Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Those latter-day Cotton Mathers who blamed abortion on the increased numbers of childless women are wrong, wrong, wrong - says Amanda Marcotte over at Slate, anyway. She describes the increase thus:
I was genuinely surprised to read the recent Pew Research Center study showing that the share of American women who are skipping out on motherhood has nearly doubled since 1976, rising from 10 percent of the population to 18 percent.
Personally, I was happy to see that more women feel free to forgo childbearing.
That seems like a slight mischaracterization - surely some “feel free” not to have a wee bairn, but many may not have had the opportunity, or tried too late. Whether or not the matter makes you happy is a complicated issue. It brings out our delightful ability to project, judge, and generalize - the comments contain the usual zesty gumbo of jeremiads against selfish career wimmen, God-bothering brood-hatching suburbanites, and of course Enemies of the Planet who never stop to think how much carbon kids will produce. Sigh.
Of course some women - and men - are happy without children. Good for them. In the Steynian demographic sense, bad for us, but when it comes down to individual choice there’s no reason to look down on people who don’t want to have kids. They have their reasons, and they're none of my business. They’ll never know what they miss, but it's their call. However: I'm curious whether the opprobrium hurled at women who don’t have children equals the sniffing disapproval from some right-thinking folk towards those who breed, to use that awful word, and stay home instead of charging off to the office every day to lawyer away. You get a flavor of that disapproval in her opening line, where she explains why she might be happy about fewer kids hanging on the crust of the embattled planet:
Maybe it's because I live in the famously child-friendly neighborhood of Park Slope, in Brooklyn, N.Y., where I'm forced to dodge 15 strollers every time I go to the grocery store.
The horror! And da noive of those women to leave the house! As for the compensations of being childless:
But clearly there are upsides to childlessness. Just looking around my own apartment, I can see the value in furniture that's gone unruined, cats that have gone unbothered, and a distinct lack of toys cluttering up my floor.
“Unbothered cats” may be the least persuasive argument for not having kids I’ve ever read. Also the saddest.
(PS Before anyone asks whether I’ve given much thought to the burdens of motherhood, I’ve been a stay-at-home dad since my daughter was born. I make the lunches, do the carpooling, shop for groceries and cook the meals, take her to the doctor and dentist and piano, and clean the house. Would not trade a second of any of it for life in an office. Without my daughter, the last ten years would seem, in retrospect, a desert. Albeit one with unruined furniture.)
(PPS: Is it just me, or is the presumably-happy-to-be-childless woman the article uses for an illustration look a bit like Sarah Palin?)
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Jul '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
yeah, sure you are happy, but what about your cats?
Jun '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I've read that a woman's fertility decreases by half by the time she's 35, and then falls really fast after that. That's probably a good part of it. It's also increasing hard for women to "marry up." Today, a majority of college graduates are women. If they're the family's major breadwinner, that makes a difference too.
Jul '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
I believe it was in the Wall Street Journal that I read an interesting Op-Ed discussing how, owing to advanced education, not only can women not "marry up" these days, but they are uninterested in "marrying down" and find "marrying across" challenging. .. leading to an overall chilling effect on educated women marrying. Couple that with your (i am pretty sure) correct stat on fertility rates and you certainly will account for a chunk of the childless.
Jul '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
If Slate writers lack the enthusiasm to reproduce, where will the next generation of Slate writers come from? And, of course, if they are able to imprint that attitude on their readership, they can diminish together.
Wouldn't want to scratch the furniture, after all.
Jul '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
I don't have children, but we have ruined many of furniture.....
May '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
I would like Slate to publish an article by the 83-year-old woman in a nursing home, sitting there alone all day, depending on the overworked and underpaid nurses aides, hoping for smile or a kindness, so glad that she didn't "burden" herself with children...
May '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Well, don't ask me to make sense of it. I had two children the old-fashioned way then paid a second mortgage for the third child my 33 year old body couldn't seem to produce. I had to have that third child. I can't imagine wanting none.
Jul '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
The single most fundamental biological imperative is to reproduce. We can try to argue ourselves out of that fact, but it doesn;t generally work. People may cleverly talk themselves out of the importance of having children, or better yet thevirtue of having none, but such protestations have the unmistakeable tenor of whistling past the graveyard. To borrow an image, no woman (or man) ever lay on her deathbed and wailed, "Damn, why did I insist on having children?"
May '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Despite each of my three children doing something daily to decrease the amount of hair I have and increase my blood pressure, I couldn't imagine my life without them. Sure I'd have unscratched furniture (not to mention unscratched floors, walls, skin) but that's all part of life. The house looks "lived-in."
I think it is safe to say that most (if not all) of the people at Ricochet would not look down their noses at those that do not wish to have children. Somehow, I don't get the same tone from the author about those of us who choose to have children. We seem to be evil polluters and disruptors that (heaven forbid) impinge on their ability to enjoy their pristine furniture and unfettered trips to the grocery store without being "forced" to dodge strollers. Isn't the sidewalk big enough for all of us.
I can relate to the part about having unbothered cats though:) My wife and I had 2 cats that we decided to give up (to a loving family) once we decided to have kids
May '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Please don't tell me that you are now younger than my 34 year old daughter.....
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Well, you know, there was King Lear. That didn't work out so well.
I love this post, James, because it highlights something I've often detected in stories like these -- and I say this as a guy with no kids: there's the thin, high-pitched, barely detectable hysteria in all of these I'm Childless and Loving It! pieces that really screams I'm Childless and Lonely, Unfulfilled, and Terrified of I'm Missing Out on the One Truly Great Experience of Being Alive.
Sort of like when people say, "Hey, let me be totally honest with you here...." You know for a fact that the next words out of their mouths will be lies.
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
We will have bigger problems than Sharpee marks on chairs when these cultural values are carried to their logical conclusion and Sharia law is instituted by a culture encouraging 11 kids each. Brilliant, lady.
Jul '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
I'm up for a stealth cat bothering campaign.
I understand that Ms. Marcotte is unduly burdened by having to "dodge 15 strollers every time I go to the grocery store." I too, am burdened by having to dodge self-centered progressives dictating to me that I have to live a greener existence, and furthermore, that I should be compelled to pay for the largess of the Utopian society that they believe should be foisted upon me.
To say nothing of having to dodge their shopping carts in the middle of the grocery store aisles as they ponder their selection of organically grown sprouts, or humanely harvested free range eggs as they stew in their "Meanwhile, back to ME!" broth. Typically the screechiest folks proclaiming the want for a better world for EVERYBODY, are the first to demand the most for themselves.
So if we are having fewer kids that trans-morph into these social delights, then I might be persuaded by Ms. Marcotte that it is, indeed, a good thing. I guess now I'll be labeled a eugenicists. Pot, kettle, Ms. Marcotte.
May '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Isn't having someone to bother the cats a benefit of having children?
May '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Duane Oyen
Please don't tell me that you are now younger than my 34 year old daughter..... · Jul 14 at 9:36am
Well, let's see...I didn't say I was 33 years old today. :-) There are a whole bunch of years in there somewhere that involved trying to create a life that refused to be created and then a journey a little girl and I went on to find each other. So, I'm 41 and older than your daughter. Does that make you feel any better?
May '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Andrea Ryan
Duane Oyen
Well, let's see...I didn't say I was 33 years old today. :-) There are a whole bunch of years in there somewhere that involved trying to create a life that refused to be created and then a journey a little girl and I went on to find each other. So, I'm 41 and older than your daughter. Does that make you feel any better? · Jul 14 at 10:39pm
Much better- aged, over-the-hill, arthritic misery loveth company. And we offer such fine schadenfreude opportunities for Conor!
May '10
Re: Slate writer pleased there are fewer kids
Thanks for reminding me about my arthritis. Scott's mortgage is paid off before mine. That hurts worse.
Duane Oyen
Andrea Ryan
Duane Oyen
Well, let's see...I didn't say I was 33 years old today. :-) There are a whole bunch of years in there somewhere that involved trying to create a life that refused to be created and then a journey a little girl and I went on to find each other. So, I'm 41 and older than your daughter. Does that make you feel any better? · Jul 14 at 10:39pm
Much better- aged, over-the-hill, arthritic misery loveth company. And we offer such fine schadenfreude opportunities for Conor! · Jul 15 at 10:41am