It used to be that having a large number of children was more important to your family's survival. Childhood mortality was higher, and children often contributed to the family business. My dad was one of 11 born to a farming family, and the kids were expected to help operate the farm.
I happen to know a bunch of large families (7+ kids), and I think the common thread among them is:
* The choice to be open to more children into the family, whether by birth, adoption, or fostering, is not primarily because they perceived themselves to have extra free time or extra resources, but because they had more love to give. Which is not to say that families who have fewer are less loving, or that material circumstances don't factor into the decision. But it seems like the families I know recognized that they could parent more children, and give them all sufficient love and care, and that was the motivating factor.
* They tend not to have highly scheduled, highly involved kids -- and the kids turn out just fine.
* There are increased costs as the number of children increases. But having, say, six children does not cost twice as much as having three.
I have 5 kids. As you say, there are a lot of things we don't do. There are not individual sports that we rush one kid to and then another for different kid. Often we pick full family activities, like swimming (or swim team) where 2-3 kids can all participate together, and the other kids can still have fun. We also don't live in a high cost-of-living area, so housing costs are [somewhat] low. Also child care, we made the decision early on that my wife would stay home with the kids. She couldn't earn enough for us to afford child care anyway. So this was the cheaper option. That also affords her more time to work on food prep as well, so we don't eat out much at all.
I'm not the OP that you were asking, but I do want to chime in.
My wife and I make a pretty good team. Even the most tense arguments eventually get resolved with a laugh.
We have three boys, we're probably going to have a fourth. We feel we have a lot of love to give. And giving someone life is the ultimate pay-it-forward act of gratitude. My parents did it for me. If I can give a few children life and send them out into the world with a good grounding, my life is a win.
It's not really that many, it only seems so because of the negative attitude in popular culture towards large families. I know many families with 7-14 children. And so far, I have one but I foresee many more in the future and I'm really looking forward to them.
The standards we expect for childrearing are also dramatically higher today than ever before.
Previous generations just sent the kids off to play after school, without much attention; they expected kids to be 100% on their own after highschool (and even before); and on and on.
Today we expect far more parent involvement than ever before (at least in the US), this makes it comparatively more expensive to raise children now than in years past.
'Today we expect far more parent involvement than ever before (at least in the US)...'
True also in the UK. As a kid, the normal after-school routine was to walk home, get changed and play out until it was dark. All achieved with minimal contact with parents.
Now kids seem to have very little independent time and this, in my opinion, is/will be very much to their detriment in later life.
Is there a trend in the UK of nosy neighbors reporting unsupervised children to the authorities? This has been a disturbing trend[1] in the US that makes it harder to provide kids with independent time, particularly when the person responding to the complaint is guaranteed to be heavily armed.
1: I say trend, though it's probably much less than 1% of the population, but kids are seen by more than 100 adults in a week, and the nosier adults self-select for being more likely to be looking for kids doing something wrong.
'Is there a trend in the UK of nosy neighbors reporting unsupervised children to the authorities?'
I'm not sure it's so common but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens from time to time. I guess it depends what time of day and how far away from home they are?
The transition from "free-range" kids to the helicopter parenting they experience now also informs a lot of the issues with college and university students being afraid of challenge and ideas they've not already come across. I look at how my brothers and I were raised (in the 80s) and I look at kids born and raised in the 90s, and there's a clear disconnect in attitudes and experiences that can be attributed to whether or not one was constantly supervised and pampered.
Exactly my case: I walked to and from school every day, and kept playing on street and backyards' bushes every afternoon. My kid I drive to and from school, he never went to the street unattended, he is 10.
In the U.S. there are an increasing number of places where the schools insist on parents being present for both drop-off and pickup, sometimes to the point that they will call Child Protective Services (government agency) to report Child Endangerment if the kid arrives alone.
We are looking at places for our older child right now, and one of the schools we are looking at has an official document that the parents must present in order to pickup your child. Otherwise they will not release the child.
It's very interesting that you are aware of the difference yourself. Is there a reason why you can't let your kid be like you? Is it spousal disagreement, living circumstance, or a change in your own attitude?
I feel like most of this comes from the childless. Most parents seem to understand, but people without kids expect you to transform into superwoman/man.
I, as a childless adult, couldn't care less how my friend raises her kid, just as long as she isn't abusive. It's probably because I haven't spent any time learning the ins-and-outs about raising a child, so I don't have a strong opinion either way.
But if anything, my friend has felt internal pressure on decisions she makes with her child via the opinions of other parents. This is especially true to her with respects to the pressures to breastfeed.
True, unfortunately many mothers have latched on to breastfeeding and "natural birth" as a way to feel superior to other mothers. We had to go through a lot of that during our first, including people working in the hospital. One worker even called formula poison.
"Jobs for women are higher-paying and more satisfying than ever before, and that raises the opportunity cost of having large families"
This is not true. Depending on the wife for income prevents her from focusing on having a large family. Without the assistance of a grandparent or some expensive nanny, this tends to limit the number of children in the family to 2 or 3.
Also, women working has driven the price of houses up, so it's difficult to get by with one working parent now. Women have less of a choice to work now, and more of an obligation.
This doubling of eligible workers also drives down the salary of everyone, making men pull in less money, further forcing women to work whether they want to or not.
Not to mention how expensive large vans/suvs are to actually drive them around.
You and the author are both suggesting that improvements in jobs for women raise the opportunity cost of having large families, yet you are framing it as a refutation.
"Jobs for women are higher-paying and more satisfying than ever before, and that raises the opportunity cost of having large families"
This is not true. Depending on the wife for income prevents her from focusing on having a large family.
You claim to be disagreeing but I think you are agreeing with that comment. By referring to "opportunity cost", the author means precisely that when a woman works it is harder to have a large family. Not having a job is one opportunity cost of children.
I believe that craig1f is claiming that if most women did not work, wages would be higher for those women that do work (due to reduced labor supply), so increased labor participation for women has lowered the opportunity cost compared to a hypothetical world in which women work.
So back when being a stay at home mom was the norm, it was hard, but now that working moms are the norm, being a stay at home mom is easy? I don't think that checks out.
While being stay at home was the norm, around 33.9% of women in 1950 worked and it continued to go up. That is not completely negligible number. (The number for males was closer to 86.4%)
I think that things are hard for different reasons. Nothing will ever be easy. If you believe life will get to the point that it's easy, you've got things wrong.
"Not to mention how expensive large vans/suvs are to actually drive them around. "
Just driving is pretty expensive. Not owning a car saves loads. Unfortunately, it usually takes a lot of money to live somewhere that doesn't require one.
Also worth noting - my wife would be at home with the kid right now (I have a much higher income) except she has substantial student debt, so off to work she goes. This means paying for creche too.
We couldn't afford creche fees for two kids, and she can't afford not to work due to aforementioned debt.
Also we had a kid because we were approaching mid thirties and it was a now or never thing, but it would have been nice to get a home big enough for two kids (a 3 bed apartment, or a bigger 2 bedroom apartment, would suffice) but the numbers don't add up.
Cheaper healthcare, education and available public transport (less need for car). That matters greatly. Also, not having much money seems to be less stigmatized and less criminalized then in America. There is some stigma, but there is less of "you are not rich therefore you are stupid" attitude.
We moved to europe. I actually doubled my salary but I only really managed to become a dev here,in the US I floundered. It was the depths of the great recession though.
Does your wife’s work actually offset the cost of childcare? I ask because you say your income is much higher than hers but you cannot afford a three bedroom apartment. This seems to imply that her income is quite low.
I know a number of families who ran the numbers and found out that the second income didn’t offset the cost of childcare. Or if it did, the excess income was so low as to be negligible. Don’t forget that there are tax implications to having a second income.
We've run the numbers thoroughly. 40% of her take home goes to childcare. 50% to student loans. Tbf getting in to debt for a degree in the humanities is generally a horrible idea but we all have dreams.
Also, to be honest, we could pay for a three bed apt. Afford is another question. Currently socking away cash to try to buy a house, but that affects ability to go somewhere more suitable for a family in the meantime.
The sad thing is you both sound like intelligent, upstanding members of society, and are rationally limiting your sadly expensive kids.
Meanwhile, the dredges of society have multiple kids, Bc they actually make money from them with their subsidized housing and other benefits they pick up having more kids.
And then you factor in “undocumented” immigrants, who also seem to roll in with way more than 2 kids, and your taxes also end up paying for all those kids to go to school with your one kid.
Idiocracy indeed. When will liberals actually wake up to some of the realities around them? Our productive, intelligent members of society are the ones being most discouraged to reproduce!!
I believe the poster above was mentioning more those that are below median income or certainly those closer to poverty levels. There are a lot of benefit programs that take number of dependents into account so if you income is remaining the same, then increasing the number of children you have increases the benefit amount you receive. I don't think you can draw a causal relationship between benefits provided (at least for many families) and increased children, but there are certain people that do know this and exploit it regularly (source: watching an in-law do it ATM).
We're immigrants. Documented, of course. Got jealous of people with over a month of vacation and decided to do something about it.
If I can work out a remote work situation we might buy a cheap house and have another kid but tbh I'm terrified because my family has autism in its genes, and maternal age is a risk factor.
Of course, if we'd started off European, she wouldn't have the student debt. Bit of a bummer there.
If you drive down my friend's neighborhood in North Virginia, you see house after house of moms with law-degrees, math degrees, engineering degrees, most with Masters, who said "fuck working" after 5-10 years and decided to become stay-at-home. All with substantial student debt that they didn't work long enough to justify.
The number of women who WANT to work is a lot lower than everyone wants to admit. And when they see the option to leave the working world, many of them take it. So much education that just gets wasted when they realize that having a career is not nearly as fulfilling as they have been led to believe.
If I won the lottery tomorrow, my first thought would be "sweet, we can afford a third kid!"
Why do you assume they are full filled now or that they decision to stay at home was not pragmatical? Or not sacrifice for what they believe is best for children?
He/she is saying that this is the case for most women. Most women like to lead more balanced lives, and a part of that is getting an education, then working for some time, traveling, then taking care of the kids and yet more traveling. Most men like to work for most of their lives.
I don't think the education is wasted-- not if you view education as more than a means to employment. However, I agree that most women will take the opportunity to leave the working world when it becomes viable to do so.
I have the feeling that even with a full-time housewife, having lots of children still goes hand-in-hand with multi-generation families living together. I can't reasonably imagine dealing with 6 kids without uncle/aunt/grandmother around too
The large families I know each have one full-time homemaker (Mom or Dad) and no other family nearby. They depend heavily on the older children to help out.
For instance, an 8-year-old can do laundry (except for carrying the basket), or vacuum, or prepare sandwiches for the entire family's lunches. A 12-year-old can change diapers, assist in the kitchen, or keep an eye on younger children of any age for an hour or two while Mom and Dad are a couple rooms away cooking or doing other chores. In some states, a 15-year-old can drive siblings to school; and in most a 17-year-old can drive them to other destinations.
One thing I've noticed is that the children in these families are much more mature, responsible, and independent than children of similar ages in 1-3 child families.
I wonder if the Canadian model of 1.5 years of maternity leave is a must for humanity's survival in the long term. IMHO (without much research) i see many women who have no choice but to feed formula milk to their babies (at daycares) as they are not around to breastfeed. Now i read somewhere that without breastfeeding the baby enough the women's body generates lesser and lesser breastmilk. But, Doctors always recommend breastfeeding as it gives maximum immunity to the baby. In the absence of a proper/sufficient maternal leave (like the Canadian one), i wonder if the next generations of humans become less and less immune to diseases.
> It's affordable, but couples in western countries don't really want more children (just under 2 is the average)
I was looking at how many contraceptions and items my friends bought for their newborn ranging from things related to feeding/sleeping/playing. And that's not including the highest expenses, namely shelter/transportation/food. I thought to myself, my goodness how did we ever raise children in previous millennia? Anecdotally it feels like it's becoming more and more expensive to have children. I'm fairly well-off myself, and I would probably be fine with just one child, if any.
Canadian resident here. Our kids go to daycare, it's not subsidized and costs us $1200 per month per kid (and we had a good deal). Families with kids used to have some tax breaks, they were all eliminated a couple years ago. There's some support though, you need to be really poor to get max ~$500/mo per child.
Even with my relatively good IT salary having kids here is not fun at all.
Subsidized by whom? Norway is rich off oil and gas money.
With greater distribution of capital (not income, that's just more wage slavery), we could likely not only afford kids more, but also support social relations that make rearing kids easier. Society wouldn't be fighting you.
Mondragon and the cooperatives in Emilia-Romagna might be work looking at.
Subsidized by the people whose retirements the kids will be paying for when they reach working age.
And don't say that saving up money now will get rid of the need to depend on future generations in retirement. You can't eat a 401k. Retirement is inherently dependent on the productivity of subsequent generations no matter how you move money around.
The article focuses on very utilitarian ways of thinking of a family, which is a sad way to look at kids.
I know lots of large families - many who are extremely poor - who are the happiest people I know. The difference being that they've made their family their source of joy, and don't look somewhere else to find fulfillment.
I'm writing this in case someone reads this article and thinks "well, the math doesn't support having children, so I won't". There's a _lot_ more to kids than financial calculation.
I can only imagine that those couples with a lot of children find happiness in having many. It's not that large families make people the happiest. Just want to clarify in case some depressed person thinks they will cure their depression with many, many kids.
The author is not as utilitarian as he appears, but you have to be familiar with him and his prior writing to realize this, so I can see why you'd think that.
> "well, the math doesn't support having children, so I won't"
The thing is that that's not how it works. It's not the case that everyone first does the math, and then the rational decision. But what does happen is that a lot of families, all over the place, make the individual choice of "we'd love to, but we can't afford another kid". And in aggregate, that leads to lower birth rates across society.
And if society makes it cheaper to have kids, the birth rate goes up.
This is re. India, but might also apply to other developing countries - public school is not an option. Because the public school system is so abysmal, it is used mostly by the very poor who have no other choice. Sending your kids to private schools is a fundamental aspiration, one that is realized even with single mothers who work as maids / domestic help.
This point along puts a huge cost on having children, even for people below or just around the poverty line. When sex was the only recreation option available with no known birth control methods, lots of kids was the norm. That has changed now, though. People at all levels of society know that raising a child with an semblance of upward mobility is expensive, and logarithmically so - the good private schools are 10X more expensive than the regular ones, with the international schools going to 100X.
Breaking the norms is difficult, but it looks like the country is already tending towards a voluntary one child policy, at least for any parents that hope their children will live better than they did.
Globally, the main thing is that married families have transitioned from small farm cooperatives (where the husband works the fields and the wife in the house) to market-based work for both of them. The problem with market based work is that it's usually incompatible with keeping one eye on small children, unlike the household chores of a farm. Also, kids are pure burdens until they can join the market themselves, whereas farm kids could help collect eggs and feed chickens starting pretty young.
In America at least the cost disease of education, housing, and healthcare all make it worse, but the first part is the primary culprit. And I'm not sure there's any fix for it besides long parental leaves and subsidized childcare.
Back in the day, in the farming days, people still had only 2 children on average survive to the adulthood — the population growth only really took off after industrial revolution. The biggest problem back then was that having more than 2 children impoverished them in the long run — it ensured that each kid had less land to farm than their parents. If you kept having above replacement fertility rate for a while, after a few generations the descendants had no land to farm, and with few alternatives afforded by technology-less society, this meant absolute poverty and starvation.
This article claims a lot of things and assumes many more.
I think "affording" children has never been the primary goal of folks having children. Most folks aren't all that good at predicting what it will cost to raise a child or three. Some costs aren't as much with multiple children (used clothing, for example, or sharing rooms makes housing more affordable). Others are higher, such as child care and food costs. Some things are improved if one parent stays home. I think the main thing that drives folks to have smaller or larger families is desire to do so rather than costs themselves. Oddly enough, education can help as well, if you are in a country that thinks it needs more or less children in total.
I find it appalling that it is socially unacceptable in many places for the man to stay home while the woman works. If my immigration status didn't depend on my husband working and we were at all keen on having children at all, I'd work while he stayed home with children.
I'm not sure jobs are any more satisfying, as it is a difficult thing to compare. Many parts of the world simply didn't allow women the same sort of opportunities as men 100 or 150 years ago. Some didn't 40-50 years ago. I got turned down for a job 20 years ago because "females just couldn't do the work required".
We also don't actually need large families any longer, not like we did in the past. Between better infant mortality rates, better survival of giving birth, and birth control, and the financial reasons given earlier, it really isn't as necessary. It's OK to do, but it should be a choice. I think society should have laws allowing maternity and paternity leave and time to tend to the children. This should include a parent staying home... at least until the child is in school and/or mature enough to spend some time alone. In so many places, this is missing.
There are opportunity costs if someone has multiple children, though. What chances does a woman have to be CEO if she also wants 5 children in a 10-year time frame? If she takes the proper time off for both her pregnancy and infant care, it becomes difficult. This can be worked around with strong paternal leave policies: After all, once a woman is healed enough to do her job, she doesn't need to be the one staying at home. It also puts the opportunity costs on both sexes.
There's some evidence that when women start to out-earn their husbands they divorce at higher rates. Whether biological or social (and probably a bit of both), there is an expectation that men contribute more financially than women do, which explains a lot of why men work more after having children than women do. Plus, women obviously invest more in having children than men do.
Can you sort that out from simple insecurity about not meeting society's standards from a traditional family? And if that is the case, wouldn't it be more prudent to change education or provide counseling to some couples in that situation?
And I have no problem with people getting divorced. Divorce rates are a ridiculous standard to rely on because it is based on moral principles. We make it really easy for people to get married, with little to no education about what a healthy relationship might include. I'd rather folks get divorced while they can be on friendly terms, actually, and I'd happily require them to go through some counseling to learn how to do so afterwards (so long as there is no abuse involved).
Women do physically produce the child and most can breastfeed or pump milk. Ideally, strong fraternal leave policies means she can get some support while doing this stuff. Even if the father doesn't live with the mother, he can still help out. After that, there isn't anything the woman does that a man can't do, especially while they are young. It just might take some education. Men do it all the time when the woman dies during childbirth, after all. And honestly, a woman should be up to date with education as well since her information could easily be out of date with current medical standards.
> Can you sort that out from simple insecurity about not meeting society's standards from a traditional family? And if that is the case, wouldn't it be more prudent to change education or provide counseling to some couples in that situation?
I'm not sure. A large part of it could definitely be that men don't know how to act in such a situation since it's not a family format that society has had to deal with before.
The changes you're advocating for are all pretty radical (I don't mean this is a bad way necessarily) and I'd be worried that they may have unintended or unplanned for consequences.
I don't think it's a given that men can raise children as well as women can.
With regards to divorce. I think it's pretty clear that divorce is harmful when children are involved. The best thing for kids is to have two parents in a healthy marriage. Obviously this isn't always possible, but I think it should be the goal.
Yeah, I figure that is some of it. And I figure education is part of the way out of it. Simply doing healthy relationship sort of thing (treating the other person as a human adult, for example) and teaching folks to be upfront with what they want out of it would help, I think. That isn't so radical, and I think that in itself would help build stronger marriages.
I do agree that divorce isn't the best situation for most children. But I also believe some of that can be minimized. I've met an entire range of folks - I had cousins happy their parents divorced. My parents would still be together if my father was alive. And somewhere in between. Parents getting along and the ability to see and talk to both parents at nearly any time seems to help. Of course, that sort of thing also limits what sort of life someone can lead after the divorce (live within driving distance to each other, for instance).
I'm also more in line to making sure folks can have birth control and teaching the importance of being in a stable relationship before having children (marriage or not, as the daily routine doesn't make a difference). Again, though, education.
Paternity leave isn't that radical in some areas when they concentrate on making sure the sexes are equal. I know here (Norway) they used to require some of it, and it is still an option for part of the time. Some friends of mine were both working about half their normal hours because of it actually. But yes, I'm pretty radical about it all, more so in some areas.
I'm pretty sure men can do just as much as women once the physical part is changed. The biggest thing I notice is that women are trained to do some of this stuff from the time they are young, whereas men aren't. Women are more likely to take child development classes and such things, for example. Again, this is really just education and little things like showing men doing a good job at this stuff on TV and things like that. You know, unless there are efforts to get more men into teaching and childcare like there are efforts to get more women into STEM fields. Until then, self education.
> There's some evidence that when women start to out-earn their husbands they divorce at higher rates. Whether biological or social (and probably a bit of both), there is an expectation that men contribute more financially than women do
Alternatively, women who aren't financially dependent on men don't put up with as much in terms of negative situations within marriage. If that's the reason, there's no pressure unless your intent is to keep a wife through material dependence.
That's probably part of it, but they aren't mutually exclusive. The difference in wages between spouses is small anyways (but men usually earn more), so I don't think the marginal increase in a woman's income changes her ability to provide for herself all that much.
There is another way to look at children, which is from the societal level.
New humans are still the most important inputs to human society. As societies become more specialized and productive, the powers and burdens of new humans go up. Thus, richer societies need fewer people, but each person needs to be more specialized and capable. And inversely, a society that is not producing new humans who are more specialized and capable, is a society that will have trouble advancing.
Evaluating public policy from this perspective produces some different conclusions than the more traditional family-oriented perspective which is often used to look at policies related to children.
Policies that empower women professionally and reproductively mean that only women who affirmatively choose to have children will have them--increasing the chance that they will have the means and will to invest heavily in each child.
And policies that give each child the chance to maximize their potential can be seen as long-term investments, not handouts.
Conversely, policies that permit or force children to develop sub-optimally are wastes that should be eliminated. Today many societies promote policies that encourage procreation (no access to sex education or contraception, incentives for more kids), but don't invest in children (no early childhood education, bad primary and secondary education, poor health care, poor food programs, etc.).
If someone bought a car but refused to pay for gas and oil changes, you would probably say they are making some damn bad decisions. Either maintain the car, or if you can't afford to do that, don't get one until you can.
Traditionally, the analogous kid blame game has fallen on the parents themselves. But parents are part of a larger society, and ultimately, given an ~80 year life span, will only manage about 25% of a new human life. Society will manage the other 75%, but in a lot of ways, our thinking about policy has not caught up to that reality.
I’m not going to disagree with your overall thesis, but there is something I find oppressive about the idea that society manages 75% of your life, rather than managing your own life during adulthood.
Yeah, the word "manage" is not great because of the supervisory overtones, which have oppressive connotations.
What I mean in more words is the process by which we create the logistics we need to thrive (food, clothing, shelter, power, comms, currency, etc), combined with the incentives to produce the society we want to live in (physical safety, freedom of expression, opportunity for work and love, etc.).
It's hard to talk about this without judgmental overtones. But essentially what I mean is, picture your best life--how do we make that possible for each and every person? It won't happen by accident. And it's to everyone's benefit it we can make it more likely.
And when that doesn't happen--when people don't have the skills to find work, when they commit crime, when they fall to addiction, when they're mentally or physically ill, etc... at that point we do sort of "take them under management." They go on unemployment or disability, they go under medical and mental care, they go into prison. Those are direct costs we all pay, and probably even greater is the opportunity cost of that human life. (And not just from a strictly economic perspective, but also art, emotion, love, etc.)
But people become part of society when they're born. And a lot of what makes each person who they are, is set during childhood. Letting a person go without investment for 20 years, then paying direct costs to manage them if it doesn't work out, doesn't seem smart to me.
If you take any life and trace it back to the beginning, early management is in the family. But there is a lot that society can do to help that process be more successful. And I would argue it's in all of our benefits.
And again, to make it clear, I'm not talking about authoritarianism. In modern democracies, in an ideal sense, we should be managing ourselves. To some extent we're discovering the society we want as we go along, so our management system need to be adaptable, and that's what democracy should give us. I'm advocating for certain policy choices we can make democratically--give women more power of their lives and reproduction. Invest fully in the health and education of all children. Provide support to families so that they can do a better job of raising their kids. Etc.
Actually, I recall reading or hearing somewhere that the negative correlation between income and number of kids mostly applies to consumerist societies, which is what much of the West has become. I can't find the source ATM, so if you know, please post.
Demographic decline seems almost inevitable given our economic system, sans immigration.
I'm a parent in SF. The cost of housing and availability of quality care (day care, nanny), and schools are definitely factors among the parent community here in deciding not to have more children. Many of the parents I know are doing well financially (they must be to be raising kids in SF), so I get to see the non-financial reasons for smaller families. One that's pretty important: quality of life. The opportunity cost of having children is about much more than money.
The options for doing things you enjoy are hugely greater today than in the past. Fancy restaurants, sports events, cruises, gaming, live music, Netflix, social media. World travel. Rewarding work. You name it. The world has become much better and better at providing things that people enjoy spending their time and money on.
Having children not only reduces the money you have to enjoy these things, it puts a huge damper on your time, and freedom to do so. Sure, you could go to that cool new restaurant with your young children. But it's a completely different experience than going without them -- so much so that it veers into negative utility.
For some people enjoying family life and kids is more valuable than all of the other stuff combined. But as the world gets better and better at giving people alternatives to spend their time/money/freedom on that they enjoy, having more children will become less and less attractive for more and more people.
Policies will only do so much to reverse this. Many European countries have much more family oriented policies than the US, yet look at the reality of their birthrates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe.
> Policies will only do so much to reverse this. Many European countries have much more family oriented policies than the US, yet look at the reality of their birthrates
That's not paradoxical; strong social support networks have been known for a long time to produce reduced birthrates; the usual explanation for which is that it is because a significant reason people have children is as a form of do-it-yourself social insurance, especially for old-age support.
Overall, “its too expensive to have kids” isn't the reason the US birthrate is lower than the past; if it was, birthrates would be higher in the upper income segments and lower among the poor, but it's exactly the opposite.
Affording kids is all about choices. My wife and I have 4 kids under 7, and she does not work. We lived in Seattle last year and moved to Dublin Ireland in August. We have zero debt, own a house in the states and rent in Ireland. We don’t own cars in Ireland as they don’t honor the US license and I don’t want to do drivers ed again. Since moving here in August we went from zero in checking to an average daily balance of 10k last month; based only on my income here in Ireland of about 90k a year taxed at 42%. In that time we’ve paid for flights and trips for 6 to London ( we all got sick and had to ball none refundable lame), Barcelona ( 4 nights), Berlin ( 4 nights), London again ( booked 4 nights in May money already out of the account) and the big one back to the states this month @ 3k in tickets.
We don’t eat out much, we don’t owe anyone / pay interest, we don’t spend money on things we don’t need that don’t a provide a good ROI. We’d rather walk around and explore a city then take a tour and pay to stand in line some where, we cut our own hair, shop at thrift stores or sales, Read we are frugal. Even in the states wife did not work. In the states our cars were paid for in cash, we had no credit card debit, and we built our own house with our own bare hands out of cash; it took 3+ years and we lived in a fifth wheel with 2-3 kids for part of it, but it was all paid for. We made the choices to have kids, and we worked out how to afford our choice and how to be happy.
Why four kids — We watched the intro to idiocracy a few too man times and decided we needed to have more vs fewer kids to combat Clevon. We’d have more kids but we hit 40 this year and that was our stop having kids cut off.
Spend 700$ a month on car payment, 500$ on month on eating out, 500$ a month on amazon, 2000$ on a house payment, buy alcohol and other vices for hundreds a month, ETC and shit adds up fast and you wonder how you can even afford yourself. Don’t have a car payment, or house payment, eat out less, don’t drink and smoke and the numbers are completely different. We have a huge rent payment in Ireland that was the biggest hit moving here. Going from paying property taxes to 2800 a month in rent hurt. But we rented a huge house and rent a room out for 600 a month; which helps off set costs. The house is walking distance to work, grocery, train, and kids school – the higher rent facilities the no care life style. We could live further out and pay half the rent but we would need 2 cars. We chose higher rent over cars.
In the west, we need a lot more housing, roads, and trains. These could be doubled and it wouldn't be enough. We need a large government intervention on the scale of a Manhattan Project.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadI happen to know a bunch of large families (7+ kids), and I think the common thread among them is:
* The choice to be open to more children into the family, whether by birth, adoption, or fostering, is not primarily because they perceived themselves to have extra free time or extra resources, but because they had more love to give. Which is not to say that families who have fewer are less loving, or that material circumstances don't factor into the decision. But it seems like the families I know recognized that they could parent more children, and give them all sufficient love and care, and that was the motivating factor.
* They tend not to have highly scheduled, highly involved kids -- and the kids turn out just fine.
* There are increased costs as the number of children increases. But having, say, six children does not cost twice as much as having three.
My wife and I make a pretty good team. Even the most tense arguments eventually get resolved with a laugh.
We have three boys, we're probably going to have a fourth. We feel we have a lot of love to give. And giving someone life is the ultimate pay-it-forward act of gratitude. My parents did it for me. If I can give a few children life and send them out into the world with a good grounding, my life is a win.
Also likely the worst thing you can do for the environment
Previous generations just sent the kids off to play after school, without much attention; they expected kids to be 100% on their own after highschool (and even before); and on and on.
Today we expect far more parent involvement than ever before (at least in the US), this makes it comparatively more expensive to raise children now than in years past.
True also in the UK. As a kid, the normal after-school routine was to walk home, get changed and play out until it was dark. All achieved with minimal contact with parents.
Now kids seem to have very little independent time and this, in my opinion, is/will be very much to their detriment in later life.
1: I say trend, though it's probably much less than 1% of the population, but kids are seen by more than 100 adults in a week, and the nosier adults self-select for being more likely to be looking for kids doing something wrong.
I'm not sure it's so common but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens from time to time. I guess it depends what time of day and how far away from home they are?
We are looking at places for our older child right now, and one of the schools we are looking at has an official document that the parents must present in order to pickup your child. Otherwise they will not release the child.
I, as a childless adult, couldn't care less how my friend raises her kid, just as long as she isn't abusive. It's probably because I haven't spent any time learning the ins-and-outs about raising a child, so I don't have a strong opinion either way.
But if anything, my friend has felt internal pressure on decisions she makes with her child via the opinions of other parents. This is especially true to her with respects to the pressures to breastfeed.
This is not true. Depending on the wife for income prevents her from focusing on having a large family. Without the assistance of a grandparent or some expensive nanny, this tends to limit the number of children in the family to 2 or 3.
Also, women working has driven the price of houses up, so it's difficult to get by with one working parent now. Women have less of a choice to work now, and more of an obligation.
This doubling of eligible workers also drives down the salary of everyone, making men pull in less money, further forcing women to work whether they want to or not.
Not to mention how expensive large vans/suvs are to actually drive them around.
You claim to be disagreeing but I think you are agreeing with that comment. By referring to "opportunity cost", the author means precisely that when a woman works it is harder to have a large family. Not having a job is one opportunity cost of children.
Just driving is pretty expensive. Not owning a car saves loads. Unfortunately, it usually takes a lot of money to live somewhere that doesn't require one.
Also worth noting - my wife would be at home with the kid right now (I have a much higher income) except she has substantial student debt, so off to work she goes. This means paying for creche too.
We couldn't afford creche fees for two kids, and she can't afford not to work due to aforementioned debt.
Also we had a kid because we were approaching mid thirties and it was a now or never thing, but it would have been nice to get a home big enough for two kids (a 3 bed apartment, or a bigger 2 bedroom apartment, would suffice) but the numbers don't add up.
In America perhaps. Europeans seem to manage, generally on lower salaries than Americans...
I know a number of families who ran the numbers and found out that the second income didn’t offset the cost of childcare. Or if it did, the excess income was so low as to be negligible. Don’t forget that there are tax implications to having a second income.
Meanwhile, the dredges of society have multiple kids, Bc they actually make money from them with their subsidized housing and other benefits they pick up having more kids.
And then you factor in “undocumented” immigrants, who also seem to roll in with way more than 2 kids, and your taxes also end up paying for all those kids to go to school with your one kid.
Idiocracy indeed. When will liberals actually wake up to some of the realities around them? Our productive, intelligent members of society are the ones being most discouraged to reproduce!!
You should check your numbers. Having kids is essentially never a money-making proposition.
We're immigrants. Documented, of course. Got jealous of people with over a month of vacation and decided to do something about it.
If I can work out a remote work situation we might buy a cheap house and have another kid but tbh I'm terrified because my family has autism in its genes, and maternal age is a risk factor.
Of course, if we'd started off European, she wouldn't have the student debt. Bit of a bummer there.
The number of women who WANT to work is a lot lower than everyone wants to admit. And when they see the option to leave the working world, many of them take it. So much education that just gets wasted when they realize that having a career is not nearly as fulfilling as they have been led to believe.
If I won the lottery tomorrow, my first thought would be "sweet, we can afford a third kid!"
Some are fullfilled, some are not.
For instance, an 8-year-old can do laundry (except for carrying the basket), or vacuum, or prepare sandwiches for the entire family's lunches. A 12-year-old can change diapers, assist in the kitchen, or keep an eye on younger children of any age for an hour or two while Mom and Dad are a couple rooms away cooking or doing other chores. In some states, a 15-year-old can drive siblings to school; and in most a 17-year-old can drive them to other destinations.
One thing I've noticed is that the children in these families are much more mature, responsible, and independent than children of similar ages in 1-3 child families.
I thought I was refuting the point, but in fact, agreed with the point.
Whoops!
- Subsidized daycare
- Subsidized education
- 1.5 year maternity leave
- Subsidies for families with children under a certain income bracket
It's affordable, but couples in western countries don't really want more children (just under 2 is the average)
I was looking at how many contraceptions and items my friends bought for their newborn ranging from things related to feeding/sleeping/playing. And that's not including the highest expenses, namely shelter/transportation/food. I thought to myself, my goodness how did we ever raise children in previous millennia? Anecdotally it feels like it's becoming more and more expensive to have children. I'm fairly well-off myself, and I would probably be fine with just one child, if any.
“Contraceptions” for a newborn seems a bit...premature.
Even with my relatively good IT salary having kids here is not fun at all.
With greater distribution of capital (not income, that's just more wage slavery), we could likely not only afford kids more, but also support social relations that make rearing kids easier. Society wouldn't be fighting you.
Mondragon and the cooperatives in Emilia-Romagna might be work looking at.
And don't say that saving up money now will get rid of the need to depend on future generations in retirement. You can't eat a 401k. Retirement is inherently dependent on the productivity of subsequent generations no matter how you move money around.
I know lots of large families - many who are extremely poor - who are the happiest people I know. The difference being that they've made their family their source of joy, and don't look somewhere else to find fulfillment.
I'm writing this in case someone reads this article and thinks "well, the math doesn't support having children, so I won't". There's a _lot_ more to kids than financial calculation.
The thing is that that's not how it works. It's not the case that everyone first does the math, and then the rational decision. But what does happen is that a lot of families, all over the place, make the individual choice of "we'd love to, but we can't afford another kid". And in aggregate, that leads to lower birth rates across society.
And if society makes it cheaper to have kids, the birth rate goes up.
This point along puts a huge cost on having children, even for people below or just around the poverty line. When sex was the only recreation option available with no known birth control methods, lots of kids was the norm. That has changed now, though. People at all levels of society know that raising a child with an semblance of upward mobility is expensive, and logarithmically so - the good private schools are 10X more expensive than the regular ones, with the international schools going to 100X.
Breaking the norms is difficult, but it looks like the country is already tending towards a voluntary one child policy, at least for any parents that hope their children will live better than they did.
In America at least the cost disease of education, housing, and healthcare all make it worse, but the first part is the primary culprit. And I'm not sure there's any fix for it besides long parental leaves and subsidized childcare.
Back in the day, everyone worked the fields. The men, the women, and the children. Especially in times of harvest, the more hands, the better
I think "affording" children has never been the primary goal of folks having children. Most folks aren't all that good at predicting what it will cost to raise a child or three. Some costs aren't as much with multiple children (used clothing, for example, or sharing rooms makes housing more affordable). Others are higher, such as child care and food costs. Some things are improved if one parent stays home. I think the main thing that drives folks to have smaller or larger families is desire to do so rather than costs themselves. Oddly enough, education can help as well, if you are in a country that thinks it needs more or less children in total.
I find it appalling that it is socially unacceptable in many places for the man to stay home while the woman works. If my immigration status didn't depend on my husband working and we were at all keen on having children at all, I'd work while he stayed home with children.
I'm not sure jobs are any more satisfying, as it is a difficult thing to compare. Many parts of the world simply didn't allow women the same sort of opportunities as men 100 or 150 years ago. Some didn't 40-50 years ago. I got turned down for a job 20 years ago because "females just couldn't do the work required".
We also don't actually need large families any longer, not like we did in the past. Between better infant mortality rates, better survival of giving birth, and birth control, and the financial reasons given earlier, it really isn't as necessary. It's OK to do, but it should be a choice. I think society should have laws allowing maternity and paternity leave and time to tend to the children. This should include a parent staying home... at least until the child is in school and/or mature enough to spend some time alone. In so many places, this is missing.
There are opportunity costs if someone has multiple children, though. What chances does a woman have to be CEO if she also wants 5 children in a 10-year time frame? If she takes the proper time off for both her pregnancy and infant care, it becomes difficult. This can be worked around with strong paternal leave policies: After all, once a woman is healed enough to do her job, she doesn't need to be the one staying at home. It also puts the opportunity costs on both sexes.
And I have no problem with people getting divorced. Divorce rates are a ridiculous standard to rely on because it is based on moral principles. We make it really easy for people to get married, with little to no education about what a healthy relationship might include. I'd rather folks get divorced while they can be on friendly terms, actually, and I'd happily require them to go through some counseling to learn how to do so afterwards (so long as there is no abuse involved).
Women do physically produce the child and most can breastfeed or pump milk. Ideally, strong fraternal leave policies means she can get some support while doing this stuff. Even if the father doesn't live with the mother, he can still help out. After that, there isn't anything the woman does that a man can't do, especially while they are young. It just might take some education. Men do it all the time when the woman dies during childbirth, after all. And honestly, a woman should be up to date with education as well since her information could easily be out of date with current medical standards.
I'm not sure. A large part of it could definitely be that men don't know how to act in such a situation since it's not a family format that society has had to deal with before.
The changes you're advocating for are all pretty radical (I don't mean this is a bad way necessarily) and I'd be worried that they may have unintended or unplanned for consequences. I don't think it's a given that men can raise children as well as women can.
With regards to divorce. I think it's pretty clear that divorce is harmful when children are involved. The best thing for kids is to have two parents in a healthy marriage. Obviously this isn't always possible, but I think it should be the goal.
I do agree that divorce isn't the best situation for most children. But I also believe some of that can be minimized. I've met an entire range of folks - I had cousins happy their parents divorced. My parents would still be together if my father was alive. And somewhere in between. Parents getting along and the ability to see and talk to both parents at nearly any time seems to help. Of course, that sort of thing also limits what sort of life someone can lead after the divorce (live within driving distance to each other, for instance).
I'm also more in line to making sure folks can have birth control and teaching the importance of being in a stable relationship before having children (marriage or not, as the daily routine doesn't make a difference). Again, though, education.
Paternity leave isn't that radical in some areas when they concentrate on making sure the sexes are equal. I know here (Norway) they used to require some of it, and it is still an option for part of the time. Some friends of mine were both working about half their normal hours because of it actually. But yes, I'm pretty radical about it all, more so in some areas.
I'm pretty sure men can do just as much as women once the physical part is changed. The biggest thing I notice is that women are trained to do some of this stuff from the time they are young, whereas men aren't. Women are more likely to take child development classes and such things, for example. Again, this is really just education and little things like showing men doing a good job at this stuff on TV and things like that. You know, unless there are efforts to get more men into teaching and childcare like there are efforts to get more women into STEM fields. Until then, self education.
Alternatively, women who aren't financially dependent on men don't put up with as much in terms of negative situations within marriage. If that's the reason, there's no pressure unless your intent is to keep a wife through material dependence.
New humans are still the most important inputs to human society. As societies become more specialized and productive, the powers and burdens of new humans go up. Thus, richer societies need fewer people, but each person needs to be more specialized and capable. And inversely, a society that is not producing new humans who are more specialized and capable, is a society that will have trouble advancing.
Evaluating public policy from this perspective produces some different conclusions than the more traditional family-oriented perspective which is often used to look at policies related to children.
Policies that empower women professionally and reproductively mean that only women who affirmatively choose to have children will have them--increasing the chance that they will have the means and will to invest heavily in each child.
And policies that give each child the chance to maximize their potential can be seen as long-term investments, not handouts.
Conversely, policies that permit or force children to develop sub-optimally are wastes that should be eliminated. Today many societies promote policies that encourage procreation (no access to sex education or contraception, incentives for more kids), but don't invest in children (no early childhood education, bad primary and secondary education, poor health care, poor food programs, etc.).
If someone bought a car but refused to pay for gas and oil changes, you would probably say they are making some damn bad decisions. Either maintain the car, or if you can't afford to do that, don't get one until you can.
Traditionally, the analogous kid blame game has fallen on the parents themselves. But parents are part of a larger society, and ultimately, given an ~80 year life span, will only manage about 25% of a new human life. Society will manage the other 75%, but in a lot of ways, our thinking about policy has not caught up to that reality.
What I mean in more words is the process by which we create the logistics we need to thrive (food, clothing, shelter, power, comms, currency, etc), combined with the incentives to produce the society we want to live in (physical safety, freedom of expression, opportunity for work and love, etc.).
It's hard to talk about this without judgmental overtones. But essentially what I mean is, picture your best life--how do we make that possible for each and every person? It won't happen by accident. And it's to everyone's benefit it we can make it more likely.
And when that doesn't happen--when people don't have the skills to find work, when they commit crime, when they fall to addiction, when they're mentally or physically ill, etc... at that point we do sort of "take them under management." They go on unemployment or disability, they go under medical and mental care, they go into prison. Those are direct costs we all pay, and probably even greater is the opportunity cost of that human life. (And not just from a strictly economic perspective, but also art, emotion, love, etc.)
But people become part of society when they're born. And a lot of what makes each person who they are, is set during childhood. Letting a person go without investment for 20 years, then paying direct costs to manage them if it doesn't work out, doesn't seem smart to me.
If you take any life and trace it back to the beginning, early management is in the family. But there is a lot that society can do to help that process be more successful. And I would argue it's in all of our benefits.
And again, to make it clear, I'm not talking about authoritarianism. In modern democracies, in an ideal sense, we should be managing ourselves. To some extent we're discovering the society we want as we go along, so our management system need to be adaptable, and that's what democracy should give us. I'm advocating for certain policy choices we can make democratically--give women more power of their lives and reproduction. Invest fully in the health and education of all children. Provide support to families so that they can do a better job of raising their kids. Etc.
I'm a parent in SF. The cost of housing and availability of quality care (day care, nanny), and schools are definitely factors among the parent community here in deciding not to have more children. Many of the parents I know are doing well financially (they must be to be raising kids in SF), so I get to see the non-financial reasons for smaller families. One that's pretty important: quality of life. The opportunity cost of having children is about much more than money.
The options for doing things you enjoy are hugely greater today than in the past. Fancy restaurants, sports events, cruises, gaming, live music, Netflix, social media. World travel. Rewarding work. You name it. The world has become much better and better at providing things that people enjoy spending their time and money on.
Having children not only reduces the money you have to enjoy these things, it puts a huge damper on your time, and freedom to do so. Sure, you could go to that cool new restaurant with your young children. But it's a completely different experience than going without them -- so much so that it veers into negative utility.
For some people enjoying family life and kids is more valuable than all of the other stuff combined. But as the world gets better and better at giving people alternatives to spend their time/money/freedom on that they enjoy, having more children will become less and less attractive for more and more people.
Policies will only do so much to reverse this. Many European countries have much more family oriented policies than the US, yet look at the reality of their birthrates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe.
That's not paradoxical; strong social support networks have been known for a long time to produce reduced birthrates; the usual explanation for which is that it is because a significant reason people have children is as a form of do-it-yourself social insurance, especially for old-age support.
Overall, “its too expensive to have kids” isn't the reason the US birthrate is lower than the past; if it was, birthrates would be higher in the upper income segments and lower among the poor, but it's exactly the opposite.
We don’t eat out much, we don’t owe anyone / pay interest, we don’t spend money on things we don’t need that don’t a provide a good ROI. We’d rather walk around and explore a city then take a tour and pay to stand in line some where, we cut our own hair, shop at thrift stores or sales, Read we are frugal. Even in the states wife did not work. In the states our cars were paid for in cash, we had no credit card debit, and we built our own house with our own bare hands out of cash; it took 3+ years and we lived in a fifth wheel with 2-3 kids for part of it, but it was all paid for. We made the choices to have kids, and we worked out how to afford our choice and how to be happy.
Why four kids — We watched the intro to idiocracy a few too man times and decided we needed to have more vs fewer kids to combat Clevon. We’d have more kids but we hit 40 this year and that was our stop having kids cut off.
Spend 700$ a month on car payment, 500$ on month on eating out, 500$ a month on amazon, 2000$ on a house payment, buy alcohol and other vices for hundreds a month, ETC and shit adds up fast and you wonder how you can even afford yourself. Don’t have a car payment, or house payment, eat out less, don’t drink and smoke and the numbers are completely different. We have a huge rent payment in Ireland that was the biggest hit moving here. Going from paying property taxes to 2800 a month in rent hurt. But we rented a huge house and rent a room out for 600 a month; which helps off set costs. The house is walking distance to work, grocery, train, and kids school – the higher rent facilities the no care life style. We could live further out and pay half the rent but we would need 2 cars. We chose higher rent over cars.