Re: [Fwd: Re: "Family values"]

["Margaret M Gullette" <mgullette@xxxxxxx>]

                  One always over-emphasizes to emphasize, I suppose.
I simply wanted to point out, to whoever believes that there are no
or slight constraints on the decision to have children today (given
all the changes Katha rightly mentions) that there are new
constraints. They are certainly capitalism's. (The need for two
incomes in a family, the lengthening work-week, the need some people
have to hold two jobs, the absence of a system of child-care or
affordable private child care, the rise in the percentage of income
needed to pay for housing, the later age of marriage--now about 27
years--; the cost of raising a child (we never knew this in my
generation, but it's constantly in the papers now, as a kind of
disincentive), the need for a woman to build a career --or simply
hold a job--without interruptions.  I might repeat the elegant
use-value argument of Peter Van Heusden, which also problematizes the
"freedom" of currently fertile women.


            I think this argument is worth making NOT because I
believe in having many children personally--I would respect any
woman's decision not to have children. But because I see many adult
children not having children who are thinking about it but can't see
how to fit it into the life plan. My son said once--his friends are
thirtyish--that kids have become a "lifestyle accessory."  What I was
trying to do, pace Yoshie, is to show how complicated "wanting" to
have a child, or rather "not wanting to" has become.
            That "desire" is not entirely innate is a newish thesis
of the scholars or work on the history of emotions or the social
construction of emotions. These young people are having their desire
shaped by the current constraints. And although I value a historical
perspective, our theory and practice are rightly aimed at current
conditions.
        I suspect that Italy's negative birth rate has something to
do with these new capitalist conditions of child-rearing. Sweden and
Germany have generous programs for parents of new children. I can't
imagine that the childfree there resent this; being "childfree" for
those who identify with that condition, has its own rewards. The US
is creating scarcity (or what Peter calls "the illusion of scarcity")
and its concomitant emotions--jealousy,
resentment, revenge--constantly; the situation Katha describes, where
the childfree resent whatever pathetically few advantages [!] are
given
mothers of young children on an ad hoc basis, workplace by workplace,
is simply another painful example.

        Sorry to repeat some of my original message.

        As for praxis, today I lobbied at the request of CPPAX for
three legislative items (sorry, Carroll): improvements in contingent
work; improvements in welfare; a higher minimum wage. Two would help
autonomous individuals and mothers; one mothers alone. I don't feel
comfortable with an argument that I should have done only the two on
behalf of autonomous individuals and not the other--which is one
implication of the debate that has been going on here, although I'm
sure no one meant that outcome.

    Margaret






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