Shared Parenting, Part II
As I’ve been talking to people about getting knocked up and what this means in terms of getting married and my career, I’ve found myself saying rather astonishing things, like, “I’m not that concerned about my career. It’ll be there no matter what I decide to do.” Similarly, while my partner and I are a couple, I’m not concerned about getting married because I know he is going to be involved with our child and in my life no matter what our official status is. Both of these things are big changes in American society which are turning out to have huge and mostly positive effects on families and fertility rates.
I write in Slackonomics about how educated, middle class Generation X parents are having more children than similarly situated baby-boomers, and in fact are nudging up the fertility rate here in the US not seen since the 1960s. I explain this in my book — and so does yesterday’s Times magazine — in a somewhat astonishing and counter-intuitive way.
Professional American middle class couples are more open to flexible gender roles, as I noted in a previous blog post about shared parenting, which make it easier and more attractive for professional women to have more children than previous generations. While fertility rates were dropping among the more educated and professional classes for many decades, that changed with Generation X as strict rules about who does what in the household have loosened considerably, and as post-Boomer men have become more equal partners in child-rearing even when the marriage or partnership dissolves. So getting married and having kids is a whole lot more attractive for women who now have more options about what to do with their lives. (A spate of Gen X fatherhood books attests to how Xers have brought shared parenting into the mainstream; see Neal Pollack’s book, Alternadad, as one example).
What’s more, the Times magazine piece adds another interesting dimension to the American fertility puzzle.
In an article titled, No Babies? by Russell Shorto (author of one of the best modern narrative history books ever written, The Island at the Center of the World) first confirms what I write in my book: The more traditional the society, the less likely professional women are to get married and raise a family. And because traditional societies don’t accept women doing it on their own, either, fertility rates have dropped to unprecedentedly low levels. But where gender roles are more flexible, fertility rates are up.
While Shorto relied on demographers and sociologists to puzzle this out, I found economists who had come to the same conclusion. As I write in my book, Shelly Lundberg and Robert A. Pollak report that, as a direct result of shared parenting and household chores, professional American Gen X women are having more children than almost anywhere else in the developed world.
Here is where Shorto makes an additional observation, however. Fertility rates are even higher in the US than “liberated” European cultures due in part to the flexibility of the American economy. While European countries provide state subsidies for having children,
the American system seems to make up for it in other ways. As Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania writes: ‘In general, women are deterred from having children when the economic cost — in the form of lower lifetime wages — is too high. Compared to other high-income countries, this cost is diminished by an American labor market that allows more flexible work hours and makes it easier to leave and then re-enter the labor force.’ An American woman might choose to suspend her career for three or five years to raise a family, expecting to be able to resume working; that happens far less easily in Europe.”
So when liberal-minded Americans lament that Europe is so much more progressive when it comes to supporting families and children, there may just be another side to the story. When the labor market is highly regulated and protected, there is less flexibility and more need for state subsidy to families. When the labor market is less secure but more flexible, educated professional women can more easily tailor their careers around family obligations and child-rearing. At the same time, conservative-minded Americans who lament the demise of traditional family values should take note that more flexible gender roles actually STRENGTHEN the family and facilitate child-rearing.
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[...] Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction, which will be published in a few days, writes on her blog about the effect getting “knocked up” (her term, not mine) has had on her life. So far, [...]
lisa
Just for fun, here is an exchange that took place on the above website:
Lisa Chamberlain, author of Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction, which will be published in a few days, writes on her blog about the effect getting “knocked up” (her term, not mine) has had on her life. So far, not much. She doesn’t feel any pressing need to marry the boyfriend who knocked her up (like so very many others today, alas) and doesn’t think the baby is going to affect her career all that much. Okay, stop laughing, all you mothers out there. You see, Ms. Chamberlain is a member of Generation X, which is far superior to those stupid Baby Boomers (you know, the ones who for the most part did think it was important to get married before they got knocked up - or at least before they started showing) in that Gen X couples practice Shared Parenting, that is, Gen X guys aren’t hamstrung by outmoded ideas about gender roles, and they really do half of everything house and kid related, fifty-fifty, share and share alike. Personally, I can’t wait to read Ms. Chamberlain’s blog a year or so from now to see how her boyfriend is doing in the fifty-fifty department.
Comments 4
1. Lisa Chamberlain wrote:
Thanks for reading my blog! I do appreciate it. However, just a few notes of clarification. I didn’t say having a child would have no effect on my career. It’s’ just that I finally got to a point where I wasn’t hand-wringing about it. I’ve experienced quite a few ups and downs with my career having had no children at all! So I have a little faith that my career isn’t going to just go away as if I have done nothing for the last 20 years. Do I expect bumps in the road? Hell yes. That’s the Gen X/Slackonomics experience. No evidence it’ll change now.
More importantly, however, I carefully avoided saying that “shared parenting” meant 50-50. That’s not my expectation. Life is a lot messier and more complex, and the more flexible everyone is, the happier we will all be. Having said that, my partner has two smart and beautiful daughters whom he loves very much and co-parents with his ex-wife. So I have pretty concrete evidence that he’ll be a pretty fantastic dad!
Posted 01 Jul 2008 at 11:53 pm
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2. Brigette Russell wrote:
Thanks for reading and commenting. Glad the perfect 50-50 wasn’t your expectation, since it’s pretty unrealistic. I read a NY Times article online somewhere recently about shared parenting, and some of those couples were pretty hard core about insisting that EVERYTHING had to be right down the middle. Seemed a bit obsessive to me. You’re right that flexible is better.
Hope your pregnancy is an easy one. I’m always sick the first trimester, and then miserable again in the third. It’s ghastly, but it’s all worth it when you finally bring that baby home from the hospital.
Posted 02 Jul 2008 at 3:19 am ¶
3. Bev wrote:
I’m glad she expects bumps in the road. Little does she know that they won’t be speed bumps, but what will seem like enormous mountains. As those of us who are currently parents know, it is really easy to comment on what you THINK it’s going to be like. The reality is always different. (And yes, Lisa, you can sit and say, “Oh, I know it will be different.” No you don’t, you won’t know until it is upon you) My husband is a wonderful father, and I consider him a co-parent, as well as just an overall great. But not on any given day are our contributions 50-50, or even 60-40, or even 70-30….you get the picture. And I married this man when our first child was six months old.
I’m interested to see what Lisa has to say six months after her baby is here, and then at two years, and then again at ten years. I do wish her all the best. The easy part is having the baby, the hardest thing you will ever do is raise it.
Posted 04 Jul 2008 at 12:05 pm ¶
4. Lisa Chamberlain wrote:
Thanks for reminding me why I’ve (mostly) stayed away from blogging about my personal life! From now on, I’ll just stick to talking with my family, friends and acquaintances, many of whom have kids and say it’s difficult of course, but have lots of positive things to say as well. People ranting on blogs, however, seem to be another species. I don’t know what I’ll be saying in six months or two years, but it won’t be a rant on a blog!
Posted 06 Jul 2008 at 3:56 pm ¶