From Cradle to the Rave
During my half-hour drive into school, I usually cycle through country music, Oldies, or talk radio. While both have their flaws, I generally favour the CBC national format to the local any-idiot-can-call-in show.

On Tuesday, they were interviewing a man named Phillip Longman. He is suggesting that we will soon have to deal with an epic problem of under-population, that's right, under. He is the author of "Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity." (Click here for more information.) He pointed to the trend of developed nations to have sub-replacement birth-rates, meaning that the death rate is higher than the birth rate. Many population experts are saying that world population will max out at 9 billion, and will drop after that, not because of maximization of resources, but because of a fully voluntary decline in birth rate. They will fall (and are already falling in many places) because:
- increased access to medicine means more access to birth control
- urbanization means children become economic burdens rather than economic assets
- increased access to education for women, means that women put off having children longer, if not entirely
- the cost of raising children is rising (cost of living, opportunity costs, etc.)

I need look no further than my own family to see plummeting birth rate. Of my 9 siblings, only two have children so far, so we likely won't even replace ourselves, let alone duplicate ourselves or copy our parent's quintupling of themselves. While my own reproduction plans are on hold, I at least want to reproduce myself. Many see a lowered population as a good thing, but Longman warned that our current social assistance programs are designed so that the taxes on the working class will pay for the health etc. needs of the aging, and if we fail to reproduce that tax base, we are doing ourselves a disservice, and if that impersonal tax base fails us, we will also have no offspring to care for us in our old age. He used tax bases as a concrete example, but stressed that a stable reproduction is crucial to ensuring a stable economy and social structure.

I don't know how much of this was ever spoken, but I've always felt a strong sense from my cultural tradition that the idea of reproduction was fundamental. People who choose not to have children are sometimes seen as irresponsible and selfish. Women who choose careers over family are seen as incomplete women. Marrying before 25 is encouraged (and often marriage after 25 is viewed with suspicion). These views are not uniquely Mennonite, and are seen as "traditional" within most cultural groups. In our more modern "free" society, are we better off by being able to make our own family decisions in this way?

Longman suggested various things, including government initiatives (ie. tax breaks) encouraging extra childbirth and a restructuring of society to facilitate it. He thought that by changing the way we do education, young people could marry and have children instead of beginning their college degrees, meaning that they would effectively use their best child bearing years actually bearing children.

He was of course lambasted after the show for minimizing women to biological beings, not individual thinkers. He was also criticized by some for not being aware of the things needed for progress. Both of those things are highly valued in my birth culture. Focus on economic progress is seen as greed and desire for ultimate freedom of the individual (not simply the desire for woman's rights) is seen as selfish. I am likely not bound to follow in the traditions of my parents in various aspects of my life, especially reproduction, but I am not convinced that the traditional arguments against having families are valid. Raising children does not have to be as expensive as is claimed. A housewife is not a lesser woman, rejecting the opportunities afforded by our feminist age. Pulling ourselves out of traditional economic ideology, life becomes more than a maximization of financial opportunities. Removing ourselves from the me generation, we realize that life is better lived helping others, not simply ourselves.

   [ posted by William @ 2:46 PM ]