Newsweek

Are we hurting the country by not having children?

Sue Fagalde Lick childlessness, J.R. Bruns, Newsweek, number of women not having children, psychology today, Where Have All the Babies Gone

Now the statisticians are saying we’re not making enough babies to keep the population going. We’re moving toward a situation where we have way more old people than young and nobody to take care of those old people.

An article called “Where Have All the Babies Gone?” appeared in Newsweek earlier this week. The authors suggest that choosing to be childless is bad for America. My favorite line: “Crudely put, the lack of productive screwing could further be screwing the screwed generation.”
So next time you’re arguing about whether or not to have children, suggest you should have a few for the good of the country.
As I’m sure I have mentioned here before, the percentage of people not having children is going up all over the developed world. Already, in the U.S. we have doubled the number of women who never have children from 10 percent in 1970 to 20 percent now, and the numbers are similar elsewhere. What’s going to happen in another 40 years? The article quotes a sociologist who says that more than one in three women in Japan will never marry or have children. That’s a little scary.
Even more frightening to me are the mean-spirited comments that follow the Newsweek article. Check them out. Prepare to be outraged and worried by some of the commenters who claim they’re working so hard to keep their careers afloat that marriage and children are out of the question.
In response to the Newsweek article, J.R. Bruns published a piece titled “Going Childless” at psychologytoday.com (link not available).The problem is people who can’t commit to marriage or children, he says. Men and women need help building healthy relationships into which they can feel good about bringing children.
It’s all a little mind-boggling. We all have our own individual reasons why we may not be having children. I doubt that any of us are thinking about how it affects the population as a whole.
What do you think about all this?

 

Glad I Don’t Live in Chad

Sue Fagalde Lick infertility in third-world countries, Karen Springen, Newsweek

An interesting Newsweek article talks about how badly infertile women are treated in some third-world countries. It’s quite horrible. In “What It Means to Be a Woman,” Karen Springen wrote about a Mumbai woman who was ostracized for 13 years before fertility treatments allowed her to become a mother. But it gets worse than that. Quoting various experts from around the globe, she talks of how infertile women are shunned from gatherings such as weddings because they are believed to carry a curse that might be contagious.

In Chad, if woman doesn’t bear children, her husband has the right to leave her or take a new wife. Springen’s story also reports that in the Hindu religion women without children can’t go to heaven because they have no sons to perform the death rituals. Some Chinese and Vietnamese believe the souls of childless people can’t rest after they die, and in Muslim cultures women without children sometimes aren’t allowed to be buried in graveyards or sacred grounds.

Compared to that, our situation is easy. We can even joke about it because we have choices. We can choose whether or not we want to be mothers. If we are infertile, we can try medical treatments or adopt. Either way, we aren’t punished, well, except perhaps for the mothers who can’t get past not becoming grandmothers. At worst, we feel left out of the Mom Club and lonely in our old age. Of course those who want children and can’t have them grieve the loss of the babies they never had, but thank God nobody says they can’t go to heaven or be buried wherever they want.

In discussing our childless state, we need to remember different cultures have different ways of looking at it and do our best to promote understanding. Let’s hope that as the world grows smaller, more tolerant ways will spread and women who don’t happen to be mothers will be honored for their value as individuals.

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