Congrats on the baby and kudos for breastfeeding! It is a JOB! Could never get the hang of it so always impressed with mamas who take to it like good soldiers/saints!
On the issue of status, I’ve been wondering if this is an example of long term versus short term investment? The people I know who are now in their 40s and 50s and had one child or none, seem rather frustrated by the lack of *something* in their life. To be sure they had many adventures and opportunities not had by those parenting in their 20/30s. But all around, it seems the long term investment of children makes for a much happier and worthwhile life in the Golden Years. Would be nice if more childless Boomers and Gen Xers would give a sort of testimony about this to the Zoomers and Alphas. But then again, most of these folks tend to say they don’t regret not having kids (I’m not buying it tho)
I'm from a very large extended family in which having lots of kids is the norm and high status, but I work in an environment which is the total opposite, plus I myself am not having kids. I have the great privilege of many multi generational relationships both with people who are now grandparents and great grandparents and those who have grown old with no children.
The thing that has really struck me over the years is it would make instrinsic sense that children would give parents' lives purpose and worth, as you say. Yet I see lots of parents with the same lack of *something* in their life as their kids get older and move out. I've always wondered if it's something to do with the model of family in which children end up moving out and often away, rather than forming and retaining extended families around them. Some of the people I know who express the "purposeless" sentiment the most are older, retired parents who don't know what their purpose in life is anymore now they've stopped working and mothers who don't know what their purpose is once their children are grown. Maybe if you have no children, you've just had a longer time period to reckon with that feeling and figure out what you want to spend your older years pursuing, I'm not sure.
All anecdotal I know, it would make sense on average that parents feel that less but I am curious about whether this will eventually be impacted by a labour and economic system in which communities become more dispersed.
I can accept that. So maybe the larger issue isn't specifically having kids only, as much fostering a sense of community with family and friends that makes adult children want to move home and raise families. Modern Wisdom podcast had an episode with a demographer who postulates that the reason families are shrinking or non existent is the zeitgeist around parenting now: that kids need the best stuff and parents have to cater to them. My husband and I have had to reconcile with this. Our two children share a bedroom and we hope to have a third who may also have to share that room with them until we can buy a bigger home. We are not a TRAD family by any means but we've accepted that more kids might mean living smaller. Alan Jackson's great hit Little Bitty (all hail 90s country!) sums this up and seems to be a lifestyle those of us wanting more kids will have to accept. It's such an antithesis to how our middle class Boomer parent were raised and raised us. It feels revolutionary, honestly. We haven't even told my very Boomer in-laws (Boomer as described by Tim Dillon ha!) we plan to go for third. They would say we are nuts. My parents are cool about it though. So all in all yes, it probably has more to do with the perceived lifestyle of parenting rather than just having kids. And this maybe has to do with the malaise felt by parents of older children now. They spent so much time helicoptering and doing the kid stuff only, that they lost themselves and each other. That's easy to do. I for one look forward to more kids, but also have some grand plans for when they are all grown up hahah! Ok, not that grand, just more hiking and writing.
Excellent read! I think a lot of this is also fueled by our lib-left/egalitarian culture which regards 'being unencumbered' as the highest social and moral value, because altruism and self-sacrifice (which includes childrearing) are inherently encumbering.
The fundamental reality is that you cannot say: "Every person should be equally free and empowered to 'make their own choices'," while then ALSO expecting most people in that society to GIVE UP their freedom/means of empowerment for the sake of others. You cannot promote personal freedom and comfort as the highest moral values, and then expect people to voluntarily do things which are uncomfortable or self-sacrificing, for the benefit of others.
(As you said in your piece "We Will All Become Boring," the Baby Boomers only got to enjoy both carefree hedonism and social support because they reached adulthood during a time of economic and demographic growth, which (along with the advent of reliable birth control) destroyed the idea that people have fixed/sacred obligations to their families, communities and religions. But this is not sustainable, since migrant workers are not a permanent solution to an aging population with a high dependency ratio.)
Human beings did not evolve to be unconditionally altruistic to ALL people at ALL times. We evolved to be wary of free-riders and psychopaths - people who might try and advance their OWN interests with little-no regard for OTHERS' interests.
It's human nature to pursue the path of least-resistance - to try and gain as much as you can with as little effort/self-sacrifice as possible. And if a person is naturally/genetically unempathetic, they will have fewer reservations against harming and exploiting others in the process (i.e., taking more than they give back).
This is why every civilization in history has a small percentage of free-riders and psychopaths - selfish genes came first (evolutionarily), but empathy and altruism came later; for the sake of caring for children and cooperating with unrelated strangers (e.g., romantic partners). However, this means that altruism is not as deeply engrained into our genetics as self-interest is. Heck, some people don't even have genes for empathy/altruism at all (i.e., the worst sociopaths - the ones who commit the most heinous crimes - are genetic. They were born without the mental hardware for compassion/altruism and there is no cure for their condition/cognitive defect).
Simply put: self-interest is universal; altruism is not. Every single person has "selfish genes," but not every person has the capacity to empathize with/behave compassionately towards genetically unrelated strangers.
Thus, we evolved for CONDITIONAL altruism - we only help others insofar as 1) doing so is affordable (e.g., holding a door open for someone costs almost nothing), and 2) we have assurance that the person we're helping is a worthwhile/trustworthy investment.
Thus, if you want large numbers of people to cooperate, you need to create social systems which promote self-sacrifice while also weeding out free-riders and psychopaths.
This is why early religions formed, and also why there has never been a successful left-libertarian (e.g., libertarian socialist) culture in history. Revolutionary Catalonia was crushed immediately amidst the Spanish civil war, Christiania is being invaded by drug gangs, and all attempts to create voluntary, socialist communes always fall apart within a few years - as Richard Sosis' research shows. Conversely, religious communes are able to last much longer (e.g., the Hutterites have been around for generations), because of something called "costly signaling" - religious communes are more stable and cooperative because they are more effective at encouraging self-sacrifice (e.g., repeating shibboleths, fasting all day, no sex outside of marriage, wearing restrictive clothes, long prayer/worship services, etc.), thus promoting social trust. Secular-socialist communes can't really motivate people to partake in ritual self-sacrifice however, and thus, they experience low social trust and promptly fall apart.
The hard truth is this: the pursuit of pleasure and comfort is a zero-sum game. Most people will not give up/suppress their desire for comfort unless they are ASSURED that doing so is a WORTHWHILE INVESTMENT - that the person for whom they're making sacrifices will ALSO give up some of their own pleasure and comfort, in return (e.g., a man giving up his freedom to support a wife with whom he can experience sexual pleasure and raise kids - the latter whom can support both parents in old age).
Comfort for one person inherently entails discomfort for another person (or oneself, if you subscribe to 'rugged individualism'), because life is uncomfortable by design - human beings did not evolve to be comfortable or happy BY DEFAULT. This is because comfort and happiness breed complacency, which consequently lowers your genetic fitness (i.e., your odds of survival and reproduction). Thus, our default state is to be uncomfortable and unsatisfied, because those two things motivate us to work harder/strive more; increasing our fitness.
Discomfort is a FEATURE of evolution (and life itself); not a bug.
This is also the answer to the common lib-left question: "Why do people CARE how OTHER people run THEIR lives? Why do people judge/shame others for their OWN PERSONAL DECISIONS?" Why are so many people disgusted by what OTHER people find fun/enjoyable? If having lots of casual sex or eating whatever I damn well please makes me happy, then it's my right to do so! Who is anyone else to tell me 'no'?"
The answer to this (rhetorical) question is simple:
Cultures which use shame and disgust to dehumanize and punish (i.e., kill/imprison/exile) hedonists and free-riders are the ones which survive and pass on their genes.
Most people are naturally distrusting of those who don't engage in costly signaling. Ergo, a culture which permits hedonism and doesn't demand costly signals (e.g., the modern, egalitarian West) will suffer from low social trust and low rates of self-sacrifice, leading to low fertility rates and myriad other factors which will ultimately contribute to civilizational decline.
Congratulations Louise! So happy to hear from you again. When I saw your article I was like “wait, she’s back? Am I seeing this right?” I’m also nursing my 2 month old as I write so this feels pretty special ❤️
I live in a high fertility enclave in a low fertility context (our city’s fertility rate is basically on par with South Korea. Higher than Seoul but on par with the country. It’s a lovely place to live. Rent per sqft is considerably lower. All the cafes are kid friendly (and dog friendly). There is a big playground. A beach. Hiking trails. Schools. You frequently see children out by themselves. Everywhere you see babies and young parents. The local business people know our kids, and some have known my first child since she was a baby. She is 3 and starting to do her own shopping, with their help. I did an informal survey of our village’s Halloween party, and the plurality of families had 2 children, with some 3-4 child families. For our city (birth rate 0.77) that is quite something. Most people here are very secular, so there isn’t a religious component to it. In short it’s just a ridiculously good place to have kids.
I’ll never forget a childless neighbor who said “I need to have a child to fit in here. All of my friends are parents.” And a year later, she had a baby boy. This just reminds me of what Johann said. Maybe motherhood will never be high status. But it sure is a lot more appealing if it’s something like a membership card, so you can fit into the local culture. Especially if you know there is a readymade cohort of young parents there to welcome you. And maybe that is enough. I think women are status conscious, but we don’t necessarily all aspire to be queen bee. For most of us, just fitting in is perfectly fine.
Louise is back! So delightful to hear your voice again :) listened to this on my reluctant first-trimester walk, after I quelled the first wave of nausea with a snack and grabbed the opportunity for fresh air (ok bundled myself up in a big coat and dragged myself for a walk around the block) before the second wave hits.
Was so delighted to see this in my podcast library this morning! Your voice is soothing enough for even the depths of first trimester morning sickness ;)
Congrats on the baby, Louise :)
And I totally agree about status, because I am convinced that I’m drawn to all the tradwife content online, as a woman working in tech who will not be moving into a big farmhouse in the country any time soon, because it tells me that a home life and family can be equally enriching and precious as the signs of status I spent my 20s chasing.
In a world where, as you say, “why would anybody want more than three kids” and I’m the first of my peers to get pregnant (at 29! Which is later than I’d have liked!), it feels like a warm hug to be told that it’s ok for motherhood to be my primary goal.
Welcome back Louise, congratulations on the second baby :)
The really funny thing is I've never personally heard anyone say "why would you have three", always the opposite; "ONLY two"?! And zero may as well be a death sentence 💀
My husband and I are both one of six which was half the size of our respective mothers' families so three is basically just halfway. And same for my best friend. So we are from one of the sub cultures in which motherhood and lots of babies is high status. Ironically, by the time I got to helping raise my 4th and 5th siblings, *I* was the one saying "....surely not AGAIN" 😂. I am EXHAUSTED and they're not even mine! So kudos to all of you 😂.
But the thing is, we always could tell that lots of babies was high status in our culture but extremely low status in wider culture, especially for poorer families. And this sentiment came the most from so called conservatives who were all for family values but really didn't like the poor having lots of babies if they were on benefits. Yes, poorer groups have more kids but they also get the most social / state support / benefits, and that really isn't very popular. Poorer families are more likely to rely on other people in general so we never needed paid childcare, there was always an older sibling, grandma or aunt to help. Lots of wealthier families would be aghast at that living arrangement.
When I was growing up, there was also an active campaign in schools in poorer areas to avoid teenage pregnancies and young pregnancies, and we all remember the disdain for large families. Now those same voices are wondering why we didn't all have six babies of our own when we were young enough to, it really does give me whiplash.
Amazing the conclusion is always more childcare - the old chocolate laxative.
I tend to agree re degrading of status of having children. I think 'The Status Game' explanation holds a lot of weight. What makes people so sensitive to status though? I personally would say that de Bottons 'Status Anxiety' is useful in the sense that hyper-marketised meritocratic society creates a lot of 'losers' - in a compassionate sense of the word - and those losers then feel sensitive to modern slightly unhinged status games.
I think also Brighton is a case study of the ideological effects of Giddens 'pure relationship' and the lives oriented solely by desire rather than any other principles of duty to something higher than one's self. I that sense, I would say, putting the issue of sexuality aside, that one of the fundamental drivers of low fertility is that young men and women today have checked out of the duty to society, the family and the common good. This is as much to do with the Nietszchian idea of the last man/woman as with anything else - young men and women simply do not want the responsibility of adulthood, let alone parenthood.
This is of course only one aspect of the debate though.
I made a similar point in a (very long) comment under this article: comfort is impossible without discomfort - if you want people to make costly sacrifices for you, then you need to make sacrifices for others which are equally as costly.
This is why there has never been a sustainable, long-lasting left-liberal/left-libertarian society in human history - quality social support is incompatible with freedom of lifestyle/association. (It's not a coincidence that the New Left died out after the economic boom of the 50s-70s ended - people realized that we do NOT live in "post-scarcity" environment, in fact.)
Fingers crossed for continued good nights for you and baby. Hope you are healing well too!
And I owe you and Mary Harrington a big thank you. I'm writing this as I nurse my third baby that was inspired in part by reading your and her writing last summer. Only sad I didn't figure this out 2 years earlier and maybe I would have been on the fourth now.
My wife and I used to live in a gay neighborhood in a major city. We didn’t move there because of the gay community—it was just a good deal and extremely close to our jobs.
Anyway, when we had a baby we couldn’t leave fast enough. Brighton sounds like a similar place, fun when you’re young but not necessarily built for families.
Ha that's so interesting as my most local gym has a really high proportion of gay men in particular for some reason, and the most common sentiment on a baby announcement from them on one of the straight men or women is "why would you ruin your life like that?" 😂. All the LGBT couples I personally know who are considering or have had children are lesbian couples.
But in my professional life, I have noticed a growing subset of usually very wealthy gay men who want kids via surrogacy arrangements and are going overseas to arrange it, leading to arguments that existing fertility options in the UK (and insurance decisions overseas) are homophobic/discriminatory. So I do think having children is becoming high status amongst a sub group of liberal, wealthy gay men?
Men and women are both anxious about status, in slightly different ways, but women are more memetic. I think the “really, you have three kids?” comments are likely to have more of an effect on women.
Thank you. I expect men are (conventionally, at least) more concerned with job status, women will by what their friends think. Men will meet and talk about their jobs, or former jobs if retired, women will talk about their kids, or nowadays, non-kids.
I expect social conformity - mimetic theory - is perhaps more powerful than we realise. When we married and had kids in the 90s, it may have been because we had friends who were doing the same. It may have helped that a small terraced house in south London was just about affordable, but it was hard work and there wasn't any spare cash for going out. But we didn't think too hard about it - and with hindsight you can see the cultural milieu that was around you. My daughter in her late 20s was surrounded by DINKs and career minded women so felt odd and lonely having a child, so young.
The difficult thing is that the window of opportunity for having kids is small (though it looks deceptively large when you are, say, 18) and that the status signifiers that appeal to an 18 year old are different from those that appeal to a 50 year old. I can't imagine a woman in her 50s that would regard another woman having a well paid job as being higher status than a housewife with a large family, a nice house and a husband who pays the bills. So it is really the low status of motherhood to girls and women under 30 that is the problem. Not that I know how to fix that.
Indeed. When you look back from your 50s, you imagine (through the haze) the best years of your life. You can’t see that ahead of you in your 20s. I think we are influenced by our peer groups and culture more than we think. If all your mates are messing about, you need to be the odd one out to go home and study. Not sure how we change this, but an occassional message from media, tax system, government etc that parenthood is a good thing and we all benefit, would be a start.
Huge congratulations on the new baby! ❤️
It’s so good to have you back! we missed you! Congrats on your new baby 💕
Congrats on the baby and kudos for breastfeeding! It is a JOB! Could never get the hang of it so always impressed with mamas who take to it like good soldiers/saints!
On the issue of status, I’ve been wondering if this is an example of long term versus short term investment? The people I know who are now in their 40s and 50s and had one child or none, seem rather frustrated by the lack of *something* in their life. To be sure they had many adventures and opportunities not had by those parenting in their 20/30s. But all around, it seems the long term investment of children makes for a much happier and worthwhile life in the Golden Years. Would be nice if more childless Boomers and Gen Xers would give a sort of testimony about this to the Zoomers and Alphas. But then again, most of these folks tend to say they don’t regret not having kids (I’m not buying it tho)
I'm from a very large extended family in which having lots of kids is the norm and high status, but I work in an environment which is the total opposite, plus I myself am not having kids. I have the great privilege of many multi generational relationships both with people who are now grandparents and great grandparents and those who have grown old with no children.
The thing that has really struck me over the years is it would make instrinsic sense that children would give parents' lives purpose and worth, as you say. Yet I see lots of parents with the same lack of *something* in their life as their kids get older and move out. I've always wondered if it's something to do with the model of family in which children end up moving out and often away, rather than forming and retaining extended families around them. Some of the people I know who express the "purposeless" sentiment the most are older, retired parents who don't know what their purpose in life is anymore now they've stopped working and mothers who don't know what their purpose is once their children are grown. Maybe if you have no children, you've just had a longer time period to reckon with that feeling and figure out what you want to spend your older years pursuing, I'm not sure.
All anecdotal I know, it would make sense on average that parents feel that less but I am curious about whether this will eventually be impacted by a labour and economic system in which communities become more dispersed.
I can accept that. So maybe the larger issue isn't specifically having kids only, as much fostering a sense of community with family and friends that makes adult children want to move home and raise families. Modern Wisdom podcast had an episode with a demographer who postulates that the reason families are shrinking or non existent is the zeitgeist around parenting now: that kids need the best stuff and parents have to cater to them. My husband and I have had to reconcile with this. Our two children share a bedroom and we hope to have a third who may also have to share that room with them until we can buy a bigger home. We are not a TRAD family by any means but we've accepted that more kids might mean living smaller. Alan Jackson's great hit Little Bitty (all hail 90s country!) sums this up and seems to be a lifestyle those of us wanting more kids will have to accept. It's such an antithesis to how our middle class Boomer parent were raised and raised us. It feels revolutionary, honestly. We haven't even told my very Boomer in-laws (Boomer as described by Tim Dillon ha!) we plan to go for third. They would say we are nuts. My parents are cool about it though. So all in all yes, it probably has more to do with the perceived lifestyle of parenting rather than just having kids. And this maybe has to do with the malaise felt by parents of older children now. They spent so much time helicoptering and doing the kid stuff only, that they lost themselves and each other. That's easy to do. I for one look forward to more kids, but also have some grand plans for when they are all grown up hahah! Ok, not that grand, just more hiking and writing.
Congratulations Louise! 👼
Excellent read! I think a lot of this is also fueled by our lib-left/egalitarian culture which regards 'being unencumbered' as the highest social and moral value, because altruism and self-sacrifice (which includes childrearing) are inherently encumbering.
The fundamental reality is that you cannot say: "Every person should be equally free and empowered to 'make their own choices'," while then ALSO expecting most people in that society to GIVE UP their freedom/means of empowerment for the sake of others. You cannot promote personal freedom and comfort as the highest moral values, and then expect people to voluntarily do things which are uncomfortable or self-sacrificing, for the benefit of others.
(As you said in your piece "We Will All Become Boring," the Baby Boomers only got to enjoy both carefree hedonism and social support because they reached adulthood during a time of economic and demographic growth, which (along with the advent of reliable birth control) destroyed the idea that people have fixed/sacred obligations to their families, communities and religions. But this is not sustainable, since migrant workers are not a permanent solution to an aging population with a high dependency ratio.)
Human beings did not evolve to be unconditionally altruistic to ALL people at ALL times. We evolved to be wary of free-riders and psychopaths - people who might try and advance their OWN interests with little-no regard for OTHERS' interests.
It's human nature to pursue the path of least-resistance - to try and gain as much as you can with as little effort/self-sacrifice as possible. And if a person is naturally/genetically unempathetic, they will have fewer reservations against harming and exploiting others in the process (i.e., taking more than they give back).
This is why every civilization in history has a small percentage of free-riders and psychopaths - selfish genes came first (evolutionarily), but empathy and altruism came later; for the sake of caring for children and cooperating with unrelated strangers (e.g., romantic partners). However, this means that altruism is not as deeply engrained into our genetics as self-interest is. Heck, some people don't even have genes for empathy/altruism at all (i.e., the worst sociopaths - the ones who commit the most heinous crimes - are genetic. They were born without the mental hardware for compassion/altruism and there is no cure for their condition/cognitive defect).
Simply put: self-interest is universal; altruism is not. Every single person has "selfish genes," but not every person has the capacity to empathize with/behave compassionately towards genetically unrelated strangers.
Thus, we evolved for CONDITIONAL altruism - we only help others insofar as 1) doing so is affordable (e.g., holding a door open for someone costs almost nothing), and 2) we have assurance that the person we're helping is a worthwhile/trustworthy investment.
Thus, if you want large numbers of people to cooperate, you need to create social systems which promote self-sacrifice while also weeding out free-riders and psychopaths.
This is why early religions formed, and also why there has never been a successful left-libertarian (e.g., libertarian socialist) culture in history. Revolutionary Catalonia was crushed immediately amidst the Spanish civil war, Christiania is being invaded by drug gangs, and all attempts to create voluntary, socialist communes always fall apart within a few years - as Richard Sosis' research shows. Conversely, religious communes are able to last much longer (e.g., the Hutterites have been around for generations), because of something called "costly signaling" - religious communes are more stable and cooperative because they are more effective at encouraging self-sacrifice (e.g., repeating shibboleths, fasting all day, no sex outside of marriage, wearing restrictive clothes, long prayer/worship services, etc.), thus promoting social trust. Secular-socialist communes can't really motivate people to partake in ritual self-sacrifice however, and thus, they experience low social trust and promptly fall apart.
The hard truth is this: the pursuit of pleasure and comfort is a zero-sum game. Most people will not give up/suppress their desire for comfort unless they are ASSURED that doing so is a WORTHWHILE INVESTMENT - that the person for whom they're making sacrifices will ALSO give up some of their own pleasure and comfort, in return (e.g., a man giving up his freedom to support a wife with whom he can experience sexual pleasure and raise kids - the latter whom can support both parents in old age).
Comfort for one person inherently entails discomfort for another person (or oneself, if you subscribe to 'rugged individualism'), because life is uncomfortable by design - human beings did not evolve to be comfortable or happy BY DEFAULT. This is because comfort and happiness breed complacency, which consequently lowers your genetic fitness (i.e., your odds of survival and reproduction). Thus, our default state is to be uncomfortable and unsatisfied, because those two things motivate us to work harder/strive more; increasing our fitness.
Discomfort is a FEATURE of evolution (and life itself); not a bug.
This is also the answer to the common lib-left question: "Why do people CARE how OTHER people run THEIR lives? Why do people judge/shame others for their OWN PERSONAL DECISIONS?" Why are so many people disgusted by what OTHER people find fun/enjoyable? If having lots of casual sex or eating whatever I damn well please makes me happy, then it's my right to do so! Who is anyone else to tell me 'no'?"
The answer to this (rhetorical) question is simple:
Cultures which use shame and disgust to dehumanize and punish (i.e., kill/imprison/exile) hedonists and free-riders are the ones which survive and pass on their genes.
Most people are naturally distrusting of those who don't engage in costly signaling. Ergo, a culture which permits hedonism and doesn't demand costly signals (e.g., the modern, egalitarian West) will suffer from low social trust and low rates of self-sacrifice, leading to low fertility rates and myriad other factors which will ultimately contribute to civilizational decline.
Congratulations Louise! So happy to hear from you again. When I saw your article I was like “wait, she’s back? Am I seeing this right?” I’m also nursing my 2 month old as I write so this feels pretty special ❤️
I live in a high fertility enclave in a low fertility context (our city’s fertility rate is basically on par with South Korea. Higher than Seoul but on par with the country. It’s a lovely place to live. Rent per sqft is considerably lower. All the cafes are kid friendly (and dog friendly). There is a big playground. A beach. Hiking trails. Schools. You frequently see children out by themselves. Everywhere you see babies and young parents. The local business people know our kids, and some have known my first child since she was a baby. She is 3 and starting to do her own shopping, with their help. I did an informal survey of our village’s Halloween party, and the plurality of families had 2 children, with some 3-4 child families. For our city (birth rate 0.77) that is quite something. Most people here are very secular, so there isn’t a religious component to it. In short it’s just a ridiculously good place to have kids.
I’ll never forget a childless neighbor who said “I need to have a child to fit in here. All of my friends are parents.” And a year later, she had a baby boy. This just reminds me of what Johann said. Maybe motherhood will never be high status. But it sure is a lot more appealing if it’s something like a membership card, so you can fit into the local culture. Especially if you know there is a readymade cohort of young parents there to welcome you. And maybe that is enough. I think women are status conscious, but we don’t necessarily all aspire to be queen bee. For most of us, just fitting in is perfectly fine.
Louise is back! So delightful to hear your voice again :) listened to this on my reluctant first-trimester walk, after I quelled the first wave of nausea with a snack and grabbed the opportunity for fresh air (ok bundled myself up in a big coat and dragged myself for a walk around the block) before the second wave hits.
Was so delighted to see this in my podcast library this morning! Your voice is soothing enough for even the depths of first trimester morning sickness ;)
Congrats on the baby, Louise :)
And I totally agree about status, because I am convinced that I’m drawn to all the tradwife content online, as a woman working in tech who will not be moving into a big farmhouse in the country any time soon, because it tells me that a home life and family can be equally enriching and precious as the signs of status I spent my 20s chasing.
In a world where, as you say, “why would anybody want more than three kids” and I’m the first of my peers to get pregnant (at 29! Which is later than I’d have liked!), it feels like a warm hug to be told that it’s ok for motherhood to be my primary goal.
So lovely to hear! Morning sickness feels like death at the time, but once it’s over you realise how brief it is
Welcome back Louise, congratulations on the second baby :)
The really funny thing is I've never personally heard anyone say "why would you have three", always the opposite; "ONLY two"?! And zero may as well be a death sentence 💀
My husband and I are both one of six which was half the size of our respective mothers' families so three is basically just halfway. And same for my best friend. So we are from one of the sub cultures in which motherhood and lots of babies is high status. Ironically, by the time I got to helping raise my 4th and 5th siblings, *I* was the one saying "....surely not AGAIN" 😂. I am EXHAUSTED and they're not even mine! So kudos to all of you 😂.
But the thing is, we always could tell that lots of babies was high status in our culture but extremely low status in wider culture, especially for poorer families. And this sentiment came the most from so called conservatives who were all for family values but really didn't like the poor having lots of babies if they were on benefits. Yes, poorer groups have more kids but they also get the most social / state support / benefits, and that really isn't very popular. Poorer families are more likely to rely on other people in general so we never needed paid childcare, there was always an older sibling, grandma or aunt to help. Lots of wealthier families would be aghast at that living arrangement.
When I was growing up, there was also an active campaign in schools in poorer areas to avoid teenage pregnancies and young pregnancies, and we all remember the disdain for large families. Now those same voices are wondering why we didn't all have six babies of our own when we were young enough to, it really does give me whiplash.
Amazing the conclusion is always more childcare - the old chocolate laxative.
I tend to agree re degrading of status of having children. I think 'The Status Game' explanation holds a lot of weight. What makes people so sensitive to status though? I personally would say that de Bottons 'Status Anxiety' is useful in the sense that hyper-marketised meritocratic society creates a lot of 'losers' - in a compassionate sense of the word - and those losers then feel sensitive to modern slightly unhinged status games.
I think also Brighton is a case study of the ideological effects of Giddens 'pure relationship' and the lives oriented solely by desire rather than any other principles of duty to something higher than one's self. I that sense, I would say, putting the issue of sexuality aside, that one of the fundamental drivers of low fertility is that young men and women today have checked out of the duty to society, the family and the common good. This is as much to do with the Nietszchian idea of the last man/woman as with anything else - young men and women simply do not want the responsibility of adulthood, let alone parenthood.
This is of course only one aspect of the debate though.
I made a similar point in a (very long) comment under this article: comfort is impossible without discomfort - if you want people to make costly sacrifices for you, then you need to make sacrifices for others which are equally as costly.
This is why there has never been a sustainable, long-lasting left-liberal/left-libertarian society in human history - quality social support is incompatible with freedom of lifestyle/association. (It's not a coincidence that the New Left died out after the economic boom of the 50s-70s ended - people realized that we do NOT live in "post-scarcity" environment, in fact.)
Fingers crossed for continued good nights for you and baby. Hope you are healing well too!
And I owe you and Mary Harrington a big thank you. I'm writing this as I nurse my third baby that was inspired in part by reading your and her writing last summer. Only sad I didn't figure this out 2 years earlier and maybe I would have been on the fourth now.
Congratulations Mara! I’ve passed your message onto Mary too 😊
Congrats on the baby!
My wife and I used to live in a gay neighborhood in a major city. We didn’t move there because of the gay community—it was just a good deal and extremely close to our jobs.
Anyway, when we had a baby we couldn’t leave fast enough. Brighton sounds like a similar place, fun when you’re young but not necessarily built for families.
I thought of you Carina when I looked up the stats on LGBT parents - they’re *overwhelmingly* lesbians
Ha that's so interesting as my most local gym has a really high proportion of gay men in particular for some reason, and the most common sentiment on a baby announcement from them on one of the straight men or women is "why would you ruin your life like that?" 😂. All the LGBT couples I personally know who are considering or have had children are lesbian couples.
But in my professional life, I have noticed a growing subset of usually very wealthy gay men who want kids via surrogacy arrangements and are going overseas to arrange it, leading to arguments that existing fertility options in the UK (and insurance decisions overseas) are homophobic/discriminatory. So I do think having children is becoming high status amongst a sub group of liberal, wealthy gay men?
Congratulations on the baby. Kudos and high status to you.
How does status as a factor in declining birth rates fit with your generalisation that women tend to be more status conscious, than say, men?
Men and women are both anxious about status, in slightly different ways, but women are more memetic. I think the “really, you have three kids?” comments are likely to have more of an effect on women.
Thank you. I expect men are (conventionally, at least) more concerned with job status, women will by what their friends think. Men will meet and talk about their jobs, or former jobs if retired, women will talk about their kids, or nowadays, non-kids.
I expect social conformity - mimetic theory - is perhaps more powerful than we realise. When we married and had kids in the 90s, it may have been because we had friends who were doing the same. It may have helped that a small terraced house in south London was just about affordable, but it was hard work and there wasn't any spare cash for going out. But we didn't think too hard about it - and with hindsight you can see the cultural milieu that was around you. My daughter in her late 20s was surrounded by DINKs and career minded women so felt odd and lonely having a child, so young.
The difficult thing is that the window of opportunity for having kids is small (though it looks deceptively large when you are, say, 18) and that the status signifiers that appeal to an 18 year old are different from those that appeal to a 50 year old. I can't imagine a woman in her 50s that would regard another woman having a well paid job as being higher status than a housewife with a large family, a nice house and a husband who pays the bills. So it is really the low status of motherhood to girls and women under 30 that is the problem. Not that I know how to fix that.
Indeed. When you look back from your 50s, you imagine (through the haze) the best years of your life. You can’t see that ahead of you in your 20s. I think we are influenced by our peer groups and culture more than we think. If all your mates are messing about, you need to be the odd one out to go home and study. Not sure how we change this, but an occassional message from media, tax system, government etc that parenthood is a good thing and we all benefit, would be a start.
https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/its-embarrassing-to-be-a-stay-at?r=k7sg9&triedRedirect=true
Posted by Mirakulous on one of the chat threads, this is an excellent article on the status thesis. He'd make a great guest for MMM!