of milk and honey, the USA. California dreamin' was to be a dream come true...several years and degrees later, I eventually settled down and married a bonafide cowgirl from Oklahoma and helped raise six lovely and gifted children, all blessedly schooled in private Catholic institutions. The very model of a success story, some would have said...Today, I'm just not so sure. Truth to tell, I sometimes wonder and pray what I could have done differently to keep it all together....To date, all our children are scattered across the vast expanse of the USA, from the Pacific west coast to the Atlantic east coast...all successful urban professionals, comfortable and fiercely independent. Only our eldest son(a tenured professor) in California is married, with a lovely Mexican wife, helping raise two joyful children. She stepped away from her career as an architect and never looked back to become a full-time mum. They are a delight to be around and I am so proud of how active they are with their Catholic Church community and outreach. Their lives are full, busy and blessed with purpose, definition and meaning. Living on one salary has been a challenge at times for them, but you can see they make it work. Their home is often a scattered mess of children's toys and bric-a-brac on the floor, the pitter-patter of children running amok, yet always with the living and abundant presence of joy. Sadly, the remaining bunch are much too attached to their careers, making money, creature comforts and other silly, pleasurable but pointless pursuits....they have all emphatically professed no interest whatsoever in getting married, having children and raising a family. It's too much of a bother and burden for them, they say, as it would cramp their already active lifestyle. They love their possessions, their collectibles, their trips, their investments, their crap....and all have lost or let go of their faith life....and it sorrowfully shows to a fault. It is hard to see ones children lost in trivial and material pursuits that power their minds, hearts and souls far from the prayers and desires we had hoped for them all over a lifetime. They are free to do so. Yet we are also gladdened by the answer to the many prayers over the years with our eldest son and his family. We travel often to visit our kids, especially our grandchildren, as we retired 5+ years ago and now live in France, close to my ageing family. Parenting is indeed a struggle and a joy. Embrace the journey and be a light of love, hope and determination.
How old are they? I didn't start getting interested in marriage until about 30, but didn't find a woman I actually felt I could marry and commit to forever until about the age of 35. Then the fucking lockdowns intervened and screwed everything up, delaying marriage for years. She's younger than me and isn't keen on kids because she finds them annoying, but it's also that she's very sensitive to financial "success". So I'm inclined to agree with Ed that the problem is that parenting has become seen as low status.
Partly it's due to lack of pushback against anti-society left wing memes like "the planet is overpopulated" or "the future is doomed by climate change"; totally wrong, but how often do you see a robust response to that stuff? The sheer amount of energy and risk required to constantly push back against the latest academic nonsense completely overwhelms societies ability to respond. Shut down academia and see fertility levels start heading back upwards a decade or two later.
Thank-you for responding and sharing your commentary. My eldest is 43 and my youngest is 32...with the exception of my eldest and married son, the rest of my kids simply are held captive and brainwashed by their careers, power, fame and fortune hunting. They are fearful of struggling financially, of messy, screaming children, of not having it all the way they want it. Even though he's happy and in my view has enough, they see their older brother grappling and struggling financially to provide in their eyes adequately for his family. They're constantly bragging that they are "living the dream", which honestly disappoints their mother and I, as its boastful pride and nonsense. In their minds, getting married and raising a family would simply spoil and ruin that dynamic lifestyle...its just not sexy, cool or fun. One out of six is not the best ration to swallow, but it's what we have and we are indeed grateful for the 2 grandchildren in our lives. Ever hopeful, perhaps in time they will come to their senses...
I suspect they will, especially if they're actually telling you they're living the dream in those words. That's the behavior of people who are trying to convince themselves that it's true.
When I was in my 20s I too "lived the dream" because I was earning extremely well for my age, so money was simply not a barrier. Work was fun, I travelled, I dated or had one night stands, I partied. But soon enough I discovered that travel wasn't as much fun as it looked in the movies because many places I could go were actually quite similar, that companies can love you one day then stab you in the back the next, and that dating could quickly lose its novelty whilst girlfriends who turned out to be not a good fit needed to be dumped, with everyone feeling terrible as a result. I found I was happiest when hanging out with friends at home on lazy sunny days by the water, that careers have both highlights and lowlights, that dating could become exhausting and that it was much better to have a nice partner than being alone with 'options', especially as friends steadily paired off.
The turning point for me was when I realized I'd done a bunch of interesting projects at work and had a fulfilling and varied career so far, yet when I thought about doing that for another few decades with nothing else I felt nearly sick. Like eating chocolate every day, I suddenly realized that if I got to retirement age with nothing but a series of projects and jobs to show for it all life would feel incredibly empty. It's possible your kids just haven't really grappled with how long life actually is, and how much time they still have to fill. Even people who love their work, as I'm blessed to do, might rethink how much they love it when considering the next 30 years of doing nothing but that. I also have a friend in a similar job who loves his kids and derives much more meaning from them than work, which probably helps.
I think children can be influenced a lot by their parents, so don't give up on persuading your kids about having kids. But it's got to be phrased in positive ways, not "your material life is shallow" but "kids are actually much more fun over the long run". My wife feels negative towards having children (it's the one sad point in our relationship), partly because her own mother actually complained to her that having kids was hard and she didn't enjoy it! Well, if your own mother is so down on having had you, I'm not totally surprised she's reluctant. It's probably lucky she's so well adjusted in every other way, really! Whereas my parents did the more traditional thing and always told me and my brother how much they loved us, how happy we made them and so on. It's also worth emphasizing that society makes it look harder than it really is. My parents did have one regret about having me and my brother - it was that they worried too much about us, and could probably have focused more on themselves. They didn't need to take us to quite so many activities, etc, and we'd have worked out fine. I think this is a message that easily gets lost - people used to just leave kids alone and tell them to go play by themselves or with their siblings, and that was fine. You didn't have to reorient every waking minute around keeping them busy.
Good of you to share this (I'd like to say courageous but the term has become too fashionable for my liking). We are, I surmise, of the same generation, and I agree with you that parenting is a struggle and a joy. As a dour protestant, If I may venture: take heart (corage!) in the joys and live in hope for the end struggles:
"but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint." Isaiah 40:31 (NIV, of course)
Yeah, I think this is correct. If even somewhere like Iran can't keep above replacement then it certainly looks like top-level conservative policies aren't the most effective thing driving fertility choices. That said, I think Orban's efforts are more impressive than sometimes portrayed - moving the needle upward is very difficult, and to get back to 1.6 in a decade or so isn't bad. Would be interesting to see if it continues. Hovering just under 2 implies a relatively stately population decline, where Korea's rates look very scary indeed.
yes, and at least they've identified the problem and are trying to do something about it. They might fail, but if you don't try, your chances of failure are 100%.
If there is one characteristic that has epitomized our species accent to the top of the biological totem pole, it’s our adaptability.
The economic impacts, notwithstanding, I’m not convinced that a stabilizing or even declining population is a bad thing.
I think it’s reasonable to assume the population explosion we’ve experienced over the last 2 or so centuries can, in major part, be attributed to the industrial revolution and the associated rise in technological innovation. That 2 centuries in, we are seeing declining fertility and population retreat, may simply be an adaptive response to the forces that produced the original population boom.
I think technology impacts culture. And culture impacts fertility. Obviously, human culture is not monolithic. Different cultures will probably respond in ways unique to their cultural DNA. Which means that the way forward is going to be somewhat chaotic. As to what that looks like, I haven’t a clue.
Why is fewer people good? It means the ones that remain have to work harder unless productivity increases can offset the declining population, but right now we're not managing that. More people is good! There's plenty of space on this wonderful Earth, we're not in any danger of overpopulation anytime soon, the idea that we are is unfounded wishful thinking by neo-Marxists.
Do you have any notion how corrosive and destructive the average North American is to the environment? The consumption alone destroys ecosystems, habitats and entire species of animals. The pollution is staggering when you think on it. The direct pollution of being and keeping yourself alive. The indirect pollution created by manufacturing processes to keep you fed, clothed, and entertained. The even less direct pollution offloaded into the environment by pharmaceuticals excreted into the water by millions of people per city. Endocrine disruptors and xenoestrogens in the environment. Not to mention the impact on society of having more people than can be fed, housed, employed, and made happy.
No, until the population collapses, there won't be any positive changes.
Goodness me, old chap, what gloom and doomery! For some reason as I read this missive, every sentence seemed to end with an upward intonation, literally. As for 'Endocrine disruptors', is that some kind of euphemism for Antifa?
How is pollution staggering? The US and Europe are doing pretty well I think! The air is clean, the water is clean, we can go almost anywhere and not worry about whether the environment is dangerous (or plants or animals!), occasionally derailed trails notwithstanding. There are plenty of wild animals, birds and fish because hunting is now a pretty rare activity (and strictly regulated in Europe), replaced by agriculture which has itself heavily improved its environmental impact over time through things like GMOs reducing pesticide use and much greater efficiency.
Now you can argue that some of this pollution has been exported to China, but so what? We don't live in China. Also, their pollution is largely one of convenience and communism, they know how to reduce pollution, they just don't bother.
Pollution required to keep us entertained? Really? Hollywood, music and video games are not exactly famous for their pollution generation. Indeed what little pollution they created in previous years in the form of waste CDs/DVDs/TVs and the pollution created by moving all those things around has been strongly reduced by the internet and longer lived/much less heavy/much more power efficient display technologies.
Drugs in the water supply could be a problem! But they could also just be scare stories. A lot of the research into things like sperm counts and endocrine disrupters comes from the halls of academia, which generates large amounts of informational pollution in the form of bad studies and bad claims. I don't see much direct evidence of harm from the water supply - if it's there at all it must be only observable via very subtle statistical effects, which almost by definition means the problem isn't _that_ bad compared to pollution problems from the past.
No, I'm pretty happy with the levels of pollution I see around me. People where I live are quite clean, really (I'm not living in North America though). Even in unusually dirty western cities like San Francisco that's more a result of politics and culture than population levels.
After doing way too many deep dives into pollution and green topics, my main conclusion was that a lot of claims of our supposedly awful destructive effect on the environment are weak and caused by ideology+bad incentives. Consider a classic story we were all subjected to endlessly over the past decades - evil humanity is destroying the beautiful coral reefs through our air pollution. How often did we hear about that? Then the corals experienced massive growth, reaching their highest levels since records began, and it turned out some of the most important studies claiming bad coral health were fraudulent. The corals are fine, they always were, claims to the contrary were based on taking a tiny amount of data and assuming it was sufficient to understand the whole lifecycle of the reefs. This good news story mysteriously never made it to the press because "if it bleeds it leads", so they want you to think the world is bleeding.
You make a compelling point about the anticipated stress of being a parent vs. parental status. As well as the cultural references surrounding children and large families.
The media, both news and TV/movies, are now dominated by tragic circumstances of teenagers run amok. When I was growing up in the '70s, we had TV shows like "Eight is Enough," "The Brady Bunch," and "The Partridge Family" featuring large families with happy outcomes every week. You're right to draw our attention to the underlying cultural message of being a parent.
It is interesting listening to boomer era family members who grew up in the 40s and 40s for when they tell stories of their childhood, two things do stand out: the absolutism of parents as figures of authority, and by extension, the concept of adulthood, and second, the notion of respectability and fear of affecting the family's respectability standing in the community. While some kids today probably still acknowledge parents as figures of authority, especially at younger ages, I do wonder how many even comprehend the notion of *embarrassing* the family in front of the whole neighborhood by doing a silly antic or prank or having the local policeman seen knocking on the door of your house.
Our kids have been explicitly warned of this many time. They do understand it. It's one of the reasons they aren't allowed on social media even as teenagers. However, this is very countercultural and difficult. Even in our world of home education, it's rare. The surrounding culture promotes teen autonomy (mostly for reasons of consumption -- having poor impulse control, teenagers make great customers) instead of family stability.
I was looking at my granddaughter this morning, at 2 1/2 possibly the most charming individual in the world, curled up in an oversized armchair with a book, and tears came to my eyes when I thought about how few people going forward are going to be able to appreciate a moment like this. In the mid 80’s when I was expecting my first pregnant women and small children were everywhere, the US was in the middle of another baby boom, average family size was 3. People were returning to church in those days, having children made them rethink their earlier indifference to religion. It is hard to believe that things have changed so dramatically in one generation. I raised 5, and thoroughly enjoyed it, and it really does make me sad that so many people will not get to experience the wonder of a small person dependent on them, the incredible insight into a rapidly maturing mind whose thoughts are totally transparent, the sheer entertainment value that watching children closely provides. I have six grandchildren so far, and the opportunity to relive my parenting days are priceless. But if I had to make the decision to start a family tomorrow, it would be very hard.
It isn’t the difficulties or the expense, both of which are often overestimated, but something else you allude to here- the constant undermining of everything you hope to teach them by every aspect of our society. Even if you avoid the minefield of school, between incompetents and ideologues, by homeschooling as we did, every child they come in contact with has the entire cesspool of the internet in their pocket. The entire society conspires to destroy childhood by sexualizing it while burdening it with the responsibility for destroying the planet and wiping out cute wildlife worldwide. I am not sure it is possible to protect them anymore, and I do not even think it will be legal to try for much longer. Then you will be left with the financial responsibility of being a parent without the opportunity to raise your children to be good company, to understand your most strongly held beliefs, to be people of integrity and self control in a society which values neither. I understand why young people are afraid of this even while I would say they are giving up the most wonderful experience in life.
"It’s worth trying to fix housing and childcare costs ...The issue goes much deeper, to the question of how much support we give parents, not in terms of cash but of authority and prestige."
There is a contradiction between wanting childcare costs to be low, but parents' having authority and prestige. If care of children is to be done as cheaply as possible, solely for the benefit of people who don't want to spend any time with children, that means caring for children has no societal worth. One could say the same about caring for the elderly or handicapped people.
"There is a contradiction between wanting childcare costs to be low, but parents' having authority and prestige."
I had to read this a few times to understand your meaning, and now I've concluded that I disagree (a rarity between us). Your thinking seems to be that if parents are exalted, then doing their work must pay well, which means childcare would be expensive.
It's fine enough reasoning, but there's clearly something missing in that poorer societies have higher birthrates, even the poorer societies that were previous generations of the West, and we can see overwhelming evidence that parents were/are respected more in those societies than they are in the modern parent-mocking West. In today's America, we speak of the cost of raising a single child as a bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars (lifetime), such that economics are often cited (perhaps as an excuse) in parenthood decisions. There are other arguments, of course (hedonism being a big one - the "social life" disappears once the baby is born). But plainly, children weren't perceived as having this cost in the West's past, nor are they perceived as having such a cost in poorer countries.
The lion's share of the cost is educational and medical, which likely explains the lack of serious discussion. In America, both education and medicine experience drastically inflated pricing to fund their politicization. This factor seems independent of parental respect. Or maybe it's not, in that those politicizing education and medicine are hell-bent on undermining parental authority over children...
I don't know if we really disagree, or if I just wasn't clear. My main point was that if doing the job of a parent has a low economic value, that's an indication that it has a low societal value. The additional step, that this is related to undermining parents' authority and prestige, is more of a stretch.
"In America, both education and medicine experience drastically inflated pricing to fund their politicization."
"My main point was that if doing the job of a parent has a low economic value, that's an indication that it has a low societal value."
One of the silly tropes that's been out there for a while holds that the job of a mother ought to pay several hundred thousand dollars per year, given the hours and the responsibilities (24/7 supervision, cooking, cleaning, teaching, etc). The problem with this trope is that it ignores the question of who should pay this mother: she herself, since it is her child.
The fact that parents incur this need for labor and largely pay it themselves obfuscates the true valuation of the labor.
When I see parental authority undermined, I see more these:
1. The general left-wing disdain for experience and authority (Moral Foundations Theory).
2. The eradication of any obligation from child to parent at any stage of life, particularly at adulthood.
It is not clear to me that either of these factors would be mitigated if we acknowledged that parental chores are economically valuable (say, by paying nannies $10k/month).
The Greta Thunbergs of the world are also feeding low-fertility trends to some degree with their apocalyptic rhetoric. I'm not saying that people have chosen to remain childless solely because they heard about Malthus in a gen-ed science course or somesuch, but it's one more ingredient in the stew of tangible and intangible factors that push people to reject parenthood or even just delay it long enough that a large family is unattainable. I am embarrassed to admit that I went through a phase in my early adulthood when I was absolutely obsessed with overpopulation, to the point of leaving sanctimonious Big Families Are Bad comments on websites that celebrated large families. Lately my wife and I have been talking about going for additional kids and glumly concluding that we're probably just a bit too old. I think back to those big-family websites and conclude that they had it right and I had it wrong.
definitely. I used to think the 'I'm not having kids cos of overpopulation' was a coping mechanism because people felt they couldn't afford kids, but a lot of people have definitely memed themselves into it. Again, lots of bad advice out there. Overpopulation is really not an issue in Eurasia and a lot of people will really regret it when they're older.
People often "confess" to me that, now that it's too late, they wish they had more children. They seem to want me to reassure them that they were justified in their decisions, when my existence as a mother of ten demonstrates that it can be done without great wealth or idealized sanctity.
"Everyone does what they can with what they have to work with," is my typical reply. "I'm fortunate to have very good health." Also wine, soothing British murder programmes, and all the Extra-Strength Fatalism.
We feed children a steady diet of hedonism and nihilism. The nihilism discourages any consideration of the future, and the hedonism discourages doing anything difficult.
Paul Erlich likely did as much harm to humanity through disinformation as considerably more notorious figures did through totalitarianism and genocide. You've hit on a significant factor in the parenthood crisis as well as society's struggles in general, though: We don't respect the wisdom of age anymore.
If I have to hear one more DEI advocate spout "It's time for the old folks to stand aside and let the young lead!"...
No. The Death of the Grownup is our defining struggle, and the perpetual adolescents are the ones who need to sit down, shut up, and listen to something other than their own personal "truths" for a change.
You hit it on the head: the problem is secularism. Nietzsche understood the great dilemma of his own philosophy: once you give up on God, life really is pointless. Our world is more Nietzschean than we would care to admit today.
The ancient's telos (purpose of life) was "to conquer your passions and lusts so that you may live as a free man" (Aristotle). The Medievals telos was "to learn the mind of God". Modern man's telos is "if it feels good, do it". And as a parent of 3 girls, I can attest that parenthood often doesn't "feel good". It's hard and full of conflict -- rewarding, but that comes later. So absent a transcendental reason to experience the pain and discomfort and risk of parenthood... why not just have fun for 2 decades instead?
There is one economic piece that you didn't mention: state-run old-age support. This removes the last real economic incentive to have children: someone to take care of you when you get old. I suspect it's minor though; just another nudge in the anti-natal direction.
Well said. The modern notion of "do what makes you feel good and happy" explains a lot of our narcissistic culture. I know a lot of educated people in their 30s who simply don't want responsibilities and want to have fun, so they don't have kids. Simple as that.
Point of order, "the hippie who wanted to get in bed with your daughter and the education official who wanted to control what your children learned and thought" are now the same person.
The invention of the teenager, and the infinite extension of "youth" (I think you've written about that), has infantilizing effects on a generation. They can't be parents because they have never grown up.
I think a lot about how it's considered acceptable to cut off contact with your parents if they "don't accept you", or if you deem your childhood unpleasant or if your parents don't agree with your politics.
I don't think this is done all that often...the people I know who have cut off contact with parents all had a divorce or equally traumatic event in their childhood. But it's scary as a parent to hear stories about people cutting off contact with parents because they voted for Trump...
On a more positive note, my kids go to a neighborhood Catholic school in New York with a lot of middle class 3rd/4th gen Italian families. It's amazing how many of these families have big networks of cousins and extended family that are acting as the "village" for their kids. These kids basically only socialize with their cousins for the first 5 years of life, which seems to help build family solidarity. None of these families are huge, 2 or 3 kids, but if everyone in the family does that, and stays local (the NYC economy helps) you end up with a nice little local tribe.
I think if my older brother and sister had had children I would have felt a much stronger desire to have them myself. After all, like with cake at teatime, I don't want to be left out. I'm amazed at how much a product of my environment and messaging I am. It's embarrassing. Still, I don't see how it could have been any other way, short of giving birth to myself and pulling myself up by my own bootstraps.
All of us are a product of cultural norms, expectations, values, desires, etc. Even on a subcultural basis--like your milieu--what others think and do impacts your significant life decisions.
In well-educated circles, Keeping Up with the Joneses today means having more houses than children.
A big part of the reason that parents try to be friends with their children instead of authorities is that parents aren't in relationships with each other, and when they're not in relationships with each other, they tend to be antagonistic towards each other. This leads to competing over the children's affection - a competition which parents perceive that they will win by being the least authoritative and most "cool".
Of course, intentional attempts to eviscerate the family as a concept have been a part of left-wing politics at least since Marx. The technocrats want state "experts" to raise children; the parents are unqualified idiots who just happened to have sex.
Hedonism and nihilism; the diet of modern "education". They explain a lot of symptoms, including the rise in mass shootings.
But we also have to blame feminism. This devaluing of femininity, which encourages women to instead try to be men, has caused a dramatic decline in the desire for motherhood among women AND a dramatic decline in marriage rates. We perceive the statistical impacts of women in the workforce, but the cultural and psychological ones get short shrift. Time was, having a bunch of children was THE GOAL in life; there was no greater measure of success. Few think that way anymore because the culture is radically different.
I work with many accomplished women and we do have to acknowledge the feminist movement did open doors and liberate women in ways earlier generations were not, it is too easy to forget how systematically unfriendly past generations were to working women or women who wanted to be doctors or leaders. Single women couldn't even get a mortgage without it being cosigned by a male relative. There is certainly a distinct unfairness about it. And we should note that the professional classes in the western world is firmly pro-feminism and is also the class with the highest marriage rates and family stability, at levels comparable to the averages of the 1950s.
It's the collapse of marriage and family stability among the working and lower middle classes that has been pronounced and is becoming problematic. How much of that is due to feminism? After all, these cohorts are typically less "feminist" than the educated classes.
But I would agree there is a reckoning of sorts. Like it or not, despite what trans and gender fluid people want to believe, biology is very stubborn. Women have children. Men do not. Human biology requires significant childrearing periods. And, for whatever it is worth, women do seem to have maternal instincts that men do not, at least at the same level and to the same extent. Biology makes it very clear the female is the one to have children and raise children - which is what all other female animals do. Male dogs don't help with the child rearing! Now, there is certainly still a major place for the male human in childrearing, even in the hardwiring of male humans. And I'd agree much of modern progressive thought is in denial about these basic biological realities and our modern societies are paying the social and cultural costs for progressive denial.
After all, for all the advancements of progressive thought, people are no happier, or perhaps even less happier, than they were in more traditional generations. Food for thought.
Lower class people have a lot less impulse control. Many of the things that make a marriage stronger (don't beat each other up, don't have sex with other people, don't constantly badmouth each other) are a lot harder for people with weaker self-control. Lower end jobs are also relentlessly dull and sometimes physically exhausting.
The volatility of family or romantic drama sometimes presents a temporary escape from drudgery, but it has big time consequences. The penalties for bad marital behavior are also generally a lot higher than they used to be, and there's social pressure to break up struggling marriages rather than to remain in them. The "good" behavior of the rich also often looks a lot better in statistics than it does in reality.
The constant marriage-hopping creates a lot of chaos and is very disruptive to communities. I think most of the florid pro-homosexual flag-waving you see from certain classes is mostly used to provide a cover for bad straight behavior and significantly less out of genuine fondness for sodomites. The same people who will fly a gay flag would never, in a thousand years, permit a gay bar to be built and operated on their commercial street. What I'm getting at is that the 36 year old female with a master's degree enjoys cheering on the alphabet parade more because it provides her with cultural cover for keeping her divorce options open much more so than because she authentically believes that the relentless pursuit of chemsex is one of life's highest callings.
Your last point resembles the fact that there's a negative correlation between support for illegal immigration in America and the presence of illegal immigrants in the community. Support is strongest of all in America's "whitest", most expensive cities, where virtually no illegal immigrants venture.
What a great article. I'm 36, married, with two kids under 6 and another on the way. I believe the decline of religion is indeed the kicker in this situation. I was brought up in a fairly traditional Catholic family, and I was pretty much completely alone among my mostly non-religious peers in being encouraged - no, taught as fact - that dating was for finding a future spouse not just for fun, and marriage to that spouse was about having (and caring for) children. There is a lingering cultural remnant of this in the West ("yeah I'd like to get married and have kids someday, how about you?") but the way that religion makes this desire an imperative and not a lifestyle choice has to be the ultimate reason, in my opinion.
". . . a special multifaith naming ceremony with Mr Blobby and this year's Love Island winner, with music by the NHS choir and a special gift of Captain Sir Tom Moore’s gin."
Outstanding; I can imagine such a thing as a South Park special for the progeny of our modern feckless aristocrats (of various ilks).
Thank you for your kind thoughts and sentiments, Ed. The joys and sorrows of parenting, dare I say, continue well into adulthood. Never occurred to me whilst they were growing up this scenario would become what it is. Our faith has helped us to remain steady, stalwart and ever hopeful. Somehow I believe the unconditional love of family will break through…meanwhile we pray, listen, share and are thankful for all the blessings in our lives. By the by, your excellent blog has provided me with food for thought, smiles, grins and reliable analysis. Thank you for what you do!
More than likely. Women are being trafficked into China, too. However, if you bring more low-status women into an anti-birth culture, I don't see the birthrate increasing.
It doesn't really work like that. Firstly you are describing one of the most urbanized places in the world. 1/3 of the Peruvian population live in Lima. Greater. B.A is 1/3 of Argentina . The entire Southern cone is sub replacement level fertility. The`` Three Sisters ''are above replacement. ( Peru-Bolivia-Ecuador ) The green wave of abortion laws being liberalized pre covid saw the mobilization of college educated women across continent - In a similar way you have a massive expansion of universities across the continent - An opus dei government in Peru was brought down in part because it wanted to reform the government. Bear in mind that the Catholic University in Peru is constantly arguing with the Church because the church objects to the Catholic University's insistence on talking about the abortion rights of transwomen It is not mentioned because it is inconvenient but Pentecostalism/evangelicalism succeeds because it is seen as feminist. Anti booze, letting women preach and telling men to marry single mothers.
Funnily lots of Latin America will get whiter over time as the Germans in the Bolivian jungle ape their Amish cousins
A group of army officers cannot even mount a coup these days..
Many moons ago I happily chased the American dream across the pond, driven by adventure, opportunity and a willingness to do my very best to succeed...the stuffy, tired and static European old world of the late 70's simply paled in comparison to the new promised land of milk and honey, the USA. California dreamin' was to be a dream come true...several years and degrees later, I eventually settled down and married a bonafide cowgirl from Oklahoma and helped raise six lovely and gifted children, all blessedly schooled in private Catholic institutions. The very model of a success story, some would have said...Today, I'm just not so sure. Truth to tell, I sometimes wonder and pray what I could have done differently to keep it all together....To date, all our children are scattered across the vast expanse of the USA, from the Pacific west coast to the Atlantic east coast...all successful urban professionals, comfortable and fiercely independent. Only our eldest son(a tenured professor) in California is married, with a lovely Mexican wife, helping raise two joyful children. She stepped away from her career as an architect and never looked back to become a full-time mum. They are a delight to be around and I am so proud of how active they are with their Catholic Church community and outreach. Their lives are full, busy and blessed with purpose, definition and meaning. Living on one salary has been a challenge at times for them, but you can see they make it work. Their home is often a scattered mess of children's toys and bric-a-brac on the floor, the pitter-patter of children running amok, yet always with the living and abundant presence of joy. Sadly, the remaining bunch are much too attached to their careers, making money, creature comforts and other silly, pleasurable but pointless pursuits....they have all emphatically professed no interest whatsoever in getting married, having children and raising a family. It's too much of a bother and burden for them, they say, as it would cramp their already active lifestyle. They love their possessions, their collectibles, their trips, their investments, their crap....and all have lost or let go of their faith life....and it sorrowfully shows to a fault. It is hard to see ones children lost in trivial and material pursuits that power their minds, hearts and souls far from the prayers and desires we had hoped for them all over a lifetime. They are free to do so. Yet we are also gladdened by the answer to the many prayers over the years with our eldest son and his family. We travel often to visit our kids, especially our grandchildren, as we retired 5+ years ago and now live in France, close to my ageing family. Parenting is indeed a struggle and a joy. Embrace the journey and be a light of love, hope and determination.
That is very sad, I'm sorry to say. Really made me feel bad for you, and the kids. it feels like a decision they will really come to regret.
How old are they? I didn't start getting interested in marriage until about 30, but didn't find a woman I actually felt I could marry and commit to forever until about the age of 35. Then the fucking lockdowns intervened and screwed everything up, delaying marriage for years. She's younger than me and isn't keen on kids because she finds them annoying, but it's also that she's very sensitive to financial "success". So I'm inclined to agree with Ed that the problem is that parenting has become seen as low status.
Partly it's due to lack of pushback against anti-society left wing memes like "the planet is overpopulated" or "the future is doomed by climate change"; totally wrong, but how often do you see a robust response to that stuff? The sheer amount of energy and risk required to constantly push back against the latest academic nonsense completely overwhelms societies ability to respond. Shut down academia and see fertility levels start heading back upwards a decade or two later.
Thank-you for responding and sharing your commentary. My eldest is 43 and my youngest is 32...with the exception of my eldest and married son, the rest of my kids simply are held captive and brainwashed by their careers, power, fame and fortune hunting. They are fearful of struggling financially, of messy, screaming children, of not having it all the way they want it. Even though he's happy and in my view has enough, they see their older brother grappling and struggling financially to provide in their eyes adequately for his family. They're constantly bragging that they are "living the dream", which honestly disappoints their mother and I, as its boastful pride and nonsense. In their minds, getting married and raising a family would simply spoil and ruin that dynamic lifestyle...its just not sexy, cool or fun. One out of six is not the best ration to swallow, but it's what we have and we are indeed grateful for the 2 grandchildren in our lives. Ever hopeful, perhaps in time they will come to their senses...
I suspect they will, especially if they're actually telling you they're living the dream in those words. That's the behavior of people who are trying to convince themselves that it's true.
When I was in my 20s I too "lived the dream" because I was earning extremely well for my age, so money was simply not a barrier. Work was fun, I travelled, I dated or had one night stands, I partied. But soon enough I discovered that travel wasn't as much fun as it looked in the movies because many places I could go were actually quite similar, that companies can love you one day then stab you in the back the next, and that dating could quickly lose its novelty whilst girlfriends who turned out to be not a good fit needed to be dumped, with everyone feeling terrible as a result. I found I was happiest when hanging out with friends at home on lazy sunny days by the water, that careers have both highlights and lowlights, that dating could become exhausting and that it was much better to have a nice partner than being alone with 'options', especially as friends steadily paired off.
The turning point for me was when I realized I'd done a bunch of interesting projects at work and had a fulfilling and varied career so far, yet when I thought about doing that for another few decades with nothing else I felt nearly sick. Like eating chocolate every day, I suddenly realized that if I got to retirement age with nothing but a series of projects and jobs to show for it all life would feel incredibly empty. It's possible your kids just haven't really grappled with how long life actually is, and how much time they still have to fill. Even people who love their work, as I'm blessed to do, might rethink how much they love it when considering the next 30 years of doing nothing but that. I also have a friend in a similar job who loves his kids and derives much more meaning from them than work, which probably helps.
I think children can be influenced a lot by their parents, so don't give up on persuading your kids about having kids. But it's got to be phrased in positive ways, not "your material life is shallow" but "kids are actually much more fun over the long run". My wife feels negative towards having children (it's the one sad point in our relationship), partly because her own mother actually complained to her that having kids was hard and she didn't enjoy it! Well, if your own mother is so down on having had you, I'm not totally surprised she's reluctant. It's probably lucky she's so well adjusted in every other way, really! Whereas my parents did the more traditional thing and always told me and my brother how much they loved us, how happy we made them and so on. It's also worth emphasizing that society makes it look harder than it really is. My parents did have one regret about having me and my brother - it was that they worried too much about us, and could probably have focused more on themselves. They didn't need to take us to quite so many activities, etc, and we'd have worked out fine. I think this is a message that easily gets lost - people used to just leave kids alone and tell them to go play by themselves or with their siblings, and that was fine. You didn't have to reorient every waking minute around keeping them busy.
Good of you to share this (I'd like to say courageous but the term has become too fashionable for my liking). We are, I surmise, of the same generation, and I agree with you that parenting is a struggle and a joy. As a dour protestant, If I may venture: take heart (corage!) in the joys and live in hope for the end struggles:
"but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint." Isaiah 40:31 (NIV, of course)
Yeah, I think this is correct. If even somewhere like Iran can't keep above replacement then it certainly looks like top-level conservative policies aren't the most effective thing driving fertility choices. That said, I think Orban's efforts are more impressive than sometimes portrayed - moving the needle upward is very difficult, and to get back to 1.6 in a decade or so isn't bad. Would be interesting to see if it continues. Hovering just under 2 implies a relatively stately population decline, where Korea's rates look very scary indeed.
yes, and at least they've identified the problem and are trying to do something about it. They might fail, but if you don't try, your chances of failure are 100%.
If there is one characteristic that has epitomized our species accent to the top of the biological totem pole, it’s our adaptability.
The economic impacts, notwithstanding, I’m not convinced that a stabilizing or even declining population is a bad thing.
I think it’s reasonable to assume the population explosion we’ve experienced over the last 2 or so centuries can, in major part, be attributed to the industrial revolution and the associated rise in technological innovation. That 2 centuries in, we are seeing declining fertility and population retreat, may simply be an adaptive response to the forces that produced the original population boom.
I think technology impacts culture. And culture impacts fertility. Obviously, human culture is not monolithic. Different cultures will probably respond in ways unique to their cultural DNA. Which means that the way forward is going to be somewhat chaotic. As to what that looks like, I haven’t a clue.
Why is fewer people good? It means the ones that remain have to work harder unless productivity increases can offset the declining population, but right now we're not managing that. More people is good! There's plenty of space on this wonderful Earth, we're not in any danger of overpopulation anytime soon, the idea that we are is unfounded wishful thinking by neo-Marxists.
Do you have any notion how corrosive and destructive the average North American is to the environment? The consumption alone destroys ecosystems, habitats and entire species of animals. The pollution is staggering when you think on it. The direct pollution of being and keeping yourself alive. The indirect pollution created by manufacturing processes to keep you fed, clothed, and entertained. The even less direct pollution offloaded into the environment by pharmaceuticals excreted into the water by millions of people per city. Endocrine disruptors and xenoestrogens in the environment. Not to mention the impact on society of having more people than can be fed, housed, employed, and made happy.
No, until the population collapses, there won't be any positive changes.
Goodness me, old chap, what gloom and doomery! For some reason as I read this missive, every sentence seemed to end with an upward intonation, literally. As for 'Endocrine disruptors', is that some kind of euphemism for Antifa?
How is pollution staggering? The US and Europe are doing pretty well I think! The air is clean, the water is clean, we can go almost anywhere and not worry about whether the environment is dangerous (or plants or animals!), occasionally derailed trails notwithstanding. There are plenty of wild animals, birds and fish because hunting is now a pretty rare activity (and strictly regulated in Europe), replaced by agriculture which has itself heavily improved its environmental impact over time through things like GMOs reducing pesticide use and much greater efficiency.
Now you can argue that some of this pollution has been exported to China, but so what? We don't live in China. Also, their pollution is largely one of convenience and communism, they know how to reduce pollution, they just don't bother.
Pollution required to keep us entertained? Really? Hollywood, music and video games are not exactly famous for their pollution generation. Indeed what little pollution they created in previous years in the form of waste CDs/DVDs/TVs and the pollution created by moving all those things around has been strongly reduced by the internet and longer lived/much less heavy/much more power efficient display technologies.
Drugs in the water supply could be a problem! But they could also just be scare stories. A lot of the research into things like sperm counts and endocrine disrupters comes from the halls of academia, which generates large amounts of informational pollution in the form of bad studies and bad claims. I don't see much direct evidence of harm from the water supply - if it's there at all it must be only observable via very subtle statistical effects, which almost by definition means the problem isn't _that_ bad compared to pollution problems from the past.
No, I'm pretty happy with the levels of pollution I see around me. People where I live are quite clean, really (I'm not living in North America though). Even in unusually dirty western cities like San Francisco that's more a result of politics and culture than population levels.
After doing way too many deep dives into pollution and green topics, my main conclusion was that a lot of claims of our supposedly awful destructive effect on the environment are weak and caused by ideology+bad incentives. Consider a classic story we were all subjected to endlessly over the past decades - evil humanity is destroying the beautiful coral reefs through our air pollution. How often did we hear about that? Then the corals experienced massive growth, reaching their highest levels since records began, and it turned out some of the most important studies claiming bad coral health were fraudulent. The corals are fine, they always were, claims to the contrary were based on taking a tiny amount of data and assuming it was sufficient to understand the whole lifecycle of the reefs. This good news story mysteriously never made it to the press because "if it bleeds it leads", so they want you to think the world is bleeding.
You make a compelling point about the anticipated stress of being a parent vs. parental status. As well as the cultural references surrounding children and large families.
The media, both news and TV/movies, are now dominated by tragic circumstances of teenagers run amok. When I was growing up in the '70s, we had TV shows like "Eight is Enough," "The Brady Bunch," and "The Partridge Family" featuring large families with happy outcomes every week. You're right to draw our attention to the underlying cultural message of being a parent.
It is interesting listening to boomer era family members who grew up in the 40s and 40s for when they tell stories of their childhood, two things do stand out: the absolutism of parents as figures of authority, and by extension, the concept of adulthood, and second, the notion of respectability and fear of affecting the family's respectability standing in the community. While some kids today probably still acknowledge parents as figures of authority, especially at younger ages, I do wonder how many even comprehend the notion of *embarrassing* the family in front of the whole neighborhood by doing a silly antic or prank or having the local policeman seen knocking on the door of your house.
Our kids have been explicitly warned of this many time. They do understand it. It's one of the reasons they aren't allowed on social media even as teenagers. However, this is very countercultural and difficult. Even in our world of home education, it's rare. The surrounding culture promotes teen autonomy (mostly for reasons of consumption -- having poor impulse control, teenagers make great customers) instead of family stability.
Look at the Gilmore girls- ( Looks at camera with digust) Rory and her mother are friends.
I was looking at my granddaughter this morning, at 2 1/2 possibly the most charming individual in the world, curled up in an oversized armchair with a book, and tears came to my eyes when I thought about how few people going forward are going to be able to appreciate a moment like this. In the mid 80’s when I was expecting my first pregnant women and small children were everywhere, the US was in the middle of another baby boom, average family size was 3. People were returning to church in those days, having children made them rethink their earlier indifference to religion. It is hard to believe that things have changed so dramatically in one generation. I raised 5, and thoroughly enjoyed it, and it really does make me sad that so many people will not get to experience the wonder of a small person dependent on them, the incredible insight into a rapidly maturing mind whose thoughts are totally transparent, the sheer entertainment value that watching children closely provides. I have six grandchildren so far, and the opportunity to relive my parenting days are priceless. But if I had to make the decision to start a family tomorrow, it would be very hard.
It isn’t the difficulties or the expense, both of which are often overestimated, but something else you allude to here- the constant undermining of everything you hope to teach them by every aspect of our society. Even if you avoid the minefield of school, between incompetents and ideologues, by homeschooling as we did, every child they come in contact with has the entire cesspool of the internet in their pocket. The entire society conspires to destroy childhood by sexualizing it while burdening it with the responsibility for destroying the planet and wiping out cute wildlife worldwide. I am not sure it is possible to protect them anymore, and I do not even think it will be legal to try for much longer. Then you will be left with the financial responsibility of being a parent without the opportunity to raise your children to be good company, to understand your most strongly held beliefs, to be people of integrity and self control in a society which values neither. I understand why young people are afraid of this even while I would say they are giving up the most wonderful experience in life.
"It’s worth trying to fix housing and childcare costs ...The issue goes much deeper, to the question of how much support we give parents, not in terms of cash but of authority and prestige."
There is a contradiction between wanting childcare costs to be low, but parents' having authority and prestige. If care of children is to be done as cheaply as possible, solely for the benefit of people who don't want to spend any time with children, that means caring for children has no societal worth. One could say the same about caring for the elderly or handicapped people.
"There is a contradiction between wanting childcare costs to be low, but parents' having authority and prestige."
I had to read this a few times to understand your meaning, and now I've concluded that I disagree (a rarity between us). Your thinking seems to be that if parents are exalted, then doing their work must pay well, which means childcare would be expensive.
It's fine enough reasoning, but there's clearly something missing in that poorer societies have higher birthrates, even the poorer societies that were previous generations of the West, and we can see overwhelming evidence that parents were/are respected more in those societies than they are in the modern parent-mocking West. In today's America, we speak of the cost of raising a single child as a bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars (lifetime), such that economics are often cited (perhaps as an excuse) in parenthood decisions. There are other arguments, of course (hedonism being a big one - the "social life" disappears once the baby is born). But plainly, children weren't perceived as having this cost in the West's past, nor are they perceived as having such a cost in poorer countries.
The lion's share of the cost is educational and medical, which likely explains the lack of serious discussion. In America, both education and medicine experience drastically inflated pricing to fund their politicization. This factor seems independent of parental respect. Or maybe it's not, in that those politicizing education and medicine are hell-bent on undermining parental authority over children...
I don't know if we really disagree, or if I just wasn't clear. My main point was that if doing the job of a parent has a low economic value, that's an indication that it has a low societal value. The additional step, that this is related to undermining parents' authority and prestige, is more of a stretch.
"In America, both education and medicine experience drastically inflated pricing to fund their politicization."
Absolutely true!
"My main point was that if doing the job of a parent has a low economic value, that's an indication that it has a low societal value."
One of the silly tropes that's been out there for a while holds that the job of a mother ought to pay several hundred thousand dollars per year, given the hours and the responsibilities (24/7 supervision, cooking, cleaning, teaching, etc). The problem with this trope is that it ignores the question of who should pay this mother: she herself, since it is her child.
The fact that parents incur this need for labor and largely pay it themselves obfuscates the true valuation of the labor.
When I see parental authority undermined, I see more these:
1. The general left-wing disdain for experience and authority (Moral Foundations Theory).
2. The eradication of any obligation from child to parent at any stage of life, particularly at adulthood.
It is not clear to me that either of these factors would be mitigated if we acknowledged that parental chores are economically valuable (say, by paying nannies $10k/month).
I agree, except I would add that the father also has a child, not just the mother.
The Greta Thunbergs of the world are also feeding low-fertility trends to some degree with their apocalyptic rhetoric. I'm not saying that people have chosen to remain childless solely because they heard about Malthus in a gen-ed science course or somesuch, but it's one more ingredient in the stew of tangible and intangible factors that push people to reject parenthood or even just delay it long enough that a large family is unattainable. I am embarrassed to admit that I went through a phase in my early adulthood when I was absolutely obsessed with overpopulation, to the point of leaving sanctimonious Big Families Are Bad comments on websites that celebrated large families. Lately my wife and I have been talking about going for additional kids and glumly concluding that we're probably just a bit too old. I think back to those big-family websites and conclude that they had it right and I had it wrong.
definitely. I used to think the 'I'm not having kids cos of overpopulation' was a coping mechanism because people felt they couldn't afford kids, but a lot of people have definitely memed themselves into it. Again, lots of bad advice out there. Overpopulation is really not an issue in Eurasia and a lot of people will really regret it when they're older.
People often "confess" to me that, now that it's too late, they wish they had more children. They seem to want me to reassure them that they were justified in their decisions, when my existence as a mother of ten demonstrates that it can be done without great wealth or idealized sanctity.
"Everyone does what they can with what they have to work with," is my typical reply. "I'm fortunate to have very good health." Also wine, soothing British murder programmes, and all the Extra-Strength Fatalism.
Cynthia, I think you have a typo where you described yourself "as a mother of TEN"!!!
True. I meant to say I'm a mother of etn.
On behalf of those of us concerned with the future of our civilization, I thank you for your service. You must have the patience of Job!
Not really. That's part of the myth.
If you think of it as a act of pennace towards Mother Gaia than sure...
We feed children a steady diet of hedonism and nihilism. The nihilism discourages any consideration of the future, and the hedonism discourages doing anything difficult.
Paul Erlich likely did as much harm to humanity through disinformation as considerably more notorious figures did through totalitarianism and genocide. You've hit on a significant factor in the parenthood crisis as well as society's struggles in general, though: We don't respect the wisdom of age anymore.
If I have to hear one more DEI advocate spout "It's time for the old folks to stand aside and let the young lead!"...
No. The Death of the Grownup is our defining struggle, and the perpetual adolescents are the ones who need to sit down, shut up, and listen to something other than their own personal "truths" for a change.
You hit it on the head: the problem is secularism. Nietzsche understood the great dilemma of his own philosophy: once you give up on God, life really is pointless. Our world is more Nietzschean than we would care to admit today.
The ancient's telos (purpose of life) was "to conquer your passions and lusts so that you may live as a free man" (Aristotle). The Medievals telos was "to learn the mind of God". Modern man's telos is "if it feels good, do it". And as a parent of 3 girls, I can attest that parenthood often doesn't "feel good". It's hard and full of conflict -- rewarding, but that comes later. So absent a transcendental reason to experience the pain and discomfort and risk of parenthood... why not just have fun for 2 decades instead?
There is one economic piece that you didn't mention: state-run old-age support. This removes the last real economic incentive to have children: someone to take care of you when you get old. I suspect it's minor though; just another nudge in the anti-natal direction.
Well said. The modern notion of "do what makes you feel good and happy" explains a lot of our narcissistic culture. I know a lot of educated people in their 30s who simply don't want responsibilities and want to have fun, so they don't have kids. Simple as that.
Point of order, "the hippie who wanted to get in bed with your daughter and the education official who wanted to control what your children learned and thought" are now the same person.
The invention of the teenager, and the infinite extension of "youth" (I think you've written about that), has infantilizing effects on a generation. They can't be parents because they have never grown up.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Grown-Up-Americas-Development-Civilization-ebook/dp/B00BY5QY5A/
Eternal Adolescence explains most of the West's problems. It's the ultimate Luxury Belief.
I think a lot about how it's considered acceptable to cut off contact with your parents if they "don't accept you", or if you deem your childhood unpleasant or if your parents don't agree with your politics.
I don't think this is done all that often...the people I know who have cut off contact with parents all had a divorce or equally traumatic event in their childhood. But it's scary as a parent to hear stories about people cutting off contact with parents because they voted for Trump...
On a more positive note, my kids go to a neighborhood Catholic school in New York with a lot of middle class 3rd/4th gen Italian families. It's amazing how many of these families have big networks of cousins and extended family that are acting as the "village" for their kids. These kids basically only socialize with their cousins for the first 5 years of life, which seems to help build family solidarity. None of these families are huge, 2 or 3 kids, but if everyone in the family does that, and stays local (the NYC economy helps) you end up with a nice little local tribe.
I think if my older brother and sister had had children I would have felt a much stronger desire to have them myself. After all, like with cake at teatime, I don't want to be left out. I'm amazed at how much a product of my environment and messaging I am. It's embarrassing. Still, I don't see how it could have been any other way, short of giving birth to myself and pulling myself up by my own bootstraps.
Culture matters. A lot.
All of us are a product of cultural norms, expectations, values, desires, etc. Even on a subcultural basis--like your milieu--what others think and do impacts your significant life decisions.
In well-educated circles, Keeping Up with the Joneses today means having more houses than children.
A big part of the reason that parents try to be friends with their children instead of authorities is that parents aren't in relationships with each other, and when they're not in relationships with each other, they tend to be antagonistic towards each other. This leads to competing over the children's affection - a competition which parents perceive that they will win by being the least authoritative and most "cool".
Of course, intentional attempts to eviscerate the family as a concept have been a part of left-wing politics at least since Marx. The technocrats want state "experts" to raise children; the parents are unqualified idiots who just happened to have sex.
Hedonism and nihilism; the diet of modern "education". They explain a lot of symptoms, including the rise in mass shootings.
But we also have to blame feminism. This devaluing of femininity, which encourages women to instead try to be men, has caused a dramatic decline in the desire for motherhood among women AND a dramatic decline in marriage rates. We perceive the statistical impacts of women in the workforce, but the cultural and psychological ones get short shrift. Time was, having a bunch of children was THE GOAL in life; there was no greater measure of success. Few think that way anymore because the culture is radically different.
I work with many accomplished women and we do have to acknowledge the feminist movement did open doors and liberate women in ways earlier generations were not, it is too easy to forget how systematically unfriendly past generations were to working women or women who wanted to be doctors or leaders. Single women couldn't even get a mortgage without it being cosigned by a male relative. There is certainly a distinct unfairness about it. And we should note that the professional classes in the western world is firmly pro-feminism and is also the class with the highest marriage rates and family stability, at levels comparable to the averages of the 1950s.
It's the collapse of marriage and family stability among the working and lower middle classes that has been pronounced and is becoming problematic. How much of that is due to feminism? After all, these cohorts are typically less "feminist" than the educated classes.
But I would agree there is a reckoning of sorts. Like it or not, despite what trans and gender fluid people want to believe, biology is very stubborn. Women have children. Men do not. Human biology requires significant childrearing periods. And, for whatever it is worth, women do seem to have maternal instincts that men do not, at least at the same level and to the same extent. Biology makes it very clear the female is the one to have children and raise children - which is what all other female animals do. Male dogs don't help with the child rearing! Now, there is certainly still a major place for the male human in childrearing, even in the hardwiring of male humans. And I'd agree much of modern progressive thought is in denial about these basic biological realities and our modern societies are paying the social and cultural costs for progressive denial.
After all, for all the advancements of progressive thought, people are no happier, or perhaps even less happier, than they were in more traditional generations. Food for thought.
Lower class people have a lot less impulse control. Many of the things that make a marriage stronger (don't beat each other up, don't have sex with other people, don't constantly badmouth each other) are a lot harder for people with weaker self-control. Lower end jobs are also relentlessly dull and sometimes physically exhausting.
The volatility of family or romantic drama sometimes presents a temporary escape from drudgery, but it has big time consequences. The penalties for bad marital behavior are also generally a lot higher than they used to be, and there's social pressure to break up struggling marriages rather than to remain in them. The "good" behavior of the rich also often looks a lot better in statistics than it does in reality.
The constant marriage-hopping creates a lot of chaos and is very disruptive to communities. I think most of the florid pro-homosexual flag-waving you see from certain classes is mostly used to provide a cover for bad straight behavior and significantly less out of genuine fondness for sodomites. The same people who will fly a gay flag would never, in a thousand years, permit a gay bar to be built and operated on their commercial street. What I'm getting at is that the 36 year old female with a master's degree enjoys cheering on the alphabet parade more because it provides her with cultural cover for keeping her divorce options open much more so than because she authentically believes that the relentless pursuit of chemsex is one of life's highest callings.
Your last point resembles the fact that there's a negative correlation between support for illegal immigration in America and the presence of illegal immigrants in the community. Support is strongest of all in America's "whitest", most expensive cities, where virtually no illegal immigrants venture.
What a great article. I'm 36, married, with two kids under 6 and another on the way. I believe the decline of religion is indeed the kicker in this situation. I was brought up in a fairly traditional Catholic family, and I was pretty much completely alone among my mostly non-religious peers in being encouraged - no, taught as fact - that dating was for finding a future spouse not just for fun, and marriage to that spouse was about having (and caring for) children. There is a lingering cultural remnant of this in the West ("yeah I'd like to get married and have kids someday, how about you?") but the way that religion makes this desire an imperative and not a lifestyle choice has to be the ultimate reason, in my opinion.
Thank you!
". . . a special multifaith naming ceremony with Mr Blobby and this year's Love Island winner, with music by the NHS choir and a special gift of Captain Sir Tom Moore’s gin."
Outstanding; I can imagine such a thing as a South Park special for the progeny of our modern feckless aristocrats (of various ilks).
Thank you for your kind thoughts and sentiments, Ed. The joys and sorrows of parenting, dare I say, continue well into adulthood. Never occurred to me whilst they were growing up this scenario would become what it is. Our faith has helped us to remain steady, stalwart and ever hopeful. Somehow I believe the unconditional love of family will break through…meanwhile we pray, listen, share and are thankful for all the blessings in our lives. By the by, your excellent blog has provided me with food for thought, smiles, grins and reliable analysis. Thank you for what you do!
Since contraceptives exist, no amount of sex with objectivized foreign women will produce babies.
SK could probably get women to emigrate there if they were determined.
Presumably being a housewife or a single mother in Seoul is better than doing the same in Laos or Burma
More than likely. Women are being trafficked into China, too. However, if you bring more low-status women into an anti-birth culture, I don't see the birthrate increasing.
It doesn't really work like that. Firstly you are describing one of the most urbanized places in the world. 1/3 of the Peruvian population live in Lima. Greater. B.A is 1/3 of Argentina . The entire Southern cone is sub replacement level fertility. The`` Three Sisters ''are above replacement. ( Peru-Bolivia-Ecuador ) The green wave of abortion laws being liberalized pre covid saw the mobilization of college educated women across continent - In a similar way you have a massive expansion of universities across the continent - An opus dei government in Peru was brought down in part because it wanted to reform the government. Bear in mind that the Catholic University in Peru is constantly arguing with the Church because the church objects to the Catholic University's insistence on talking about the abortion rights of transwomen It is not mentioned because it is inconvenient but Pentecostalism/evangelicalism succeeds because it is seen as feminist. Anti booze, letting women preach and telling men to marry single mothers.
Funnily lots of Latin America will get whiter over time as the Germans in the Bolivian jungle ape their Amish cousins
A group of army officers cannot even mount a coup these days..