It came up at book group today that there may be some connection between the last generations having fewer children and the longer periods that children live with their parents. If you have six children, you dare not let the first one stay home. Or perhaps they have more of a peer/friend relationship when they have 1-2 children. Or perhaps the children have less incentive...well, there are a dozen hypotheses, aren't there? Is it associated or causal or coincidental? Which way does the arrow of causation run?
I would think it would take even more childbearing years off the table and depress the number of grandchildren even further. Which would mean less role for Nanas, if there were only one grandchild between the two daughters, rather than seven. Does this feed on itself generation after generation?
Just thoughts on my walk. I kept coming up with explanations and then seeing a hole in my reasoning a hundred steps later.
3 comments:
First thought is that older female children were often the carers of the younger children, and that pre-WW2 having 7 or 8 children in a house with 3 bedrooms wasn't unusual.
In the USA the TFR was on a downward trajectory until WW2, and then it's been weird.
The 60's were unusual for the high birthrate and very young age of first marriage/leaving home, and then the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 was a massive step-change in the economics of childbearing. So it's hard to know if dropping below 2 is continuing a very long-term trajectory, or response to some continuing or new societal change.
As it is happening worldwide, it is hard to see it as a product of any solely American phenomenon. It parallels female education and religiosity on both macro and micro levels, and those are usually considered the most likely places to look,
This probably belonged more under the last post, but I've been pondering things and had a general thought. In organizational research, it's noted that the jobs with the highest rates of burnout tend to be those with high expectations and low control. I am wondering if parenting falls in that category, and if looking at it through that lens helps solidify what's happening. If we assume that a person feeling or fearing burnout will not have any further children, then it would seem to be an area that could quickly impact fertility rates.
A few ways I'm seeing this:
- Control and expectations are relative states. Women's education tends to be correlated with decreased birth rates, and presumably education gives women more control in most facets of their life. This might have the side effect of making a good portion of women feel less in control as a parent, because their standard for control went up. Parenting is often messy and chaotic, work can often be less so. A young-ish colleague recently told me she was never having kids unless she could find a partner she knew would share the work. She has high standards for her workplace and tends to ask this of her coworkers as well, and has previously left other jobs over issues with working conditions. It's a consistent stance, but one she can only take because she's highly educated and talented at her job. Maybe people who feel in control at work have more trouble accepting a home life that is worse than their work life.
- Anecdotally, young women from troubled circumstances often have kids young and will specifically cite "wanting something of their own to love". Thus if your life is out of control, having a baby might be seen as a way of gaining control you don't otherwise have.
- Work from home seems to support childbearing in a way that cash payments don't. It strikes me that work from home gives you more control over your life than an extra $2000 tax credit does.
- Religious communities often lower the expectations on parents, by giving praise for having kids at all.
Still a working theory, so I'm aware it's half baked. But it would explain South Korea where (as far as I can tell) they've created a society that still has a lot of traditional ideas about the role of parents, while also having some of the highest expectations of those parents. Their birth rate has responded accordingly. I'll keep thinking about this.
Post a Comment