I’m sure for many people who really really wanted this, it does, but childless couples are as happy, if not happier on average than couples with children.

Even for those who really want children, having them doesn’t “make” them happy.  It’s possible, even fairly easy, to be happy and have a good relationship as a couple with children in the mix.  But they don’t make you happy.  As a stay-at-home parent with two kids, I can say that I’m happy with my life.  Sometimes deliriously so, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  But without kids my wife and I would go to jazz clubs more often, would take trips outside the USA every year, would drive cooler cars and would even eat better because I get tired of pulling out all the stops in the kitchen for kids who will turn up their noses at chicken nuggets just because it’s a Tuesday.  And only a liar or someone with serious delusions would claim to never feel resentful about it.

As for birth-rate worries, the only reason to worry about them is if you think certain (white) people should be having more children than certain other (non-white) people.  Misogyny is a big part of it, but racism is the foundational motivation.  Making life suck for women is just a side benefit, as it were.

Concern about birthrate is a favorite chew toy of rightists for centuries.  “We’ll have too few soldiers!  We’ll have too few workers!  The purity of our race/culture/favorite hobby will be diluted by…THOSE PEOPLE WHO BREED LIKE RABBITS!”

It’s depressing.  There’s no new ideas on the Right, just new ways of fudging old ideas to make them seem new.

Where did I put that Swift Cookery book? Had all those recipes for Irish Child dishes.

“Like I’ve said before, the right wing argument for endless population growth in the U.S. and Europe is based on the erroneous notion that wealth is strictly derived from labor”

I think they also are looking at total GDP which may increase as population increases, but per person GDP starts to go down as you use up resources and overall quality of life probably drops dramaticaly.

“per person GDP starts to go down as you use up resources and overall quality of life probably drops dramaticaly. “

Which is not a problem if you’re at the top of an economy like the US, because most of that wealth will be coming to you. You just don’t worry about the quality of life for the peons at the bottom.

Well, yeah, it’s easy to dismiss natalism when it’s pretty clearly based on a concern with race or religion.

But what about a declining birthrate among the most literate? I don’t have numbers (and I’d quite pleased if actual numbers proved my concern to be groundless), but it’s pretty impressive just how little my colleagues with doctorates from top-ranked liberal arts departments have bred. The rates of reproduction seem low (though not quite as low) for families in other professions as well. Again, this is a personal impression; maybe there are lawyers or MDs I don’t know who just pump out the progeny in bulk.

Seems to me your high-bourgeois professional families are the ones most likely to value education, intellect, reason—and just plain reading and thinking over a lifetime—and to pass these values on to their own children and to promote them in US society generally. It would seem to me we would want to encourage such people to breed as an ethical matter, even if there’s no viable way to translate this concern into public policy. 

Just a thought.

(And unfortunately, liberal arts academia for all its reputation for leftism may be the most family-unfriendly profession there is. Many women get doctorates, few make full professor. Graduate programs still run as if all students were male and had full-time homemaker wives or lived in boarding houses with full maid and food service.)

Plus, if you are at the top it gives you more workers to exploit.

Wapsie:

You can teach people besides your children to appreciate education, that is what being a teacher is all about.  I don’t think we need to encourage a breeding program for PHd’s

But the standard of living goes up the fewer people, especially dependent children, we have to split resources amongst.

Pssst, they want people as desperate as they can get them. They want people to have to compete over crumbs. Not THEM, of course, but you know, people.

The endless population growth model also stems from a commitment to unsustainable capitalism, and frankly right now we should be taking a long, hard look at the dangers inherent when we want everything to grow exponentially without considering what happens when the growth (in the current case, of housing prices) way outstrips our ability to handle it.

But God is supposed to take care of this. If you consider the environment and don’t “rape the earth” as Ann Coulter put it, you are spitting in God’s face! *gasp*

One of the few problems I had with Michelle Goldberg’s book The Means of Reproduction is that she indulged the argument that while developing nations need to reduce their population, developed nations need to increase ours, an argument that comes straight from the hyperventilating anti-sex, misogynist hard right.

I might also add that that argument is fundamentally racist.  For its progenitors, “developed nations” = US and Europe = the Cleaver family, while “developing nations” = those dirty people from Latin America, Africa, South Asia, etc.  With that kind of worldview, more breeding here and less there means tilting the white:non-white ratio more towards the former.

[T]hey have an ideological objection to women [getting paid for] working.  There was a word for that, wasn’t there?  Right at the tip of my fingers, it is…

Since the West uses more food and energy than the third world, population control in the West is what’s needed. There’s enough food in the world to feed the population, but too much of it is used by a few, which means a lot of people around the world are going without. And since members of the first world have the rights and the access to birth control (more than people in developing nations, at least), we are the ones that have to rectify this problem.

You can teach people besides your children to appreciate education, that is what being a teacher is all about.  I don’t think we need to encourage a breeding program for PHd’s

Exactly. Instead of encouraging educated adults to have children, encourage them to become teachers and community leaders. Otherwise, you’re kind of assuming that the kids of parents who weren’t formally educated have no hope.

Wapsie says: but it’s pretty impressive just how little my colleagues with doctorates from top-ranked liberal arts departments have bred.

Might there be some self-selecting going on there?  Perhaps your colleagues didn’t have much interest in having children, if so - why should they be encouraged to become parents?

One might have to twist the head abit, but…

Children are a necessity.

Voluntary childlessness is a privilege.

Plenty of women throughout history have thought as Amanda does, but one way or another, natural forces, social forces, personal forces have resulted in these women (and their mates) having children.  If they cannot for biological reasons, then they adopt.

There is a great deal that goes into a structure that allows many women in a population to retain a practical ability to have no children as a choice.  Along with greater civil rights, hyper-exploitative capitalism is a key mechanism, because it allows us to take the products of child-raising from other countries into our own for real cheap.  Without that ability, we would never have had the political coalition to increase our civil right wrt our procreation choices.  “Our” meaning the non-noble classes, ok?  Upper-class women have always saught or maintained a control over procreation (at least to a minimum, if not none). 

I think the greatest challenge of our post boomer age is going to be the fight to retain personal sovereignty in the face of (hopefully short) economic and environmental decline.  However, I’m pretty sure that a primary result is going to be that Amanda and (younger) people like her will have *fewer* practical rights over how many children can be produced in a restructuring of the economic and environmental systems.  Without globalization, they will be quite a bit more directly exposed to the reasons why couples have children, even if they don’t need the labor.

As for right-wingers and their population paranoia, I suggest one reads some of the literature about Japanese sexism and xenophobia and its impact on Japan’s demographics.  Not only can you get a laugh at those silly japanese, you can get a clearer idea of why conservatives are so interested in the right women having babies.  Start with the empress, hmmm?

But what about a declining birthrate among the most literate?

I wasn’t aware the ability to read was genetic.  I’m pretty sure it’s a result of education.

The complaint about fewer children by literate/educated women is fundamentally a racist/eugenic one, but with an odd twist: Education of women is one of the big factors cited for limiting family size by population-control types. So the “PhDs should have more kids” people are essentially arguing that a phenomenon demographers rely on for reducing population growth throughout the developing world should suddenly reverse itself for their convenience.

(And of course, speaking of convenience, highly educated people are the most capable of evaluating the pros and cons of having whatever number of kids they decide would be optimal, so if they keep deciding that smaller numbers would be better than bigger ones, that probably says something about the family-friendliness of the society around them.)

The other thing about “OMG NOT ENOUGH WORKERS!” is that it’s a nice cover for the fact that when there are too many workers you don’t have to pay them squat, and when there are not enough you have to pay them a competitive wage. So in many ways, especially in an age of automation, it translates to “OMG PAYING WORKING CLASS TYPES A LIVING WAGE!”

You’re right—-the ability to volunteer to be childless is a privilege.

I think it should be a right.

I’m sick of people saying something is a privilege to dismiss it.  Clean water is a privilege.  It should be a right.  Freedom of speech is a privilege.  It should be a right.  The word, more than any other, seems to cause confusion on these basic issues, when the word was invented to clarify.

“Along with greater civil rights, hyper-exploitative capitalism is a key mechanism, because it allows us to take the products of child-raising from other countries into our own for real cheap.”

Can you explain what you mean by this? 

For myself, I don’t buy it, and it implies that childless women are somehow leeches on the world or something.  Using less of something does not mean using more of it.  A child that does not exist is not using energy, food, air, water, not polluting, etc.  Less is less…right?...

while immigration is no substitute for trying to help other countries develop themselves

No, but it can greatly help those countries.  People who immigrate here typically send money back home, which raises the standard of living for their families and stimulates their home country’s economy.  There is a risk of a brain drain: educated, creative, and determined people leaving home and thus leaving those countries without potential lawyers, doctors, government workers, etc., but many developing countries simply don’t have enough opportunities for that kind of work.

Waspie—I’m not going to comment on the validity of “Idiocracy” concerns, because like you I have no hard stats either way, and anyway I choose to take the “Roy Porter” perspective on these matters (that is, intellectuals are spontaneously born of uneducated parents regularly enough to keep me optimistic).

Anecdotally, however, in my English dept in Canada, there’s a veritable baby boom a-happening among the 40-under “white liberal elite” profs of both sexes (even our same-sex couples are on their second or third child).  Actually there appears to be a baby boom among bourgeois types in general in my city—I’m not the only one to note it.

My husband and I are both PhDs and we hear no end to the “guilting” for (1) being lucky enough to choose childlessness (we’re both nearing 40) and (2) not passing on our supposed brainiac genes (seriously: I contend that most PhDs are only comprised of about 20% smarts—the rest is pure sweat and will). 

I honestly do sense a white panic undertone to most of those comments, as strong as or stronger than the knee-jerk sexism aimed my way.  That, or resentment, usually from older people who couldn’t as easily opt out.

keshmeshi:

One nice phenomenon, at least sometimes, is people from developing countries making the first 10-20 years of a career in the developed world, then returning home where they have the money, maturity, expertise, developed-world contacts and so forth to make both a better career and better development results for their countries. (The fact that many developing countries don’t have enough opportunities is a symptom, btw, not a cause.)

while developing nations need to reduce their population, developed nations need to increase ours

What’s so hilarious about that is the obvious paradox that exists in the foaming-at-the-mouth mentality so many of these rightwing nutbars have when it comes to talk of immigration reform to create paths to citizenship for the brown folks living here.

America needs to increase it’s population?

Aren’t there more than 10 Million people here who we could help to become citizens?  That would certainly increase our population.

I hatehatehatehate the Idiocracy argument—because it’s so ignorant.

Only one of my grandparents on either side finished high school. Neither parent went to college.

Yet I was, magically, despite my faulty genetic burden, was able to do both and here I am, because **genetics does not matter compared to education and opportunity.** Jeebus, can we drop this BS whining about the overbreeding masses for once? It’s all crap, and it’s offensive as hell.  You don’t get more intellectuals by breeding them like rabbits, you get them by making education available to all. Why is this so hard to understand?

“We’ll have too few soldiers!  We’ll have too few workers!  The purity of our race/culture/favorite hobby will be diluted by…THOSE PEOPLE WHO BREED LIKE RABBITS!”

The idea of a Germanic people without sufficient space dates back to long before Adolf Hitler brought it to prominence. The term Lebensraum in this sense was coined by Friedrich Ratzel in 1897, and was used as a slogan in Germany referring to the unification of the country and the acquisition of colonies, based on the English and French models. Ratzel believed that the development of a people was primarily influenced by their geographical situation and that a people that successfully adapted to one location would proceed naturally to another. These thoughts can be seen in his studies of zoology and the study of adaptation[1]. This expansion to fill available space, he claimed, was a natural and necessary feature of any healthy species.[2]

These beliefs were furthered by scholars of the day, including Karl Haushofer and Friedrich von Bernhardi. In von Bernhardi’s 1912 book Germany and the Next War, he expanded upon Ratzel’s hypotheses and, for the first time, explicitly identified Eastern Europe as a source of new space. According to him, war, with the express purpose of achieving Lebensraum, was a distinct “biological necessity.” As he explained with regard to the Latin and Slavic races, <u>“Without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy budding elements.”</u> The quest for Lebensraum was more than just an attempt to resolve potential demographic problems: it was “a necessary means of defending the German race against stagnation and degeneration.”[3]

OTOH, if it’s a matter of destiny:

The term was coined early in the twentieth century by Nichiren sect religious activist and ultranationalist Tanaka Chigaku, who cobbled it from parts of a statement attributed in the chronicle Nihon shoki to legendary first emperor Jimmu at the time of his ascension.[2] Ambiguous in its original context, Tanaka interpreted the statement by Jimmu, mythically descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu, as meaning that imperial rule had been divinely ordained to expand until it united the entire world. While Tanaka saw this outcome as resulting from the emperor’s moral leadership, many of his followers were less pacifist in their outlook.

“Along with greater civil rights, hyper-exploitative capitalism is a key mechanism, because it allows us to take the products of child-raising from other countries into our own for real cheap.”

Can you explain what you mean by this? 

For myself, I don’t buy it, and it implies that childless women are somehow leeches on the world or something.  Using less of something does not mean using more of it.  A child that does not exist is not using energy, food, air, water, not polluting, etc.  Less is less…right?…

I kind of see where the original poster is going… what I think they are saying is that women in developed nations enjoy the privilege of being able to choose childless lives because of the benefits people in developed nations enjoy as a result of the cheap labor providing us so many resources from underdeveloped nations.

Even if you don’t shop at Wal-Mart… you shop at Wal-Mart.  It’s difficult, nearly impossible for an American citizen not to directly benefit from the exploitation of labor in underdeveloped countries.  Because even if you personally don’t shop at Wal-Mart, you shop somewhere where the owner has likely maximized profit in some way by taking advantage of the cheap labor available in the third world.

Hell, if you own a computer, you have probably benefitted from exploitative labor practices.  If you look in your closet, it’s likely that much of what you own used exploitative child labor.

We can make a certain amount of conscious ethical choices to minimize how much we are contributing to this raping of the third world, but to completely avoid it altogether in America, one would almost have to choose to live completely off the grid and cultivate their own food.

Anyway… the point that the original poster was trying to make is that childlessness is a privilege that can only be enjoyed in fully developed nations, and part of the reason it can be enjoyed is because the third world nations provide so much for us for so cheap… largely because we exploit the cheap labor available in their booming populations.

By the way… I do agree with Amanda that the decision to not have children should not be just a privilege for some, but a right for all.  Just pointing out that part of why it is a privilege for some is because of how good we have it here as a result of our pillaging of the poorer countries of the world.

Since the West uses more food and energy than the third world, population control in the West is what’s needed.

Hmmm.  I agree but I don’t.  That position seems to be making the argument that the amount that we Westerners consume per person is perfectly acceptable, that we just need to limit the number of new Westerners coming into the world.

Yes, reducing population in the countries with the highest levels of consumption per capita certainly would help, but I think it fails to address what really needs to happen.

We need to stop consuming so goddamned much.  The goal shouldn’t be to figure out how we would best be able to maintain a manifestly greedy lifestyle for so many, but to accept that we consume far more than we need, and to adjust our consumption to far more ethical levels when placed in the context of the rest of the fucking world.

Yes, reduce the size of the greedy populations in Western nations.  But also reduce the per capita level of greed of those same Western nations.

Yes, the Idiocracy argument (cf “The Marching Morons”) comes up whenever the term “Social Darwinism” is too controversial for a pundit to utter.

There’s many problems with it, but let some basic history be your guide to the core arguments against:

For hundreds of years, Christian Europe sent its intellectuals into the celebate clergy, including monasteries. There’s no way to know how often this kept them from having kids, but that was the system. Despite this, there eventually came an intellectual Renaissance, and the Powers of that continent would go on to capture the world with their superior technology.

Meanwhile, in China, there was Confucianism, whereby the intellectual elite were trained in the same fashion for hundreds of years, and categorically encouraged to have large strong families. Result: The power of the European barbarians was underestimated by the mandarins, and ultimately left the country’s well-being at the mercy of foreigners until relatively recently, and an overpopulation crisis that persists to this day.

Add to this the suggestion of recent years that problems on the ADD-to-autism spectrum are heightened when both parents are nerdly-smart, and the whole breeding program for brains comes crashing down.

It’s all tied up with the royal mystique. You know, our chieftain is so awesome, so his son must be just as awesome. I’d like to see a success-to-failure ratio drawn up of that across all time.

I am not saying that childlessness is a privilege so I could dismiss what should be a *right*.  I am not even against childlessness!  I simply recognize that childlessness is *expensive* socially and personally.  The basic costs of care for children are actually pretty minimal, and mostly comes from sunk costs into infrastructure and social networks.  Of course, when you actually have to increase capacity on the margins to feed kids, then they can be expensive.  Children are horrendously expensive in the here and now for alternative structural reasons that don’t have much to do with genuine necessities other than a proper schooling.

What I’m saying (partially) is that life sucks when you don’t have enough labor.  People who don’t produce enough of it don’t get social capital (they’d better provide capital in other ways!).  Of course it sucks more for cheap wage conservatives!  Children also helps secure your possessions by discouraging people from thinking that you’re an easily eliminated victim.  A growing population makes a society more liquid in terms of roles and economic activities on both the producing and consuming side.  These are just a few of the effects.  Restructuring society around a steady state doesn’t really just mean that all women have fewer babies.  It gets more involved than this, and gets quick into the murk of economic justice.  It’s very likely would mean that *some* women would get to have fewer babies as is their want, but it is almost certainly going to be at the expense of people like Amanda.  Either she has kids or donates more of her life to the greater wealth of her society than she might wish to.  Civil rights for black people certainly has meant that whites have lost some economic and cultural power (not this was power worth having, for the most part).  If a chica way down in Tabasco province gets to have fewer kids, then, beyond a certain level, Amanda *will* have to compensate with children or labor.

I’m all for giving everyone this choice.  I just want people to be aware that people really will raise holy hells to prevent that from happening—besides the whacko conservatives who want free labor and the ability to punish women with children.

“Social Security is not our biggest problem”

You’re right. The looming insolvency of Medicare and Medicade is a much larger and more immediate concern.

Some have the “privilege” of not having children forced upon them, by fate, circumstance, or other factors in their lives that simply preclude it.  I don’t see how it can be considered a “privilege” if it’s susceptible to such forced acceptance.  Having children is also a privilege, and I think the arguments in favor of that proposition would be stronger.

It’s a choice, sure.  Maybe the argument is that merely having that choice is a privilege?  I’d say it’s more of a right.

Like I’ve said before, the right wing argument for endless population growth in the U.S. and Europe is based on the erroneous notion that wealth is strictly derived from labor (and then only men’s paid labor), and that resources have nothing to do with it.

That’s perhaps a part of it, but I think it’s more about fear of the brown hordes outbreeding us and overwhelming us white folks with sheer numbers, the mongrelization and dilution of our pure red/white/blue American blood, the sapping and impurification of our precious bodily fluids.  That’s why at the same time they call for more (white) babies they also call for tougher and stricter immigration laws and border enforcement.  That’s why population control in the developing world is a good thing but here it’s a bad thing (except it’s also a good thing in the African-American and Latino and Asian-American segments of society, too; remember the demonization of “welfare queens” popping out babies to get bigger welfare checks).  It’s mostly about racism.

We need to stop consuming so goddamned much.  The goal shouldn’t be to figure out how we would best be able to maintain a manifestly greedy lifestyle for so many, but to accept that we consume far more than we need, and to adjust our consumption to far more ethical levels when placed in the context of the rest of the fucking world.

You are free to go live in a hut and eat gruel and wear rags if it will make you feel less guilty. Nobody is stopping you.

The basic costs of care for children are actually pretty minimal, and mostly comes from sunk costs into infrastructure and social networks.

Uhh…what?  Costs for care for children are pretty minimal?

Food?  Clothes?  School?  (Including college!)  Health care?  Day care?  Baseball leagues?  Soccer teams?  Birthday parties?  Christmas gifts?  Lost leisure?  All of which don’t exist if you don’t have children?

Just an astounding statement.

<blockqutoe>Children are horrendously expensive in the here and now</blockquote>

And unfortunately here and now is where we live; what alternate reality are you proposing we inhabit?

Either she has kids or donates more of her life to the greater wealth of her society than she might wish to.

How do you propose to enforce that?  And how do you know that that doesn’t happen naturally anyway?

We need to stop consuming so goddamned much.  The goal shouldn’t be to figure out how we would best be able to maintain a manifestly greedy lifestyle for so many, but to accept that we consume far more than we need, and to adjust our consumption to far more ethical levels when placed in the context of the rest of the fucking world.

You are free to go live in a hut and eat gruel and wear rags if it will make you feel less guilty. Nobody is stopping you.

Rush Limbaugh, is that you?

So any criticism of the amount we Westerners consume is a call for us all to live in mudhuts and eating porridge and grasshoppers?

You are ridiculous.

Do you think maybe there is possibly, perhaps, some sort of middle ground between everybody needing to live in mudhuts and everybody needing a 2 acre lot and no less than three flatscreen televisions per household?

I’m being hyperbolic, but the point is, per capita, as a nation - we use waaaay too many resources.  Calling it anything other than a wanton level of greed is a lie.

But seriously, you don’t think that relative to the rest of the planet that we live on, we DON’T consume too much?

Seriously?

We do not need to be encouraging Americans to have more kids.

We don’t need to be *discouraging* Americans from having kids—a lot of the things we do in our society are frickin’ insane, and put huge burdens on parents—but we don’t need to be encouraging them. America is very, very good at assimilating immigrants. We don’t *have* problems like the Muslims in Europe, because we are built on the concept of being an immigrant nation.

I am in favor of policies that ensure that every woman gets to have exactly as many children as she wants and is able to have… no more, no less. I would be even more in favor of policies that give the same freedom to men, as long as they take no power from women’s bodies… but that can’t be done with policy, it must be done with technology. I want to see a world where men can get birth control as easily as women, and the birth rate plummets but the children who *are* born have *two* loving, involved parents, and meanwhile society starts handwringing about why *men* don’t want kids.

I also want to see vastly increased legal immigration, increases in foreign aid for the purpose of educating women or providing them with reproductive health and family planning services, and teeth in treaties like the International Rights of Women. I want to see rape treated as a war crime or an act of terrorism, and I want to see a lack of equal legal rights to men in their home country be considered grounds for granting women asylum in the West.

The entire planet, in general, needs to have fewer people, but the US and other developed nations have solved this problem by giving women education, birth control and rights. Increasing our population through immigration rather than pushing women to have kids they don’t want would mean that foreign women would come here, absorb our cultural belief that they have the right not to have children, return home to be married and demand rights that they learned to take for granted in the US, which would advance the cause of human rights *and* population control worldwide.

As for cheap labor… automation made labor virtually extinct in the US *before* outsourcing came along. I’d like to see a world where everyone gets an education, all the mindless physically grueling jobs that are unpleasant are done by machines, and all the human beings have jobs that don’t destroy their bodies and may actually be satisfying. For this to work we’d need a lot fewer humans in general, because if robots are more expensive than Third World orphans, companies will go with the Third World orphans.

Sure, women say that they don’t want to have more kids because they can’t afford them, and for many that’s true, but for some of us, it’s a nice, convenient excuse.  Personally, there’s no amount of free daycare that would get me to have a kid.  There would have to be a lot of women who want four to make up for those of us who want zero, and that, I think is a pipe dream. There’s no government program that’s going to make four pregnancies a delightful proposition, and no amount of free daycare will reduce the (to quote Katha Pollitt) gender Republicanism that sets into many households when babies enter. ...
But no matter how much you can correct for some of the routine injustices that discourage women from having children, I think it’s going to be increasingly hard to get around the fact that if kids are really, truly a choice, increasing numbers of people are going to say, “No thank you.” Right now, I think the childbirth rate is as high as it is because a lot of people have kids just because it’s what you do—-it’s hard to imagine an alternative when it’s presented to you your whole life as just what you do.  But as increasing numbers of people question that and refuse to have children, others will see that there’s an alternative and opt out.

THIS!!!!  TIMES A TRILLION!!!!!! I was just making these points to the BF on the ride home last night. I think you’re reading my mind.

I love you, Amanda!

I want to see a world where men can get birth control as easily as women

Amen!

all the mindless physically grueling jobs that are unpleasant are done by machines, and all the human beings have jobs that don’t destroy their bodies and may actually be satisfying.

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!

People also seem to have kids when they feel they have a void in their life, this is where I think society makes a mistake by pretending that children are the greatest thing that can happen to people.

The basic costs of care for children are pretty minimal ... if you consider women’s labor to be free.

Furthermore, unless you’re talking about reducing population by 50% a generation or something, the labor issue just isn’t there. Whether each working-age person cares for (by proxy) 0.95 retired people or 1.05 doesn’t make it out of the noise.  The big shifts, with people actually living significantly beyond retirement age, have already happened, and have pretty much topped out. Heck, in some countries life expectancy is even declining…

“(I’ve seen this a lot with couple I know as their kids age and the amount of shit the wife has to do for the kids goes down.  She ends up taking on more man duties like mowing the lawn, and he’s the one who gets the benefits of more time.)”

Holy shit.  I always wondered why my mom started mowing the lawn some time around my late teens.  My dad always (and I mean always—they had this odd garden/lawn division of labor) did it when I was little.

Weird, isn’t it?  I only thought about it when I was trying to figure out what would happen if we got our wish list, and suddenly I realized that added hours for the house are given to the couple (if coupled, which most parents are, despite stats—-many “single” mothers are living with the father), not the mother.  And couples divide assets unevenly most of the time.

“The basic costs of care for children are actually pretty minimal…”

You say that, shah8, because you don’t pay them.

“The basic costs of care for children are pretty minimal ... if you consider women’s labor to be free.”

Yes.

“Like I’ve said before, the right wing argument for endless population growth in the U.S. and Europe is based on the erroneous notion that wealth is strictly derived from labor (and then only men’s paid labor), and that resources have nothing to do with it.”

Oh, Lordy!  If righties only did believe that wealth springs from labor, even if the labor in question were solely that of straight white men, we wouldn’t be in the miserable fix we’re in now.  But, of course they don’t, because such a belief would imply that wealth is built up from underneath like a wall from its base instead of descending from above like manna, and that’s an implication righties can’t endure.  Which is why they’ve concocted their mythology of the Magical Rich, whose unstinting largesse is the only thing which allows the world to continue to revolve.  Righties don’t believe that wealth is the result of anybody’s labor, what they believe is that it’s a form of charity dispensed by a limited corps of superüberdudes, and they say so again and again.

Re: reproduction by literate couples
Cultural reproduction is much more important than genetic reproduction by literate couples. Children read if their parents read for pleasure or learning. Children watch TV if their parents watch TV. There are always exceptions, but most children absorb the values of their families. Poorly educated parents produce well educated children if the children see the value that parents place on education, and see parents trying to educate themselves.

Teachers have a hard time instilling a love of learning in children who are from poorly educated or illiterate, non-aspiring families.

Meanwhile, in China, there was Confucianism, whereby the intellectual elite were trained in the same fashion for hundreds of years, and categorically encouraged to have large strong families. Result: The power of the European barbarians was underestimated by the mandarins, and ultimately left the country’s well-being at the mercy of foreigners until relatively recently, and an overpopulation crisis that persists to this day.

Yamara,

The cause and effect you are presenting here is a gross orientalist oversimplification of historical factors in the rise of Western imperialist encroachment on China and internal factors which made it possible. 

Though Confucianism(actually Neo-Confucianism) played a part, the larger factors are ones not unique to that philosophy…but more universalistic ones such as draining discretionary wars, overconfidence/hubris in their own society’s greatness, and an unwillingness to question prevailing social orthodoxy.  Factors common in many societies, past and present…...including our own judging by recent historical events….

As for the overpopulation issue, that did not really become a serious issue until the late 1970’s which was due in large part to 1950’s/early ‘60s Maoist era policies of providing financial and political incentives for large families as a clumsy hamfisted effort to both replace severe population losses from decades of wars (i.e. Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, Korean War) and to build up the population to defend Mainland China against external threats as well as to export Maoist revolutionary ideals abroad, especially in the Third World.  This along with a relatively more stable peaceful environment due to a lack of rampaging warring armies across the Chinese landscape compared to previous decades eventually made China’s population grow to the point it became a demographic problem….especially when one considers the massive starvation which occurred in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950’s-early ‘60s.  In short, China’s current overpopulation problem is a product of ill-conceived policies in the mid-20th century….not Confucianism/Neo-Confucianism of bygone dynasties.

Did no one actually read the next two sentences after the apparently controversial one?

School breakfasts are cheap.  S-Chip is cheap.  Many other programs aimed at improving children’s welfare are cheap for their benefits.  This should tell you something.

As for the cheap because women’s labor is free angle, I think that’s somewhat asinine, because many, many, many things are cheaper because we have free or lowcost women’s labor.  Weigh the cost of children in the context of free/cheap female labor, but do this in its proper context.

Lastly, I actually *do* have an idea of how much it costs to have a kid around.

Race you Denelian, first one to Ceres wins!

That actually sounds great, but we really don’t have much idea of what’s out there in the asteroid belt as far as exploitable resources, though, or do we? I don’t see how there’d be any oil (no organic matter to decay) and that seems like the first thing that might make people (or their robots) go zooming out.

exholt,

If I really wanted to grossly oversimplify Sino-European relations, I would have just used one word. Gunpowder. But I was just making a point about how ridiculous target-breeding for brains is.

Please note that I was grossly oversimplifying Europe’s situation as well. (How many feudal second sons were foisted in and out of clerical celebacy? How many of those were idiots?) I implied no actual superiority of one culture over another, simply the historical observation that China was whupped for century by European innovation, and its own refusal to adopt it.

I’ve been studying Chinese relations in the decades leading up to the Opium Wars, and not just European sources. The organization and politics of the Qing bureaucracy is fascinating, but in the broadest overview, it comes down to not accepting the new, for better or for worser. It’s hardly an “occidental” view, considering that Japan and Siam made very different choices during the 19th Century, and the former certainly jumped on the bandwagon of beating on China as soon as it could.

While I’ll concede that overpopulation has new causes and challenges with each generation, there were always issues in a nation whose numbers have always impressed the rest of the world.

Anyway, I wasn’t writing a dissertation on China in response to Goldberg. Just that her broad sweeping arguments are less accurate than my offhand comparison.

I also enjoy the inflection of Mandarin names, though I’m illiterate in it. My roommate is better at it, since we have a few clients in China. We should have more fun names like those over here. It would challenge our intellect.

-Y

As for the cheap because women’s labor is free angle, I think that’s somewhat asinine, because many, many, many things are cheaper because we have free or lowcost women’s labor.

What you mean, shah8, is that these things are cheaper for you.  They’re not necessarily cheaper for the women of whom you speak.  My point would be that they too eat, breathe, cogitate and take up space; they too count, at least technically, as human beings.  Amanda often makes the point that there are plenty of people out there (not all of them male) who cultivate the habit of counting on women’s labor to save their bacon while denying its importance; I must say that you appear to me to be a fine example of the type of individual she’s describing.

I’ve been studying Chinese relations in the decades leading up to the Opium Wars, and not just European sources. The organization and politics of the Qing bureaucracy is fascinating, but in the broadest overview, it comes down to not accepting the new, for better or for worser. It’s hardly an “occidental” view, considering that Japan and Siam made very different choices during the 19th Century, and the former certainly jumped on the bandwagon of beating on China as soon as it could.

This analysis leaves out the critically important factor of Qianlong’s(1736-1799) wars in the latter part of his reign and their inertial impact, especially on China’s economy and military leadership.  This factor alone was cited as a critical reason why many historians of China place the starting point of Qing China’s decline in the last years of his reign.  By the time the British emissary of King George III arrived 1793…the decline was already underway. 

As for comparisons with Siam and Japan, keep in mind that both countries are far smaller geographically which seriously factors in administrative and governing capacity, especially in an era before modern communications or transport. 

Though I know little about Siam beyond the fact it did suffer some loss of territories due to Western Colonialism, one of the reasons why Japan had a far easier time in adopting Western ideas and techniques other than having a past history of doing so was also the fact Japan was a feudal society where despite having a central Tokugawa Shogunate government in Edo, most effective day-to-day political authority was exercised by regional lords who were given relatively wide latitude so long as they are not found to act in ways which may insult and/or threaten Tokugawa rule.  A factor in the rise of the relatively unprivileged Choshu and Satsuma from “outer domain” clans to being leading players in the anti-Shogunate campaigns which culminated in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. 

Moreover, Japan was fortunate that China fell victim to Western Colonialism first and thus, were able to learn from observing China’s experience and tailor their responses accordingly. 

In addition, feudal Japan has had a militaristic based culture based not only on the existence of the privileged Samurai, but also from the many bloody wars fought between rival clans along with a few colonialist expeditions such as Hideyoshi’s initiation of two invasions of Korea during the 1590s’ Imjin Wars or the Satsuma’s 1609 Tokugawa approved military expedition to the Liu Qiu/Ryukyu Kingdom to compel them to become a tribute paying vassal of the Satsuma clan.

Continuing from the last paragraph, China on the other hand has had a long tradition of distaste for the military profession, especially among the socio-political elite dating back to the Sung Dynasty(960-1279 CE) as the dynasty’s founder came to power via military coup and he wanted to undermine the prestige and power of military leaders in Chinese society to discourage others from following in his footsteps.  This distaste is starkly underscored by the Chinese adage “Good steel should not be used to make nails, good men shouldn’t join the military/desire a military career.” 

This mentality permeated the socio-political elite well into the 20th century as Chiang Kai-Shek found when his marriage to Soong Mei-Ling was almost stopped by her family due in part because of their disdain for his military occupation.  While the family was part of the merchant class…...the lowest of the 4 commoner classes* in the Confucian/Neo-Confucian social order, they were at least part of the accepted social hierarchy whereas soldiers were completely excluded at this point. 

This factor along with China’s experience with colonialism/invasions is one reason why both Chinas during the mid-20th century onward, especially the mainland, has glorified the military as a respectable occupation in various media.  Though they have had some success, most Chinese youth are indifferent IME, especially those who excel academically to the point they can gain admission to both Chinas’ topflight universities.  It is one possible factor in why the ROC(Taiwan) has implemented 2 years of mandated military service for all young males since the 1950’s.  Even so, I’ve personally encountered many socio-economically privileged male ROC citizens who have used the chance to study at US universities as a means to evade their military service obligations. 

* 1. Scholar(Ideally working as an official in the Civil Service) 2. Farmer/Peasant 3. Artisan/craftsmen 4. Merchant

beckabot, at the end of the day, my entire point was that we should value the labor of people who bring other people into the world and bring them up, even if they are half way around the world.  The problems from *not* appropriately valuing them are many, while rectifying that inequality will lead to (worthwhile, I think) hardship in the first world.

It just gets hard to respond or take a discussion seriously if you get accused of doing the thing you are arguing against (and which I have not done, btw).  That is what is asinine about it. 

Or how about this?  A game of The Price is Right, Children’s Edition?  For the last @#%#%#$ time, I actually have some degree of knowledge above nonexistant about how much it costs to raise a child in the US.  I also know very rough estimates of how much it costs to raise a kid in Mexico or China.  They aren’t the same, and that is for reasons that don’t have to do with the actual necessities.  Which is why I said a bunch of things further that some people seem determined not to read.

So beckabot, you might feel good slinging your arrows in the good fight, but did you say one, just one, worthwhile thing about something I actually did?

For the love of Christ and all that is holy, including the Spaghetti Monster, this is about someone’s personal control over their own procreation, balanced against all of the circumstances.  This is about not forcing women to make choices about children against their will and especially against the tide of events.  This isn’t actually someone’s right to be childfree at any cost.  This is about people having the actual choice to weigh the expenses of having children and not having them.  It is about the recognition that other people can make choices that impinge on your own free will (and still be perfectly entitled to have that power of choice).  I wanted to talk about this kind of thing because I think a discussion and resolution without frankly dealing with this is liable to embed nasty backlashes in the body public.

exholt, I just read Beasley‘s The Rise of Modern Japan.  I think it’s pretty bad, but as far as Japan and colonialism is concerned, I think Japan just got lucky…period.  The European powers were getting seriously overstretched by the time serious attention got to Japan.  The US wasn’t really in a position to do anything, and nobody had a particularly strong idea of what Japan’s wealth might be.  Japan also had good weather while much of the rest of the world was undergoing catastrophic weather events.

As for Yamara, if you haven’t picked up Kenneth Pomeranz‘s The Great Divergence, you really need to read that book.  You’ll like it.

beckabot, at the end of the day, my entire point was that we should value the labor of people who bring other people into the world and bring them up, even if they are half way around the world.  The problems from *not* appropriately valuing them are many, while rectifying that inequality will lead to (worthwhile, I think) hardship in the first world.

shah8, you’re never going to achieve a proper valuation of the contributions of sympathetic women in the third world while ignoring the contributions of unsympathetic women in the first world.  I’m telling you that right now. 

“Sweetie, I’d be perfectly willing to approve of you totally if only you’d do what I say” is a proposition I’ve heard before.  Fortunately I’ve accumulated enough experience in life to understand that it’s a false proposition.

This isn’t actually someone’s right to be childfree at any cost.

Okay, maybe I’m biased, shah8, but in my book a woman who is not fitted to raise children and who knows it and who honors that knowledge by declining to have kids has done society a favor.  In my book, too many women who are unfitted to raise children are dragooned into doing so through a mixture of inertia and social convention and I’ve noticed that the results are often unhappy.  (Sometimes they even lead to “hardship”, which is too bad.)

So beckabot, you might feel good slinging your arrows in the good fight, but did you say one, just one, worthwhile thing about something I actually did?

Since I don’t know for a fact that I’ve misunderstood what you’ve had to say, I’m going to stick with my theory that I’ve understood it adequately and perhaps too well.  “If only you could read me in the original Hebrew!” is another maneuver with which I’m familiar.

On a purely personal note, shah8, I don’t see how it is that you’ve managed to mess up a handle as simple as mine, while I’ve managed to transcribe yours correctly.  I doubt I’m much smarter than you.  What gives?

Hmm, excuse the extra c…

I’ve said more about the contributions of “unsympathetic” women than you have.  Moreover, I’m not actually lambasting anyone or trying to guilt anyone.  Lastly, all I was trying to get people to do was to consider children’s critical roles in the world instead of specifically looking at them as a good that might might be beneficial but expensive/totally not worth it/future wage slaves.  Of course I’d approve of you if you went along with what I think.  That’s what most people do.  However, there isn’t any coercion or expectation that you should desire to think the way I think.  I’m mostly just interested in having a productive conversation where I learn something.

I am completely and thoroughly aware about how much one thinks one would be a bad parent.  I think *I* would be a bad parent without a SO’s help.  I am not disputing your judgement.  I simply said that your (and mine) ability to act on that judgement was significantly enabled by us being citizens in a country that can expropriate the positive social/economic benefits of having children from elsewheres.  If immigration should dwindle and globalization falter, then our nieces and nephews (if not ourselves), some of whom who would be just as bad parents as we would be, will not have the ability to be childless, even if they have the choice.  At least not without compensations that many may not be able to provide.  The world, and large social dynamics, really doesn’t give a shit about what we feel we can do and what we feel we can’t.  Responding to pressure applied to certain points, our social system will translate tremendous amount of pressure on people like us to have kids.  It is just important that we recognize this, because our goals include giving the people who insulate us the choice *not* to insulate us.

Wow, shah8.  This is a surprise.  I’ve never believed that nagging men is a tactic which works, but here I find I’ve managed to get you to come to the point by employing a technique I never would expected would bear fruit.  So while there are certainly things I take exception to in the preceding post (for example: if you realize that “the world and large social dynamics really doesn’t give a shit about what we feel we can do and what we can’t” you must also realize that there’s no “considering children’s critical roles in the world” without “considering them [children, that is] as a good that might might be beneficial but expensive/totally not worth it/future wage slaves” because in terms of “the world and large social dynamics” those are exactly what “children’s critical roles” are) I’m not going to pursue that stuff now, if only because I’m amazed at the level of clarity you can rise to when you’ve decided that clarity rather than mystification is your goal.  (And also because I think this thread is kind of played out.)

‘Nuff said…

Hmm, I reread everything in this post…Gotta say, I agree with Michelle Goldberg 100%, and I don’t think Amanda truly grapples with the reasons Dr. Goldberg provides.  She aknowledges some of what the reasons were, like the politics of immigration, but this is dumped off into, well, we won’t repeat Europe’s mistakes.  I’m not the average american and neither is Amanda, and I strongly suspect that a supercharged immigration policy would promote a rather virulent reaction from the average american.  A reading and awareness of the vicious sentiments against Irish and Asian immigrants suggest that this issue is permanently latent

Furthermore Michelle Goldberg’s arguments with respect to Italy holds a great deal of resonance with me.  The political situation in Italy has grown darker and darker.  There has been *state sanctioned* ethnic cleansings of gypsies over the last year, not to mention the usual issues with immigrants from Italy’s former African colonies.

Recognizing the political issues around immigration is critical, if only to assure continued immigration here rather than in other first world country.

Hmmm, that is enough.  I come at this from a slightly different angle than Dr. Goldberg so I didn’t recognize where she was coming from (I also had it in my head that this was Meghan McArdle for some reason).  I followed the links time…

Wait, what? 

I’m not sure I comprehend your response correctly bekabot, but I agree that children should be considered as people with agency and purpose, and that this consideration doesn’t happen because it’s inconvenient to TPTB.  I gather you believe I am objectifing children because you see me talking about their “roles”.  If you are good for something, then you can be thought of as a tool…  I’m not sure how I’d answer that.  It’s hard to seperate language conventions from the contemporary narcissim of people.  It shouldn’t happen, but it does anyways because people are heavily inclined to think of other people as a means to an end, regardless of golden/silver rules or Categorical Imperatives, or whatnot…

As for clarity and mystification:  Note that I have a fairly nasty case of ADD, and most certainly have problems writing clearly enough for other people.  There was no intent to be obscure.

I’m not sure I comprehend your response correctly bekabot, but I agree that children should be considered as people with agency and purpose, and that this consideration doesn’t happen because it’s inconvenient to TPTB.

Maybe children should be considered as people with agency and purpose, but mostly they’re not; mostly they’re regarded as resources or investments, and that’s when they’re lucky.  That’s when they’re not in a situation where they’re liable to be regarded as burdens.  That’s when they’re not in a situation where they really are burdens.

I don’t believe that you in particular objectify kids, shah8, anymore than anyone else does.  But I do believe that people in general objectify kids, with a very few remarkable exceptions (a group of which I don’t pretend to be a member) because they more or less have to.*  You’re right when you say that the world and large social dynamics don’t give a shit what we think we can and can’t do; well, a corollary of that is that the world and large social dynamics don’t give a shit about us as individuals even when we’re adults, let alone when we’re children.  All that’s a fiction, and an invaluable one, but we have to uphold it ourselves.  Remember: the world and large social dynamics don’t give much of a crap about any of our capacities other than the instrumental ones (perfectly correct).  Can you lift up a large rock?  Can I grunt out a large kid?

If you are good for something, then you can be thought of as a tool…

Yep.  Because in a very solid sense, that’s what you are.  That may not be all you are, but (just one example) if your labor goes for less, if your being goes for less, you have fewer resources with which to prove that that’s not all you are.  Which is probably why the people at the top of any social network end up with a reputation for possessing a “greater reality” than those who roost below them can lay claim to. 

*That’s what this whole darn thread is about, shah8.  Sheesh.  That’s what all that Italy-Gypsies-and-Africa business entails.  You’re the one who brought that stuff up.  It’s hard to believe that you did so without some grasp of the implications carried by the material you were citing.

I brought it all up because I was accusing(pointing out?) Amanda in the most gentle way I could think of—of precisely the thought process you are accusing me of.  Read the phrase you wrote with the asterisk and then read Amanda’s post.