by Lisa Hymas
Photo: streunna4 via FlickrI’ve been happy to see my recent posts on childfree living and population
growth spark discussion on topics too often avoided. We’ve had spirited conversations in the
comment threads on Grist and Grist’s Facebook
page, and that’s percolated out to Andrew Sullivan’s blog and the Guardian website,
among other spots. The latest
outlet to join the conversation is AOL
News, where reporter Dave Thier does a better job than most of putting the
issues into context. (Compare to MSNBC’s
Dylan Ratigan Show, which erroneously boiled down my message to
“Kids are killing the planet.” Never look to cable TV for
nuance.)
And the conversation has spread beyond the English-speaking
world via articles published in Italy and Brazil. My Italian and Portuguese language
skills are rusty, but from what Google
Translate tells me, these authors seem to understand “the advantages of a life led
without putting the light of little children.” (Or something like that. I welcome
further insight from our cosmopolitan readership.)
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Italians are receptive
to the GINK
message. Italy has one of the
lowest fertility rates in the world—1.32
births per woman. There’s lots
of hand-wringing over the graying populace in Italy and some other European
countries (see, for example, this article in today’s New York Times), and that’s an issue I’ll delve into in a later post.
For now, I want to point out one interesting factor that
contributes to low Italian birthrates, as described by Fred Pearce in his new
book The
Coming Population Crash—And Our Planet’s Surprising Future; Italy’s baby bust can be blamed in part on “the dysfunctional roles of the
state and church,” he writes. The
Vatican has tried hard to keep birth control out of women’s hands (Frances
Kissling reports on its efforts in a recent Mother
Jones article)—but even in Italy, the cradle of Catholicism,
that campaign is backfiring.
Pearce explains:
[The Catholic church and the
Italian government] both promote an old patriarchal ideal of large families in
which the wife stays at home. The
state denies any responsibility for child care or helping mothers into
work. The church, despite losing
its influence in the bedroom, retains power over the political climate and
public services. This, the demographers said, turns out to be a lethal
combination for baby making. Where
women are grabbing their new rights but men are not taking their new
responsibilities, the result is ultralow fertility. [Emphasis mine.]
Pearce compares this to the situation in more egalitarian Sweden, where the
fertility rate is 1.67
children per woman—“not at replacement levels, but not set to
demographic meltdown either.” He describes the situation of a woman named
Astrid who lives in Stockholm:
She got a year’s maternity leave
when each of her [two] children was born. She works a flexible thirty-hour week
and can put her children in a nursery at the office when she needs to. Her
partner, Sven, is adept at changing diapers and takes turns with the four a.m.
feeding. …
The Swedish lesson is that [in
European countries] where employers, the state, and men are more flexible,
national fertility rates are higher. …
A lot of this comes down to power,
says Scandinavia’s top demographer, Gosta Epsing-Andersen. These days, most
couples have a “bargaining process in order to reconcile employment and
child care.” Women who work, especially those with good jobs, can drive a
better bargain. They also have the pick of available men—choosing those who
will change a diaper as well as be good in bed. In Scandinavia, 85 percent of
the best-educated women have children, compared with only 60 percent in more
conservative and patriarchal Germany.
In short: You want more kids in your country? End entrenched
chauvinism and start supporting working moms.
This is, of course, just one piece of a complicated puzzle. In the developing world, it’s been demonstrated time and again that more rights and opportunities for women lead to lower fertility rates. More to come in future posts about how all of these pieces fit together.
Related Links:
How green are the ‘childless by choice’?
Birth-control opponents greenwash their message
50 years after the Pill and this is the best we can do?
