Second in a Series . The first post is Is It A Crisis?
In the evangelical crowd my children grew up in, even in their generation there is an unusual concentration of families that have more than two children. The church we attend has several families with four or five children (not to mention plenty of twos and threes - we have a lot of children at our church), and as they in turn network together, it is likely that some of those children will grow up and be comfortable with a large family as well. These families have a strong tendency to homeschool as well. During recent medical difficulties, my wife and I covered some homeschool days for one of them, her five plus a sixth that she has taken under her wing because his family situation is unstable and he was not doing well in public school.
It's difficult. There are reasons why not a lot of people want this job. It is a rather distilled version of raising children in general, with the same frustrations. Children are adorable. They say surprising things and you can watch them grow. But you don't get a lot of immediate reward. You are trusting God or your own abilities quite a bit for eventual growth. Two of the main things you need are energy, which comes with youth, and patience, which comes with age. They are not adults and you cannot have a decent conversation with them for a long time. Erma Bombeck noted decades ago that as soon as you can have a decent conversation with them, they leave. (Or used to in the old days.) The younger social workers with children used to admit that they found it a relief to come to work. When our children were very young I did a lot of solo child care after my night shift, which is perhaps worse for men because you can't go over to some woman's house with your kids, so are very much stuck. It is very nice to have the other adult come home.
There is something about child care that is very easy, but many people still don't want to do it. Come to think of it, that is also true of working a night shift. This suggests that there is also something very hard, or at least unattractive about it. When things are both easy and hard, the weight of the other incentives changes as well. Attractions and rewards that usually work for other things stop working. Attractions and rewards that people overlook or care less about start becoming more important.
All this is prologue for a very controversial tweet, which I found offensive at first, because these women staying home with lots of children are some of my favorite people. Yet as I looked at it, I saw there was some truth in it, however overstated.
Yes, I think fertility does just come down to avoiding carceral* employment/the 4HL*. Every "weird" high fertility group we talk about is really a different strategy for not having a job. Amish, Hasidics, Afghans, the Indigent, the Rich, etc. All the same deal.
Most of the women I am referring to can be very easily pictured in competitive employment, and in fact many of them have excelled at it. Yet there are an unusual percentage of them, now that I look at it, who have interesting and even dramatic talent, but might not thrive in typical jobs.
If I am going to be that controversial, I may as well include Bill Burr here. (Language alert.)
*I don't know what he means by these: carceral and the 4HL
7 comments:
"Come to think of it, that is also true of working a night shift." literal lol from me, with complete agreement. Overnights were such a great gig and I'd never go back in a million years.
Carceral/4HL (4 hour life) basically means regular 9-5 employment where you have to just work for someone else for 8 hours a day (so with sleep and other obligations you end up with 4 hours a day where you call the shots).
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/4-hour-life-4hl
Wrt the "hardest job", coal mining isn't a bowl of cherries, but neither is childbirth. (only speaking from observation here...)
You can change other jobs. Even if you give up a child, you are always that child's mother--and you then have to deal with the stigma of not keeping your child.
Parenting is not--or should not be--a solo task. Rather than fall back on the "it takes a village" trope, it's far easier to conceive of taking on a lifelong obligation to baby if you know you have a spouse and family members who can help, if need be. All the "weird" high fertility groups have unique shared values. The group members likely know all their cousins by name.
If you settle down and start a family, you're choosing to become an adult. My husband and I noted that after our second child, the adults in our families started treating us as, well, adults. We had passed the threshold to adulthood--although of course no one ever talked about it. We didn't have any silly family meeting setting out goals for family members.
I've been struck by what I've thought of as "Peter Pan Syndrome" among young adults. People are putting off "growing up." Arguments about the cost of living, internet arguments about online dating, etc., are at some level excuses.
I thought when we married we would be treated as adults. Then I thought when we had had two foster children, for first sixth months then three months, that we would be treated as adults. On one side of the family it was. But for us it took only one natural-born child to be treated as semi-adults, though we were never fully initiated on any side even after two (which is fine. They were our parents, we were their children, that never quite goes away.)
As far as putting the cat among the pigeons, In my time-travel fantasies about returning to college, I have thought that writing a play in which it is Wendy who never grows up, staying in Never-Neverland with Tinkerbell and Princess Winterspringsummerfall, playing with Ken dolls and talking about Grll Power and how inferior boys are , while Peter and the Lost Boys leave to take jobs in the city or in trade, returning once a year to try to talk the girls into becoming women, whicxh they laugh and never do.
It's fun to think about, but I would have had no further dates at William and Mary after that.
"Carcereal employment" is high-falutin' for "wage slave," accent on "slave." "Carcereal" is related to "incarceration." In many places, prisoners are required to work if medically able.
Up vote from me.
The strongest argument against growing up, since well before James Barrie's time, is that the prospect doesn't look all that pleasing.
A tweet that is very on topic: https://x.com/NewRightPoast/status/1869083892688511288
Quote, because I've never linked a tweet before, "Developing a theory around "forced fun" that People of Catan do (barcade, hanksgiving, escape room, museum of ice cream, sober rave, etc.) to recapture the whimsy of childhood and it's like please just have kids you dorks."
"People of Catan" is a great moniker.
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