Think Before You Breed

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Bubba_Switzler

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After noticing this news:

livescience.com/48995-us-birth-rate-hits-all-time-low.html

I was naively searching for some philosphical discussion in favor of child bearing and came across this article:

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/think-before-you-breed

Which led to her book and several others of a similar nature:

amazon.com/The-Baby-Matrix-Parenthood-Reproduction/dp/0615642993

amazon.com/Why-Have-Kids-Parenting-Happiness/dp/0547892616

amazon.com/Parenthood-Decision-Beverly-Engel-M-F-C-C/dp/0385489803

The gist of these books is that parenting is a separate decision from marriage and that women who have children don’t think it through. Other books go further to defend childless marriage.

Now, of course, I am familiar with Catholic teaching on this. I find this all quite appaling. Much of this seems heavily infused with the “it’s my body, bug off” mentality. I am not shocked that such attitudes exist.

Nevertheless, I am curious why I can’t seem to find any good books that argue to the contrary outside of Catholic teaching.

My own experience with parenting has been quite positive, even when dealing with the challenges that children naturally present, and I’m sure that I’m not alone.
 
The reality is that people who have kids sometimes don’t actually think it through and end up unhappy with their decision to make a baby. In turn, they pass that unhappiness along to their kids and spouses/significant others. Not all people want to or even should reproduce for myriad reasons. Yet, there is much pressure put on people by family members, society, and their faith to have kids they may not want and/or may not be capable of raising even remotely properly. So, I am actually in favor of making people more comfortable with the idea of not having to be parents if they aren’t inclined to reproduce.

What I find interesting is that we have groups of people who are separating getting married from having children and groups of people who are separating having children from getting married. Less people are marrying than ever before. More and more couples are choosing to live together and raise children together without ever “making it official”. They’re living next door to the people who married and chose to not raise children together.
 
I would go further. The line of thinking seems to be that there are good reasons to have children. Either people give in to primal urges or they rationally decide to forgoe having children.

Here is at least one article I found:
Amatai Etzoni professor of international relations and director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at George Washington University explains the dichotomy between weariness and meaning, writing, “a good life is not one centered around squeezing as much pleasure out of life as possible. Pleasure of the kind celebrated by those who would rather go out for dinner than stay home with their infants, watch TV than change diapers, and gamble than attend a PTA meeting – is Sisyphean. No sooner does one gain this kind of pleasure than one is lacking it again.”
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lifesitenews.com/news/parents-find-greatest-fulfillment-from-raising-children-pew-poll-confirms

Even non-Catholics can understand that fulfillment may entail doing hard things.

More articles like this:

sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120517115446.htm

cnn.com/2012/07/30/opinion/etzioni-children/

sonjalyubomirsky.com/files/2012/09/Nelson-et-al.-in-press.pdf
 
Having children forces us to put the good of another above our own gain. The resistance to this idea has been the real drive behind the Culture of Death in our modern society. For catholic writings on the benefit of children, we don’t need anything new (though there are sources). We can rely on scripture, the Church Fathers and Sacred Tradition. The joys of parenthood are manifest especially in Proverbs. Why should we look for someone new to tell us what we already know?
 
Because people with kids are too busy to have time for navel contemplation and book writing about it?
 
Is it wrong to think it’s funny that Margaret Sanger’s plan for fewer children from the “unfit” and more children from the “fit” is a utter failure and is consistently and concertedly undermined by the very people who promote her philosophy?
 
Have you seen the book called “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting”?

I don’t know if the author is Catholic or not, but the book mainly presents reasons from the economic perspective for societies to encourage people to have children. I thought about that book when I saw the news about the continued declining birthrate in America.
 
I really doubt the author has taken a good hard look at fertility rates and replacement rates in Western states. European ethnic groups (With exception to Rossiya, президент Путин has done an excellent job in collaboration with Kirill and Medvedev to reverse this) are contracepting and murdering themselves out of existence.

The world which the next century is ushering in will be one filled with a whole lot of brown people, and very few white people.
 
Lookingforjoy said:
Are you thinking the opposite view would be that you should want to have kids? The overwhelming majority of people feel that way already:

gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.aspx

Why write a book to convince people of what they already believe?
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The statics you should take note of are those in the first article I cited: fertility is crashing.

Yes, childbearing has always held the numerical advantage but this advantage is declining. As with so many social issues, only one side is making its case and the resulting one-sided debate is influencing people, in this case, to drop out of raising children.
 
gardenswithkids said:
Have you seen the book called “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting”?

I don’t know if the author is Catholic or not, but the book mainly presents reasons from the economic perspective for societies to encourage people to have children. I thought about that book when I saw the news about the continued declining birthrate in America.
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Yes, that is a very good book and at least this is a counter to the population control arguments but the implied argument is that we should have children for the sake of the continuation of the human race. But there are much better personal arguments.
 
Hobbes42 said:
I really doubt the author has taken a good hard look at fertility rates and replacement rates in Western states. European ethnic groups (With exception to Rossiya, президент Путин has done an excellent job in collaboration with Kirill and Medvedev to reverse this) are contracepting and murdering themselves out of existence.

The world which the next century is ushering in will be one filled with a whole lot of brown people, and very few white people.
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It’s not just European ethnic groups. One of the worst and most immediate countries suffering this is Japan. Another headed in this direction is China. And I’ve seen statistics if declining fertility pretty much everywhere else including India and the Middle East though they remain above replacement rate.

Europeans have exported this idea to the world.
 
Bubba_Switzler said:
It’s not just European ethnic groups. One of the worst and most immediate countries suffering this is Japan. Another headed in this direction is China. And I’ve seen statistics if declining fertility pretty much everywhere else including India and the Middle East though they remain above replacement rate.

Europeans have exported this idea to the world.
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I do not know if this is still relevant.

I have heard that worldwide, fertility rates have gone down. The only region that is an exception is sub Saharan Africa.
 
Bubba_Switzler said:
It’s not just European ethnic groups. One of the worst and most immediate countries suffering this is Japan. Another headed in this direction is China. And I’ve seen statistics if declining fertility pretty much everywhere else including India and the Middle East though they remain above replacement rate.

Europeans have exported this idea to the world.
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India and China are also facing demographic problems of their own making. A lot of young men will have problems finding wives, since a lot of women have been aborted.
 
Bubba_Switzler said:
It’s not just European ethnic groups. One of the worst and most immediate countries suffering this is Japan. Another headed in this direction is China. And I’ve seen statistics if declining fertility pretty much everywhere else including India and the Middle East though they remain above replacement rate.

Europeans have exported this idea to the world.
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Iran has a total fertility rate of 1.92. The US is 1.88, so it’s virtually identical.

One fact I’ve heard noted is that European countries where 1) women have some control over their fertility and 2) there’s a continuing tradition of women doing 100% of everything at home and where the husband is essentially another child to be cared for have particularly catastrophic fertility rates. This is a pattern that is particularly clear when comparing southern and northern Europe and it may be what is going on in, for instance, Japan. Italy has a total fertility rate of 1.4 and is notorious for these two traits. Meanwhile, the US has a total fertility rate of 1.88 and Sweden is 1.91 and Norway is 1.85. That isn’t a lot, but it’s practically half a kid, which in these discussions is a lot. In many developed countries, a more egalitarian ideal for housework and childcare seems to correlate with better total fertility rates.

A lot of people will point to Scandinavian countries’ strong social supports for working families as an explanation for why they have better fertility than southern Europe, but that raises the question of why the US, which notoriously lacks nearly all of those goodies, has total fertility numbers that track Scandinavia so well. I would argue that it’s the egalitarian culture that helps make women in developed countries happier to have more kids. If the husband is a help rather than essentially another child clamoring for help, the wife will be more capable of adding another real child to the family.
 
Bubba_Switzler said:
The statics you should take note of are those in the first article I cited: fertility is crashing.

Yes, childbearing has always held the numerical advantage but this advantage is declining. As with so many social issues, only one side is making its case and the resulting one-sided debate is influencing people, in this case, to drop out of raising children.
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I don’t think it is dropping out per se, but instead of having “children” more are having “a child” and later in life. Perhaps when they feel ready instead of when “compelled” by various factors. Look at the massive shift towards childbirth after 30 in the OP’s article.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
I don’t think it is dropping out per se, but instead of having “children” more are having “a child” and later in life. Perhaps when they feel ready instead of when “compelled” by various factors. Look at the massive shift towards childbirth after 30 in the OP’s article.
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I think it would be more accurate to say that there is a trend away from childbearing that takes three forms:
  1. Delayed childbearing
  2. Fewer children, and
  3. No children
While it is true that most people are not going all the way to #3, it is the case that pretty much everyone, Cathoilcs included, are following #1 and #2.

My experience is that there is no need to “compel” people to have children. What we are getting now is a very one-sided debate; there is little or no public discussion of the very good reasons why someone would want to have children.
 
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