Raising children has become a status competition.
Are falling birthrates good news? Among credentialed elites the answer is often “yes.” Declining fertility is viewed not as a problem but as a sign of progress. Fewer children, the thinking goes, means less strain on the planet, fewer constraints on women and more room for self-expression.
Some cite the “cost of living” as a barrier to child-rearing. But the real cost today is social rather than material.
Babies have always required food, shelter and love. What’s changed is the definition of successful parenthood. In past generations, families raised children according to what they could afford. Today, parenting is judged according to what cultural elites consider acceptable. This shift matters more than people realize.
In the 1960s, even well-off families lived in ways that would now seem modest. Think of the world depicted in “Mad Men.” Don Draper is a high-earning advertising executive. Yet his living arrangement wouldn’t strike anyone today as lavish. In the pilot episode, his children Sally and Bobby share a bedroom. The family owns one car. No one claims a good childhood requires constant activity, a private room for every child or elite educational planning starting in kindergarten.
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Rob Henderson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He has a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge and is the best-selling author of “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.”
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