I think housing costs are an under-appreciated factor. A decent house, in a decent school zone, with a <1 hour commute to a major job market can be insanely expensive until you've been working for a number of years. Our decision to treat housing as an "asset class" more so than "shelter" has major repercussions.
I agree with all those. I'll add another: as more people choose not to have children there is less fear among the rest that you will be left out. I literally have a friend who prioritizes developing friendships among those who she knows won't be having children. There are plenty of alternatives nowadays.
Here's a fact that cuts against a purely technologically-determined cause. The fertility rate (TFR) for native-born French women has been declining more or less steadily for nearly 300 years, with the WWI period being a temporarily negative deviation from trend, and the baby boom era a temporarily positive one. Following the baby boom, that TFR declined below replacement and has been stuck there for over 50 years. People sometimes guess "the pill!", but that obviously that can't be squared at all with, "300 years, and our ancestors were neither stupid nor helpless and have always been able to control their fertility rates in the old-fashioned ways.
It's not just France. Rates in most countries which were industrializing or getting richer tended on average to decline by about half during the 19th century. The general timing of such changes in many places and over such a long period of time seem to correlate with levels of wealth, urbanization, religion, and the general status of women - their legal emancipation on egalitarian terms, grant of the franchise, education, and participation in the labor market.
Not only can we compare the timing of these changes between countries given these levels, but we can compare the timing of changes for *different classes within the same country* given the different levels of education and wealth of those classes. And in general, in the past two centuries, we see wealthy, urban, educated elites running ahead of the general trend.
All that tells us that it's mostly not 'technology', especially not recent digital communications tech. Among other things, a lot of it is simply the 'opportunity cost' of having children - in money, time, leisure, status, career, ambition, etc. - which has never been higher. Affordability matters, of course, but my position is that it's not nearly as important as people claim. For instance, our ancestors were much poorer and had many more kids. But affordability is the most socially acceptable rationale (or excuse) and so people focus on it in erroneous exclusion of the various more important factors.
The trouble is not that women in particular have lost the 'epic story' aspect of understanding the path of their own lives, it's that they now have an alternative and competitive epic story to pursue which rivals and often trumps the one which includes children or grandchildren, especially insofar as their understanding of what constitutes 'epic' derives from being influences by socially prominent cues and signals about which activities and ways to spend ones time are more elite and higher in status.
People used to have fair sized families in small homes and apartments in big cities, so it is hard to see how affordable housing is the issue. I agree that the public school system is awful nearly everywhere, but you hardly see young people paying any attention to local school politics because otherwise they can't have kids. You could test how much it is schools perhaps by looking at areas with regional school choice (St Paul and Minneapolis, MN for example) and comparing their birth rates with other metro areas of similar size and jobs but no school choice options. I never got the sense living in MN that people there were having more kids because it was easy to switch to a better school even if you lived in a cheaper spot.
The only thing I might add to your narrative is the bizarre victim culture that has everyone walking on eggshells around each other. I wouldn't want to have to date as a young adult in the current environment; just asking someone out is likely to get you in trouble in addition to the normal fears of rejection. If just about all the young people you know are in your workplace, asking someone out on a date sounds like a really good way to get a nasty-gram from HR.
I think you misunderstand opportunity cost. It is not that people are less able to "afford" children: as you say, they are richer today, not poorer than in the past. But, opportunity cost is about the available alternatives. In the past there were few opportunities to have a better life by not having kids. Essentially, the questions were "what else are you going to do with your time?" and "who's going to look after you when you're older?"
Today, there are many, many answers to those questions. You can pursue a dramatically more lucrative career. You can travel. Because of the substantially higher social standards for child welfare, the spread between with-kids and without-kids home and lifestyle is MUCH larger. And your savings will look after you at least as reliably as possibly ungrateful children would.
It's not just children. Many avocations are facing a related problem: there are lots and lots of other things to do now. And, in addition, children are much more costly today (many of us are old enough to remember "free-range childhood" - and can readily see that today's "coddled childhood" is very expensive by comparison.
No, he applied opportunity cost perfectly correctly. As Handle said, "...it's that they now have an alternative and competitive epic story to pursue which rivals and often trumps the one which includes children or grandchildren..." He is saying that people don't want to have kids because they want to do other things, but they cite cost and the like because that is more socially acceptable than saying they just can't be bothered to have kids because they want to do something else instead.
I would go with Linn, but I think that it's worse than that. The child wasn't the star, per se, that was the first step towards decadence. The family line was the star, as such. The loss and displacement of the lineage and name - the name of Abraham, to go back before last names as such, for example, or the Tudors, etc. The idea that a last name commemorated was immortality, in effect. This was a step towards grandchildren not having a key place as the goal of a good life.
There is another angle to one particular aspect of 'sex recession' which *does* line up with the emergence and widespread adoption of new technologies. My impression is that mainstream popular American TV and film passed 'peak raunch' decades ago, both in terms of quantity of output and degree of raunchiness. It is also my rough impression is that this coincided with 'peak Alpha male' in terms of the net capacity of especially famous and elite Alpha males to capitalize on their attractiveness with low risk and a more socially permissive, less sanctioning environment.
If anything, American Pie, which was already nearly a quarter of century ago, was a kind of last-gasp effort which was still necessarily nearly all comic rather that erotic and it signaled the closing of that era, leaving nothing but increasingly mediocre echoes in its wake. Has there been a big movie lately that appeals to both sexes and is mostly about portrayals of sexual passions that are neither ironic nor borderline pornographic?
It's fun to speculate on why, though I'd like to read an account from some trustworthy expert Hollywood insider. Could be anything like that is all just far too politically incorrect and 'problematic' to see the light of day ever again. Could be that people are more sorted into narrower entertainment niches, especially with people watching via internet streaming and on smartphones. Could be certain foreign audiences in increasingly globalized markets - I'm mostly thinking the Chinese - are by some combination of genuine consumer demand and state censorship much more prudish and/or regulated, and that catering to these demands for those audiences has become a much higher priority for Hollywood.
My hunch is that a big part of it is due to various consequences of cheap and plentiful internet pornography, and men in particular coming to see that as the culturally-designated method by which to stimulate lustful sentiments, and that it is only appropriate to do so in private isolation.
This can be compared to the kind of extended period of intermittent Bacchanalia that was the American youth scene of forty or more years ago, of the kind that was described in Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings. The 50's and 60's efforts to be artistically transgressive - while coincidentally picking some low-hanging fruit from satisfying the demand for entertaining vices - manifested as a pushing against the limits, and then the new limits, and then again, of sexual mores and the social centrality of normal family life. By the late 70's and 80's, this seems to have 'settled in' to an entertainment culture that was experienced as constantly encouraging young people to hook up and have casual sex all the time, and without the internet, and due to the fact that they were still actually socializing in person, also all the time, the exposure to these shows and films seemed to have had at least some influence on the audience in that direction.
But since then, the tide seems to have turned and the waters continue to recede.
As a young adult I assumed marriage and children were in my future, not because I wanted children that much but because young women - whom I wanted very much - wanted those things. Then, I became acquainted with the provisions of "child support" and "family law". The prospect of losing at least a quarter of my income for two straight decades, having my life bureaucratically overseen by the authorities to ensure compliance (for example after pay increases), and the apparently inevitable long-running interpersonal conflicts around visitation and money, certainly focused my (bureaucracy-averse, conflict-avoidant and lifestyle-ambitious) young mind on "how much do I want a child? Or a wife?" Because those movie scenes about middle-aged men living in sad apartments while fretting about making next month's support payments to ex-wives with suburban homes the men don't live in, the ones I used to think were an exaggerated Hollywood joke - they weren't a joke.
It's often the case that the falling birthrate is attributed to women's decisions, as if men simply fell into line. But, back in my dating days, I once ran through the profiles on a dating website. Men were far, far less likely to say they were looking for marriage and children - I counted, and it was a landslide difference. I expect that after two or three generations of men watched their fathers impacted by modern family law, young men simply don't want to go through that. It's basic self esteem.
Please don't think this is an attack on women and what they want: it isn't. The challenges and costs of motherhood have been well documented. It may well be that this level of family law protection is not even enough to really keep women enthusiastic about devoting their lives to family. It may simply be that the total costs of having children - financial and otherwise - exceed their total benefits, so that no system of family law can make it a win-win.
Pornography and recent tech like the Internet have only been big factors in the most recent thirty years. Birth rates and marriage rates have been steadily dropping for much longer than that.
The celebrity rapper DMX had 17 kids. I personally know tons of men just like DMX in terms of having 10+ kids, but without the talent, fame, or money. I also know several women who have 10+ kids. They have so many kids through a mix of recklessness, not seriously thinking about it, and macho pride in having lots of kids.
The types of families that seriously plan to have kids, and especially the ones that go to college, and establish a complicated career, and date for a few years before picking a serious wife, that lifestyle generally produces few children.
First, birth rates are obviously cultural. What else could they be? Next, some people thinking having new biological kids is somewhat racist and selfish next to helping existing underserved kids. Also, many adults are encouraged to be career or hobby/fitness focused and then go into a baby panic when they reach the end of their fertility years.
I could be wrong about this, but my impression is that the reduction in the fertility rate is less due to people (especially married people) deciding *not* to have kids--that is still quite rare--but rather to people having fewer kids, like 1 instead of 3. This would seem to count against the notion that people are treating children like expensive pets. It may have something to do with the risk aversion Levin mentions, though, since fewer children is a less risky life choice in all sorts of ways (finances aside, fewer kids means lower odds that one or more of your children will become a drug addict, or otherwise be a huge burden later in life rather than just a positive source of memories and grandkids--one bad apple can spoil the bunch).
In my own life the stars of my epic movie are the books I plan to write, and my nephew who I have an unusually big role in raising for an uncle. But the path I'm on is not for most people, and I agree that many people should be having more kids.
I think housing costs are an under-appreciated factor. A decent house, in a decent school zone, with a <1 hour commute to a major job market can be insanely expensive until you've been working for a number of years. Our decision to treat housing as an "asset class" more so than "shelter" has major repercussions.
I agree with all those. I'll add another: as more people choose not to have children there is less fear among the rest that you will be left out. I literally have a friend who prioritizes developing friendships among those who she knows won't be having children. There are plenty of alternatives nowadays.
Here's a fact that cuts against a purely technologically-determined cause. The fertility rate (TFR) for native-born French women has been declining more or less steadily for nearly 300 years, with the WWI period being a temporarily negative deviation from trend, and the baby boom era a temporarily positive one. Following the baby boom, that TFR declined below replacement and has been stuck there for over 50 years. People sometimes guess "the pill!", but that obviously that can't be squared at all with, "300 years, and our ancestors were neither stupid nor helpless and have always been able to control their fertility rates in the old-fashioned ways.
It's not just France. Rates in most countries which were industrializing or getting richer tended on average to decline by about half during the 19th century. The general timing of such changes in many places and over such a long period of time seem to correlate with levels of wealth, urbanization, religion, and the general status of women - their legal emancipation on egalitarian terms, grant of the franchise, education, and participation in the labor market.
Not only can we compare the timing of these changes between countries given these levels, but we can compare the timing of changes for *different classes within the same country* given the different levels of education and wealth of those classes. And in general, in the past two centuries, we see wealthy, urban, educated elites running ahead of the general trend.
All that tells us that it's mostly not 'technology', especially not recent digital communications tech. Among other things, a lot of it is simply the 'opportunity cost' of having children - in money, time, leisure, status, career, ambition, etc. - which has never been higher. Affordability matters, of course, but my position is that it's not nearly as important as people claim. For instance, our ancestors were much poorer and had many more kids. But affordability is the most socially acceptable rationale (or excuse) and so people focus on it in erroneous exclusion of the various more important factors.
The trouble is not that women in particular have lost the 'epic story' aspect of understanding the path of their own lives, it's that they now have an alternative and competitive epic story to pursue which rivals and often trumps the one which includes children or grandchildren, especially insofar as their understanding of what constitutes 'epic' derives from being influences by socially prominent cues and signals about which activities and ways to spend ones time are more elite and higher in status.
I agree, quite possibly 100%.
People used to have fair sized families in small homes and apartments in big cities, so it is hard to see how affordable housing is the issue. I agree that the public school system is awful nearly everywhere, but you hardly see young people paying any attention to local school politics because otherwise they can't have kids. You could test how much it is schools perhaps by looking at areas with regional school choice (St Paul and Minneapolis, MN for example) and comparing their birth rates with other metro areas of similar size and jobs but no school choice options. I never got the sense living in MN that people there were having more kids because it was easy to switch to a better school even if you lived in a cheaper spot.
The only thing I might add to your narrative is the bizarre victim culture that has everyone walking on eggshells around each other. I wouldn't want to have to date as a young adult in the current environment; just asking someone out is likely to get you in trouble in addition to the normal fears of rejection. If just about all the young people you know are in your workplace, asking someone out on a date sounds like a really good way to get a nasty-gram from HR.
I think you misunderstand opportunity cost. It is not that people are less able to "afford" children: as you say, they are richer today, not poorer than in the past. But, opportunity cost is about the available alternatives. In the past there were few opportunities to have a better life by not having kids. Essentially, the questions were "what else are you going to do with your time?" and "who's going to look after you when you're older?"
Today, there are many, many answers to those questions. You can pursue a dramatically more lucrative career. You can travel. Because of the substantially higher social standards for child welfare, the spread between with-kids and without-kids home and lifestyle is MUCH larger. And your savings will look after you at least as reliably as possibly ungrateful children would.
It's not just children. Many avocations are facing a related problem: there are lots and lots of other things to do now. And, in addition, children are much more costly today (many of us are old enough to remember "free-range childhood" - and can readily see that today's "coddled childhood" is very expensive by comparison.
No, he applied opportunity cost perfectly correctly. As Handle said, "...it's that they now have an alternative and competitive epic story to pursue which rivals and often trumps the one which includes children or grandchildren..." He is saying that people don't want to have kids because they want to do other things, but they cite cost and the like because that is more socially acceptable than saying they just can't be bothered to have kids because they want to do something else instead.
You're right. I should have read more slowly. Apologies to Handle.
I would go with Linn, but I think that it's worse than that. The child wasn't the star, per se, that was the first step towards decadence. The family line was the star, as such. The loss and displacement of the lineage and name - the name of Abraham, to go back before last names as such, for example, or the Tudors, etc. The idea that a last name commemorated was immortality, in effect. This was a step towards grandchildren not having a key place as the goal of a good life.
There is another angle to one particular aspect of 'sex recession' which *does* line up with the emergence and widespread adoption of new technologies. My impression is that mainstream popular American TV and film passed 'peak raunch' decades ago, both in terms of quantity of output and degree of raunchiness. It is also my rough impression is that this coincided with 'peak Alpha male' in terms of the net capacity of especially famous and elite Alpha males to capitalize on their attractiveness with low risk and a more socially permissive, less sanctioning environment.
If anything, American Pie, which was already nearly a quarter of century ago, was a kind of last-gasp effort which was still necessarily nearly all comic rather that erotic and it signaled the closing of that era, leaving nothing but increasingly mediocre echoes in its wake. Has there been a big movie lately that appeals to both sexes and is mostly about portrayals of sexual passions that are neither ironic nor borderline pornographic?
It's fun to speculate on why, though I'd like to read an account from some trustworthy expert Hollywood insider. Could be anything like that is all just far too politically incorrect and 'problematic' to see the light of day ever again. Could be that people are more sorted into narrower entertainment niches, especially with people watching via internet streaming and on smartphones. Could be certain foreign audiences in increasingly globalized markets - I'm mostly thinking the Chinese - are by some combination of genuine consumer demand and state censorship much more prudish and/or regulated, and that catering to these demands for those audiences has become a much higher priority for Hollywood.
My hunch is that a big part of it is due to various consequences of cheap and plentiful internet pornography, and men in particular coming to see that as the culturally-designated method by which to stimulate lustful sentiments, and that it is only appropriate to do so in private isolation.
This can be compared to the kind of extended period of intermittent Bacchanalia that was the American youth scene of forty or more years ago, of the kind that was described in Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings. The 50's and 60's efforts to be artistically transgressive - while coincidentally picking some low-hanging fruit from satisfying the demand for entertaining vices - manifested as a pushing against the limits, and then the new limits, and then again, of sexual mores and the social centrality of normal family life. By the late 70's and 80's, this seems to have 'settled in' to an entertainment culture that was experienced as constantly encouraging young people to hook up and have casual sex all the time, and without the internet, and due to the fact that they were still actually socializing in person, also all the time, the exposure to these shows and films seemed to have had at least some influence on the audience in that direction.
But since then, the tide seems to have turned and the waters continue to recede.
“[children] star in the epic movie that is your life”
Perfect description
As a young adult I assumed marriage and children were in my future, not because I wanted children that much but because young women - whom I wanted very much - wanted those things. Then, I became acquainted with the provisions of "child support" and "family law". The prospect of losing at least a quarter of my income for two straight decades, having my life bureaucratically overseen by the authorities to ensure compliance (for example after pay increases), and the apparently inevitable long-running interpersonal conflicts around visitation and money, certainly focused my (bureaucracy-averse, conflict-avoidant and lifestyle-ambitious) young mind on "how much do I want a child? Or a wife?" Because those movie scenes about middle-aged men living in sad apartments while fretting about making next month's support payments to ex-wives with suburban homes the men don't live in, the ones I used to think were an exaggerated Hollywood joke - they weren't a joke.
It's often the case that the falling birthrate is attributed to women's decisions, as if men simply fell into line. But, back in my dating days, I once ran through the profiles on a dating website. Men were far, far less likely to say they were looking for marriage and children - I counted, and it was a landslide difference. I expect that after two or three generations of men watched their fathers impacted by modern family law, young men simply don't want to go through that. It's basic self esteem.
Please don't think this is an attack on women and what they want: it isn't. The challenges and costs of motherhood have been well documented. It may well be that this level of family law protection is not even enough to really keep women enthusiastic about devoting their lives to family. It may simply be that the total costs of having children - financial and otherwise - exceed their total benefits, so that no system of family law can make it a win-win.
In any case, for this man, it wasn't even close.
Pornography and recent tech like the Internet have only been big factors in the most recent thirty years. Birth rates and marriage rates have been steadily dropping for much longer than that.
The celebrity rapper DMX had 17 kids. I personally know tons of men just like DMX in terms of having 10+ kids, but without the talent, fame, or money. I also know several women who have 10+ kids. They have so many kids through a mix of recklessness, not seriously thinking about it, and macho pride in having lots of kids.
The types of families that seriously plan to have kids, and especially the ones that go to college, and establish a complicated career, and date for a few years before picking a serious wife, that lifestyle generally produces few children.
First, birth rates are obviously cultural. What else could they be? Next, some people thinking having new biological kids is somewhat racist and selfish next to helping existing underserved kids. Also, many adults are encouraged to be career or hobby/fitness focused and then go into a baby panic when they reach the end of their fertility years.
I could be wrong about this, but my impression is that the reduction in the fertility rate is less due to people (especially married people) deciding *not* to have kids--that is still quite rare--but rather to people having fewer kids, like 1 instead of 3. This would seem to count against the notion that people are treating children like expensive pets. It may have something to do with the risk aversion Levin mentions, though, since fewer children is a less risky life choice in all sorts of ways (finances aside, fewer kids means lower odds that one or more of your children will become a drug addict, or otherwise be a huge burden later in life rather than just a positive source of memories and grandkids--one bad apple can spoil the bunch).
In my own life the stars of my epic movie are the books I plan to write, and my nephew who I have an unusually big role in raising for an uncle. But the path I'm on is not for most people, and I agree that many people should be having more kids.