The shrinking birthrate: It’s complicated

My husband and I are grandchild-less by choice. 

Oh, not our choice. 

This Mother’s Day, I’ll be the only mother in the family. My mother is no longer with us, and our two daughters don’t have children and don’t plan on it. I’ve always heard that being a grandparent is the only thing that lives up to its hype, and I know my daughters and their partners would be excellent parents. We would be super-cool grandparents. It’s disappointing.

But they don’t want to, so they aren’t going to, and I’m OK with that. This is the ultimate paradox of parenthood. The whole project is to raise children, then let them go so they can live their own lives by their own principles. I can be simultaneously disappointed for myself and proud of them for knowing what they want. 

I’m not alone. A lot of my Baby Boomer friends are grandchildless. The U.S. birth rate has plummeted among almost all ethnicities, including immigrants. Hispanics are holding their own. That makes me sad for all of us who don’t get their late-life dreams and for the young people who won’t know the joy of having their own children. But it’s also a population-level problem. 

The United States has fallen below the replacement rate that keeps numbers steady, which is 2.1 children per woman. In the U.S., it’s now 1.66, half of what it was in 1960. Half the countries of the world are also that low, or lower. 

As someone who grew up with the ideals of Zero Population Growth, that at first seems like a good thing. But a population that’s an upside-down pyramid, with a small cohort of young people supporting a big cohort of older people, becomes stagnant. Where do the innovative ideas and energy come from? How will Social Security work? (Please don’t confuse this concern with people who care only about the white birthrate.) This crashing birthrate, the end of millennia of human existence, seems like an indication of a society that’s not working. 

When it comes to these generational issues, the impulse of the other generations is to blame people’s individual choices: Gen Z doesn’t want to work, millennials could have houses if they gave up avocado toast and the birthrate is crazy cat ladies’ fault. My own mind has gone to blaming social media highlighting how hard parenthood is, griping about poopy diapers and preschool pickup. Or the other trend of bragging about being a perfect parent, which makes it seem fraught, confusing and performative. 

But something this big has bigger reasons behind it. Society-level reasons. 

Pretty obviously among them: Better contraception. Women having babies, but fewer of them. Rising infertility rates. And certainly financial insecurity. (That’s also the leading reason women have abortions.) My children have good jobs, but their costs for non-extravagant housing are many times the mortgage on our first house, and they still owe for their master’s degrees. Paying for their own children’s college? That seems pie-in-the-sky.

It’s feminism’s fault! No, I think the fault lies in the reaction to feminism. Women have changed in the past 50 years and the world hasn’t. The obvious principle that women are human beings with the same talents, desires and rights as men has led women to go to school, get jobs and have careers, run companies, enter the military, become 40% of the doctors and lawyers.

But nobody responded to this great contribution of once-wasted talent and work by saying, “Wow, thank you. But we’d like to perpetuate the human race, too. What can we do to help?” Instead of helping, a myth was created called “Having it All.” But really, it was “Doing it All.” Men in general did not scoot over or step up to take on childcare and household responsibilities. Nobody made sure there was reasonable maternity leave, affordable daycare and healthcare. The U.S. maternal death rate is the highest in the developed world, while we spend the most on healthcare. And it is twice as high for Black women. That might indicate a system that was not set up to support childbirth.

Maybe young women see the “doing it all” model, and they aren’t into it. 

And, have you noticed? The future doesn’t look good. Climate change is profoundly altering the Earth forever. Fascism is on the rise. Misogyny and racism are back in style. I often think it’s a good thing I don’t have grandchildren whose future I would wake up and worry about. 

So anyway, Happy Mother’s Day, everyone! I will be more than happy to look at photos of anyone’s grandchildren. I could babysit! And I still remember with great affection my girls’ childhood. But they don’t have to reproduce to bring delight to my life. One of the only things that surpasses its hype, because I don’t think it gets enough hype, is being friends with your adult children. And trusting them to live their lives.

Polly Campbell covered restaurants and food for the Cincinnati Enquirer from 1996 until 2020. She lives in Pleasant Ridge with her husband, and since retiring does a lot of reading, cooking and gardening, if that’s what you call pulling weeds. She writes monthly on a variety of topics, and she welcomes your feedback and column suggestions at editor@moversmakers.org.