Ed. note: Please welcome Vivia Chen back to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, “The Ex-Careerist,” here.
CONTRARY TO WHAT YOU’VE BEEN FORCED-FED by the likes of JD Vance, it’s not those career-obsessed cat ladies who are the culprits behind America’s decline in birthrates. The truth is that women simply are having fewer children, and there’s not much that will change that trend, short of enforced childbearing. (Let’s not think about that – yet.)
It’s happening not just in the U.S. but throughout the world. According to recent research from the United Nations, the average woman had five children in 1960; today that figure is 2.2 – the lowest number recorded thus far. And in the U.S., that number is even lower – 1.6 – and we probably haven’t hit bottom.
In every state the birthrate is falling, though New Jersey stands out for having the smallest decline. (Is New Jersey more conducive to baby-making?)
But what should really alarm American pro-natalists, reports The Economist, is where the birthrate is falling most sharply: Alaska, North Dakota, and Utah – states that have been historically the most fertile. “All told, states that had above average fertility rates in 2014 are responsible for more than 80% of the collapse in American birth rates over the past decade,” notes The Economist.
That means you can’t rely on women in the red states to pump out more babies. “Troublingly for such policymakers, the recent fall in birth rates is concentrated in rural parts of the country and places where people tend to have less education,” says The Economist. Even in a place like religious Utah, women aren’t producing babies like they used to. “Whereas in 2005 most women in Utah had their first child before the age of 25, today fewer than one in four do.”
So what’s causing this trend? The right will blame bad morals (again, cue the miserable, selfish career gal), while the left will point to the lack of government support for working parents.
What the U.S. offers in family support is paltry (woefully so, compared to other wealthy countries), but will better benefits fix the problem? It’s questionable. Even in countries with generous parental leave, subsidized child care, and free education and health care, birthrates remain stubbornly low. Finland, for example, offers all of the above, yet its birthrate hovers around 1.3.
There’s no single reason for this trend but I suspect women’s access to birth control, being active in the workforce (also connected to birth control, I think) and just having more autonomy than their mothers have a lot to do with it. So JD Vance can issue edicts until he turns purple (“I want more babies in the United States of America!” he hollered at an anti-abortion rally), but women will do what they want.
Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Do you?
Odds and Ends:
Americans strongly condemn adultery – in theory. According to Gallup, a whopping 89% say adultery is “morally wrong.” (Only 8% said it was OK, while the remainder weren’t sure.)
But that doesn’t mean Americans aren’t sinning. According to Techopedia, 16% of married individuals admit to cheating, though other sources put that figure at 20% to 40%. (There’s apparently no reliable figure, because, well, people lie about cheating.)
But the real kicker is that Americans top the league table of countries with the most cheaters, followed by Germany, the UK, Brazil, and France. How is it possible that Italy didn’t make that list?
This 94-year old won’t be pushed around by Trump. Remember how Trump insisted that Rupert Murdoch be deposed ASAP because he could drop dead any minute? (The prez is suing Murdoch for defamation for publishing a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that alleged Trump had sent Epstein a raunchy birthday card in 2003.)
Well, Murdoch won’t be sitting for any deposition unless he’s good and ready. He just struck a deal to give Trump “a sworn declaration describing his current health condition,” plus “regularly scheduled updates” about his health, that postpones his deposition until goodness knows when.
A personal coda. Cameron Stracher’s recent op-ed in New York Times, “I Helped Bury Stories About Trump. I Regret It,” stopped me in my tracks. I worked with Stracher at The American Lawyer in the early 2000s and liked him.
But in 2018, I learned that he was part of the legal machinery that buried unfavorable stories about Trump’s various sexual liaisons. At the time, he was general counsel of American Media, the owner of The National Enquirer. So I wrote a critical post (“The Lawyer as Pimp”) about lawyers who cleaned up after Trump, and I mentioned Stracher’s role. He didn’t take kindly to my post and threatened to sue me. But apparently, he had doubts all along. That’s a relief.
Subscribe to read more at The Ex-Careerist….
Vivia Chen writes “The Ex-Careerist” column on Substack where she unleashes her unvarnished views about the intersection of work, life, and politics. A former lawyer, she was an opinion columnist at Bloomberg Law and The American Lawyer. Subscribe to her Substack by clicking here:
The post Stop Blaming Career Women For The Falling Fertility Rate appeared first on Above the Law.
from Above the Law https://ift.tt/5VYbao4
via IFTTT