Babies and control
A subscriber wonders
The Wall Street Journal headline reminds all that various governments ranging from Russia to China to Japan to several other countries regularly encourage their populations to have more babies these days. The effects have been, frankly, negligible which must drive authoritarians crazy. Japan, where population issues began as a central policy concern decades ago, is finding no budge in the numbers. Even those nice Norwegians are not bearing more children as their birth rate is below replacement level as true in an increasing number of countries globally. The Journal notes the incentives have been wide-ranging and, to the average citizen, probably pretty lucrative but fairly ineffective.
Over the weekend, a long time subscriber sent me an observation on this theme.
“You’ve written on this before and while the article does a good job of laying out the possible impacts, I wonder if there isn’t another point in all of this. In a world where we have more data at our fingertips than ever before, we also have going indicators of feelings of being less connected and less in tune with each other. As we strive for more control over our world, it would potentially appear that we are having less ability to exercise said control.
Children complicated this greatly. If you ever want to feel out of control, care for a newborn….What are your thoughts ?”
What a sage observation of a curious juxtaposition. Those countries where demographics are of such profound concern, coincidentally, are also often but not exclusively places where control is something the population most craves because so much of their lives is “guided” by others.
It’s hard to find a country where one has fewer choices than China. Xi Jinping’s dozen years in charge resulted in a severe constriction in decision-making options, whether in the realm of speech, education, and purchasing power (you know how subversive those foreign products are, don’t you?) as quick but not exhaustive examples. Xi’s hopes that the Middle Kingdom could reverse the decades’s effect of the “one child policy”, perhaps the most successful single action by the CCP over its rule, simply are not coming to fruition. Not only that but deaths now outpace births as of last year. Lots of things are less than splendid in the Middle Kingdom of General Secretary I and the CCP.
Vlad the Impaler’s actions in Ukraine resulted in global sanctions against Russian citizens. While his oligarchic buds are doing fine, the average citizen already had an ok but hardly fabulous life in that society. Alcoholism and health care issues undermined much hope before the conflict but the current state of affairs isn’t a terrific incentive to bring babies into the world. Vlad implored Russian babushkas a bit more successfully earlier in his rule but Russia’s birth rate hovers at 11.1 births per 1,000 people or down over the last four years.
Nationalist authoritarian Viktor Orban’s heavy pressure on Hungarians to expand families is meeting success only with those already intending to have more children, leading critics to note the distortions thatbthe incentives are creating in the nation’s economy. Orban’s pressure to guide society on births matches his efforts to normalize his own actions by fomenting racist views of “outsiders” and similarly anti-democratic regimes.
Even relatively democratic Norway, as the Journal highlights, cannot motivate its relatively wealthy, cosmopolitan population to increase their number of children, despite substantial cash and lifestyle incentives. Norwegian women enjoy their current workplace options and overall opportunities.
Our own population remains stable because of immigration rather than a higher birth rate. Concerns about births now focus on too few rather than teenagers, single family homes, or other characteristics. These may motivate critics of abortion to push harder to end that health care option but the complicated public policy debate in the United States shows how intertwined immigration, economics, and social policy have become.
The list goes on in other places as worldwide population transformation first evident sixty years ago continues showing effects. Some of of the changes illustrate population restricting policies in places like Latin America or India while others reflect the common experience of women in the workplace having many more options.
In the end, the answer I offer Dale some thoughts but I particularly welcome your ideas on this question.
It strikes me that the decision to bear children—which women alone can do— is one that women around the world seem to weigh carefully, deliberately, and personally. Holding the decision close on whether to bring another life into the world is the most sacred of decisions anyone can make. That strikes me as a control issue indeed, one most women do not want to cede.
While most countries are not witnessing the front and center demand being made about reproductive rights in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, we are seeing more subtle reactions worldwide that aim for the same right to control decisions. Women are trying to achieve autonomy over their own bodies and choices. Many women want to feel they have control over the future in the most fundamental of ways, regardless where they live. It is a precarious policy challenge in some places while a more open debate in others but women hold the ultimate choice.
Women are half of the population of any country. They are indeed worried about the future for children, the sustainability of the planet, health care options, cultural norms, religious strictures, opportunities available not only to women but to future generations in an era of climate change and water scarcity and international instability and on and on. I realize many of you won’t agree with that but I am pretty confident that is the message women are sending, like it or not.
I am not implying in any way that these choices don’t have major consequences as they do. But the evidence is growing that women (and many men with whom they share their lives) simply do not, as the Chartr story Dale forwarded to me stated unequivocally “Most people [men and women, it would seem] that don’t want children…just don’t want them”, see them in their futures.
Is this selfish? Perhaps but is any more so than those who don’t want to pay taxes or differ on some other contentious public policy? Why does community good take on a greater importance here than elsewhere? Dale’s question is crucial as how does freedom, so highly cherished and fought to protect, differ from decisions on choice and autonomy? Aren’t they the flip sides of the same coin?
I welcome your thoughts on this topic or anything else we can do to expand measured, civil discussion. I do not have the answers but want to hear your thoughts. My points are to spur others to chime in.
Thank you for taking time to read this. Please feel free to circulate it.
Dale is a subscriber to this newsletter. I deeply appreciate subscribers helping advance my efforts to broaden our conversation as sole voices are insufficient to cover the panoply of topics our world confronts.
Be well and be safe. FIN
“Chartr: why aren’t we having babies?”, dailychartr.co, 13 October 2024.
Chelsea Dulaney, “Worldwide Efforts to Reverse the Baby Shortage are Falling Flat”, WallStreetJournal.com, 13 October 2024, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/birthrate-children-fertility-europe-perks-family-04aa13a0?mod=hp_featst_pos4
Jacob Funk Kierkegaard, “China’s population decline is getting close to irreversible”, Peterson Institute for International Economics, 18 January 2024, retrieved at https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-population-decline-getting-close-irreversible
“Russia’s birth rate, 1950-2024”, macrotrends.com, retrieved at https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/RUS/russia/birth-rate
“U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to Another Low”, Centers for Disease Control, 25 April 2024, retrieved https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/20240525.htm