Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, takes a look at why people don’t have kids anymore. Glenn’s conclusion: society has made it more difficult, rather than less difficult, to be a parent.
A lot of his points are spot-on and recognized by those of us, especially in the LDS world, trying to be parents in a parent-unfriendly world. Which of course brings us to the point: what can we do to make our world more kind to parents?
I’m not sure how many of Glenn’s points are addressable. For example, when I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s, I went wandering around the neighborhood by myself from the age of about eight. There is no way I would do that with my kids today (and, interestingly, my kids — ages 10 and seven — have no desire to wander around Miami by themselves). What can we do to change this? I’m not sure there are any solutions, except perhaps to move to more kid-friendly suburbs (the children of my friends who live in Orem, Utah do wander around the neighborhood on their own, so there are still places where you can do this).
But in a place like Miami, your Saturdays and after-school time are spent carting your kids to birthday parties, to play dates, to soccer practice and on and on. Multiply all of the extracurricular activities by five or six or more kids, and you have complete chaos on your hands.
But there are causes for parent-unfriendliness that can perhaps be addressed. One of Glenn’s primary complaints is the “cost” of having a kid, which runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Would the cost be significantly less if we were less materialistic, if our children didn’t have to own the latest Nintendo, the latest clothes and the latest Ipod? The answer is definitely yes. So, it appears to me that one thing we can do is create an environment of valuing things other than material goods and teaching those values to your kids. What do you think, denizens of the Bloggernacle: is it possible?
Actually …
What exactly are the statistics for child predators comparing the 1960s with today?
My suspicion is that the numbers really haven’t changed that much. And that your children were just as likely to be preyed upon back then as now. And that we are simply more aware of the problem now and therefore consider it more of a risk. But it’s equally likely that I’m completely wrong on this.
Parents are much more paranoid and micromanaging these days than they used to be. This also makes parenting more taxing.
I think parents need to take the initiative to ‘trade’ kids more often–that’s one easy solution. I wrote a book when mine were 1 and 4 and this was only possible because they spent 10/hours or so per week at other people’s houses. When those kids were at my house, I was able to get housework done.
We spend far more on activities (gymnastics for 2, preschool for 2, dance for 2, etc.) than we spend on toys or “stuff.” We easily pay out $400 – $500 per month, and my oldest is only four! I can’t imagine life without the activities though – the days would stretch on forever!
Video games will not be allowed in my house – ever. They can play them at their friends houses once in a while, but not here. They suck up time, keep kids from being active, and cost way too much. Of course, I haven’t had to live through the whining about it yet, so it’s easy for me to say.
Sue (#3) we used to say the same thing about Video games, and then my son earned his own money to go buy one, but we do have limitations as to how much time they can spend on the thing. My girls though have full access to it and they never play video games because they are outside way too much with friends or other activities, thanks goodness!
As for the initial commentary of this thread, it is possible and here is our experience. As for weekly activities, our rule is that each child is in at most one extra-curricular activity at a time which means that even though my youngest wants to play soccer and learn piano this summer, she gets one activity, and so she chose soccer — brilliant choice! In the fall when soccer is done, then she can choose another, etc, etc. We do this for any number of reasons but mainly to prevent parental, child, and family burnout, and since children do not usually understand this concept, we impose these limits for everyone’s sake. It actually works really well for our children as they accept the understanding that home life is perhaps more important than social life and in the end they really feel safe and secure, and not overwhelmed, knowing they did enough each and every day. Sure they won’t be pro athlete’s or concert pianists, but they will have energy later to balance their lives! We also find that balancing the home life is really good to help manage emergencies such as when doctors appointments or church activities come up, for example, we can then choose whether we will attend or have the flexibility to change when they will happen. Provides for clear(er) sailing. We also makesure, and not just for keeping the Sabbath day holy, that we will spend the day Sunday doing only spiritual things to help us re-focus spiritually for the week to come which means that outside is probably off-limits unless it’s for a family walk or family visit with relatives or church or…I think you understand. Another thing that we do is each Sunday evening after dinner, we have ‘table talk’ where we do a round-table of planned activities for the week and decide how and which will get done and perhaps which are postponed, and for us this works so well that everyone has bought into this concept.
For example, my wife just had surgery and was incapacitated for 4 days, and so during our table talk prior to the surgery, we were able to decide who was going to do which of the major chores for the days she was going to be out, and also which activities were going to be postponed. It eased my wife’s stress and we found that balancing the load worked perfectly, no complaints and everything got done!
In short, they do not at all need all ‘these things’ and we do not have to do all ‘these things’ as I have never been able to fully grasp how ‘these things’ will benefit the social fabric of the family and the balance we need to get by. God does not want us to be in complete ‘commotion’ or ‘chaos’ as we call it these days, He wants houses of order and for us to do all things in wisdom and order but at the same time be actively engaged in good causes, not complete disorder, imbalance, and overindugence in ‘these things’, thus creating unwieldy mass chaos. I am not at all cutting into anyone that will comment herein, but these are my experiences on the matter. We have eternity to get all this done, and we know that it ain’t all getting done tomorrow so why try?!?!?!
“Video games will not be allowed in my house – ever. They can play them at their friends houses once in a while, but not here. They suck up time, keep kids from being active, and cost way too much.”
Sue,
If you want to say that they suck up too much time, are too violent, don’t encourage creative thinking (though many do), I might buy in to those arguments; but when you are spending $400 – $500 per month on activities for two kids I don’t think that you can call video games “too expensive”. But then again, that’s my opinion as a person who has played video games says the days of asteroids, the Commodore 64, and other great ancient computers (at 31 I still play video games on my computer). On the filpside I also have many wonderful childhood memories of playing in the stream down the street, the woods / swamp behind our house, making snow forts and having snowball fights to name a few.
A comment more germaine to the subject. I am not currently a parent, which makes me an oddity in the LDS world at 31. My wife and I are waiting to finalize an adoption from China, we are hoping to travel in July. I have mixed emotions about parenting. As I look back on my childhood with an adult’s perspective I see the imperfections of my parents; but I also see that they did things right most of the time. I find that today, my main concern is doing as well or better than my parents did. I find that my worry that runs a close second to this is all the interference parents get from the rest of society. Fewer and fewer people are having kids, yet so many of these people without kids seem to think they are experts on raising children, and want to tell you (with the government’s help) how to do it.
One memory from my childhood stands out in this respect. One sunny summer day I was playing at the brook down the street from my house. This brook was about four to six inches deep in most places, with the occassional pool that might be a foot or so deep, with a soft muddy bottom. It was a great place to find crawfish, frogs, and other creatures little boys find so interesting. There was probably four of us playing down there, most of us being about eight. One of the neighbors decided this wasn’t safe and called the police on our parents, or at least on mine. A police officer showed up at my mother’s door and asked if she knew where her kids were. She said, yes, that I and my sister were down playing at the brook. He was shocked that she was aware of this and allowed it. He mentioned that we could drown unsupervised down there. All the kids there knew how to swim, though there wasn’t enough water in that brook to swim in, which she mentioned to the officer. He informed my mom that it only takes a teacup of water to drown in. She conceded the point but mentioned that he was just as likely to get struck by lightning leaving her porch as any of us were to drown in that brook. At this point the frustrated officer informed my mother that he could have her kids taken away, to which she told him to do what he had to do and closed the door. I didn’t learn about this conversation until much later in life.
Sadly, it seems that more people today seem to think they know how to parent, with less real world experience in parenting, than people did even in the 80’s. I find it no wonder that kids have “play dates” now and parents are always around to supervise. It does make me sad to think of the passing of children learning independence gradually at a young age.
Sue,
I’m very angry at your comment (not you! your comment!) because it reflects this terrible cycle of parenting in our culture: parents are bored (because there are so few other parents and children around), so they buy entertainment in the form of activities, which means that parenting is very expensive (not to mention time consuming!), which means that a parent has to work, which means that there are fewer parents and children around, etc.
If your family can afford and enjoys these activities, more power to you. But if you cannot easily afford them (not to get personal, but I know people who “cannot afford” college funds for their kids or food storage, but spend what you are spending on activites for kids), may I suggest that you look into alternatives? Mothers’ groups, park days, museum membership, library storytime, a walk around the lake, science projects and art projects for preschoolers, etc. etc. are all no or low cost and stop the days from dragging on forever. I’ll put on my flak jacket and say that I think it is a very poor choice to spend money on preschool, gymnastics, karate, etc., if you do not have food storage or college funds or do have consumer debt.
And as for video games, we’ve found that the presence of GameBoys in our house is a very small price to pay for cheerful compliance with requests to do chores. 🙂
We can afford them, thanks Julie. We have food storage and educational IRAs too. We also have a house that is almost completely paid for and two cars we own free and clear. I do work – in the evening after my kids are in bed, from home – but I work in order to preserve my sanity, not because we need the money. (We used to have a part-time nanny and I worked during the day, but not anymore.) But thanks for the concern. Interesting assumptions people made in the last few posts.
I don’t think that pre-school is a poor choice. That’s what we spend the bulk of our money on. They’ve benefitted a great deal from it, socially, emotionally and academically. I know I could homeschool, but I have no desire to do that.
They love gymnastics. They LOVE dance. Gymnastics is 1 hour per week. Dance is 45 minutes per week. Trust me, we still have plenty of time and energy for all of the other things we do together. I apologize for not posting the full list. We were talking about things we spend money on as parents, so that’s what I posted about. I suppose I should have qualified it with exacting lists of all of the free things we do – playing outside, at the park, playgroup, jumping on the trampoline, riding bikes. I teach them piano myself. Calm down, people.
I’m sorry that you feel that the opportunities I give my kids constitute poor parenting. Sorry, but it seems like sour grapes. I mean, I can’t believe you bought gameboys when you could have spent it on wheat for your food storage! Honestly… It’s all relative folks.
And #5, I didn’t call them too expensive. I said they cost too much – meaning, for what they are – IN MY OPINION. I didn’t say that I don’t spend far more on other things. I just hate them. It isn’t either/or. It’s just an example of one of the things we chose to cut out. My brothers are obsessed with them and I think it’s ridiculous.
Sue, I thought it was clear from my comment that I was addressing not you and your choices personally (“If your family can afford and enjoys these activities, more power to you.”) but rather making a general comment on those people who spend what you spend but can’t really afford it. I also thought it was clear that I only think that things like preschool are a poor choice for people who CAN’T afford them. But apparently these things weren’t clear at all if you thought that I was thinking that what you do “constitutes poor parenting.” So I’ll apologize for the miscommunication.
I read the disclaimer Julie. This sentence was pretty clear too though: “I’m very angry at your comment (not you! your comment!)because it reflects this terrible cycle of parenting in our culture…” I’m not sure how you separate me from my comment about how I parent my kids, but I do understand – you were not talking about me, just that you feel that my kind of parenting in basically a plague on society in general. I do understand what you mean though. No big deal.
For the record, I do consider myself to be a fairly crappy mother. I’m not saying that to generate sympathy or any comments to the contrary, it’s just true. I suck at it. I always try to get better at it, I’m not giving up, but sometimes the best thing I can do for my children is to get them away from me and involved in productive activities. We all have to know our limitations.
“you feel that my kind of parenting in basically a plague on society in general”
Ummm, no. But the fact that you would think this might represent my thinking after what I wrote in #9 leads me to believe that fruitful discussion is not likely, so I won’t pursue this, although suffice it to say that I don’t think that at all.
Great idea.
The article says what I have often said on the bloggernacle on why the birthrate is down even amoung LDS families.
The anxiety. The safety precautions. I just can’t send my children out to play by themselves outside, away from me, so I can have some peace, and I can get something done. We expect more from parents these days, most of which is impossible. And we expect more from ourselves as parents, despite the impossibility. How can we possibly have more children when we are failing the ones we have?
I’d like to see Social Security pay out based on the number of dependents claimed– say take the highest average of an 8 consecutive year time span and pay a “bonus” to recipients based on that average. People would still have to sacrifice in the short term but it would return procreation back into a positive economic activity and it would help cure the SS insolvency problem only 20 years away. Too many childless and single child families are going to get a free ride on the sacrifices I made early in my career so that my wife and I could start a family.
Videogames are like any extra activity, too much is probably not healthy. My daughter and I have had some great times playing games, but she understand that like telelvision, it isn’t something she’s going to do for hours at a time. We wouldn’t let her watch movies for 4 hours a day, but I don’t see how watching Mr Rogers while she eats breakfast is hurting anything.
I find this statement very strange. Have you never bought something for no other reason than someone enjoys it? Every time you rent a movie, go get ice cream, or take your family swimming are you calculating how much wheat you could buy from the cannery?
I live in the middle of Mormondom and I would never let my kids wander further than the small circle we live in. Our stake had a primary teacher sexually abusing children in his primary class, I don’t think Utah is much safer than anywhere else.
What do you think, denizens of the Bloggernacle: is it possible?
Of course it’s possible! We cut the costs of four children by frequent garage-saling. And we don’t buy elaborate video game systems, new DVDs, etc. The kids get exposure to video games at their friend’s houses, or when their cousins come to visit and bring that stuff with them. We occasionally rent videos.
We have found that having four kids does not *cost* that much more than having three, or even two, did. In fact, in some ways having more kids has introduced an economy of scales of sorts which has made it seem less expensive rather than the other way around, both in terms of time and money. For example, the older children can help the younger ones get dressed, saving us the hassle of doing it ourselves. The older children can do dishes, clean rooms, make beds, clean bathrooms, saving us time that we used to spend on that stuff.
I do agree that the “wander-around-your-neighborhood-at-will” dynamic has changed a bit, but this of course differs even from neighborhood to neighborhood. I am not sure if it would even be desirable to get this back. Our solution has been to get a home with a very large yard (fenced off completely from the street) where the kids can go out and have lots of adventures together (another way in which having more kids actually has made the world more child-friendly for us- they actually play with each other outside).
I also think that there are some locales that are more child-friendly than others. Where we live, in Dallas, Texas, it is EXTREMELY child-friendly. Social events and other activities seem to often be geared towards families with children in a way that I have not seen in other places.
I grew up on a farm. The biggest restriction my parents put on us was “No shooting shotguns inside the barn.”
Jjohnsen, it was sarcasm.
“No shooting shotguns inside the barn.”
Awesome! {nominates gst for Post-of-the-Week Award}
I think that a bigger issue in Glenn’s original post was the cost-benefit analysis — that having kids, in addition to being in many ways more expensive, also seems to provide fewer benefits to parents. Why did farmers always have more children than city-dwellers? Because children are more useful in milking cows and baling hay than in… well, hang on, outside of running the actual household, what would you have your kids do in town? Maybe if you’re an artisan, you’re making your eldest a son an apprentice, but what about the younger ones? And now there’s no handing off the second eldest to a neighboring artisan, and your third son to the Church, and all the rest of it, because we’re in a post-industrial society and children go to school till they’re ready to marry, essentially, and who has three sons anyway?
Ahem, anyway, yeah. What can we do to make having kids more beneficial to parents? I know I spend (and have spent) a considerable amount of time proofreading my mother’s papers in school, and helping with the quilting and genealogy and the rest of it, but I doubt it comes even close to breaking even on her investment. Even counting all of our help (my sisters and I) on her website, and so forth, it’s just not a comparison. The Social Security idea is one, but these are the sorts of things that work best when they come to exist organically, and not by government action.
I have 4 sons as did my Dad.
My standard response to snarky questions about the number of kids in my household is that I am subsidizing the snarkers medicare and SS with my families massive effort.
The only thing that will really increase the birthrate is a return to religion as a whole. Its no accident that in the US Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Mormons, and devout Christians of various types have much higher birthrates than secular types. Also political conservatives have more kids than political liberals. Over time the future will belong to the “breeders”.
One region of Germany has a much higher birthrate than the rest of the country. Its Bavaria, the home of the pope and the most religously fervent province of Germany.
We were not allowed to fire real firearms out the upstairs windows. Only BB Guns.
Things have really changed……
Getting back to the original question…
I think a BIG disincentive right now for large families is the expectation that professional parents work long, long hours. I realize this has gone on for awhile, especially in certain professions, but anecdotally, it seems like hours worked are longer now across the board for breadwinners.
And on a personal note, if my husband hadn’t recently found a more family friendly job, I don’t think we would be having a fourth child. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about adding to your family if you are already overworked and feel horribly guilty about the kids you rarely see because you have to be absent to provide for them. Even if only one spouse works, the long hours can be an incredible strain on every member of the family, multiplied by how many members are in that family.
“I live in the middle of Mormondom and I would never let my kids wander further than the small circle we live in. Our stake had a primary teacher sexually abusing children in his primary class, I don’t think Utah is much safer than anywhere else.”
JJohnson, sadly I think you’re exactly right. Where we live, we do feel comfortable letting our two older kids play in the cul-de-sac in front of our house with the other neighborhood kids and roam to a very limited degree. We don’t let them go in anyone’s house without asking us first, and they’re always supposed to be within “yelling distance,” but even that amount of freedom is a luxury that families in other areas don’t have.
Allison, re: your #23, I’m not convinced that people as a whole actually work longer hours than they did, say, 50-100 years ago when people had bigger families. For one, more people those days as a percentage of the population were farmers who worked six days a week. Secondly, many people in manufacturing were expected to put in 10-12 hour days regularly. If you wanted to “get ahead” as a company man (or, less frequently, woman), you need to work 12 hours days and go golfing with the boss, etc. I think commuting time is higher today, so that supports your point. Clearly, professionals such as lawyers and doctors and investment bankers work very, very hard today, but I’m not sure they work that much harder than they did 50-100 years ago (think about Wall Street in the 1920s, for example).
What I think has changed is the expectation among LDS families that one must earn more money and join the general rat race (of which I am one of the fattest rats, btw). I think more LDS people these days are likely to be professionals who feel for whatever reason (college loans to pay off, want a bigger house, etc) that they MUST earn a six-figure income or they MUST get a promotion. Again, I’m guilty of this myself, but do we really, really NEED to earn that much money? Could we get by on salaries half the size of what we earn today (if we are professionals, as I am) and work a lot less? It seems to me that may be the crux of the discussion, and you point out yourself that your family life improved when your husband got a more family-friendly job.
I think many LDS people (again, including myself) may be chasing the “idol” of a high-powered career and losing sight of the big picture in the long run.
Geoff, I agree with you but would also add that previous generation generally thought that a father’s role began and ended with him being a good (financial) provider, and didn’t expect much hands-on childraising. So regardless of how the hours play out, we expect more from fathers today.
Geoff, those are some good points. A few quibbles, though:
I think you’re right that farming families 100 years ago worked harder than most families today. On the other hand, every family member was expected to work hard as well from a pretty young age to contribute to the family income/survival. Large families under those circumstances meant a bigger labor force at home.
Also, it’s true that many professionals could live on far less than they do. However, in many fields it’s difficult to find the job requiring fewer hours at lower pay even if you’re looking for it. There are only so many government or in-house jobs for lawyers, for instance. It took my husband years before he found the very family-friendly job he has now, and meanwhile, any kind of stability required he work a very demanding job. My point is that there aren’t enough professional jobs where spending time with your family on a regular basis is practicable, and if the goal is to encourage people to have larger families, the corporate culture needs to change.