Human Progress

Chelsea Follett: Today’s podcast guest is Stephanie Murray, a public policy researcher turned freelance journalist and contributing writer for the Atlantic, who also has a Substack called Family Stuff that rounds up the latest research on demography, family policy, and so on. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, and many other outlets. And we’re going to discuss her recent piece in the Dispatch. Are We Willing to Admit that We Need Parents? That tackles the very timely issue of declining fertility rates and what she considers the most annoying aspects of birth rate discourse. But first, how are you, Stephanie?

Stephanie Murray: I’m very well. Happy to be here.

Chelsea Follett: All right, so let’s set the stage first here for anyone not aware of this, although I think regular podcast listeners probably are. In many places, fertility rates are falling and in fact hitting record lows. Practically all rich countries and many developing countries, such as India, Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam, the list goes on, are now below the replacement fertility rate. That is the rate needed to sustain the population at its current level and keep it from shrinking, meaning that the world population will, since it’s soon going to be below replacement at the world level as well, eventually age and shrink. And some countries are already seeing their populations age and decline. Falling birth rates have put major global economies on the path toward what the McKinsey Global Institute calls population collapse. And so given these trends, more and more of the discourse has turned to this issue of fertility rates or birth rates and the many different possible effects of these trends, some positive, some very challenging. What are the possible causes of the decline? What, if anything, could be done about it? If should anything be done about it? And your piece discusses an aspect of this topic that I find really interesting.

Chelsea Follett: So let’s walk through the piece. You begin with an anecdote about how a little over a year ago, you were conducting an interview about the possible causes of fertility decline. So tell me what happened?

Stephanie Murray: Oh, yeah. So I frequently I write on this topic with some frequency. And so I interview, I follow research on it very closely, I would say, for somebody who doesn’t do research on it, let’s just put it that way. And so I often interview people about demographers, other researchers. There’s lots of people who research fertility falling economists, sociologists, so on and so forth. And so I was interviewing somebody, a demographer, about a certain possible consequence of it, I mean, cause of fertility decline. And at one point in the interview, she kind of stopped and was like, she just, she wanted to clarify that the issue here is not that oh, people are having fewer kids than too few kids. She was like, the problem is that they’re having fewer kids than they want.

Stephanie Murray: And the way she was saying it was sort of, she wanted to be clear that she wasn’t saying, hey, we need to be messing with the birth rate for some sort of, like, concern about national interests. She was trying to say, like, hey, we… The reason we care about this is that people want more kids. And so that’s why we should care. People want more kids and they’re not having them. And so that’s why… That’s the justification for us being sort of preoccupied with this question. And, well the whole piece is sort of, I think, pushing back on that slightly because, which is a difficult thing to do because, of course, well, yeah, I agree that people not having kids that they would really like to have is a problem. And I agree with concerns about… I think there are good reasons that we don’t want to go near the idea that, oh, yeah, we should be trying to get people to have kids that they don’t want right? Nobody wants to go near that. And I also don’t want to go near that. So it’s a touchy issue. But, yeah, that’s what happened.

Chelsea Follett: No, absolutely. You mentioned a couple of different reasons that people tend to characterize the falling birth rate issue this way as primarily a concern if people are not meeting their fertility goals and avoiding any broader discussion about possible implications of the lower birth rate itself. And I think that you identify a really important tension because you have this hypothetical that you put forward of, what if everyone just decided they didn’t want to have any children at all and the birth rate dropped to zero. Now they’d be meeting their goals right?

Chelsea Follett: But almost everyone, even people who are not at all alarmist about falling birth rates, and you’re not an alarmist on this either, would agree that at that point, that is a concern. So it’s difficult because for people who are devoted to a free society where people can determine the course of their own life, it can feel like admitting that there could be any problem related to this is almost like a call for action, which could, of course, go disastrously wrong. But there are a couple of different reasons that you mention as to why people might be hesitant to talk about this. Could you elaborate a bit more about why you see that these people chafe against admitting that these trends could be potentially problematic at all. In some cases they might fear, like I was saying, that a problem could lend support to some truly terrible attempted solutions. And you put forward a couple of other reasons?

Stephanie Murray: Sure. So just to be clear, you’re asking, like, why is it that they tend to be a little bit cagey about admitting the actual consequences here?

Chelsea Follett: Yes.

Stephanie Murray: Well, I think there’s sort of the obvious one, which is that, I mean, there are countries where population control efforts have become incredibly coercive. And I think that we… I just think… Well, I certainly, that is a major and legitimate concern. Getting the state involved in sort of getting people to have children or to stop having children, I think raises massive. I mean, there’s a legitimate threat there that that civil liberties could get sort of cast away.

Stephanie Murray: And so I don’t know. That’s sort of the main one. I think that, I think that’s probably the primary reason that people get uncomfortable because they, for very good reason, they don’t want to. They don’t… If we… I think there’s a sense that if we catastrophize about low fertility, then maybe it will justify in some people’s minds, taking really drastic and violating government steps. And that that’s a legitimate concern. That’s a totally legitimate concern. The other one is that I think that people sometimes sense that you’re not going to succeed in getting people to actually have children if you’re just saying, hey, have kids for the economy. Save the economy. And that’s why you should devote your life to raising this child. Slow, oh, no, GDP growth is gonna, like, slow down or whatever. I think there’s and I think there’s some legitimacy to that, to be completely honest, too. But yeah, just sort of feeling like, well it’s not gonna work. If you just sort of like, talk about the fact that we need parents. That’s not why people have kids. And I… Well, I sort of push back on both of those points, I guess, in different ways.

Chelsea Follett: Yeah, you do, and we’ll explore that in a moment. But I do agree with you and I think that it’s a very important point that there is legitimacy to these concerns. I’ve written in the past about government efforts to control the population both upwards and downwards, and that has resulted in some truly heinous human rights abuses throughout history. And so I understand people’s hesitancy to even suggest that this might be a problem because there are some people who, whenever they hear a problem being described, assume that there has to be a government based solution. And that can go to some very dark places. But you also discuss people who think this is a problem, and yet for basically PR reasons, as you’re saying, marketing reasons, realize that it might be more persuasive to talk about how fulfilling it is to have children instead of how society itself sort of needs children. You make a really interesting… Yes?

Stephanie Murray: Well, I was just going to say I do think that there’s, there’s ’cause one thing that I kind of, I, in the piece, I sort of try and trace out a couple different ways that I think this sort of caginess, I think that’s how I call it manifests because I… It’s not just that people are like, well, low birth rates aren’t a problem. It’s like they, a lot of times people will acknowledge that it’s a problem, but then they sort of redefine it, I would say. So one is that I think sometimes people are like, oh, yeah, no, there, there are going to be economic challenges of low fertility rate. But that’s the problem is with our economic system. Let’s just change the pension system, right? You know, it’s so reliant on new workers arriving, right. And so let’s just change the economic system, right? Or as we said at the beginning of this, there’s… People will say it’s a problem only in so far as, well, people are having fewer kids than they like.

Stephanie Murray: And then there’s this other way that I find honestly probably the most annoying, where people basically seem to be aware that there are huge economic challenges of low fertility. But then when it comes to actually sort of saying, okay, what do we do about this? How do we convince people to have kids? How do we encourage people to have kids? They do it in this very individualistic way, almost sort of like selling parenthood as the experience of parenthood. They sort of just tuck away the fact that we actually really need parents and they focus on, well, you’ll be so happy. Oh, my gosh. Like it’s so fulfilling. And yeah, I think that, I actually think that that tendency to sort of sell the cuddly sort of like warm fuzzies of parenthood while kind of ignoring what parents are doing for society is sort of… Well I think it’s disingenuous. And I also think it can actually undermine the goal here…

Chelsea Follett: Yeah, there are a lot of good points there too. And I am sympathetic to people who want to talk about economic reforms, especially if pension system, for example, is unsustainable. I think you do need to talk about those economic reforms too. But as you say, you can also discuss birth rates. There is no reason you can’t discuss both of those things. So we also don’t want to assume that this is definitely a problem. Obviously, people have different views on this, but you say that even the Norwegian population economist. I hope I’m saying his name right. Vegard Skirbekk, the author of a book called Decline and Prosper, Changing Global Birth Rates and The Advantages of Fewer Children, admits that below certain levels of fertility problems will arise. And it is simply a fact that for a society to function, a substantial share of its members do need to raise children. Could you elaborate on that?

Stephanie Murray: Oh, yeah. So, sure. So, yeah, I think that there are definitely ways that we can adapt our economic system to low fertility. I think where I get a little bit bothered is that people are hesitant to acknowledge that there are limitations to that approach. So sometimes you get this sense that people are like, well, this whole necessity of having kids thing, that’s just a byproduct of capitalism.

Stephanie Murray: And if we just changed our economic system, then we wouldn’t need endless growth that is propped up by a high birth rate. Okay, maybe there’s some truth to that. Maybe we can tweak our pension system. Maybe we can become less reliant on GDP growth. I don’t know, whatever you want to do. But it’s just sort of a fact of human existence that you need new people to sort of take over the economy as the rest of us get older and we become too feeble to sort of work and do that kind of thing. So there are and I mentioned, I linked to some reporting that I’ve done from demographers and economists who sort of push back on the idea that, well, anything below replacement level fertility is going to cause these massive issues. There are differing views on that. Some people think that actually we could have anything above 1.5 of a fertility rate and we could do that for quite a while. And with immigration and with some other technological advancement and rising education levels and some other things, we’ll be fine.

Stephanie Murray: Actually, in that piece, I remember one demographer that I spoke to basically described it as like, hey, we are becoming sort of more productive per capita as time goes on. And so each generation sort of has, quote, unquote, broader shoulders, right. To kind of stand on and I think there’s really some truth to that. Like we are more productive than we used to be certainly for much of human history. So there’s some real truth to that in the sense that like, maybe we can do more or do as much as we are doing with fewer people. Maybe the shrinking ratio of working age people to retired folks isn’t as big of a problem as we’re making it out to be right? Great. That’s true. But there are limitations to that.

Stephanie Murray: You can’t, with zero kids, there’s nothing you can do to change, to fix a pension system if you have no workers. If nobody’s having kids. So everybody, every demographer, every economist, including Dr. Skirbekk, I don’t know how to say his name either, but he basically, everybody agrees that even though we can maybe go below replacement for a while, eventually the birth rate will be too low. There has to be sort of a limp, like at some point it does become a problem. Where it becomes a problem, how long it become has to go on before it’s a problem, we don’t know. Lots of room for disagreement there. But eventually it becomes a problem. That was really the point I was trying to make.

Chelsea Follett: And I think that’s a very reasonable approach. As we’ve already discussed, it can be dangerous to be too alarmist on this issue and potentially promote some very negative policy solutions that can infringe upon human freedom. But at the same time, it’s all right to acknowledge that there can be real challenges that come about as a result of this slower pace of innovation, possibly a poorer and less innovative society. There are things we could do such as use AI and new technologies to hopefully maintain our standard of living even with a shrinking population. But eventually there are some limits to that. So let’s talk about some of these psychological reasons that people choose to have fewer children. You make a very good point that in the past, parents captured more of the fruits of their children’s labor. They raised kids who worked often for them on farms and in their trades and then cared for them in old age. And today you point out, most of us are raising kids who will spend the majority of their lives working for someone else. In other words, modern economies have a disconnect between who raises the children and who then benefits from what those children do as adults.

Chelsea Follett: And so in a very literal sense, you write, society needs your kids more than you do could you elaborate on that point?

Stephanie Murray: Yeah, I mean for a lot of human history parents were in some sense, the employers, right. They raised, they grow, they grew their own laborers. That’s what they were doing they were steep economic incentives to raising kids especially for when we’re talking about kind of like the agricultural period. Having laborers was pretty much essential. And I mean, it could kind of be brutal on a personal level. If you read sort of the history of the necessity of raising children it often ended marriage matches. Well, I don’t want to say often, but it did.

Stephanie Murray: If you couldn’t bear children, well, your husband might put you aside and then find somebody else who can raise children, because bear children so that the family has the necessary laborers. And so there were just these steep incentives to have children. And that’s been radically altered by the emergence of labor markets and the way that our economy functions. So parents still do a lot of the work of raising children, but then they’re raising kids who are going to work for somebody else for the most part. Now I also think that this is an area where you can overstate it. Because there are still, you know, practical reasons to have children. Basically everywhere in the world where you’re actually studying these things, elder care still is done in huge chunks of it are done informally by family members, especially adult children.

Stephanie Murray: And so there’s some data showing that people who don’t have like a spouse or children of their own, they have bigger gaps in their elder care because they’re… We still rely on our adult children to care for us. That’s just a… That’s a thing that happens. Now I think that’s a much less reliable approach. There’s no guarantee in a liberal society. This is kind of how liberalism works. When you grow up, nobody can tell you what to do, including your parents. That’s sort of the idea. And that isn’t how it worked for a lot of human history. And so I do think capitalism, labor markets, sort of liberalism in general as a set of values has altered the relationship between parents and their adult children in a way that really fundamentally changes the economics of child rearing. It changes the incentives of child rearing. And that’s sort of what I was trying to point out, right.

Chelsea Follett: Right and I do think it is possible to oversell the importance of economic considerations. Obviously, it is important that historically children were a net positive economically, and today they tend to cost parents more than they get back. But people who focus only on the economic considerations, the cost of housing and so forth, tend to downplay the other factors, the psychological or cultural factors at play here. And to date, no amount of government spending anywhere in the world has ever successfully restored sub replacement birth rates to replacement levels. Many governments are trying and have tried, and they spend a lot of money, typically for very lackluster results or no noticeable results. Now you cite in your piece the interesting case of Israel, which is the only wealthy developed country today that does have an above replacement fertility rate. Now, it does have a lot of family spending, but many countries that spend far more on family and fertility policies have lower birth rates. Other people point to the fact that the population is very religious and religiosity is highly correlated with having more children, but birth rates, even for the secular population in that country are much higher than in the rest of the developed world.

Chelsea Follett: And so it’s an interesting case where it doesn’t seem like the government spending or the religiosity alone can really explain what’s going on. And you cite a piece, you link to it, that says, in my conversations with Israelis on the subject, they do not speak of having children as merely a lifestyle choice or a question of personal preference, though such considerations obviously play a major role in their thinking. There is also an unmistakable sense that having children is about something bigger than each of them individually. And you spend a lot of your piece talking about this other factor in people’s decisions on whether or not to have children or how many children to have. This factor of feeling that having children is good for your society’s future is pro social. Could you tell me a bit about that?

Stephanie Murray: Sure. Yeah. So, okay, so I think the reason that I focused so much on… The reason that I wrote the piece, right, is that when I think that when people sort of pitch, are sort of cagey about admitting, hey, we need parents, right? Or more subtly, they kind of pitch parenthood only as this sort of like, thing for you that makes you feel good. And you’ll be it’s your ticket to happiness, right? You’ll, you will feel better as a human if you do it right. Without kind of acknowledging this like, societal role that parents play. I think in some ways they kind of undersell parenthood. It’s sort of a wonky line of reasoning that I’m making here. But they, I actually think they undermine the case for parenthood. And my point, I guess my logic there is that I think that one of the reasons that parenthood is rewarding. Well, I guess I should say the societal value of parenthood is one of the reasons that it’s rewarding. That’s certainly true for me. Just in a general sense. I’ve always thought that it’s always been obvious to me that parenthood, motherhood is really socially valuable and a good way of sort of like contributing to your society.

Stephanie Murray: That is one of the things that makes it rewarding to me. And so I think when we sort of pretend like, oh, no, no, no, this is about you and you being happy, right? And let’s not point out that like this is really actually an important thing that we need people to do. You’re kind of robbing parents of a source of satisfaction. You’re taking away a source of satisfaction that is common to a lot of different types of work. We don’t take this approach for a lot of different things. If we pretended, I say in the piece that if we pretended that if we tried to recruit people to the army, right? But just sort of were like, but it doesn’t really matter how many people sign up. This is about you getting to do what you, you always wanted to hold a gun, remember, you wanted that. And so we want to make sure you have the opportunity to like ride in a tank or whatever it is, right. If that’s how we approached it, that would be, I mean, insulting.

Stephanie Murray: I really don’t think that anybody would sign up. I think a huge motivating factor for being sort of drawn to that kind of work is that you know you’re doing something that society needs that you are serving your country in a major way. And I think that’s true. It’s not just for joining the army, it’s true for nurses. And there is research about this, right? Joining government, right. There’s some interesting research about why do people who could make a lot of money in tech, why do they take on a tech job in government where they make less money. It has a lot to do with these pro social motivations. They feel like they are doing a good thing. True with nursing, true with government, true with the military. People are motivated to serve their communities, right? And so basically I’m just saying why are we, why are we downplaying that? Why are we, why are we so scared of saying, hey, maybe you should consider having kids because we need parents. Parents matter, right? To me, that’s an obvious selling point for parenthood. So I guess that’s what I meant.

Chelsea Follett: How do you think that relates to this view that’s been propagated for several decades now that the world is actually very overpopulated and having kids is essentially selfish and actively harmful even to society. So, for example, a couple years ago, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry received an award from a group called Population Matters for choosing to limit themselves to two children. That was seen as worthy of an award. And it seems like if there’s evidence that pro-social motivation plays a significant role in drawing people into all sorts of different actions and careers and choices, if there’s a lot of messaging out there that the pro-social thing to do, the thing that is really best for society is to have either few or no children. Do you think that kind of messaging might affect people’s decision making?

Stephanie Murray: Well, I think so. I mean… So, okay. I guess I should say at some point in this interview that I don’t know that anybody knows how to actually reliably increase the birth rate. I think I tend to be pretty open minded about that. I’m not convinced that economic incentives are unrelated. I think it will probably involve a lot of different things. How we think about parenthood, how we support it, correcting some of the disincentives to have children. I think it’s going to be a lot harder than there’s not going to be one like a silver bullet. I definitely don’t think that. But you know what I followed this topic too closely to say anything with certainty. That’s what I want to get out there. But do I think when you’re, when we’re thinking about like, so taking that as a given that we don’t really know how to do this, I think that, you know, do I think that the sort of way we think about the social value of parenthood and having children likely matters in how people go about deciding whether or not they are going to have kids.

Stephanie Murray: Absolutely. I think that to me that seems sort of obvious. I actually it’s funny that you mentioned the Meghan Markle thing because when I was, a couple years ago at this point, I went on a hike with a woman… I had signed up for this like half marathon hike and ended up sort of hiking it with this total stranger basically. And we were talking about fertility rates. You can’t go on a half marathon hike with me unless without me talking about fertility at some point. That’s pretty much inevitable. So we were chatting and she at one point said to me she had two kids. But she said to me that she felt selfish for having kids, right? She felt like she was basically harming the planet and sort of taking she had to take maternity leave. Had to take maternity leave, right. In order. And so she was slowing down work, right. And she was sort of, she felt genuinely like she was doing a selfish thing, drawing resources away from the planet, from her workplace in order for her to get the experience of parenthood. That’s literally how she felt about it.

Stephanie Murray: I think if that is how you view parenthood as a selfish thing. I think it makes it a lot harder to justify the decision. I think then, you’re going to be a little bit cagier about it. You’re gonna be more hesitant to actually sort of dive into it. And I think you’ll probably, if you have reservations on a personal level where you’re sort of like, well, would I be a good mother? If you think about it from the standpoint that it’s just a selfish thing to do, well, then if you’ve got personal reservations, then you might just sort of be like, well, you know, I’m not sure I’m really up to it. And also it seems like a selfish thing to do. So it may, it sort of tips the scales, I think, in a way that yeah, it makes it harder to actually decide to have kids. And it makes people feel like they have to justify the decision in all these sorts of ways, which I think that’s not good.

Chelsea Follett: All right. I would argue that it is sort of misinformation. It seems to be a very widespread idea that there is overpopulation, even though actually birth rates are going down, collapsing in many countries. This idea that too many people will cause a strain on resources, when actually people come up with all sorts of ideas to use resources more wisely. We find new resources, we find ways to recycle and use less of the ones that we have. People themselves are, to use Julian Simon’s phrase, the ultimate resource. My colleague Marian Tupy’s book Superabundance goes into this in much more detail. But a lot of research has shown that as the population has reached new highs, we’ve had lower rates of poverty, less hunger. And so population growth is absolutely compatible with high living standards. It’s not this crisis that many people claim it is. And yet that messaging seems to have real effects on many people’s decision making process, which is quite sad. If you believe, as I do, that messaging is not accurate?

Stephanie Murray: Yeah, no, I mean, I’m completely with you there. I don’t think, I think we, there was a big misinformation campaign there and I think that it. I don’t, do I think that it’s having that, that specifically is the cause of fertility decline? No, but clearly it affects some people’s, but how people are approaching the decision and not in a good way. So yeah, I’m with you.

Chelsea Follett: Absolutely. At the same time this topic is very, very tricky for those of us who are devoted to what you call liberal values, a free society, essentially. Because you don’t want the government telling people how to live their lives, but to try to in the as an individual, a private act, or a parent or an educator just telling people what you believe to be the truth on this matter, that actually more people generate more ideas, they’re good for innovation, all things being equal, a bigger population of free people, it leads to a wealthier society. Getting that message out there I think is important. And I really love the last paragraph of your piece. It’s what made me want to do this interview. I think it really encapsulates a very important message. You say those of us who want to reverse falling fertility while preserving the values of a liberal society have a tricky task ahead. We’ve got to hold two truths at once. That no one ought to be coerced into parenthood and that we will all suffer if no one raises kids. That may seem like an impossible line to walk, and yet we walk versions of it all the time.

Chelsea Follett: I don’t think there’s anyone in the world that would hesitate to admit that we need doctors. And yet most of us would agree that no one should be coerced into medical school. In other words, acknowledging the necessity of parents while respecting individuals rights. Not to become one is really just a matter of applying the same logic to parenting that we do to every other path in life. And that is just beautifully put. Could you.

Stephanie Murray: Thank you.

Chelsea Follett: Expound on that?

Stephanie Murray: Oh, yeah I guess, yeah I don’t think it’s as, it is true. These are two different points that I think most people can agree are really important. Well, basically the first point everybody does agree. We don’t want people to be coerced into parenthood. I don’t think the, basically the whole piece was saying we can’t allow that concern to make us overlook this other point, which is that we need parents, right? They provide, they are doing a service in society and society can’t function without them. So we have to be willing to hold both of them at the same time. And while I think people just have this impulse that that’s not possible, but that, but we do this all the time with other things. That was my only point. It’s just sort of like this is actually the way we think about most other types of work. Nobody thinks I mean, well, yeah, if you’re going with the military example, you know, most people think that national security is important, right? But most people oppose like conscription, right?

Stephanie Murray: Most people want a volunteer army, right? And there’s data on that. Like that’s true, right. Same with, I mean, it’s just true of basically any line of work. We don’t like forcing people to do things, but that doesn’t stop us from acknowledging that like, well, society can’t function without doctors, right? Society can’t function without teachers. We know that. We don’t hesitate to admit that. And so, I don’t know, I think that that’s sort of a hopefully way to think about this, right? We do this all the time. We can do this. We can hold these things at the same time. We can I don’t know. I think so. I think that this isn’t as radical an idea as maybe it feels.

Chelsea Follett: I agree with you that this is not a particularly radical proposal. You’re basically just suggesting that people voluntarily give a bit more social recognition to parenthood. And you write that all around you, you can see that parents, and mothers in particular, are desperate for some recognition that the work they are undertaking is valuable not just for themselves or their children, but for the world. So you’re really just advocating a voluntary cultural shift toward giving a bit more social recognition to a group that often feels undervalued. And I know that you said that you don’t think there’s, you know, any one thing that is a silver bullet, obviously, but do you think that more social recognition again voluntarily undertaken, could even shift the culture toward higher birth rates like they see in we gave the example of Israel. But in any community where there is a much higher valuation of parents, it just seems logical that you would end up with more people making that decision?

Stephanie Murray: I think so. I think so. I think so, as somebody who grew up. If we’re talking about my personal experience here, my entire life has felt a little bit weird because I’ve always sort of been like, yeah, obviously, like, motherhood is really, really important. Parenthood is really, really important. But then I constantly felt like the culture was sort of telling me otherwise, if that makes sense. Where it sort of felt like, well you shouldn’t get married and have kids right after college, right? That would be ridiculous, right? Because you should do something with your life. And it’s sort of like, well, having kids is doing something right? You know what I’m saying? So there’s lots of ways that this manifests, but I think that we do. I don’t know, we don’t consider it. There are lots of ways that we kind of denigrate motherhood, parenthood, and just sort of think of it in this sort of, like, I don’t know, kind of low way where it’s sort of something where it’s like, yeah, you can do it if you want to, right? But, like, ultimately, if that’s the only thing you’re doing, I mean, come on, you know, like, don’t you want to live a little? Don’t you want to do contribute to the world, really?

Stephanie Murray: Don’t you want to, like, use your skills? Like, I think sometimes we treat it as almost like a waste of somebody’s skills and talents, right? Which again, never made any sense to me. But, like, it is sort of a thing that. It’s an idea that I think has some cultural legs, right? So I think that definitely affects how you approach it. If you feel like everybody is thinking less of you because you decided to devote your sort of talents, your skills, your education to parenthood. And maybe that affected your other career decisions. Maybe you didn’t lean as hard into something else because you wanted to devote some time to raising kids. I don’t know.

 

Stephanie Murray: I think psychologically that can be very difficult and at the very least, make people hesitate before they actually go into parenthood. So, yeah I think if we could, you know, maybe this lines up with that last paragraph. If we thought more about the work of parenthood in the way that we think about other work. You know, if we just sort of acknowledged that it like other lots of types of work is really valuable, right? And nobody should be forced to do it. But like, it’s a really cool way of contributing to society, then I don’t know, maybe people would be more motivated or less hesitant to actually go into that line of work. I think so but you know.

Chelsea Follett: At the very least, letting people know that again, all things being equal, a larger population of free people, you know, the more the merrier, it actually leads to a wealthier, more innovative society. At the very least, that makes people better informed. Obviously, they can choose to do whatever they want from that point on. But I think it’s even more than simply this idea that parenthood is not particularly valuable. In many cases, as we already discussed, it’s seen as actively harmful or negative. A lot of people in polling claim that the reason that they don’t want children or aren’t planning to have as many children is because of eco-anxiety. Concern about the planet and climate change is a problem, but obviously, if we have more minds working on solutions to that problem, that leads to a more hopeful future. At least to me that’s obvious. But many people do seem to have this idea that people themselves are very harmful in the extreme. People like Paul Ehrlich, he’s still on the case that human beings are essentially cancer cells and they can’t just keep expanding the population and that it’s better to have no children or fewer children for society.

Stephanie Murray: Yeah, I mean, I, one of the responses that I got, I’m so far from thinking that way that it’s like, sometimes you have to remember that that is a thing…

Chelsea Follett: It’s surprisingly prevalent, you too.

Stephanie Murray: No I do think that’s a thing. Like I got one of the funniest. It’s not funny, but, like, I got an email response about this piece, and the person was like, well, the flaw in your article is that you’re assuming that kids grow up and contribute to society. And I was like… And then he went on about how basically making this case that it’s like, oh, these, like, most of these people are just sort of like a drag on society. I just don’t think that that is borne out in any way, you know? Yes. Are there people who have very troubled childhoods or whatever it is, and they grow, criminals exist, bad people exist. Of course I definitely don’t think that’s most people. I think most people are contributing to their societies and communities in various ways. One of them is that they’re raising kids. So, yes, I think to the extent that people. Now, sometimes I find I wonder about some of the polling about people’s reasons for not having kids. Is it that they really believe they’re really concerned about climate change? And that’s the main reason, or are they citing that as a reason because that feels like sort of a socially understandable one that they can, you know, I don’t know. I think there’s probably.

Stephanie Murray: People use all sorts of ways to sort of like, justify their decisions. But to the extent that it is like what the woman that I talked, that I told you about, I genuinely think she felt that having kids was selfish and it factored into how she was approaching the decision. So I think people’s beliefs about the work that they are doing, parenthood or not, matters. And so if we’re feeding into this idea, as you said, that like, oh, you know, wow, you’re bringing a human into this world that is just going to be a drain on society just so that you can snuggle a baby for a couple of years. If that’s to the extent that that’s how people feel about it, right? And that thought is in their brains, that’s not good. So we should correct that misinformation at the very least.

Chelsea Follett: No, absolutely. And I think that you’re right that in some of these cases that may not be the actual reason that someone doesn’t want children, but the fact that they go to that explanation because it sounds more pro-social and they’re hoping to sort of get social recognition by citing that as their rationale is interesting because it gets back to this need for social recognition that everyone has and that you discuss in this piece as a very powerful motivator of human action. And so if right now many people believe that the thing that will get them social recognition is to say that they’re not having children for the greater good is interesting because that is the prevalent human society. But if you turn that around and you made people better informed about the actual results of having a growing population that we’ve seen in the world, maybe you could get people to realize that, oh, actually, maybe I’ll get more social recognition if I follow my heart and have more children instead of feeling selfish about that decision.

Stephanie Murray: Absolutely. And I would just like to say, I think the reverse end of this, like the other side of this coin of what you were just saying. Like, people feel like they can get social recognition for saying, hey, I’m not having kids because of climate change, right? I see that I can see in, among parents, they feel like they can’t say I’m having, I had kids because I think that’s a good thing to do. Right? They usually opt for, well, I just really wanted children, and I love kids and I like being around them. Usually they feel like they need to justify it in this very individualistic sort of frame. Like, I did this for me, not because I think this is a good thing to do. I want us to be able to get away from that. Like, I want. I. Like I said a couple times now, that sounds so crazy to me. Like, there’s so many parts of parenthood that I find really frustrating. And I didn’t have kids because I really enjoy holding babies. Although it is often wonderful to hold your kids. So much of the… What is rewarding about it to me is the sense that I’m doing a good thing.

Stephanie Murray: Like and that gives a sense of purpose, I think, to the frustrating or boring parts of it. So I want parents to be able to sort of feel like, yeah, I’m doing this because people, we need parents, we need people to raise kids and do it well. And that’s one reason that I was drawn to this work. I feel like we should if you certainly, if you can say, you know, hey, I’m a good person, look, I’m not having kids due to climate change, then on the other side, we should allow people to say, I’m having kids, because I think it’s a good way of contributing to society.

 

Chelsea Follett: Oh, I agree, absolutely. And if you look at the few populations in wealthy countries that do have high birth rates, often religious communities, for example, those are the populations that do give people a lot of positive messaging around children and say, this is something that is for the greater good. This adds more people to our community. This is a good thing. And they celebrate kids as a positive.

Stephanie Murray: You know, it’s funny that you… I just remembered the woman that I went on that half marathon hike with, she, who she seemed to really believe she had done a selfish thing. But she described she was somebody who, with her line of work, she’s done a lot of traveling. And she told me about one time she went to Jordan, I think it was. And she was so struck by what it was like to have a child there, because unlike in the UK, where I live, you know, sometimes you go into a coffee shop or something or and people are almost grown because they’re just sort of like, oh, baby here, right? You know, like, you brought your kids, they’re going to be disruptive. She said that it was so strange ’cause she would walk into like a coffee shop or a restaurant. And it felt like, like she had gifted them this child.

Stephanie Murray: They treated her differently. They felt like, like she felt she got this overwhelming sense that people were delighted that she had this child there and she didn’t even live there. And so I think the fact that that struck her so much that she sensed it is noteworthy. You know what I’m saying? I think it changes the felt experience of parenthood in a way that changes how you think about your decision.

Chelsea Follett: And the other thing to remember about social recognition is that it’s free. It doesn’t cost taxpayers a single dime. There’s not really any downside to people just voluntarily giving this kind of recognition to other people in their life if they believe that in fact falling birth rates are something that they want to do something about. It’s not really a high risk action to offer social recognition.

Stephanie Murray: Nor do I think that it’s necessarily like, incompatible with like, if you don’t want to have kids. You know, sometimes I find myself sort of being like, hey, if you don’t want to have kids, you should be really hoping that other people have kids. Because the only way that like this works is if other people have children. And so I, to me, I think if you’re. I don’t think in the same way that saying, hey, wow, thank you for being a nurse. I am so happy that we have nurses. That doesn’t… I don’t feel bad saying that because I’m not a nurse.

Stephanie Murray: And I think there’s sort of an application here to the whole parent, non-parent divide, where it’s sort of like non-parents, child free people, people who really don’t feel called to this. It doesn’t take anything away from your decisions to acknowledge that you need parents in your life. And I feel like people don’t believe that. But if you think about it again, if you sort of compare it to other types of work we… I don’t feel bad about myself for not being a nurse and I’m fully acknowledging that my life requires nurses and doctors. You know what I’m saying? So I think, I don’t know, there’s sort of like a… I don’t think it has to tip into sort of shaming people who don’t have kids, if that makes sense.

Chelsea Follett: No, absolutely. I think that might be one of the reasons that people are hesitant to talk about this. Like you wrote in your piece, it can feel icky to have a sort of any opinion on a decision that is extremely personal and it’s not right for everyone. And you don’t want to try to make everyone follow the same path. Just like you wouldn’t want everyone to be a nurse or everyone to be a teacher. Society needs people to fill all sorts of different roles. So, I mean how do you walk that line? What are your thoughts on this?

Stephanie Murray: I don’t know. I mean, I think, like I said, I think I think it’s… I tend to always sort of think about how we do. Like, maybe this isn’t relevant to this podcast, but I, sometimes I think the thing that bothers me the most about the way we think about parenthood is that we otherize it in a way we treat it so differently than everything else. And I think it’s actually a lot more similar to other types of work and other sort of like paths in life than we sort of almost put it on a pedestal in a weird way or we denigrate it. It’s sort of like it, but it’s definitely not something that we think of in sort of like ordinary terms. And that kind of bothers me. And so I, so in terms of walking that line, I just think, you know. Well, yeah, like we recognize that, okay. There are a lot of roles that need to be filled in society, right? And just because you are not filling all of them doesn’t mean that you’re failing society.

Stephanie Murray: You can acknowledge the necessity of all these other roles without sort of feeling like, well, I don’t know, like I’m not a doctor, I’m not a nurse. I feel bad about that because we need those, we literally, we, our brains are so far from thinking that way because we recognize that societies need all sorts. And so I, yeah, how we walk that line, I think we just sort of use other types of work as a model for how we think about this.

Stephanie Murray: You know, don’t, you know? Yeah, that’s, how I would do it. That’s how… That is how I do it. I just don’t, I genuinely don’t believe that, I know lots of like child free people. I grew up with a lot of religious extended family, right? Who didn’t have any children. This is, it always felt very normal to me that some people didn’t have kids because I grew up in a religious family. And it never seemed at all incompatible that, like, oh, well some people are nuns and some people are priests and they don’t have kids. And so that must mean either that parents don’t matter or that these people who aren’t raising kids are doing something wrong. That just… We don’t think about that. We don’t apply that logic. That’s not the logic we use for pretty much any other type of work. And so we shouldn’t with parenthood. That’s what I think. That’s how I would walk the line, I guess.

Chelsea Follett: No, absolutely. Pointing out that something someone is doing is valuable is not saying that what other people are doing is not valuable. And that is a sort of paranoid way to even conceptualize this whole topic. I agree with you. So we usually end this podcast with an optimistic note because there’s the Human Progress podcast. I’m curious what trends, if any, make you feel optimistic about the future of birth rates?

Stephanie Murray: Oh to be completely honest, like, even though obviously I was sort of saying the whole piece was to say here, are we willing to admit that we need parents? I actually think the fact that I was able to write the piece that people were receptive to it actually is, to a certain degree, like, it reflects what I’ve started to see as, like, this is. It’s kind of time. I think the world is ready to hear this, if that makes sense. I have noticed there are lots of people writing about the value of parenthood, the value of motherhood, the value of caregiving.

Stephanie Murray: Sort of people publishing lots of books about sort of like, hey, this is something that we’re kind of overlooking. So in some sense when I wrote this piece, are we willing to admit that we need parents? What makes me optimistic is that it kind of does feel like we’re on the cusp of being willing to admit that. Not in a catastrophizing way, in just sort of a hey, this is kind of important way. And so I think, yeah, I guess the fact that it feels like the answer to my question, my rhetorical question, might actually be, yes, we’re approaching yes, I think that’s what gives me hope. You know, there’s a reason I was able to publish this. There was a reason that it sort of resonated with people. And I think I don’t know. I think we’re moving in the right direction, I guess. I think that’s what gives me hope.

Chelsea Follett: That’s a great note to end on. Thank you so much for speaking with me, Stephanie. This has been a topic near and dear to my heart, and it has been a fascinating conversation.

Stephanie Murray: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was super fun.