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

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

thanks for your further explanation, Margaret. I still think it's not so
easy to say that "capitalism" is discouraging people from having kids.
There's a tremendous amount of pro-natalism about -- just ask a
childless single woman!  France has been trying to raise its birth rate
for at least a century! also Germany, etc.  Pro-natalism is in fact the
origin of all those nice programs and benefits  for  mothers and
children: social support so that people will have more kids  (it didn't
work very well). The falling birth rate in Europe (under replacement
level) is a matter of concern over there to the leadership class. Japan,
also, is experiencing a major fertility decline, which the leadership
class is very upset about.
  Maybe kids ARE a "lifestyle accessory" as your son says.   I mean, why
DO people have kids?  People used to have children for economic and
religious and social-acceptability reasons: to work the farm, inherit
property, pass on a name, provide care in old age, say kaddish, prove
you were a real man or a real woman etc. the kids that didn't fulfill
those purposes (girls in China and other countries, illegitimate kids
everywhere) had a pretty rough life, if they were allowed to live at
all.
   Also kids were the inevitable byproduct of sex.  but now they're not.
   There's never going to be a society in which having kids doesn't
crimp your style --even with all those social programs, they still take
lots of time, energy, effort.  So maybe now that people can choose more
freely, a certain number choose other things. They like their childless
lives and don't want to change them.
  I mean margaret -- you have to explain why it is that social programs
for women and kids DOESNT raise the birth rate. The places with the most
social provision for children tend to have low birth rates. I would
argue that the reason is that those places (Europe, Cuba, the old Soviet
bloc) ALSO offer women other things to do than be mothers. They are the
modern urbanized educated parts of the world.
   How would you explain it?

Katha