Depopulation and childlessness

So, I'm listening to the Phillip Longman Long Now lecture on depopulation, and it has me buzzing a bit about childlessness.

For quick clarification, I don't believe he said anything that was remotely sexist. I do, however, have some feeling about the topic as being sexist. I hear and read all these (male) experts bemoaning that population isn't at replacement levels, and the subtext is the fact that all over the world, when women are given the opportunity to choose, they choose not to have children until later in life, which necessarily means that they have fewer children if they have any. I tend to feel an accusing finger pointed my way, as though I'm not doing my womanly duties, but maybe I'm just too sensitive.

Quick note: one of the major concerns in this conversation is the tremendous cost of caring for an elderly population. But it seems to me that isn't, in fact, long term thinking. It seems to me that forty or fifty years ago, a combination of industrialization (increase in food resources and wealth) and improvements in medical care created an unnatural population explosion that has traveled all over the globe. I think that we will be dealing with the consequences of that population explosion for the next forty or fifty years. I do, however, think that time will pass, and that world population will more or less settle out, and that fewer people on the planet means less competition for resources, as well as better educated children that can operate in a highly technical, mechanized workforce that has less need for raw labor. So this lecture seemed to me to be out-of-keeping with the spirit of the other Long Now talks in that sense- it was looking at a very narrow Now.

So let's come back to the touchier question, the one that seems to lie at the heart of this debate and pose a real problem for people. That issue is reproductive choice.

So why do women, given the choice, decide to delay childbearing, to have fewer children or none at all? The answers come pretty easily- having children is financially expensive, it takes a tremendous toll on a woman physically, it has negative consequences for her career... the short answer is that before a woman wants children, she generally seems to want to have established for herself a home, a career, and a stable relationship with a partner. Getting your life in order, in that sense, takes a long time- depending on how long she wants to spend on her education or starting her career, she may be in her late twenties to late thirties before she feels ready to enter that phase of her life.

Certainly that's a change from, say, an agricultural society, where one enters the work force in adolescence, and isn't looking ahead to build a career- she has, at 18, as much chance for financial stability as she ever will. She's also as sexy as she'll ever be- if she's going to get into a long-term stable relationship, she probably already knows all the likely partners in her community, and it's reasonable for her to make her choice and commit to it. Or to get knocked up and stick with it. But clearly many of us don't live in that world- women who want to be lawyers have as much reason to delay childbearing as women living in a war zone.

Phillip Longman suggests that society needs to offer financial incentives for people to have children, which makes sense. But I also don't think it speaks to the issue he perceives as a problem, because I don't believe that it's a problem at all. I think that children should be born deliberately, to people who really want them, at a time when the parents are prepared to undertake the physical, emotional, and financial responsibility. I think that often does mean that people will have children later in life, and have fewer of them overall.

The question for people thinking about the future, then, is what does that mean? How do we develop technology that can accommodate a shrinking workforce? How do we manage the almost prohibitive cost of a college education, if it acts as a barrier to financial stability for prospective parents, and a financial disincentive to having children? How do we make sure that people accumulate enough resources during their work lives to be able to afford a long post-retirement life and extensive health care? Can we develop a plan now that accommodates not just urban growth, but urban decay as populations contract? Just something to think about...