The quote appears in the New Yorker article, a magazine publisher known for it's leftish bent, in an article titled "The Case for Having Lots of Kids/In 'Hannah’s Children,' an economist and mother of eight interviews highly educated women with large families—and examines the reasons for America’s declining fertility rate."
As Pakaluk writes, “My subjects described their choice to have many children as a deliberate rejection of an autonomous, customized, self-regarding lifestyle in favor of a way of life intentionally limited by the demands of motherhood.”
Some readers might find Pakaluk and her subjects overly judgmental toward other women. Pakaluk explains that this isn’t her intention. “My full and real view is that women with much smaller families or no children at all may share the purposes, values, and virtues of the women I interviewed, even though life did not hand them the same opportunities,” she writes.... This is a group that the cat-lady discourse seems to miss: women who don’t have the families they dream of, whether because of infertility or financial struggles or because they haven’t found the right partner....
Pakaluk clearly thinks that, as a culture, it is good to encourage young women to have families. The problem is how.... Her suggestion? Religion.... Her subjects describe their trust in God as one of their primary motivations for having a kid, and then another and another....
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If you have responsibilities, then your actions have a name. Otherwise it's random shit and not free at all.
As someone who has worked in economics I can attest it is a profession where the nimble can academically justify any and all the positions they prefer….
The cat lady meme is misunderstood, mostly deliberately but also through ignorance: Cat ladies are a consequence of that last choice- not finding a suitable partner, not because the suitable partner has never entered your life but because your attitude is insufferable and/or you have never considered you have nothing of value to offer…
…in fact it is usually quite clear you’ve never considered the notion you need to have something to offer in a relationship.
I've got 2 grandkids now, and there are plans for at least one more, maybe 2 more. I also have friends with daughters that are unmarried, with no particular prospects, and getting to the age where grandchildren are becoming unlikely. It pains me to see to see their pain, and it can steer the conversation in odd directions as sensitive topics like these must be avoided like large potholes at high speeds. And of course, what does every grandparent want to talk about most? They are dear friends, and their daughter is kind and wonderful - but she's so religious that no man measures up. Ah........well. Hopefully she is able to reconcile with herself soon. I think the author has a very good point, church social settings show me that young families are getting into the groove with having more than a couple of kids, and their values are rooted in family life. This is not the case with the metrosexual Gen Z'ers I guess, and I would also point out, that urban settings might be cost-prohibitive for large families, certainly much more than suburban or rural ones.
Maybe women have created such an uneven playing field financially, that men simply aren't choosing to give them children, or even risk relationships with them.
Nah, couldn't be that. Women are never at fault and are incapable of admitting error.
Like the Shakers, I suppose the by-choice childless cat-lady demographic will ultimately sort themselves out of the gene pool.
Way back when I was a leader in freshmen orientation for college one of the recommendations for new students was get involved in an activity because the obligation forces you to structure your time and not be able to put off study time indefinitely, among other benefits.
Having kids is concrete evidence you believe both that your kids will have a future, as well as a belief in your own capacity to care for them.
I only have one child. We wanted more; in fact, it was the desire for more that led us down the path to discovering a serious medical issue before it became a fatal medical issue. So that part was good, but we still didn't get more children.
It would never occur to me that "childless cat lady" applied to people like my wife. It would never occur to me that it applied to anyone who was childless for any reason other than arrogant self-absorption.
"Pakaluk clearly thinks that, as a culture, it is good to encourage young women to have families. The problem is how."
I'll tell you what's not helping: Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
As long as this smiley glad hands elitism exists, it will draw young women to it like moths to a flame.
Her subjects describe their trust in God as one of their primary motivations for having a kid, and then another and another
I didn't like the dismissive tone - "having a kid, and then another and another." Of course, the writer is presumably writing in the Gorillas In the Mist vein, given the venue, so I wouldn't expect anything else.
But hey. Motherhood is a sacred calling, yes. It's also a down-and-dirty quotidian slog at times - lots of times, especially when the kids are certain ages. So one question, I suppose, is how to maintain that sense of vocation during those times when your children's haloes got left in their lockers at school and yours is in the dishwasher.
The Benedictines had a way: ora et labora, and make it a Rule. I didn't appreciate the wisdom of this approach until I was in the thick of it with my three plus work plus a traveling husband - one day my (Episcopal) priest and I had a very productive conversation about the (potentially) prayerful nature of all work as she was mucking out a storage closet in the church basement. My Rule is not as good as hers and I'm not as faithful at applying it, and of course my kids are out of the house now though two are still on the payroll, but I do try to keep that sense of prayerfulness in front of me.
In the spiritual Battle Royale between Benedict and pre-redemption Augustine, I seem to fight over the same ground a lot.
I don't doubt the explanation pointing to religion. My parents were religious, and it accounts for them having six kids, along with a culture in which they were surrounded by like-minded couples. Thank goodness for that. Problem is when the religion is not believed. It is getting harder and harder to persuade people that the good book contains any divine inspiration.
Religion is not the only reason for having a large family. Surround yourself with fellowship, with good company, with beloved people. We live in an age of loneliness; the antidote is right under your nose.
Good comment, Aggie. My wife and I have 4 grandkids - the 4th born this past May - and some of our old friends with married offspring have not experienced the joys that come with. And it is painful for them, very much so.
I give thanks to the Lord above for these blessings and pledge to do all I can in my remaining years to do right and good by them.
There was once a time when having sex led to the birth of children. Things changed . Once procreation became the subject of careful calculation, ,the large families became outliers.
There would have to be a radical change in the propaganda matrix for this to change. I don't expect that until after the nuclear war.
An underappreciated reason for our shrinking families is our mobile society--people who don't live where they grew up, who don't live near family, don't have the support system necessary to have lots of children. Parents are staved for the company of other adults. Daycare is crushingly expensive, but if you don't have parents or siblings nearby, you have few options.
The cultural moment in which the government can print endless money to satisfy the needs of all will surely end. At that point, the ancient value of family will surely be rediscovered.
It was more than careful calculation and large families becoming the exception. Women are incredibly status-obsessed and constantly jockeying with other women about what is fashionable. It wasn't just that large families became outliers, it was lots of other women started looking down their nose at those large families. They associated them with bumpkiness and boorishness, and ensuring that women that had them knew about it.
Women don't jockey for position the way men do. They create entire edifices of peer pressure and exclusion to establish what is and isn't popular.
The effect it has on women is astounding. Just look at what Sex & The City did to any entire generation.
I see Emma Green found a different way to employ the dishonest journalism trope "some say" which means, "I think this but want to put the words in someone else's mouth, and I'm too lazy to find actual quotes from actual people," which she frames as:
Some readers might find Pakaluk and her subjects overly judgmental toward other women.
"Some" and "might" are both weasel words that essentially boil down to Emma asserting a potential event without evidence. Ms. Green also starts with a quote from JD Vance, literally the opening sentence, setting the disapproving tone before she even introduces the book by Pakaluk. One does not have to be a disdainful snob to write for the New Yorker, but Emma Green has the pose down cold.
Readering, I've been delving into the question of religious belief a lot lately, because my religious practice has always been more reliable than my belief.
ISTM that our society used to have an expectation of religious practice (regardless of belief) - the vestiges are still present in our expectation that political figures will express belief and (except Trump! Yet another way, and definitely not my favorite, in which he has broken the mold) will make some habit of public worship, at least occasionally. From the start, you could be an atheist in American society but you'd be viewed as an eccentric.
But not since, what, the Sixties? Seventies? Whenever atheism started to become fashionable. And then the New Atheists came along and, for a while, convinced a lot of people, especially young ones, that you can base a moral code on "human flourishing" and have that be both sufficient and consistent across cultures. I think it's notable that even they have backed away from that proposition in the intervening years. When Dawkins calls himself a "cultural Christian," ISTM that adherents of atheism might want to examine their premises.
Anyway. There's a podcast, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief In God, that I've been enjoying on this topic.
My wife elected to be a homemaker. One time at a party, a woman said to her "I could never stay home and be a homemaker. I'd go crazy."
During the drive home, we were discussing the encounter. She said, as best as I can remember, "I am going crazy. But it's not all about the cost; it's also about the benefit. If going crazy at times is the cost of the joy and satisfaction I feel for and with the kids, it is a bargain."
In some circles, it may be difficult. In others, not so much.
Would the New Yorker have this same tone if the book primarily had been interviews with Muslim mothers who have large families?
What a great comment. Thanks.
Her subjects describe their trust in God as one of their primary motivations for having a kid, and then another and another....
Sounds like rightwing extremism.
The DOJ will investigate.
Children are our purpose. Worshipping women is second. Thus sayeth The Lord. Opops forgot we are all our own Lord, until death.
Oops forgot to be an existentialist.
"fertility" - LOL - another lie.
Abortion on demand is not a lack of fertility.
How is Generation Z supposed to afford a shitload of kids?? They can't. It's not like the are running farms.
The quote Althouse extracted for the headline is an excellent statement, one that amplifies yet elegantly refutes the tone taken by Emma Green's introduction and defensive asides. "The demands that save us from egoism and despair." Indeed. To have a greater purpose than serving oneself is a service to God and society in general.
WARNING! the future Belongs, to those who show up
I think the work from home lifestyle will help. Young families can more easily live close to their parents. The close-to or already retired parents can watch the new children during the day and save the new parents from the crippling cost of daycare.
Alternatively, parents (if they have work from anywhere jobs) can move to be close to their kids, when their kids start having children.
4 grandkids means; you are Just Treading Water..
2 grandkids means: you've ALREADY SUNK
yes! The future belongs to those who show up
The left doesn't want women to marry or have children because the absence of a husband and father makes women more reliant upon, and therefore more loyal to, the state. To discourage women from starting families, the left demonizes men as rapey tyrants and tries to characterize child-rearing as a form of soul-depleting, uncompensated menial labor.
Wanted, a more child-friendly lifestyle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
My wife is a highly educated woman who chose to have a large family. Personal religious belief did not play a role for her (she’s an atheist), but both she and I grew up in large, churchgoing families that no doubt provided the cultural framework for what we were attempting to emulate. The first time I traveled back to my hometown with five well-behaved, well-adjusted children, my aunt was astounded such a thing was possible without the strict religious upbringing she knew.
Apparently, somebody needs to write a book entitled: “Why Should We Eat?” Then the sequel: “Why Do We Shit?”
"Her subjects describe their trust in God as one of their primary motivations for having a kid, and then another and another"
Exactly, although not apparently what she may have really meant.
Christian sexual ethics are based on love (yes, your mileage may vary). Love overflows into Creation and requires other people to love (e.g., the Holy Trinity) since it is based on relationship. Procreation is part of Creation.
Secular sexual ethics are based on power (yes, your mileage may vary). Seeking power and control leads to isolation and loneliness since practicing Christian love means NOT seeking power and control. Procreation gets in the way of seeking power and control.
I have two young boys, and I said it several weeks ago that my wife and I (we both work) wouldn't be able to do what we do without the help of my wife's parents, who are legal permanent residents. Having the free, and most importantly, loving support of family as free childcare is worth its weight in gold.
The Chinese word for family is "家" (Jia), but to those who understand the ideogram, the top reticle means "house" and there are 7 strokes underneath it representing "7 generations".
"7 generations under one roof", because having that much help among multiple generations of your family is more valuable than an army of government tax-based assistance caring for new members most of the time.
I have close friends, childless, who live in an apartment complex where they suspect the people downstairs are running an unlicensed daycare - probably, they think, a co-op of the many Ukrainian families who have moved in over the past several years. There may not even be money changing hands.
When my mom went back to part-time work once my brother started first grade, we were latchkey kids for a couple of hours after school. The drill was to check in with our neighbor, get a snack, and play either inside or between our two houses until my mom got home. We lived in a suburb, which made it easier to do this, I suppose. Our own kids had a similar setup while I was running a summer day camp at the preschool I directed - my oldest was in charge but the neighbor, who has a work-from-home job, was in loco parentis. Also a suburb.
I used to like the band Rush. But "Subdivisions" is crap. My kids had a great time, as did their many friends with the "restless dreams of youth" that the "suburbs had no charms to soothe." They played in the creek and fished in the pond. They made up elaborate outdoor games. They roamed widely and got up to no good in minor ways. They were free, in ways that they would not, could not have been if we, their parents, had followed our personal whims and moved to a tony neighborhood with great restaurants and shops near the city center.
If you rewrite the post's headline to substitute "relationships" for "family obligations", you get Waldinger' and Schulz's "The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Study of Happiness". They are hot shot academics, very therapeutic-oriented (one considers himself a Buddhist) and probably very far culturally (and maybe politically) from the women in Pakaluk's book.
The left doesn't want women to marry or have children because the absence of a husband and father makes women more reliant upon, and therefore more loyal to, the state.
I stop short of believing that this is the INTENT, but I agree that it's the EFFECT. No matter how many women with a child or children who had an abortion for other than purely elective reasons the Harris campaign trots out.
My middle daughter, who was a Bernie Bro, had her first child at age 40, the same age as my mother when I was born. She tells us it has changed her life and loves being a mother. Her husband's parents are also ecstatic as they had given up on grandchildren. We rarely talk politics but I sense that has also changed.
"Her subjects describe their trust in God as one of their primary motivations for having a kid, and then another and another"
Exactly, althoug I recall it as my wife and I saying, over and over again, "OH GOD!" regarding our children.
I’m impressed.
I agree...the mobility of people is a big contributing factor. It means that you're less likely to have a good support system to help with the raising of children. Multi generational living is rare. If you are lucky enough, as I was, to have a community of friends who are also in the young parenthood stage, it is great to be able to pool resources. Help each other with chores, watching each other's children, picking up from day care and dropping off to school.
For two willing people, alone, to have larger families when it might require both adults to work....the process is daunting. Lots of other factors, but these two seem, to me, to be the major hurdles.
women who don’t have the families they dream of, whether because of infertility or financial struggles or because they haven’t found the right partner
Those problems have always existed and thus there have been women in that group throughout time. So the author seems to miss the forest for the trees. By saying these women struggle is a feint to refuse to address the proliferation of the people who DON'T have that issue.
Others have touched upon the problem. It is cultural - the elevation of the self through the women's liberation movement and the insertion of the state into the generational family dynamic. Who needs progeny when the state will take care of you? Everything this last 80 years or so has been a steady march to undermine the basic social structure in place for thousands of years. The major institutions in our life are almost universally anti-traditional family, many to the point of being contemptuous of the family itself, as if being a tradwife were a mortal sin. I remember not so long ago the contempt people had for any one with more than 2 children in tow and the derisive term of breeder for such women.
"Some readers might find Pakaluk and her subjects overly judgmental toward other women."
Oh what bullshit.
There's no more judgey a group of women than lefty Strong Independent Women who miss no opportunity to shit on traditional religious women, or women who want to just be moms and have a family. Then they whine about "single cat lady" jokes.
Althouse should have a tag for that.
My wife and I are one and done, and the one shows no sign of being the procreative kind at the age of 38.
Our parents were conventionally religious when we were growing up, and we both had multiple siblings (me, 3 bros; her, 4) but neither of us inherited any piety or the strong desire for a lot of kids.
So it goes.
I enjoy it when I misread a post and get to spend a few seconds in a pleasant state of cognitive dissonance. Trying to fit the described book into the form of a Chuck Palahniuk novel was amusing.
When the twins were born last April they took our grandchild count up to four. Both sons deliberately married devout Christian women who are giving their children a strong moral compass.
"published by Regnery, 'a publishing house known for its rightward bent'"
Because all the others have a lefty bent. And to mention that would be embarrassing to those all those others.
She's right. My oldest is an adult and I have a toddler. I can't imagine feeling more fulfilled working a conventional spreadsheet job. But I never would have discovered this without religion.
"Maybe what ails us is not our freedom per se, but something we mistake for freedom—being detached from family obligations, which are actually the demands that save us from egoism and despair."
Writes Catherine Pakaluk, author of book titled
Last Sunday I was driving my youngest daughter and 2 of her friends to youth group and the topic of life regrets came up and then the topic pivoted to the opposite. Of the parent of 6 children, I said, and can say now that these children are the best choices I ever made (barring marrying the blogger spouse), hands down.
My first two children sometimes tease that I should have stopped with them so they could enjoy more of the wealth I would have had, had I stopped. My wealth is in them and the next 4, not in trips to Tahiti or fancy cars.
"...but both she and I grew up in large, churchgoing families that no doubt provided the cultural framework for what we were attempting to emulate."
"...my aunt was astounded such a thing was possible without the strict religious upbringing she knew."
Discuss
Well put Ted.
The sciemtific religious want to break your bonds, steel your electrons, and sequester your carbon, in the pursuit of the God construct. There can be only one in a hierarchical or universal sense.
You are unduly harsh on the victims of feminism.
If you don't have religion as a motivation for having children, evolution can perform the same function.
Evolution's engine is the drive to have children and raise them to adulthood. It shapes everything we think and want and do. That's why having children is usually the ultimate achievement and satisfaction for humans. Pretty much everything else of value has value because it contributes to this.
Historically, "maiden aunts" would always be regarded with some sympathy and would usually of their own volition assist their sisters or wider family with childcare or other responsibilities.
Now, the maiden aunts lash out at any woman, family or not, for not being as unhappy as they are. Misery loves company.
The cat-lady discourse is about incels but also about volcels, dysfunctional characters, em-pathetic green deals, Diversity, and the Pro-Choice religion.
how did homesteading on 160 acres work in create communities?
…and bludgeon their competition with a baseball bat until they bleed out…
I will say this to that.
You had a post yesterday about Gen Z men returning to the Church.
.
I'll add a post from a couple of days ago in Legal Insurrection: Gen Z is quitting higher ed for trade schools.
There is something going on across the country. And it seems that Gen Z, one of those generations of Yoots I've always moaned about, are onto something. It seems they may be about to do the hard work, the heavy lifting to remake America. It may be they are looking at the present, looking at their possible future, and deciding maybe they'd better also check out what worked in the past. They are coming to solutions steeped in some tradition, perhaps religion, something greater than themselves. But...they are also considering the realities of the world and the concept of learning a trade that one can make a living at. Not gathering massive personal debt to buy a degree or two in things the world has no need for, and has not asked for.
It just may be a sign, albeit an early and relatively small one, of a generation seeing the picture accurately and understanding it is not as presented to them.
Ms. Pakaluk and Harrison Butker have a lot in common in their views.Not that there is anything wrong with those views.
It turns out the culture of family is more powerful and transmissible than Satan-talk. Who knew?
Astute.
Dbp, my DIL has run a marketing business from home for 20 years and raised three great kids at the same time. Her sister helped when they were little and she was still single. My son is a fireman and his hours helped. Still, she did it.
I can see how religion and/or the belief in God would help make parents decide to keep having more children. It would give comfort to those who might worry about life’s unforeseen circumstances, a death or illness of a spouse, loss of a job, loss of a grandparent who helped watch the children. It’s a risk that isn’t overwhelmingly frightening when one has a higher power to depend on for solace and help.
I had 4 children, yes me, the lefty here. My son died in 2019 at age 35. So I have three living children, I have 5 wonderful grandchildren. I know other families who are lefties who have husbands and multiple children and grandchildren . I don’t know one childless cat lady. There are a few who comment here, actually. There was a commenter here (that has died a couple years ago) that would often suggest the 19th amendment should be repealed and how abortion should be illegal. He never married, had no children. There have been other commenters here who lament the population decline and upon further discussion, they mention they had no children.
I look at the families of the Quiver Full religion and now how years later their children as adults are writing books about their extremely dysfunctional home life. Having so many children that their children can’t get their attention because there are just too many of them.
The most successful families I’ve known have used common sense and reality to make decisions about the number of children they have.
I will say as a heartening note, that from what I've been seeing on other parts of the internet, younger folks are at least starting to, and may even in general see dating apps and hookup culture as a bad thing.
I'm from a family of eight children. If feminism is about power, the power of having eight loving, fiercely loyal, adult children late in life is difficult to overestimate. What was surrendered for 20-some years is returned in the next 30-some.
Life Of Julia-ism permanently surrenders that power and then howls about unequal outcomes.
As a creed, I think so much of doctrinaire feminism leans on the notion that you'll never be older than you are today.
"Common sense" means leftism. I have five and sanity does help.
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