Brooks: The Horrors of Childlessness, Part Deux

Back in December, David Brooks sang the virtues of "natalism," i.e. having (too many, by my lights) kids. I took him to task for that (somewhat exaggerating his claims in the process, I fear). He's at it again today. Brooks's main points in "Empty Nests, and Hearts" seem to be (1) that the start your career first, then have kids pattern may be good for men, but may not be for women and (2) it would be good if society made it easier for women to have kids first, during their more fertile years, and then move on to careers later. Maybe he's right about those things; I have no opinion on the matters.

But, as in Brooks's "natalism" op-ed, the more important issues lurk in the background. First, Brooks claims that we aren't reproducing enough:

I suspect that if more people had the chance to focus exclusively on
child-rearing before training for and launching a career, fertility rates would
rise. That would be good for the country, for as Phillip Longman, author of "The
Empty Cradle," has argued, we are consuming more human capital than we are
producing - or to put it another way, we don't have enough young people to
support our old people.

This may be true, but I suspect it isn't. At any rate, it suggests a strategy--increasing the population or at least keeping it steady--that may be good in the short run, but is sure to be bad in the long run. The population issue is a controversial one, but I am among those who incline to think that the Earth is already overpopulated. I won't argue for that claim here, but suffice to say that many of the standard responses to this claim are patently irrelevant--e.g. that if humans were evenly distributed over the surface of the planet there would only be a handful of people per square mile, and so forth. At any rate, there are, of course, limits to how quickly population reduction can be effected without imposing undue hardships on any given generation; but to fail to effect any population reduction at all is to impose great hardships on countless future generations. Longman's claim, endorsed by Brooks, is consistent with an endorsement of slow population reduction, but I suspect that is not what they have in mind, and I suspect that is not how most people will interpret the claim. So, as in the case of Brooks's natalism piece, I have fewer objections to what he actually says than I do to what he might--intentionally or unintentionally--suggest.

The second important claim Brooks makes has to do with the relation between reproduction and happiness:

Over the past 30 years, the fraction of women over 40 who have no children has nearly doubled, to about a fifth. According to the Gallup Organization, 70 percent of these women regret that they have no kids.
It's possible that some of these women regret not having children in the way they regret not taking more time off after college. But for others, this longing for the kids they did not have is a profound, soul-encompassing sadness.
And it is part of a large pattern. Most American still tell pollsters that the ideal family has two or three children. But fewer and fewer Americans get to live in that kind of family.

Here Brooks's point is clear and I have no real objections to it. If people want to reproduce, then I would hope that they would be able to (within reasonable limits). I have some worries, however, about the claims that "most Americans...tell pollsters that the ideal family has two or three children," and that "fewer and fewer Americans get to live in that kind of family." (My emphasis) It might, of course, be the case that most (say, 60%) people think that the idea family has 2.5 kids, while, say, the percentage of families so constituted has decreased from 80% to 70%. A movement of this kind might, in fact, indicate that family size was moving toward what people view as being optimal. That is, just because a majority of people think that ideal families have n children and fewer families have n children does not mean that fewer people have families that they consider to be of optimal size. My suspicion is that more families have too many kids than too few--too many, that is, compared to the number they themselves would choose in a cool hour. Brooks points to social forces that tend to decrease the number of children people have, but those social forces pale in comparison to the strength and number of social forces that work to convince people to have more children than they otherwise might.

Perhaps more importantly, I continue to suspect that Brooks may be pushing a pro-reproduction agenda. It's important to be clear that nothing he says entails this, and it would be very wrong to pin him with such a position in the absence of reasonably clear evidence. I'll just use this discussion of Brooks to express my disdain for pro-reproductionism--that is, the view that basically every sane, well-adjusted couple should have kids. It is sad that so many people have a burning desire for children but can't have any. But it would be wrong to infer from this that everyone should have kids. Let me direct you to this piece from Salon, "To Breed Or Not To Breed," by Michelle Goldberg. I don't agree with everything she says--for example, I find "those sparkling, precocious New York city kids" nauseating. I'd prefer a curious, vibrant farm kid any day. But my disagreements with Goldberg are relatively peripheral ones, and her essay is worth a look.

As Goldberg points out, many people with kids have an obvious (and quasi-pathological) need to convince those of us who are childless that we need to have kids too. Now, I don't always find fervent pro-reproduction cases off-putting. One of my best friends, for example, frequently waxes poetical about the wonderfulness of fatherhood, and I find this nothing but endearing since it is so obviously a direct consequence of the overwhelming affection he has for his daughter and the delight he takes in his relationship with her. No problem there. There are, however, others who push reproduction in the pathetic and desperate way that fundamentalist Christians push their faith. The existence of those who believe or act differently than they themselves do fills them with a doubt and/or rage that simply cannot be assuaged in any way short of converting the wrong-doers/wrong-believers. As Goldberg points out, such people are pathetically transparent. Their attempts to convert are for the most part obviously based in their own doubts about their decisions. Those folks bug me.

I also want to note (as Goldberg does), that couples who choose not to reproduce tend to be happier and have better relationships that those that choose to reproduce. This is something worth keeping in mind if you incline against reproduction but worry that you might be making a Big Mistake. That's the position that Johnny Quest and I find ourselves in, for example. They (capital 'T') will put a lot of pressure on you to breed; They might be right, of course, but we mustn't give in just because they are so many, so influential, or so loud. They'll try to convince you that you are selfish if you don't generate descendents, but, of course, that isn't, in general, true. That charge is particularly amusing given how many people reproduce in order to snag a shred of immortality, or to avoid loneliness in old age.

I hope that none of this suggests that I have contempt for those who do rationally choose to have kids, since I have none. (Contempt for them, that is, not kids. Though (thankfully) I don't have any of those either.) I think offspring can be great if you're into that sort of thing (and sane, and nice, etc.). It's just not for everybody.