Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAmerica Is Doomed Unless Women Start Having More Babies: How Convenient
Ever since it became less socially acceptable to argue openly that womenat least white, middle-class womenowe it to men to curtail our professional ambitions in favor of a life as our husbands' support staff, conservatives started to panic about declining birth rates. If women don't start making more babies, they dimly warn, the country is headed for catastrophe as the workplace empties out of workers and retirees suck up all the money and people stop caring about the future. (Because we can't care about the children we do have unless we have more of them, for some reason.) To save America, women, especially those aforementioned pesky middle-class, white women, are going to have to start having more babies at a younger age, the argument goes. That this demand means that women will end up curtailing their ambitions and moving into the support-staff role is simply a coincidence, of course. Nothing to see here.
The latest installation in the declining fertility rate commentary series is from Jonathan Last, a Weekly Standard writer and author of a new book on "America's Coming Demographic Disaster" and who is far better than say, Ross Douthat, at presenting this claim in a way that makes it sound reasonable. His piece in the Wall Street Journal is impressive particularly for deigning to take seriously liberal reactions to this argument, such as the environmentalist concerns or the tendency of liberals to argue for a better social safety net so women can both work and have more children.
EDIT
What really galls me about Last's piece (and most like it) is the underlying assumption that human beings exist to serve society and not the other way around. Oh, sure, Last mentions a few conservative-friendly policy ideas to help people afford kidssuch as reducing the number of kids who go to college, attacking Social Security, and pushing people to move to the suburbsbut if reducing day care costs doesn't do it, there's no reason to think these tweaks will either. The reader is left with the feeling that the only solution to save capitalism is to clip the wings of half of the population so they can spend more time laying eggs.
I'd argue instead that if the system is set up so that it fails if women don't start popping out more kids, then it's a broken system and should be reworked to account for the reality of America today. If women don't want to have more children, then instead of abandoning women's equality as a goal, we should rework our economic system so it doesn't rely on a steadily growing population to function. After all, the point of society is to serve the people in it, not to reduce us to cogs in a machine that serves no one at all.
EDIT/END
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/04/america_s_declining_fertility_rate_it_is_not_up_to_the_female_reproductive.html
rbixby
(1,140 posts)the 'demographic disaster' they're really worried about is when whites aren't the majority anymore. Apparently that will lead to some kind of disaster or something.
get the red out
(13,466 posts)Damn the environment, just make more HUMANS and suck up all the world's resources American white people!!!!!
Disgusting.
no_hypocrisy
(46,104 posts)and correct than advocating for sterilization of non-white women.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)Lebensborn. Of course, the right kind of babies. Is it just a coincidence that they are now attacking contraception?
DURHAM D
(32,609 posts)The OP poster also used "interesting" language in his introduction that showed an unfortunate personal bias and agreement with Last.
I Alerted on it but received a message that it had already been juried and was allowed to stand 0-6. That member is still here.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022304456
In my head I refer to the Last article as "How Dare A Woman Walk Around With A Womb And Not Use It".
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)Whites are not adapted for a hotter planet.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)they have a lot of nerve.
Nay
(12,051 posts)society isn't even willing to employ existing adults in useful work, even to shore up its own SS, Medicare, etc.? We're supposed to have more babies who will likely grow up to lousy job prospects? Riiiiight. THAT sounds like a plan. . .
FBaggins
(26,737 posts)...I could have sworn that women have all of the babies.
eppur_se_muova
(36,263 posts)stuntcat
(12,022 posts)One of the many many reasons.
In 2040, when things are much shittier and the future's more clearly a mess, will women still be pressured this way? Probably.
I'm learning one thing from every encounter with my species lately- we're a bunch of selfish delusional shits.
The more I try to do everything I can that's right, the more people will hate me for it. The hate for not making another human is the sickest.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)All complex adaptive systems composed of living organisms share one common feature: an inherent, fundamental, structural urge to grow in size and power throughput.
Last has simply (and unconsciously) translated this system-level desire into cultural language. It's the same system-level urge that makes well-meaning people ask newlyweds, "So, when's the first little one arriving?" It's the same urge that drives all growth behaviour in systems ranging from plant-driven forest ecosystems to city planning commissions.
Last has done it very poorly, of course. Worse than that, it's the wrong urge to have at this point in our system's adaptive cycle. We should be getting ready to release resources, not to exploit ever more of them. That means lower birth rates, as well as lower consumption rates. But evolutionary urges die a long, hard death.
NickB79
(19,243 posts)As a call to have more babies.
Her and her Xtian friends really, really didn't like it when I pointed out that breeding ad infinitum until we all choked on our own shit wasn't much of a solution.