pro-natalist politics
on being a weirdo who cares about the birth rate
One of the major themes of this election cycle that I have to admit I did not foresee is the collision between J.D. Vance’s “pro-natalist” politics and Kamala Harris’s more laissez-faire, you-do-you ethic. That the latter position is more the cultural water we’re swimming in today should go without saying. And, on the one hand, I am fine with people who don’t want kids not having kids. It is probably for the best, both for parents and for kids.
But, that’s on the individual level. What about on the corporate and cultural levels? Is it a good thing that a growing percentage of our population doesn’t want to procreate? Are we, as a culture, doing good work if people think of kids as primarily a burden?
The kerfuffle around Vance’s more stringent comments on the issue notwithstanding, this is a good conversation to have. As Oren Cass wrote when the anger around Vance’s words first broke: “There are only two kinds of human cultures: ones that prioritize the having and raising of children and ones that cannot last.”
Procreation is an existential act by its very nature, a vote of confidence in the future. That the American birthrate is in stark decline is inarguable. The numbers are trending downward and even the immigrant birthrate, which is traditionally higher than the native rate, quickly flattens upon integration. We are headed for an oddly shaped demographic curve. Vance’s line about “childless cat ladies” might have been rude, but the larger dangers of a distorted population curve are well-known.
We were expecting our second child back in 2013 when I first read about the problem in Jonathan Last’s marvelously titled What to Expect When No One’s Expecting. Last makes a convincing case for the economic and cultural impacts of a dearth of children. While we are prone to emphasizing the dangers of overpopulation, the dangers of underpopulation packs its own punch. We need a vibrant and excited youth in order to address some of the seemingly intractable environmental problems facing us. A thriving youth culture spurs innovation and development, which are surely two of the things required to halt or reverse ecological decline. Last revealed precisely those dangers: the unsustainable welfare state, the bleak future for unconnected senior citizens, and the waning of innovation native to an aging population. Children are tangible evidence that we believe in our civilizational future.
Therefore, if Cass’s truism above holds, we are quickly becoming a culture that cannot last.
And yet, people concerned about this are often treated by our culture as misanthropic freaks. In a recent newsletter, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat asked the question “is it weird to care about the birth-rate?” Much of the reaction to the Vance and Harris brouhaha is the implied answer to that question, “Yes. It is very weird to care about the birth-rate.” Our whole cultural apparatus is predicated upon the fact (demand?) that we belong to nobody but ourselves and our single guiding principle in life must be to maximize our own self. Children, like, interrupt that project.
As a pro-natalist myself (children are good, guys!), I’ve often encountered baffled looks when I try to explain this position as if I suggested allowing cousins to get married or why the Confederate flag isn’t that offensive. Douthat locates some of the cultural weirdness around pro-natalism with racist theories about white replacement, the obvious ways in which natalism calls into question the ethos of the sexual revolution, and resistance to anything smacking of coercion (i.e. some sort of systemic pressure on people to have children). I think this is true but that these concerns are overblown.
One thing I’ve told people before on this topic is that we are in a battle of dystopias on this issue and the wrong dystopia won in our cultural imagination: we have identified more with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale which imagines a statewide apparatus of forced childbearing than with P.D. James’s The Children of Men which imagines (in its novel form) a universal fertility collapse and the resulting ennui and depression that takes over an aging population. James’s vision seems far more likely than the massive social tyranny required to enact Atwood’s fears. And we see James’s predictions borne out more clearly in our current milieu: people treating pets like children; adults acting infantilely; a broad lack of purpose and a meaningless existence.
Indeed, in a recent Atlantic article called “The Real Reason People Aren’t Having Kids,” Christine Emba writes the following:
That need is for meaning. In trying to solve the fertility puzzle, thinkers have cited people’s concerns over finances, climate change, political instability, or even potential war. But in listening closely to people’s stories, I’ve detected a broader thread of uncertainty—about the value of life and a reason for being. Many in the current generation of young adults don’t seem totally convinced of their own purpose or the purpose of humanity at large, let alone that of a child. It may be that for many people, absent a clear sense of meaning, the perceived challenges of having children outweigh any subsidy the government might offer.
I think Emba gets at the heart of the rise of childlessness. Of course, economic downturns exacerbate fertility rates, but that monocausal factor can’t explain why fertility did not rise after the 2008 collapse ended in an overwhelmingly successful recovery. That we have lost a broad sense of cultural purpose or belief in our culture has great explanatory value.
This is, I suspect, where Vance’s tinkering with tax rates or voting rights fails to pass muster. There is hardly an adequate amount of financial incentivization that makes up for a culture that treats parenting as a drag and kids as a burden. If the future looks bleak to you—whether the name you give to that fear is global warming, financial hardship, or cultural anomie—you are unlikely to want to involve children in that future.
I am going to end this by posting a ridiculously long quote from an article by Jennifer Frey, a classics professor at the University of Tulsa. You should most certainly read the entire article. Tiled “Three Books on What Being a Parent Really Means”, Frey summarizes the trends of three wildly different books on parenting that have been published recently. Here is her conclusion:
What all three books reveal, in different ways, is that the question of parenthood cannot be separated from the question of human flourishing. If we value autonomy above all else, and we understand freedom as the maximization of our options, then spending a life sacrificing for our children will seem like a very bad bet. As a mother of six myself, I can tell you that having a child is like getting married in at least one important respect: If you are honest with yourself, you will admit that you had no idea what you were getting into. Marriage and parenthood are leaps of faith that require individuals to go from thinking and choosing for “me” to thinking and choosing for “we.” This is a transition in thought and action that our culture increasingly struggles to embrace.
With parenting, the problem is worse, because the loss of control is greater—parents commit themselves to unconditionally loving someone they have never even met. In a very deep and unsettling way, we do not choose our children. The mystery of birth is that when the child is born it is entrusted to its parents, who must accept, love and care for it. Parent and child are bonded for life; over time, they will change one another deeply and irrevocably. It is ironic that we delay this bond in the name of being prepared for it, because when we do that, we delay the very changes in ourselves that are necessary to parent well. Parenting may make us more patient, generous, hopeful and loving, but these changes are brought about through the practices of family life—a daily, subtle, continuous transfiguration.