"Parenting" versus "Having Kids"

Many folks bemoan the phenomenon known as the Demographic Transition. More affluent societies and more affluent classes within societies tend to have fewer children. Witness Europe’s declining native population and America’s reliance on immigrants for new blood. Subsidies for parenting don’t seem to be enough to induce folks to reproduce at replacement rates.

Why is this? I reckon that it is due in part to the opportunity costs that better educated and more affluent women face with childbearing. They give up substantial income and substantial other consumption alternatives by reproducing. This raises the costs of childbearing with no countervailing increase in the rewards.

Another factor that merits exploration, it seems to me, is that being a parent seems to suck more than ever. You are obliged to keep your children under more surveillance and closer control than ever before. Parents are expected to pander to every whim of their children and entertain them during their waking hours, whereas when I was a kid, you could throw your kids out to play all day and only worry about them if they failed to show up at meal times. A retired pastor remarked that in his day, you didn't "parent", you just "had kids". "Parenting" implies some kind of active intervention and planning whereas "having kids" involved an ad hoc process of taking reasonable steps to keep your kids alive.

Nowadays you can’t leave your kids at home alone for even a minute to go to the store unless they are twelve years old. My sister and I were latchkey kids at one point when we were eight and five, and nobody thought anything of it. A six year old out on his own beyond his own yard is no longer tolerated. I had a range of ten blocks when we lived in a city at that age and younger and a good half mile radius in the country.

You can’t leave a kid in the car while you run into the 7-11, for crying out loud, even if it is not hot or unduly cold. You have to schedule play dates and organized activities rather than just letting the kids loose to find playmates.

You are expected to have a child centered household rather than insisting that the kids adapt to your world. Everybody’s a critic, and everybody is a spy for the child welfare apparatus.

This makes children much less desirable and contributes to declining birthrates. I can’t think of a good reason off hand to have children at all. It’s hard to make them work these days, and they generally can’t hold down a paying job. They’re unlikely to support you in your old age and are in fact likely to sponge off of you until they are in their forties. The need for affection can be entirely fulfilled by a dog without the necessity of saving for college. When you are old and in the crooked nursing home upstate that your kids picked out for you, they won’t visit.

Those of you who have decided to reproduce clearly have decided that the benefits outweigh the burdens, and I wish you all the joy in the world in your decision. May your offspring be a continual blessing. Enjoy your children, and don’t make things too difficult for yourselves.

I strongly suggest that you invest in a spare child. That way, you won’t be so worried about your main child and will be more relaxed about the dangers to which the main child might be exposed. Moreover, if one of your children is an idiot, the other one could still turn out OK.