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| Children - a treasure and a joy. Photo: August de Richelieu |
The article quoted the father of six saying:
There are not enough people. I can’t emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.
So many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control. It’s completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers—if people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words.
This matter has been on Musk's mind for some time. In July 2020 he tweeted a worried response to a BBC article on plunging fertility rates: "Population collapse is 2nd biggest danger to civilization after AI imo [in my opinion]."
That was succeeded by a tweet in July this year: "Population collapse is potentially the greatest risk to the future of civilization." This was in response to a Wall Street Journal article on the fears that the economy will suffer as US population growth falls to near zero.
Reasons why couples are not having children include fears about the impact of the climate crisis on the next generation, and their impact on the environment. The Fortune article carries this information:
A survey conducted by tech company Morning Consult last year found that one in four childless adults cited climate change as a factor in their reproductive decisions. In July, analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to investors that the “movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline”.
However, a more immediate reason why prospective parents limit their fertility has to be the pressures of life, both financial and professional, and in maintaining a certain lifestyle in step with peers.
A central factor arising from each of those elements is childcare. That is highlighted in a thoughful opinion piece in the London Observer last weekend under the probing headline: "Big families sound great, Elon Musk. But who’s going to take care of the kids?"
The writer, Catherine Bennett, notes that like the US, the UK has a "baby shortage" and that "parents tend to say they’d have liked more children". As for Musk and his delight in big families, Bennett is able to point to Musk's hands-off approach to raising his children as a poor model of sharing the burden. His first wife's children with him were left to her care and that of the other attendants his fortune could afford. But that wife observed: "Elon was obsessed with his work: when he was home, his mind was elsewhere.”
His son with his present (estranged) wife is still a baby: “Right now, there’s not much I can do,” he said. “When the kid gets older, there will be more of a role for me.”
Musk is displaying the common moral failure to take hold of a self-absorbed personality trait and control it for the welfare of a family, particularly in the way of sharing the burden of parenthood as well as the joys.
Beyond the personal barriers to establishing conditions conducive to building a family are the social barriers. Work conditions feature large here. The lack of a decent work-life balance seems to be most pronounced in the US, where decisions concerning paid annual leave and paid public holidays are left to the employer, unless there is a union contract agreed.
The BBC has revealing information on this score:
American workers generally get less paid leave than their European counterparts (there’s no national statutory minimum in the US). Yet according to one 2017 survey, the average US worker said they had taken just about half (54%) of their paid time off in the past 12 months. Things appear to be getting worse, not better; in 2018, one report showed, American workers failed to use 768 million days of paid time off – a 9% increase from 2017.
It’s clear US workers do want more time off, however; a 2019 study showed one in three Americans would take a pay cut to get unlimited vacation days. Employers have been responding to this: according to jobs site Indeed, job postings with unlimited time off rose by 178% from May 2015 to May 2019. Yet research shows that even in cases where workers can take as much paid holiday as they want, they tend to take less holiday than employees with a fixed number of days.
The reason why this occurs involves "a complex mix of professional pressures and cultural mores that combine to keep US workers pinned to their desks – even if they’d really rather not be there".
Corporate culture lies at the heart of what in Japan is termed karoshi, only in the US death by overwork is a spiritual death as the person loses touch with what is most important in life. Many managers reward "presenteeism".
Where there is no union or statutory protection:
In very competitive workplaces, employees who take leave fear being treated badly or losing out on future opportunities. A 2018 study showed one of the biggest reasons US workers didn’t take time off was fear of being seen as replaceable.
Furthermore:
The US travel association found that 28% of people didn't take vacation days in 2014 purely to demonstrate dedication to their job and not be seen as a “slacker”. “Culturally in America, we equate taking time off as quitting or not having high work ethic,” says Joey Price, CEO of an HR consultancy based in Baltimore, US. “There is stigma around the idea of not working.”
This fear of bosses perceiving workers as inadequately committed to the job is so prevalent it can even lead employees to mislead their employers rather than ask for time off directly. In 2019, one study of US workers showed that more than one in three respondents admitted pretending to be sick to get a day off, and 27% opted for “making up a random story” rather than asking for the time in advance.
Even if a company doesn’t deter taking leave, there are many workplaces where “working as much as possible is worn as a badge of honour”, says [a HR director].
Pressure to perform is not just a moral expectation; overwhelmingly, workers in the US believe that turning in an “excellent performance” is the best way to get a raise. This can easily lead to overwork – something Michael Komie, a psychoanalyst and professor in clinical psychology in Chicago, describes as a “public health issue” in the US.
In some workplaces, clocking up your mandated hours is just the start. Research shows being a constant presence in the workplace and spending “passive face time” with colleagues during and outside regular work hours can make workers more likely to be seen as dependable and committed. Price says this creates a dynamic where “you have to hustle, you have to work late hours, you have to be in the building so your boss can see that you're working”.
If they do manage to take leave, work follows most Americans out of the office. A 2017 study showed 66% of US workers reported working on vacation, with 29% responding to requests from colleagues, and 25% to requests from their boss.
What a backward society! No wonder the "great resignation" has erupted from the school of hard knocks that has been the Covid-19 pandemic. Any society like the one described above, in celebrating the need to "hustle" for job security, the conceit of indispensibility, and the exercise of fear, all instead of the person as the central element of work life, turns the boon of work into a debilitating exercise rather than a life-giving social endeavour. And that negativity flows on to the inability to build a thriving family.
Births outside wedlock are a further indicator of a society weak in providing conditions for the next generation to thrive. This year, Italy has again set records with regard its plunging population, with the birth rate now at a 160-year low. That earlier period was a time of revolutionary upheaval. What has been remarkable is that there has been the accompanying soaring level of births out of wedlock from 19.6 per cent of all births in 2008 to 35.8 per cent in 2020. The Independent continues: "The statistics office suggests this [rise] is representative of the falling influence of the Catholic Church in Italy."
Yes, the loss of a spiritual outlook on life does have a major impact on child-bearing. Without the perspective of participating in God's splendid creation, carrying and raising children can seem a chore too far. As with Italy, a similar slump in birth rate during a rising tide of secularism occurred in France at the time of the French Revolution:
[Research] shows that areas where priests stayed loyally Catholic during the French Revolution (i.e. where secularisation had made less progress) had much smaller falls in fertility. Religious, rather than economic, change drove the demographic transition...
That transition to lower birth rates in a non-industrialised country came a century before birth rates started falling in the rest of Europe.
One last factor that deprives society of conditions conducive to a thriving family is the inequality of income, with the many standing aghast at the capture of social wealth by the few, and the social elite aiding and abetting the continued inequality by campaigning on issues of race and gender rather than on equitable income sharing nationally and globally by means of tax and other measures.
From what we have seen, the mix of circumstances in our era directly leads to the displacement of children as the figurehead of society's confidence in the future. The curated focus of each person on the world pressing immediately on them means there is a shallowness of spirit and a fear that prohibits action for change.
An anecdote to end. Lawrence died in 258 under the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Valerian. Wikipedia reports:
As a deacon in Rome, Lawrence was responsible for the material goods of the Church and the distribution of alms to the poor. Ambrose of Milan relates that when the treasures of the Church were demanded of Lawrence by the prefect of Rome, he brought forward the poor, to whom he had distributed the treasure as alms. 'Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church's crown.'
Babies, children, should be seen as society's treasure and honoured with a privileged place - alongside parents - in the pantheon of all we hold in esteem, as expressed in our communal attitudes, customs and values. Out with individualism, and in with cherishing of the common good. In that way the care of children will become the responsibility of the whole "village" so that even Elon Musk will be fully on plan.
Ω Check these posts from earlier this year:
- Safeguarding the family from the digital juggernaut
- How many children to have? Be generous!
- Morals and markets and outlandish CEO pay
- Ω If you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.
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