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Saturday, March 17, 2012

On having or not having children

Last night, we had the pleasure of sharing a a delicious last-minute dinner with our friends Joel and Crista. Being in a very similar place in life - young, married professionals with no kids, able to meet up at a day's notice - we slowly wandered into a conversation about the dilemmas of starting a family.

Like for so many people our age, the decision whether to have children is weighed by a huge disconnect between the family model we know and the world in which we live.

We grew up in families where both parents worked, but the mother either gave up her job when the kids were little, or continued to work part-time with some loss to her career. Women made large gains in equality in the workplace, but it was still assumed that the woman would naturally carry most of the responsibility for making a home and raising children. This is the model that we know from experience, and I've blogged before about the residual effect that it has on my expectations of myself as a wife.

But for a variety of reasons, this model can no longer be taken for granted because for many families, it simply no longer works. We live in a world where the economy is increasingly indifferent to the physical strength of men. The skills and abilities required in today's workplace - like emotional intelligence and the ability to work well with people - are predominantly female attributes. There is strong evidence that "the modern economy is becoming a place where women hold the cards" - women already get the majority of Bachelor's degrees, hold the majority of jobs in the US, and dominate in 13 of the 15 job types predicted to grow the most in the next decade.

We see this shift among the families we know - it is often the woman who has the more lucrative degree, gets the better job, and makes more money than the man. All this has profound implications for family life.

As it often happens, the shift in the economy coincides with a shift in prevailing attitudes. It's been interesting to observe this change in very different families we know - conservative and liberal, in Poland and America, both religious and not. It is no longer assumed that the woman is the automatic caregiver for her children, and we see many mothers continue their very successful careers while fathers scale back on work and take a much more active role in raising the kids. While it is hard for some at first, this new arrangement is no longer raising eyebrows like it used it.

This is nothing new. For example, at a time in ancient Mesopotamia when women were in charge of the fields and gardens, the society was a matriarchy and worshiped female gods. Then the means of producing food changed with the invention of the plough. The plough was much heavier and gave men the advantage over women in economic production, and it was right around the time when it was adopted that Mesopotamian society shifted towards patriarchy, with male priests and gods. It is crazy to think that differences in the status of women to this day are tied to whether their ancestors tilled the land with a hoe or the plough. We are now seeing a reverse shift - when the economy begins to favor women, women gain in freedom and social prominence.

Now, I would be wrong to claim that the model I grew up with no longer works for anybody. It works rather well for many women and my close friends who do a beautiful job at motherhood. But there is an important difference with the past - the decision for the woman to stay at home or scale back on work is not automatic, but the outcome of a mutual understanding between the partners. It is no longer assumed that it is mainly the woman's job to nurture the children - how that is arranged depends on a mutual decision.

So where does that leave us? We face the task of reaching a mutually satisfying understanding about how our family is going to work for two professionals who both find great fulfillment in our jobs. Is it possible to strike such an agreement in the 21st century? In the next post, I will talk about the many reasons why it's extremely hard. In the next one after that, I will try to explain how it might be possible. Meanwhile, the thoughts and comments of our mysterious seven readers will be much appreciated.

4 comments:

  1. what say you to peeps that can have kids..and then decide not to?

    i enjoy reading your blog. thanks for your thoughts.

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  2. great post marta! It's fun watching you guys plot out these next steps in your life! All I know so far, is that watching another human being that you have made develop personality and preferences is a supremely satisfying, challenging, mysterious experience.

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  3. It's amazing how much control over our lives we have, how much we can plan and decide and prepare for. And I think that I think so because I think (haha) I know many people, including myself and my man, who would be great parents if they accidetally got pregnant, but won't (at least for the time being) reach a conscious decision to become parents. As for me, my mind doesn't see any great value in making more people. Some people argue that there are so many messed up families that if you're slightly normal you should have kids to populate Earth with decent persons - but well, unless you talk your friends into doing the same thing, your kid is doomed to spend his life in the company of the said messed-up people's children, and how could you do that to your daughter or son? And so on ;-)

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  4. Great thoughts... Psb, most of the people I know who would be great parents are a lot like you - thinking about the realities around them too deeply to take the plunge. Yet there is something in us that wants to leave a positive imprint on those who come after us, whether our own kids or the kids of others. Perhaps one way out is to re-think how we define "family". Civic identity no longer defined in tribal terms; maybe familial identity shouldn't either?

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