By Annie Galvin Producer, Opinion Audio |
When I returned to work this fall after giving birth to my first child, I ran headlong into the near-impossible math of balancing career, parenting and self-care in a country with a "workist" culture and paltry family policies.
Though I always imagined having two kids to give each of them a chance at the close relationship I have with my brother — he was "Man of Honor" in my wedding and I the "Best Ma'am" in his — I knew the logistics would only get harder with a second. How do parents corral two kids through the action-packed gauntlet between day care pickup, dinner and bedtime? Despite my frantic TikTok searches for "2 under 2 evening routine," I cannot fathom actually pulling it off.
On the Ezra Klein Show this week, we're featuring two episodes examining why my shrunken sense of possibility is becoming a norm across much of the world. Fertility rates are falling, in some cases below replacement rates, even in countries like Sweden and Japan that have invested far more in family-support policies than the United States has. What's behind this cross-cultural decline in births? Can generous work-family policies enable people to feel like they can realistically have larger families?
On our first episode, demographer Jennifer D. Sciubba, author of "8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World," examines this trend across the globe and what it could imply for the future of our societies. Then Caitlyn Collins, author of "Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving," zooms in on the "lifeworlds" of parenthood in the United States and Sweden: the mix of policies, institutions and cultural norms that affect people's experience of raising children.
Ultimately, as Ezra and his guests discuss, the problem may not be the fertility rate itself. Rather, we've created a problem of stifled desire: American families want more children than they end up having. Perhaps we've become "pro-child" but "anti-children": Parents devote so much time and energy to optimizing a single kid's life that the effort feels difficult to replicate. Until policy and parenting culture become more forgiving, families may continue to shrink — whether people want them to or not.
Listen to the episodes:
Continue reading the main storyHere's what we're focusing on today:
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyWe hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
Games Here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle and Spelling Bee. If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com.
If you have questions about your Times account, delivery problems or other issues, visit our Help Page or contact The Times.
Continue reading the main story
No comments:
Post a Comment