My column from yesterday's DMN concerns Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman's "Family and Civilization," and its thesis that the West is in an existential crisis just like those that devoured Greece and Rome, because we are not having enough children to replace us. A reader responded:
I appreciate that you try to take a larger view of social issues, as with your analysis of declining Western birth rates today. I just wish your analyses weren't so filtered through a specific political lens.Obviously, the U.S. family is in decline, and an increased focus on self is part of that. But it's important to understand that the changing nature of our economy, as much as the social liberties hated by conservatives, are behind this family breakdown.
For example, over the past 60 years, we have seen a dramatic decline in the tenure of employees with their employers. This has caused, and continues to cause, the dispersement of extended families that must break apart and "atomize" because our economy has become so "mobile." The great majority of strong, extended families today break apart because of economic demands, rather than because they grew up with "liberal" values.
Indeed, the economy itself forces people to focus on their "personal brand" -- the self -- today rather than having company loyalty or other group loyalties. This is true even in the profession of journalism.
Company loyalty, which our economy has extinguished, was just as important to the integrity of our social structure in the first half of the 20th century as our society's low divorce rates. The idea that all the negative changes in our country can somehow be traced to "liberal" social ideals is just too simplistic, the result of a bias against these ideals. It also prevents us from examining our other problems clearly.
The reader is right, of course, and as he likely doesn't know my work outside of that particular column, can be forgiven for thinking that I don't see how economic structures and relations work against the traditional family. I didn't bring that up in my column (which unlike blogs, have to be of a finite length, alas). Still, though I would question his statement that "the vast majority" of family breakup today is because of economic realities rather than moral breakdown, his overall point is important and shouldn't be forgotten.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I have thought some more about this discussion, my conflicted feelings/ambiguous thoughts, and Sig's clarity re: One should have children out of love for children and one's spouse. Not because it's part of somebody's long-term strategic plan for world domination.
And here is where I come up. I love the "Let It Be" tree of the comic strip "Rose is Rose". I am going to lean against the tree and let my fellow creatures be, particularly since I ask the same indulgence of them. It's easy to get outside myself and start philosophizing; I have plenty I can do on "my side of the street".
I don't buy Sailer's argument at the end of his piece that the place to start to address the concerns he raises is with immigration policy. I found that to be a non-sequitur. I would start by raising the personal exemption to the 2008 dollar equivalent of what it was in 1950, and by ending the special deduction treatment of home mortgage interest that favors owners over renters. Simply have an "interest" deduction -- that applies to student loans, medical expenses, consumer debt or whatever, and cap it at some six figure sum beyond which, it can reasonably be anticipated that the taxpayer in question is doing well enough not to require further deduction assistance from government. Then step back, and watch the babies start appearing.
Richard
Richard for President!
Again, Max, I appreciate your balance.
I do have trouble thinking of an "improper reason" not to have kids. (Besides, of course, destroying Western Civilization, LOL.)
Even if it's just pure human selfishness, wouldn't that selfishness be taken out on the offspring? Doesn't that happen way too often already?
Larry, yes, I think I see your point.
I think hating children is an improper reason to not have children, BUT, to the degree that the reason is true, it is proper not to have them.
Or put another way, it is improper to hate children, but in that case one shouldn't be a parent.
The object of the impropriety is the reason, not the action.
"as my 90-year-old grandmother approaches the end of her life, it's been a lot more comforting to her to have been visited by her seven children than it ever was to have any number of other people's children pay into her social security. Family does matter."
But it doesn't solve everything. Twenty-odd years ago, when my best friend was pregnant, her husband said "one of the reasons we want to have children is so that somebody will be there to care for us in our old age." Today, the child in question, my godson, who was born with Down Syndrome, still lives with his mother (his father was killed in a car crash last summer), and her major worry is who will care for HIM when she is no longer able to do so. Because of my godson, I go to a lot of conferences on disability, and one of the things I hear most often is what has apparently become a stock saying among the middle-aged and elderly parents of severely disabled children: "My fondest hope is that my child dies the day before I do."
Yes, I suppose more brothers and sisters might have made things easier. But in fact, a large proportion of children born with disabilities are the youngest (or only) children in their families, simply because caring for them can make the thought of another child impossible to handle. I don't see people like Senator Brownback lining up to help out (Brownback, in fact, has no interest whatever in funding government programs that make things easier for the families of disabled children, and has never bothered to respond to any of my letters to him on the subject. Okay, I don't live in Kansas, but you'd think he'd at least provide the courtesy of a form get-lost letter.)
And, yes, I suppose closer families might make everybody's life easier, except that whenever the Big Employer closes down in any part of the country, we virtually demand that the people thrown out of work move to wherever the new batch of McJobs are, or be branded as welfare drones. We live in Chicago. My husband's brother lives in Albany. His sister lives in New Rochelle. My brother lives in Atlanta. Those are the places the three of them could find work in their fields when they were last in the market. We are in Chicago because that was the place WE could find jobs when we were in the market. That's how The Economy works. I don't see anybody trying to change that aspect of it, certainly not people who consider themselves conservative and pro-family. Sorry about the rant.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.