So, I read Dr. Claudia Goldin’s latest drop, The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility: The Role of Mismatch. Goldin, for my little nuggets in training (that’s what I’m calling Goldin’s fanbase) is a Nobel-prize winning economist who’s been studying fertility trends.
To sum it up for my babies without time to take this dank nug to the face (that’s what I’m calling reading her papers cover-to-cover) – it’s the phones and the men.
Here’s what I want to harp on today. I honestly don’t know whether we… I was going to say “as a society.” Actually, this applies to all humans. We’re likely not prepared to accept the tradeoffs required to regain replacement rate fertility.
People have reacted to her “dads versus duds” framing.
I’d argue that the situation is actually even worse. She probably agrees with me, even if she has too much sense to say it out loud.
Basically, her case is that solving the fertility crisis will require either a lot more feminism, or a lot less.
Not getting married and not having kids has never been a more universally available or attractive option for women than it is today. Men either need to make marriage and childbearing more attractive for women or be ready to use more state violence against women. Men can either increase their contribution to the household domestic labor and care work or force women at gunpoint into marrying them and having their kids.
Let’s talk about how, for a very large percentage of women, marrying a man and having his kids has never been a particularly attractive option.
That’s why they had to force us to do it.
Here were a woman’s options until about 1970:
Become a servant
Whore
Enter a convent
Notice the lack of “normal job.”
Of the three, sex work probably has the best best-case scenarios and the worst worst-case. But none of these options are or ever were particularly easy or good, on average.
How do we know they sucked?
Because women who can work a normal job very rarely choose one of these three options. And normal jobs, for those who don’t know, suck.
Also, there’s a run on nuns. As many have pointed out, it’s skyrocketed tuition at Catholic schools.
Don’t even get me started on finding a good servant.
Prostitution, aka the world’s oldest profession, has never been successfully abolished anywhere. Safe to say that it’s slightly less context-dependant than nunship or servitude. Still, the best way to get women out of sex work always has been “better alternatives.” In 1790s London, when women had three options, around 2–4% of adult women turned tricks. Today far less than one percent of lady Londoners are “of the night.”
What does this tell us about marriage to men?
Here’s an analogy. We know Malaria sucks from the medical literature. It could kill you within 24 hours. Another clue is what people would do to avoid it. They used to take Quinine preventatively before visiting malaria-infested regions. The very common side effects ranged from headaches and hearing loss to severe bleeding and kidney damage.
Similarly, the fact that so many women chose whoring, servitude, and nunnery over marriage says a lot about what they saw and expected it to be like.
The ugly truth is that there has always been a percentage of men who are not worth marrying (or having kids with).
Don’t miss the “percentage” part. For those of you with reading comprehension deficits (who just so happen to be disproportionately young and male) I’m literally saying “not all men.”
This is Goldin’s point when she writes “dads vs duds.” Not all men are created equal, in terms of being good husbands and fathers.
Sex work and “traditional” marriage (but I repeat myself) (I use quotes here because it’s not actually traditional) are higher variance occupations than nunnery or servitude because men (being half the population) are so high variance as employers.
Some men are incredible husbands and fathers. They split the burden of earning, housework, and caretaking to create the most happiness, harmony, and prosperity for the whole family. These are Goldin’s “dads.” Where they are more common, average fertility rates are higher. (Her last major paper only looked at developed nations. This latest paper also looks at the developing world.)
Most men, however, are “duds.” They want a wife who’s thoroughly modern when it comes to her income, but completely traditional when it comes to the household division of labor, as Soraya Chemaly just pointed out with recent survey data.
And who could blame them? It’s a great deal, if you can get it.
The problem for fertility (and hetero marriage) is that it’s not a great deal for the woman. See: Marriage is for men. And a lot of women have noticed this. See: Women, not men, are saying no to dating (and marriage).
What I’d add is that heterosexual marriage (and thus fertility, as the two are still tightly linked) faces more than mere “duds.” In Goldin’s analysis, duds just haven’t fully gotten with the feminist division of labor program. They’re selfish, lazy, and entitled. (They’re also coerced into masculinity, but that’s another post.)
In addition, and worse, a lot of these men also actively hate and abuse their wives and children.
Learn more:
Unfortunately, bad men are responsible for a very large percentage of the total fertility rate.
How do we know this?
A huge percentage of the fertility rate drop is explained by falling rates of teen pregnancy.
Guess who impregnates a teenager? In most cases, an adult rapist.
Another, related huge percentage of the fertility rate drop is explained by falling rates of accidental pregnancy. This is the phone connection. Folks are having less sex, creating fewer oopses.
Guess who accidentally impregnates people? In most cases, an irresponsible man.
A third related huge percentage of the fertility rate drop is explained by falling rates of single motherhood.
You have to be a truly terrible husband to make single motherhood the more attractive choice.
Goldin didn’t even bother to suggest “make men more feminist” as a viable solution to the fertility crisis. Telling.
She very clearly identifies “men not feminist enough” as a cause (if not the cause). She goes straight to suggesting that governments should ensure women don’t have to sacrifice our careers and all of our money and free time in order to have kids.
Personally, I’d love to make men more feminist regardless of its impact on human extinction. I’m here for a good time, not a long time, baybee. And in my good time, men are complete human beings who aren’t brain-damaged by patriarchy.
I’m optimistic about this. People forget that masculine and feminine, like white and non-white, are made-up categories that shift alongside economic, technological, and cultural changes.
Marriage, like gender, is a human-made institution that varies considerably across space and time. See: Marriage: A History by Coontz.
Marriage is already changing. See: Potentially good news for marriage?
What I would like to see, at the same time, is an honest discussion of what is happening now and what we want to see in the future.
Goldin and I agree that better men would lead to more marriages and babies. I just happen to think it’s possible.
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