The Radical Cultural Shift Behind America’s Declining Birth Rate

We’ve done several podcasts on America’s declining fertility rate, and why South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world. But we’ve never done an episode on the subject quite like this one.

Today we go deep on the psychology of having children and not having children and the cultural revolution behind the decline in birthrates in America and the rest of the world. The way we think about dating, marriage, kids, and family is changing radically in a very short period of time. And we are just beginning to reckon with the causes and consequences of that shift. In the new book What Are Children For, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman say a new “parenthood ambivalence” is sweeping the world. In today’s show, they persuade Derek that this issue is about more than the economic trends he tends to focus on when he discusses this issue.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

In the following excerpt, Derek talks to Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman about their book and about their approach to explaining declining birth rates.

Derek Thompson: I am so happy you’re here. I’m so interested in this topic of declining childbirths around the world, and especially in the West and the U.S. I’m interested in its effect on economics, its effect on migration, on geopolitics, and the future, even, of warfare. This is such a huge and rich subject.

The title of your book comes at this huge, rich subject from a very interesting direction. The title is What Are Children For? And of all the questions that we might ask about this age of declining childbirth, why did you choose this one, what are children for? Rachel, why don’t you start?

Rachel Wiseman: Right, that’s a great question. So the title was chosen for two main reasons, I would say. First is that it points to a basic difficulty that many people have today when it comes to even answering the question of why they might want to have kids. So it’s self-evident to most people, especially in progressive, secular society, why someone might want to go to college or pursue a fulfilling career or fall in love. But it’s much less obvious to them why someone should have kids, especially if you take into account all of the sacrifices and the resources and the time that they demand.

And the second thing about what are children for kind of goes to the philosophical character of the book, where we felt that you can’t really know why some big trend is happening, like declining birth rates, without first stepping back and asking what that thing is for. So why should we have children? What role do they play? How could they fit into a well-lived, modern life?

And then, just as a matter of fact, the book emerged out of an editorial that Anastasia and I both wrote for The Point magazine that was dedicated to this very question of what children are for. And in that editorial, and the real seed of the book, was our expression of dissatisfaction with these big, historical narratives about why millennials aren’t having kids today, and if it’s even OK to, especially in relation to climate change.

Thompson: Anastasia, at the highest level, why do people who don’t have children say they don’t have children?

Anastasia Berg: When people who are childless are asked, “Why did you not have children?” the second-most common reason they give, this is true in both the U.S. and the U.K., after “I didn’t want any” is “I failed to find a willing and suitable partner.” This is actually true of men and women at almost the same rates. And we have sociologists and pundits respond to this by saying, “Oh, there is a shortage of Mr. Rights. There is a problem of finding eligible men.” They point to statistics about how men are not graduating in the same rates from college. “Their jobs aren’t as good, so we cannot find good men anymore.”

Now, that is an interesting supposition, but Rachel and I, in the book, explore how the actual dating scripts that we abide by include very long explorations on the dating market, they include dedicating your entire 20s and early 30s to more or less casual dating, certainly not dating with a view to family. They involve an endless vetting of that potential partner through long, nonexclusive dating, then long, exclusive dating, then cohabitation, then trial parenting a pet before one even is willing to consider having children. In this case, we’re inviting people to ask whether or not this self-evident logic of postponement within professional life, within romantic life, within personal life is in fact a good one.

Thompson: One thing that I love about the way this book comes at the question of why people are having fewer children is that it’s so different than the way I would typically write about the issue of declining fertility in the West. Because, I think, I would start with a paper that looked at the huge, broad strip of history and said, “Well, the no. 1 correlate for declining fertility is rising women’s education rates and rising labor force participation.” So, overall, let’s just say this is mostly about women moving from working inside the home, working in childcare, preparing the house, to women working side by side with men. And you are saying, no, we have to connect these grand, historical narratives with personal stories, with the psychology of parenthood; we have to consider culture. Why are you so sure that this is largely a cultural story?

Berg: Within the U.S. framework, and in talking to people in the U.S., one would be led to believe that economics plays an outsize role in people’s decision whether or not to have children and how many. But, first of all, the understanding of millennials as a radically precarious generation has been vastly challenged. If we’re looking at countless measures, from their wages to their savings to their homeownership, not to mention how much they are about to inherit, and they know it, the story of them as being a generation that’s been completely economically forsaken is one that is inaccurate.

But much more importantly, in looking at countries where having children is easy, affordable, in fact somewhat financially advantageous because they’re subsidizing having children, we see that their birth rates are as low. And so when the material explanation doesn’t hold, when material factors can’t explain the changes we’re seeing, we have to turn to what people are thinking, experiencing, in order to understand what’s driving their decision-making.

And at this kind of moment, we turn to cultural artifacts, not just as reflections of what people are thinking, but also because these are the kind of objects that people turn to for guidance and for an interpretation of their own experience. So, for instance, if you’re looking at TV shows, after decades upon decades of the success of the family sitcom, when you look today you are unable to find a single portrayal of a woman who is both excelling at whatever it is that she’s doing, if she’s a spy or a businesswoman or a lawyer, and at the same being anything but a failed mother, then you’re having a social script that’s suggesting that motherhood is incompatible with the pursuit of excellence.

If you’re looking at the rise of an entire literary genre that explores the ambivalence of women around having children, then something is happening. If you’re looking at a philosophical question that was raised for two millennia, but it was raised in the abstract, it was raised by philosophers, it was raised by a lonely poet, and you see that same question being raised every month in the New York Times op-ed section, which is “Is human life so full of suffering and so harmful that perhaps you shouldn’t be perpetuating it?” then I think we are liberated to ask the question in a cultural register.

This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guests: Anastasia Berg & Rachel Wiseman
Producer: Devon Baroldi

Subscribe: Spotify