How to shape the world for families

The flow of human life is being disrupted        Photo credit: Kate Morgan

Shaping the world to enable families to thrive is a fresh task because the previous conditions, and mindset, that surrounded this core of our existence have eroded, leaving couples in an exposed position, especially by way of a lack of societal support. 

Journalist Kate Morgan tackles this issue head on in a feature article published in the BBC's Worklife Family Tree series. The headline on this long piece is "Is parenting scarier than ever?" Morgan begins her deep dive this way:

When 37-year-old Heather Marcoux was expecting her son several years ago, she and her husband assumed it’d be the first of multiple pregnancies.

“We certainly thought we’d have more than one,” says Marcoux, who lives in Alberta, Canada. But today, the parents are very clear that their now-primary-school-aged son will never have a sibling. “We can offer our one child a pretty good standard of living,” she says. “But if we added any more kids, it would go down significantly.” 

It’s in part a financial decision; even with Marcoux and her husband’s incomes combined, childcare is a struggle, and saving in any significant way is impossible. But it also has to do with a lack of support and doubt about the future.

“I feel like another child would be a burden we just could not handle,” says Marcoux. “Nobody wants to think of their growing family as a burden. That’s messed up to even say. But some days we just think it feels so impossible what we’re trying to do with one. How could we make [our day-to-day lives] work with more? Some family members are disappointed by our choice, but the world is just different now.” 

Morgan spells out specific factors that are at the forefront of the concerns of prospective parents.

They are:

• Financial stability is more difficult to achieve than ever.
• Home ownership is all but a pipe dream. 
• Political and civil unrest is rampant across the world
• The climate is in crisis. 

"It’s easy to adopt a dismal view of the future," Morgan writes, and quotes an expert on fertility:

“The central explanation is the rise of uncertainty,” Daniele Vignoli, professor of demography at the University of Florence, said in his keynote address at a research workshop hosted on Zoom by the European University Institute. “The increasing speed, dynamics and volatility” of change on numerous fronts, he explains, “make it increasingly difficult for individuals to predict their future”. 

Therefore, we are being compelled by the circumstances of the world around us to shape the future to be more hospitable and reliable.

As in my previous post, on Elon Musk's call for more children so as to prevent our civilisation from crumbling—his words, I want to dwell on those factors that need attention by the whole "village" in order to foster conditions where new life can be welcomed in a family.

Jobs

Morgan cites this finding:

A 2019 US study showed the loss of certain jobs, including manufacturing, had a greater impact than overall unemployment on total fertility rate

Secondly: 

The rise of gig work and shift work – jobs that don’t generally come with family benefits, like childcare or healthcare in privatised countries – also creates questions around future stability, and influences decision-making around parenting.

Reforms must include statutory protection of unions and of gig workers by way of embedding their status as employees rather than contractors or the like. Some form of a universal basic income would be a boon for family security.

Housing

Morgan reports: 

A recent study by researchers at the Centre for Population Change at the University of Southampton, UK, showed the usual assumption that people would own a home before having children – one that was backed up by data until about 2012 – no longer holds true. In fact, financial realities may now mean young people have to choose between owning a home or having one or more children.

“This disconnection between owning a home and becoming a parent has significant implications for parenthood in general,” said lead researcher Professor Ann Berrington in a press release. “If it is the case, as we propose, that homeownership is increasingly competing with the costs of having children, then it is likely that those who do manage to buy a home might well postpone or even forego having children.” 

Marcoux says the pressures of paying a mortgage and maintaining a home are part of the reason she won’t have more children. It’s scary, she says, to think that something catastrophic could happen and throw the family into financial crisis. 

Reform should come in the form of public provision of basic housing after the example of Singapore's pragmatic government, which has set itself the goal of providing 23,000 apartments each year, aimed particularly for the needs of its young population which have been facing rising housing costs.

Planning 35pc increase in apartments yearly. Photo: Straits Times

This kind of targeted effort is what an Economist reviewer accepts as "arresting" and "compelling" in the arguments presented in economist Mariana Mazzucato's 2021 book Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism.

Mazzacato, a professor at University College London, has become a leading voice in the swelling call for governments to identify missions that will benefit their citizens and provide the resources to accomplish the necessary goals. Just as governments are being pushed into underwriting measures to combat global warming, so to they can use their powers of oversight to remove causes of fear surrounding family life.  

From the Economist review: 

State projects can certainly go wrong, but there is no mistaking the vital role governments played in facilitating the development of rich economies. Conversely, the weakening of state capacity—to provide badly needed infrastructure and basic services, educate citizens, root out corruption, and so on—has hurt America’s dynamism and the welfare of its people. [Also] there is no shortage of daunting global problems in need of solving; Ms Mazzucato singles out the fight against climate change, campaigns to improve public health and efforts to narrow the digital divide.

Social division

In her article, Morgan draws on the experience of Marcoux a lot, but she has also compiled research findings that collaborate that experience. Therefore, I think it important to tap into that first-hand account of what it is like being a prospective parent these days.

On the lack of community support for parents:

Marcoux also feels divisiveness impacts people at the neighbourhood level, too. There’s a lack of community, she says, that makes parenting a lot harder – and lonelier – than it used to be. “When I was a kid in the early 1990s, all the moms on the block were stay-at-home-moms. Everybody was always around, you knew your neighbours and you had community support,” she says.

Marcoux says she doesn’t feel that support, and being isolated in her own community adds to the fears of modern parenting. In one 2018 study, two-thirds of US millennials surveyed reported feeling disconnected from their communities – unfortunate findings, considering social ties are one of the strongest predictors of happiness.

“We don’t even know our neighbours. I think community has really eroded,” says Marcoux. “And now, especially, the political issues are really coming to the fore and some people are losing relationships with people we might’ve counted on in the past, because our beliefs, morals and ethics are just not compatible.” 

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. "He argues that civic life is collapsing - that Americans aren't joining, as they once did, the groups and clubs that promote trust and cooperation. This undermines democracy, he says. We are "bowling alone"; since 1980, league bowling has dropped 40 percent."

The individualism of Western societies, which involves competitiveness, and the hardening of one's heart, has been much commented upon since Putnam's study came out. Though generosity of the money kind abounds, the sharing of time, the willingness to identify onself with a community, and an extended tolerance of differences have faded from civic mores. This is all very obvious in the case of church affiliation. It is apparent that people want to be left alone to do their own thing, the level of morality sinks, and social dis-ease is the outcome.

Such a paucity of community spirit takes a long time to develop but if the wound is left to fester the rot sets in. However, a "mission" mentality for the reform of hearts and minds in this sphere of life can be jet-propelled into existence if a critical mass roar "enough is enough" and the moral challenge is accepted by each community.  

Some optimism 

Kate Morgan wrote her article on parenting in light of the uncertainty in the world around her, but she concludes by offering some reasons to have a joyful persective. In her own words:

As I write this, my own first child squirms and hiccups inside me. I’ve had a blessedly uncomplicated pregnancy, physically speaking, but mentally and emotionally, I’m knee-deep in murky, mixed-up feelings about impending parenthood.

I thought that, at 31, I’d be in a different place financially. My student loans aren’t paid off, and, barring major legislative action, I’ll likely keep carrying them around until my kid is in kindergarten, at least. I live in rural Pennsylvania, US, where the cost of living is low and I have easy access to healthy, affordable local food. But my home is rented, I’m far from my family, and while I have a loving community of neighbours, it’s tough to shake the feeling of impermanence. I am anxious about birthing a child into a pandemic, and into a country where the political peace feels – to me – tenuous. I am anxious about so many things.

Overpowering the fear is a deep, visceral excitement and an unmistakable optimism. I can’t wait to walk with my child in the natural world, battered though it may be, pointing out the preciousness of the Appalachian hardwood trees and the moths and mussels, and the deep snow on the ski hill. 

I tell myself we’ll simply do our best to familiarise – not scare – our baby with the world’s problems, and then empower them to believe they can help right the ship. Parenthood is terrifying, but feels like exactly the right choice for me. Somehow, it seems, both things can be true. 

Nobler aspirations

That optimistic point of view brings me to my last point, which is that whether we are optimists or pessimists is often a matter of personal decision. The optimist does not ignore the difficulties, but tries to avoid the plight of the pessimist, who may put too much weight on the difficulties.

Morgan writes these words of Marcoux in talking about her family's financial situation:

On top of that, adds Marcoux, she worries that she isn’t providing enough for her son.

With that statement, Marcoux seems to be heaping coals on her head by way of extra pressures that will clearly limit the enjoyment of raising her son, and the size of her family.

Therefore, within that complex mix of difficulties and fears, and hope and acceptance of struggle, that comprise family-focused decision-making, a person has to attend to the ordering of their lives. Yes, there are reasons for caution. However, I fear that prospective parents are often swayed, first by what is going to be easier for them, and second by a well-absorbed drive to keep up with their peers.

This age demands an abundance of a countercultural spirit, one that shows society there is more to life than what wealth can provide. Each of us can be a change agent within our circle. That generates a sense of purpose, which, in turn, fertilizes a fruitful meaning in life. As well, an awareness that God is with us in the adventure that is family life is source of peace on the journey.

My thoughts on the wealth trap perhaps arise from my reading at this time Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. During Scrooge's encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Past he meets "a fair young woman in a mourning dress, in whose eyes there were tears". She confronts Scrooge over why he had abandoned her - "Another idol has displaced me." When Scrooge replies that their poverty when young drove him in the pursuit of wealth, she countered that they had agreed to "improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry" - but...

You fear the world too much. ... I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion - Gain - engrosses you. ... I release you, with a full heart, for the love of him you once were. ... May you be happy in the life you have chosen.

Ω Big families are possible, and enjoyable. See here 

Ω For a spiritually uplifting consideration of how our trials and times of contentment make up the wheel of life, and how we can have access to the ultimate source of joy, tap into this video. 

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.