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"The threat of population decline," writes Michelle Goldberg at the American Prospect, "is one of the best arguments yet for socialized day care, family leave, and other dreamy Scandinavian-style policies.... I get why liberals have shied away from this discussion, since there's so many uncomfortable issues involved. But they really shouldn't, because the only solutions to the problem are liberal ones!"
I wrote a Reason feature on this issue for anyone who is interested in sociological and economic analysis of natalist policy. But for now I'll just say: Liberals ought to be very, very cautious about engaging natalist rhetoric in the promotion of social welfare policies. The claim that Western Civilization is on the brink of extinction might help sell universal daycare or any other policy that can be cast as an incentive to motherhood, but population alarmism lends credence to a number of wildly illiberal arguments. Once you've bought into the idea that a nation-state must defend its existence through native population growth, you've come uncomfortably close to arguing that a particular subset of women has a patriotic responsibility to reproduce. You've also legitimized some legislator's attempt to bribe women into using their bodies in a particular way. There is a reason that the producers of Demographic Winter are traditionalist Christians.
Gradual population decline of the kind we are seeing in Germany and Japan is, I think, manageable. But even if we insist on addressing population decline as some kind of crisis, it's not at all clear that liberal policies like paid family leave are going to turn the tide. The most obvious difference we see between developed countries with relatively high birth rates and developed countries with relatively low birthrates is cultural. Swedes and Americans are relatively more likely than, say, Singaporeans or Koreans, to believe that work and motherhood are compatible. The countries with the lowest birth rates in the world are countries in which childless women are integrated into the workforce but women with children are expected to stay home.
Such attitudes are distinct from redistributional social welfare policies. It may be that Sweden's welfare state is responsible for its near-replacement birth rate, but the evidence for this is not terribly compelling. In order to frame the story this way one needs to cast the high-fertility United States as an anomalous outlier rather than part of the general, culture-driven trend.
I am sympathetic to Goldberg in that population alarmism might be a useful way to argue for policies I happen to support; more open borders, for example. But there are better arguments for a humane immigration policy, and there are better arguments for an expansive welfare state.
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Jessica, you're right—TLC must be salivating at the thought of signing a reality TV show deal with the mother of the octuplets. (Incidentally, the word octuplets appears in neither my Word spell checker nor in the dictionary Slate uses, though the dictionary does include octuple as an adjective, noun, and verb.) I'd imagine that the mother herself isn't Quiverfull: Couples who follow the principles of the Quiverfull movement vow to accept as many children as God gives them, whether that's 20 kids or four or none, and they reject both contraception and fertility treatments as attempts to interfere with the lord's plan. Perhaps she's a Quiverfull groupie?
I wish I could put a finger on why I and so many others find this story fascinating. Maybe it's because this is one of those places where the right and the left ends of the social spectrum are in agreement. Conservative bloggers have called the mother irresponsible and speculated about what assistant programs she and her children could be enrolled in or eligible for. Liberal bloggers worry about everything from whether the kids will get enough attention to what the family's carbon footprint will be. I don't think I've seen anyone celebrating the "miracle" of this birth—the responses I've encountered have expressed only horror.
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What was she thinking, Bonnie? Maybe she was thinking that she'd get a reality TV show. While there's always been some interest in massively fertile women, it seems that in the past few years, more and more of these moms-of-multiples have been getting media attention. First there's Kate Gosselin, who has a set of sextuplets and a set of twins, as well as her own TLC show, Jon & Kate Plus 8. Then there's her network-mate Michelle Duggar (pictured at left), who has given birth to 18 children and even allowed TLC to film her giving birth to number 18.
I've seen a few episodes of both Jon & Kate and the Duggars' show, and they're outrageously banal. Entire episodes are constructed around a single task: Jon makes dinner! Jinger Duggar gets her driver's license! (Side note: All 18 of the Dugger children have names that begin with J). And it makes me wonder why these families are getting more than their 15 minutes of fame. Is it merely the freak show aspect of having so many babies? Or is it something else, something that reinforces the idea that fertility is a woman's greatest virtue? Considering the fact that the Duggars are part of an evangelical movement called Quiverfull, which eschews birth control and promotes the idea that a woman's primary function is to be a mother, I'd say it's the latter.
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Michelle Duggar gave birth to her 18th child this week. The megamom is something of an icon in homeschooling and Quiverfull circles, but whenever I see her in the news, on the Today show, or on her family's numerous reality-TV shows and specials, I find myself frustrated.
I don't yet and may never have kids, but I do like them and respect the decision to have a big family if you're up to the challenge. But the Duggars bug, primarily because of their sanctimony. They talk about being debt-free as if it's a moral issue and brag about caring for the large family thanks to living frugally, but they also generate income from rental properties and, no doubt, from their TV shows and their recently released book. It seems dishonest to suggest that everyone can afford their lifestyle if they shop in thrift stores and buy in bulk when that's not what, presumably, actually keeps the Duggars financially afloat. Furthermore, while I respect their right to hold incredibly conservative views on dating (no kissing before marriage! handholding only when engaged!), gender roles, and childbearing, I hate the reverence for Michelle Duggar as some sort of supermom. According to their TV show, weaned babies are handed off to older children, usually the teenage girls, who cook all the food, do the laundry, and do the cleaning in addition to taking care of their "buddies." It seems that they do most of the work while their mother collects the glory. The girls say that they enjoy their lives and that people who think they're too sheltered should "get over it," but I wonder how many options they truly have.
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