Why are People Having Fewer Kids? Perhaps it's because they don't like them very much

Tyrael · #1 19th-August-2008

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Why are People Having Fewer Kids?

Perhaps it's because they don't like them very much.

Ronald Bailey | February 26, 2008
The "demographic winter" is coming. So warns a new documentary of the same name. What is the demographic winter? The phrase, according to the film's promotional materials, "denotes the worldwide decline in birthrates, also referred to as the 'birth dearth,' and what that portends." The first half of Demographic Winter was previewed at the conservative Heritage Foundation a couple of weeks ago. According the film, the demographic winter augurs little good, e.g., economic collapse and social deterioration. If current trends continue world population should begin a steep decline sometime around the middle of the 21st century. Why?

Because total fertility rates (TFRs) are plummeting around the world. Population stability is achieved when each woman bears an average of 2.1 kids over the course of her lifetime—one for her, one for her male partner, and a little overage to make up to childhood deaths. Today, there are sixty countries in which TFRs are below 2.1. For example, the European Union's TFR is 1.5 and no EU member state has a TFR at replacement or above. Even high population developing countries have seen steep declines in fertility. Since 1970, China's TFR fell from 5.8 to 1.6; India's from 5.8 to 2.9; Indonesia from 5.6 to 2.4; Japan's from 2.0 to 1.3; Mexico's from 6.8 to 2.4; Brazil's from 5.4 to 2.3; and South Africa's from 5.9 to 2.7. The U.S. TFR dropped from 2.55 in 1970 to around 2.1 today, largely because of the influx of higher fertility immigrants. However, the fertility of second generation Americans drops to the level of longer established Americans.

I doubt that the "demographic winter" portends economic collapse or social deterioration, but let us set that aside for this column, and instead ask why people are choosing to have fewer children? After all, voluntary childlessness seems to violate the Darwinian premise that our genes dispose us, like all other creatures, to try to reproduce.

However, demographic data are undercutting the notion that there is some kind of sociobiological nurturing imperative, economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt noted during the question period following the documentary. As evidence, he pointed to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where 30 percent of women are childless and that Hong Kong's TFR has been below 1 birth per woman for at least a decade.

Demographic Winter asserts that "every aspect of modernity works against family life and in favor of singleness and small families or voluntary childlessness." And surely they are right. Modern societies offer people many other satisfactions and choices outside of the family. In particular women find that their time becomes more highly valued in occupations outside the home. There are no iron laws of demography, but one that comes pretty close is that the more educated women are, the fewer children they tend to have. Eberstadt also noted the best predictor of fertility levels is the desired family size as reported by women. And finally, the most profound event of the 20th century may have been the sexual revolution's drive toward gender equality, enabled by modern contraception. Unlike other creatures, people can have the fun of sex without the side effect of parenthood.

So, modernity essentially transforms children from capital goods that produce family income into consumption items to be enjoyed for their own sakes, more akin to sculptures, paintings, or theatre. But that's just the problem—according to happiness researchers, people don't really enjoy rearing children.

"Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact," reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Daniel Gilbert. In addition, the more children a person has the less happy they are. According to Gilbert, researchers have found that people derive more satisfaction from eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television than taking care of their kids. "Indeed, looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework," asserts Gilbert in his bestselling, Stumbling on Happiness (2006).

Of course, that's not what most parents say when asked. For instance, in a 2007 Pew Research Center survey people insisted that their relationships with their little darlings are of the greatest importance to their personal happiness and fulfillment. However, the same survey also found "by a margin of nearly three-to-one, Americans say that the main purpose of marriage is the 'mutual happiness and fulfillment' of adults rather than the 'bearing and raising of children.'"

Gilbert suggests that people claim their kids are their chief source of happiness largely because it's what they are expected to say. In addition, Gilbert observes that the more people pay for an item, the more highly they tend to value it and children are expensive, even if you don't throw in piano lessons, soccer camps, orthodonture, and college tuitions. Gilbert further notes that the more children people have, the less happy they tend to be. Since that is the case, it is not surprising that people are choosing to have fewer children. And if people with fewer children are happier, then people with no children must be happiest, right? Not exactly, but the data do suggest that voluntarily childless women and men are not less happy than parents. And they sure do have more money to squander as they try to pursue what happiness they can and strive to somehow fill up their allegedly empty lives.

Disclosure: My wife and I try not to flaunt our voluntarily childless lifestyle too much.

Ronald Bailey is reason's science correspondent. His most recent book, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution, is available from Prometheus Books.

Source.

The higher educated people are (and women especially since they are responsible for incubating offspring) the less likely they'll have children, cause they are busy studying, working having fun doing other things and find children a hassle. When women focus too much on other things like work this is the result. Ironically people who voluntarily choose to be childless are just as happy as people who choose to have children.

The poor and dumb tend to bear most children and make up the difference.

**Percy** · #2 20th-August-2008

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There are no iron laws of demography,

This is an assumption. It is probably wrong.

There are Laws of Nature which are have always been discovered and probably there are still ones to discover.

Animals (we are an animals) produce young as the conditions demand. High infant death rates usually mean high birth rates. Low death rates are common now, unlike any time in human history. Today's low birth rates may be nature's way of holding down a population explosion.

We are not living in times of low resources. 'Manpower' is not so essential to survival as it used to be as we have machines and power sources that have largely replaced or accentuated/enhanced human physical effort. We can grow food so much more easily today than at any time in history.

The rationales we make are just that. Post hoc reasoning.

I think that we are in n entirly new phase of history. In the past - even until recently - people could always move away from people - spread out to unoccupied regions. Now we are constrained by the spheriosity of the planet and intermix a lot more.

MadShangi · #3 20th-August-2008

Maybe... at least in my case anyway. People don't wanna have children because they don't feel like producing more slaves for the government. I see nothing in this world that I like... there's nothing I want to have to put a child through. No thanks.

shaazam · #4 20th-August-2008

here in Australia in the state we call Victoria the femints are about to achieve a breakthrough i their clamouring for late term abortions

that's righ soon it will be possible to six months when her baby has a functioning nervous system and can feel it self being truncated in nurturing Mommas womb

this is an expression of her "right to choose" or "opt out" not to or whatever

of course the "procedure" will be recommended as necessary to her physical and mental health by some conniving abortion specialist who is operating a "clinic" making $$$$$

nowdays the psychopaths hang brass plates advertising their wares out side their "practise"

the femints toes curl at news like this

Tyrael · #5 20th-August-2008

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Originally Posted by shaazam

here in Australia in the state we call Victoria the femints are about to achieve a breakthrough i their clamouring for late term abortions

that's righ soon it will be possible to six months when her baby has a functioning nervous system and can feel it self being truncated in nurturing Mommas womb

That's ridiculous. The unborn child would be too aware like a living entity and should have the right and protection to live on.

A good way to improve birthrates is to illegalize abortion except for special cases like incest.

christianj · #6 20th-August-2008

Another example about how feminists abuse women at will. Studies have shown long term (even lifelong) anguish, mental and physical deterioration with other side affects after aborting an unborn..

But hey ! it's not worth anything until it breathes air..

gaynorbarry · #7 20th-August-2008

AS children become the apostles of the state we will encounter a future much like that of Orwell’s 1984, where parents are afraid of their children in case they report them to the thought police. I know they say keep your friends close and enemies even closer but under the same roof?
A future where the state is encamped in the bedroom next to yours monitoring your every move does not appeal to me.

Dont laugh at my musings, already we have the young enviormental police being indoctornated in our state schools to watch over their wastefull parents.

Billy · #8 20th-August-2008

The fems are deliberately creating distrust between the sex. Getting women in the workforces creates a less time for children. The goal is too slow the birth rates.
Its working
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**bachelor tom** · #9 20th-August-2008

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Originally Posted by gaynorbarry

AS children become the apostles of the state we will encounter a future much like that of Orwell’s 1984, where parents are afraid of their children in case they report them to the thought police. I know they say keep your friends close and enemies even closer but under the same roof?
A future where the state is encamped in the bedroom next to yours monitoring your every move does not appeal to me.

Dont laugh at my musings, already we have the young enviormental police being indoctornated in our state schools to watch over their wastefull parents.

I agree, though I don't think the word "apostle" is the one you're looking for

Marxists have argued for state childrearing for a long time, and actually tried to destroy families in 1920s USSR.

gaynorbarry · #10 21st-August-2008