Links related to natalism

Scott Yenor; Malcolm Collins; Melissa Kearney; Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Scott Yenor writes,

American girls are taught to delay marriage and motherhood, not for the nation’s sake, but for the sake of their independence. They are encouraged to attend college and find gainful employment before they consider marrying and having children. They are discouraged from being dependent on any man. No one warns of the biological clock; every regime outlet peddles the half-truth that women can wait until their late thirties to have children. According to a Pew poll, 88 percent of parents want their children to be financially independent and to have rewarding jobs or careers; only 21 percent say that getting married is important. Marriage is regarded as a capstone to a career of striving, not the foundation of a life well lived.

If the “success sequence” is to graduate high school and get married before having children, then what should we call the sequence in which a woman postpones finding a husband until her mid-thirties? The latter sequence combines uber-success with an inability to fool mother nature about the best age for bearing and raising children.

Thanks to a commenter for the pointer. And Yenor has this:

Sixty-two percent of younger Republican men and 46 percent of younger Democratic men think that “feminism has done more harm than good,” according to a poll released by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Only 42 percent of older Republican men and 4 percent of older Democratic men hold such views. This suggests a remarkable souring of male–female relations. From the perspective of younger men, American feminism, by making American women quick to play the victim or to blame men for their woes, makes them less lovable. From women’s perspective, men who lack ambition or strength—two qualities that feminism arguably censures in men—are unappealing. The rise in lesbianism among younger women suggests that they are, indeed, ever less interested in our men.

People are increasingly choosing their social circles in part based on political-cultural beliefs. And those beliefs seem to differ between men and women. Uh-oh.

Tyler Cowen writes,

A new and great book, authored by Melissa S. Kearney of the University of Maryland.  The subtitle is How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, and here is one excerpt of the summary points:

Two-parent families are beneficial for children.

The class divide in marriage and family structure has exacerbated inequality and class gaps.

Places that have more two-parent families have higher rates of upward mobility.

Not talking about these facts is counterproductive.

The book is called Two-Parent Privilege.

Elsewhere, he links to an article on pronatalism, featuring the Collins couple.

‘Our solution is, uh, we don’t have a solution,’ he [Malcolm Collins] admits. He says the only things proven to increase birth rates are poverty and the oppression of women, which are bad and should be stamped out. The only hope is to find those few families that combine liberal, pluralistic politics, such as support for LGBT rights, with high fertility – or create new, hybrid micro-cultures that value both – and help them multiply.

Yenor concludes,

We will not restore children to the center of our society’s ideal of a life well lived until we reverse our cultural messaging—not just about children, but about the entire range of issues that touch upon what it means to be man and woman. The image of woman with motherhood near the center of her life is vital for our future, if we want to have one.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes,

South Korea spent more than $200 billion subsidizing child care and parental leave over the past 16 years, President Yoon Suk Yeol said last fall. Yet the fertility rate fell from 1.1 in 2006 to 0.81 in 2021.

I do think that cultural change is the dominant factor. I think the same thing about the obesity epidemic. If you did the manual labor that people did around the house and in the typical workplace in 1950, and you had to eat the bland, monotonous food that was put on the table back then, you probably wouldn’t be obese, either.

If today’s young people grew up in an environment in which a woman who had intercourse before marriage was shamed as a slut and a woman who had not found a husband by the time she was 25 was shamed as a spinster, they would be having more children. But now young people are postponing sex not because of mature self-restraint and conformity to social norms but because they are unskilled at handling deep relationships with other human beings. 17 is the new 15.

In the 1950s, men were ready to get married in their early 20s. Some had graduated college by then, and had found mates. Those who had not gone to college had reliable, steady jobs. They, too, had found mates.

Today, young males who have not graduated college are often in precarious positions financially and hiding out in the virtual world. Women are not eager to marry them. On the other hand, male college graduates are not ready to launch, either emotionally or financially. Ahead of them are internships, post-graduate degrees, possibly even Ph.D programs and postdocs.

The upshot is that women are more likely to get married closer to age 30, which is past the point where having a large family is viable. I mean, if you think that when you are 34 years old, chasing around two toddlers, you’ll be in great shape for a third and a fourth, good luck to you.

And Tyler Cowen points to an NYT column by Peter Coy that discusses research pointing to the influence of peer behavior on the decision to have children. I am not surprised that there is an effect, but I don’t think it can serve as a root cause of a society-wide change.

So the baby bust is what it is. Again, I am not ready to push the panic button on this issue. Population growth matters for public pensions as they are currently structured. Otherwise, I think we can tolerate some shrinkage until we see the emergence of social conditions and societal norms a few generations hence.