“If more places were ‘a great place to raise kids,’ then we would see more people having and raising more kids.”
I said that dozens of times on my book tour for Alienated America, my book about the collapse of community in the United States. Monica Hesse, a liberal feminist columnist at the Washington Post, made that same claim on the national level in her final column before delivering her baby, which the Washington Post tweeted out again yesterday.
“For many years I did not have children because, in policies and practices, the United States is hell for mothers.”
I agree that the U.S. could be and should be a better place to be a mother (And a father! We’re involved in the whole making and raising of babies too!) I also hold out the hope that making the U.S. a better place to raise kids will boost the birthrate, as Hesse suggests.
I’m just not sure that nice notion is true. I think Hesse also has too cramped a view of what it takes to make the U.S. a better place for mothers.
First, consider the national comparisons. Hesse’s argument is that the U.S. birthrate is low because the U.S. is a bad place to have and raise kids, and to prove the U.S. is a bad place to have and raise kids, she compares us unfavorably to the U.K., Finland, Sweden, Germany, South Korea, Israel, Mexico, Chile, and Europe as a whole.
Notably, South Korea has the lowest total fertility rate of any country on earth — below one child per woman of childbearing age. Also, the U.K., Finland, Sweden, Germany, and Europe as a whole have lower birthrates than the U.S. So does Chile. Of Hesse’s more mother-friendly nations, only Israel and Mexico have higher birthrates than the U.S.
Brookings Institution economist Melissa Kearney pointed today to this flaw in Hesse’s argument.
From the Nordic report: “Over the past decade or so, there has been a decline in fertility in almost all Nordic countries and regions, with quite steep declines in some.”
The reduction in fertility is widespread. Hard to explain it w/ US specific policies (or lack thereof).
— Melissa S. Kearney (@kearney_melissa) August 11, 2021
But there’s a deeper point here, which is that while Hesse rightly detects the ways in which the U.S. falls short on supporting mothers, fathers, and children, she seems to see only one possible type of support (government support) and she actively belittles any other type of support.
She mocks the idea of arranging familial daycare as “berating” for not having “arranged for Grandma to watch the baby.” (Some grandmas work full time, after all.)
Hesse also excoriates America for letting new moms leave the hospital with “no codified support.” That’s true, but she never allows for the possibility that some support can be noncodified. Maybe America’s problem, and why we have fewer babies than Mexico and Israel, is because so many people lack the noncodified support that comes from friendships, neighborhoods, church groups, and book clubs.
Hesse mocks the idea of “arranged child-care swaps with imaginary neighbors.” She states that what America demands is “Have children and never expect an iota of help from anyone who is not a blood relative.”
First of all, why are “relatives” cast in such a negative light throughout this column? Second of all, again, what she’s lamenting is partly the lack of friends and community.
This total reliance on the state shows up throughout. She states that among developed economies “the United States is the only one that does not provide paid parental leave,” which is false unless she means “paid leave required by national legislation.” An estimated 35% of U.S. workers have paid paternal leave.
Yes, the U.S. needs to become a better place to raise kids. No, a bigger Finland-style government safety net isn’t the way.
