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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can we start importing Amish people? Another strategy could be to import masses of attractive Latinas from South America, which in addition to boosting fertility would likely break the back of feminism and restore England to Holy Mother Church.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can we start importing Amish people? Another strategy could be to import masses of attractive Latinas from South America, which in addition to boosting fertility would likely break the back of feminism and restore England to Holy Mother Church.
Sensible policies for a happier Inglaterra.
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.
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!