There is an article on the Daily Beast today about "Why the Choice to Be Childless is Bad for America."
For the record, I'm not disagreeing that birth rates being too low could be a bad thing - Japan is an extreme example of what happens when there are many more older, retired folk than young, working folk - but let's be real here.
The reason so many women are choosing to be childless is pretty darn obvious even if you just read who the people interviewed about being childfree were.
Women. They were all women.
Why is this significant? Because in spite of it being the year 2013, women are still expected to bear the greater burden of child-rearing in most cases. There are obviously exceptions, but usually it's the mother who is expected to work part time or quit to spend more time on caretaking. It's the mother who risks getting passed over for promotion if she's thinking of having kids. In their Germany example, it's the women being offered the incentives to have kids, because having a kid won't negatively affect a man's career in the same way, so he won't require those same incentives. His life probably won't change.
So, really, it isn't remotely surprising that there are a lot of women who are educated and driven who are also passing on having children, since it can be a career-killer.
If we want more women to start having kids instead of seeking career options, maybe make it, I don't know, a father bears an equal burden of childcare? I mean, in the families I know who have both parents working and both parents happy, they are equal in terms of chores and spending time with the kids. Neither had to put their career aside, neither has to go to work and then come home and work some more with chores and dinners and kids while the other parent is "too tired" to help out from working all day, apparently not realizing that their partner also spent the day working.
(My stepdad was like that. Drove me crazy, and my mom crazy. Yeah, you worked all day, but so did she, you idiot, and why should SHE have to then spend another couple of hours making dinner and cleaning up after dinner and doing laundry and cleaning up while you go out and have some beers with your friends? Are you serious?)
I mean, when realistically it looks like you can choose between 1) an equal partnership, free time (cleaning up takes way less time without kids), more money and 2) kids, career options/promotions lost, neverending workload between work and kids, it doesn't take a genius to realize why so many women are choosing to go childfree.
But it apparently takes a man to write an article on how bad it is?
I like how it was a man who wrote the article..
ReplyDeleteWhile I personally wouldn't mind staying home with the kids (despite being a feminist.. but I believe in the power of choice.. not being trapped at home, but being allowed to choose it.. or not to!), I do understand people who don't want that. (I think I only like the idea because I have deluded myself to think I could write *lol*)
Having kids definitely makes it harder to have career if you're a woman.
In Sweden it's probably a little bit easier than in other countries, but it's still not equal.
What I do like is that we get 12 months of parental leave, with the option of an additional 6 months at a lower rate. 3 months are dedicated to the father, and the mother can't have them. He has to use them.
The parents also get a bonus if they actually spend the parental leave 50/50. Encouraging a more equal parenting. Which I think is good.
Even so, most people expect the woman to stay at home.
Similarly it annoys me when people don't seem to be able to accept that not all women want children. I have a couple of friends who have never been interested in having a child, and they're always questioned by their peers. Why can't we just accept that having children is not everyone's dream?
Yes, exactly. I don't have any problem with a woman who chooses to be a stay-at-home mother, or who chooses to work part time, or who chooses to put off more responsibility at work because she wants more time for her kids. But the problem is that in so many of those cases, her job chooses for her, because obviously a woman would always choose her children over better pay and more responsibility, as if that is a measure of her love or worth.
DeleteCanada has "parental leave," as well, where the parents can split between the mother and the father. It is becoming more accepted, but it is still, unfortunately, harder for women than for men to be taken seriously if they're a parent. Workin' on it!