'two things are holding us back: the refusal of men to participate equally in family and home life, and the ongoing gutting of the social safety net.'
So the first requires men to contribute their fair share, and the second requires the rich to contribute their fair share.
It's hard to be optimistic.
We have to hold on to what you wrote in closing, about community. We are going to find out how strong our communities are, or aren't, in this country, because that's the only way we can possibly withstand the war our (federal) government is waging on us.
I mean you are a man, you can literally do something at least for the first part. Like I hear you but it’s worth reflecting on the fact that you don’t need to do the second part when you can lean into the first part. And it’s probably far more effective for you to have these conversations with other men in your life. Something to think about
It's just I wouldn't be friends with a dude who didn't already agree with me on this. So we're talking family and acquaintances I guess. I suppose I generally view my own gender as a hostile force.
Zach, are all your friends only friends with others who agree with you? Perhaps it's not just that you convince men to step up, but you persuade men to convince other men to step up?
Think of it like ripples in a lake. Your one stone can eventually affect millions.
Well, I can tell you one thing, men talking to other men about this is often a lot more effective than women telling men about it. At least men take men seriously.
Men may have more credibility with men, but when it comes to moving hearts and minds, we, by ourselves, are easily dismissed as cuks, pussies, betas, or whatever the latest term of derision is. We have more traction in person standing up for or standing behind our partner, but even that is less effective than a personal crisis in the unenlightened's life. Not that I would wish that kind of situation on anyone.
Women have power, too. It will take both men and women to move men, but more importantly, it will take men and women to move boys and girls. Ultimately, it will be men and women continuing the effort to teach boys and girls new ways to treat each other that will move the river-channel of culture.
Mad props to any woman who can work from home and raise kids. I've tried it and failed, and was a stay at home Dad for a couple of years until the kids were off to pre-school and kindergarten when I could return to getting some work done.
As a society, we'd be so much better off if we made sure that parents of young children had all the support needed.
Working from home means that you have a short trip to daycare or school, and it's not a problem if they get sent home sick. It makes it easier to co-ordinate if family members are looking after the kid for the day, or if you need to take them for appointments. They're also home earlier to eat the meal you put in the oven before picking them up - none of which is possible if you commute.
Being a half hour drive - or further - from your kids and your home makes everything so much harder.
For a lot of women, working from home also removes the time tax associated with "getting ready" every morning. And for any household member, working from home typically allows timeshifting in household chores like laundry, or even running errands, which can free up valuable time on the weekends for other activities.
This is why I connect the hard work of “heteroinsistence,” as Kate Manne recently named it on her Substack (basically the idea of women in heterosexual relationships insisting that their partners step up and share labor, share care responsibilities and be fully present in their relationships), to the larger movement to resist all of this oppression. I’m not always able to go to the marches and call my senators, but I have been doing the smash-the-patriarchy work from home (see what I did there? 😜). I’m seeing my partner step up every time we talk through things, and we’ve built something beautiful together. This gives me hope that we are part of building the world we actually want for ourselves and our future kids. THIS is why I’m ready to try and have a child, if it weren’t for this baseline of equity, I wouldn’t be able to see my way to it at all.
Bonus patriarchy-smashing: I’ve been talking to my parents, and things have REALLY changed for the better in their relationship too. All a process, but to see two people go from “complementarians” to valuing each other (and my dad valuing my mom) as equals is inspiring. Just wanted to throw in some hope that while awful trends do dominate the news and legislation, we can still see the needle move on the individual level, sometimes.
Here's me yelling at you, Lyz: your proposed solution to the declining birth rate seems to be to have men do more of the domestic work. That's not going to do it (although it couldn't hurt). Would you have said to your now ex-husband, "dear, if you only would cook now and then, and take care of the laundry, I'd like to pop out a few more kids?"
The reasons people have children or don't are much more complex than that.
Well - if that was what she said, you might have a point. But that isn't what she said. The article *actually* describes a complicated society and interconnected issues that affect women, which in turn affect birth rates.
You are right that Lyz's argument was more complete than I portrayed. But she devotes four paragraphs to the lack of partner support. She later wrote that two things are holding women back "...The refusal of men to participate equally in family and home life, and the ongoing gutting of the social safety net."
I think work in the home is extremely undervalued. The socialization of children, providing good nutrition for the family, keeping the house and clothes clean. Plus, usually doing this all without a lot of adult human contact. Hugely important.
I would like to be clear - the elements of living in a family ought to be shared as much as possible - the hard work, the joy, the frustrations, the pride. Spouses should value and appreciate what the other does.
When men aren't doing their share, they should do more. Same for women.
I doubt this would move the needle on the birth rate that much, though (the focus of this article) - kids are still really expensive (!) and the social safety net really inadequate.
Well I wouldn't call fertility rates a problem, in need of a solution. We just need to adapt to societies with fewer children to take care of and more elders to take care of instead. People should have the number of children they want, not aim for some target.
But yeah if men were better partners and there were more social support, then, all else being equal, women who want more children might be more likely to have them. For that matter men who want more children would be more likely to find a willing partner. I think the point is to increase freedom of choice, not to pop out more babies.
It’s not only that they DO the work, it’s that they VALUE it as well. Nobody wants to take up unappreciated drudgery when they have other options. (Which is why so much of the latest Christian Nationalist policy-making is about eliminating options.)
I honestly don't know how my mom did it. She worked all through her adult life until her early death at 56. One thing that did happen in my family is we did chores and cooked (the kids). This was good because there were a LOT of us. But she still was the primary person for managing the house and cooking. My stepdad would pitch in but this was rare. I do think she made my brothers cook and clean - it wasn't only the girls. But I see so many of my friends with kids just getting worn down. I think this is what contributed to my best friend's death at 52 - she was run ragged working full time jobs and dealing with a partner who acted like a child.
100% agree. I posted a week or so into the void: Maybe the reason “fertility” is declining (note: there’s probably nothing wrong with people’s biological fertility, it’s a social thing) is that women are increasingly reluctant to have babies. Not just because of the cost of childcare. Not just because of the likely hit to their careers and long term earnings potential. But maybe also because they KNOW that once children are born they will do the lioness’s share of all the labor associated with having children—the caregiving, the domestic maintenance required to meet children’s needs, the mental load, the planning and monitoring—and that they will not be credited for all that WORK, either by their partners or by society at large.
I've been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, and I've seen several posts lately of women expressing gratitude to their companies for providing maternity leave. I haven't (yet) taken the time to look up these companies to see what kind of leave they offer, but the babies in the photos? Babies. They're nowhere near crawling and certainly not toddling. So, I'm guessing the leaves were six weeks? Eight weeks? Twelve weeks, maybe, if they were "lucky."
You know why magazines in places like Norway don't have articles every other page about how to use a breast pump at work or how to get your company to accommodate your need for a clean, quiet room to do so? Because their maternity leaves are long enough that women are no longer breastfeeding when they return to work. And their maternity and paternity leaves are not provided at the whim of wealthy companies that decide to throw them a bone of time off and then fire them whenever they want. They are required by law and EVERY company is required to follow the law regarding them.
Ours aren't. We don't HAVE a safety net. We never have. We just have a few little bandages politicians insist we slap on our problems and call it good.
I didn't have a FT/permanent job when I gave birth, so my "maternity leave" was staying home. The corporation my ex worked for gave him five days off. FIVE DAYS. This is a global company, and his cousin who worked for the SAME COMPANY was eligible for a full year of leave at 100% pay and even longer at reduced pay. That's because the country it was doing business in REQUIRED IT BY LAW to provide that. THAT is (only part of) a real safety net.
Enjoy your views as I generally see things from a point of view different from my own, and I learn. I think I understand your statement ‘affects women and people of color disproportionately’, at least from the women side. Can you tell me more about the people of color side of it?
In a recent article - possibly in The Guardian - it stated that over 40% of UK families have only one child, and in a few years it's expected to reach 50%.
This is a country with paid maternity leave, free health care, and much lower rates of maternal deaths.
So while all those things are an absolute necessity, when women do have them, they still don't want more kids because men everywhere are still not picking up their share of the load.
For all the business school gradates churned out every year by the Ivy Leagues, not one has come up with a better ideas then "force women to have a bunch of kids. Make women take care of them for free. Then those fully-formed humans come work for us and we get all the benefits with no investment required." That's our country's plan, as far as I can tell. This is what the best and brightest have to offer. What fun.
I'm always surprised that someone doesn't stand up in one of those classes and propose on-site daycare as an unlock/competitive advantage. This wouldn't alleviate the core issues Lyz poses here, but it would mitigate a lot of them.
Because I would bet those same elite circles see childcare as "a woman's problem" or "not manly" so people are cultured into ignoring/shaming it. A lot of senior leaders (who happen to be white men) have stay at home wives who take care of every other part of their life. You're asking them to notice something that's invisible, free and they take for granted as their birthright? I agree with you - it's a win. But it's a cultural no-go.
I agree. However, what's standing in our way is an intractable foe: the male ego. Following your proposal would require a CEO to admit that he has some sort of unfair advantage. Or the system works to benefit some more then others. As we've seen time and time again, they would rather everyone suffer and be worse off rather then change to make things better for all. It's the classic crab in a bucket/ladder pulling syndrome.
I think we need more people to stand up on the floors of congress to pass laws to make these things happen (and fewer Ivy Leaguers and more regular folks). Scandinavian countries made paternity leave available, but they found that men weren't taking their fair share of the family leave. Instead of shrugging and saying, "Oh, well, we tried," they passed laws that required fathers to take family leave or lose it. THAT turned things around.
But when you have lawmakers who are millionaires and don't even need the salary that most of us will never see, they don't have the personal daily financial experiences the rest of us do. So, they don't pass laws that are in our best interest.
Sooooooo true! I might have had a child if I had met a man who was willing to put in the work…but I never did, I chose poorly among a pool of shitty prospects and ended up with a petty, self centered man who was too lazy to even put the juice bottle in the recycling bin, instead leaving it in the icebox with a quarter inch of juice in it. Ugh.
Spot ON!!! Exactly! 🌟
'two things are holding us back: the refusal of men to participate equally in family and home life, and the ongoing gutting of the social safety net.'
So the first requires men to contribute their fair share, and the second requires the rich to contribute their fair share.
It's hard to be optimistic.
We have to hold on to what you wrote in closing, about community. We are going to find out how strong our communities are, or aren't, in this country, because that's the only way we can possibly withstand the war our (federal) government is waging on us.
I mean you are a man, you can literally do something at least for the first part. Like I hear you but it’s worth reflecting on the fact that you don’t need to do the second part when you can lean into the first part. And it’s probably far more effective for you to have these conversations with other men in your life. Something to think about
Yeah. It doesn't feel effective, but yeah.
I think it would be very effective. Someone has to start. To be the example to his dude friends. Why not you?
It's just I wouldn't be friends with a dude who didn't already agree with me on this. So we're talking family and acquaintances I guess. I suppose I generally view my own gender as a hostile force.
Zach, are all your friends only friends with others who agree with you? Perhaps it's not just that you convince men to step up, but you persuade men to convince other men to step up?
Think of it like ripples in a lake. Your one stone can eventually affect millions.
Well, I can tell you one thing, men talking to other men about this is often a lot more effective than women telling men about it. At least men take men seriously.
Men may have more credibility with men, but when it comes to moving hearts and minds, we, by ourselves, are easily dismissed as cuks, pussies, betas, or whatever the latest term of derision is. We have more traction in person standing up for or standing behind our partner, but even that is less effective than a personal crisis in the unenlightened's life. Not that I would wish that kind of situation on anyone.
Women have power, too. It will take both men and women to move men, but more importantly, it will take men and women to move boys and girls. Ultimately, it will be men and women continuing the effort to teach boys and girls new ways to treat each other that will move the river-channel of culture.
I agree that teaching children better ways of being--perhaps most importantly by showing them with our actions--is crucial.
Gotta start somewhere, man. Helping people around you has an enormous effect, even if it doesn’t feel grand and sweeping.
Yes!!!!!
Mad props to any woman who can work from home and raise kids. I've tried it and failed, and was a stay at home Dad for a couple of years until the kids were off to pre-school and kindergarten when I could return to getting some work done.
As a society, we'd be so much better off if we made sure that parents of young children had all the support needed.
yep. my kids have always gone to daycare. even now at elementary age - they go to summer camps and we have a teenage "nanny".
I mean it’s not that they can do it it’s that they have to
Working from home means that you have a short trip to daycare or school, and it's not a problem if they get sent home sick. It makes it easier to co-ordinate if family members are looking after the kid for the day, or if you need to take them for appointments. They're also home earlier to eat the meal you put in the oven before picking them up - none of which is possible if you commute.
Being a half hour drive - or further - from your kids and your home makes everything so much harder.
For a lot of women, working from home also removes the time tax associated with "getting ready" every morning. And for any household member, working from home typically allows timeshifting in household chores like laundry, or even running errands, which can free up valuable time on the weekends for other activities.
Lyz, you’re so right. Even younger people are dating and marrying at lower rates these days. It’s all connected.
**INSERT STANDING CLAPPING GIF**
This is why I connect the hard work of “heteroinsistence,” as Kate Manne recently named it on her Substack (basically the idea of women in heterosexual relationships insisting that their partners step up and share labor, share care responsibilities and be fully present in their relationships), to the larger movement to resist all of this oppression. I’m not always able to go to the marches and call my senators, but I have been doing the smash-the-patriarchy work from home (see what I did there? 😜). I’m seeing my partner step up every time we talk through things, and we’ve built something beautiful together. This gives me hope that we are part of building the world we actually want for ourselves and our future kids. THIS is why I’m ready to try and have a child, if it weren’t for this baseline of equity, I wouldn’t be able to see my way to it at all.
Bonus patriarchy-smashing: I’ve been talking to my parents, and things have REALLY changed for the better in their relationship too. All a process, but to see two people go from “complementarians” to valuing each other (and my dad valuing my mom) as equals is inspiring. Just wanted to throw in some hope that while awful trends do dominate the news and legislation, we can still see the needle move on the individual level, sometimes.
Here's me yelling at you, Lyz: your proposed solution to the declining birth rate seems to be to have men do more of the domestic work. That's not going to do it (although it couldn't hurt). Would you have said to your now ex-husband, "dear, if you only would cook now and then, and take care of the laundry, I'd like to pop out a few more kids?"
The reasons people have children or don't are much more complex than that.
Well - if that was what she said, you might have a point. But that isn't what she said. The article *actually* describes a complicated society and interconnected issues that affect women, which in turn affect birth rates.
You are right that Lyz's argument was more complete than I portrayed. But she devotes four paragraphs to the lack of partner support. She later wrote that two things are holding women back "...The refusal of men to participate equally in family and home life, and the ongoing gutting of the social safety net."
Would you take on a second job that lasts for 18+ years and requires you to be on call 24/7?
It’s easy to dismiss work that you don’t do, yet still manage to benefit from.
I think work in the home is extremely undervalued. The socialization of children, providing good nutrition for the family, keeping the house and clothes clean. Plus, usually doing this all without a lot of adult human contact. Hugely important.
I would like to be clear - the elements of living in a family ought to be shared as much as possible - the hard work, the joy, the frustrations, the pride. Spouses should value and appreciate what the other does.
When men aren't doing their share, they should do more. Same for women.
I doubt this would move the needle on the birth rate that much, though (the focus of this article) - kids are still really expensive (!) and the social safety net really inadequate.
Well I wouldn't call fertility rates a problem, in need of a solution. We just need to adapt to societies with fewer children to take care of and more elders to take care of instead. People should have the number of children they want, not aim for some target.
But yeah if men were better partners and there were more social support, then, all else being equal, women who want more children might be more likely to have them. For that matter men who want more children would be more likely to find a willing partner. I think the point is to increase freedom of choice, not to pop out more babies.
It’s not only that they DO the work, it’s that they VALUE it as well. Nobody wants to take up unappreciated drudgery when they have other options. (Which is why so much of the latest Christian Nationalist policy-making is about eliminating options.)
You could have made your point without the last sentence of your first paragraph. It wasn't respectful.
I honestly don't know how my mom did it. She worked all through her adult life until her early death at 56. One thing that did happen in my family is we did chores and cooked (the kids). This was good because there were a LOT of us. But she still was the primary person for managing the house and cooking. My stepdad would pitch in but this was rare. I do think she made my brothers cook and clean - it wasn't only the girls. But I see so many of my friends with kids just getting worn down. I think this is what contributed to my best friend's death at 52 - she was run ragged working full time jobs and dealing with a partner who acted like a child.
100% agree. I posted a week or so into the void: Maybe the reason “fertility” is declining (note: there’s probably nothing wrong with people’s biological fertility, it’s a social thing) is that women are increasingly reluctant to have babies. Not just because of the cost of childcare. Not just because of the likely hit to their careers and long term earnings potential. But maybe also because they KNOW that once children are born they will do the lioness’s share of all the labor associated with having children—the caregiving, the domestic maintenance required to meet children’s needs, the mental load, the planning and monitoring—and that they will not be credited for all that WORK, either by their partners or by society at large.
I've been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, and I've seen several posts lately of women expressing gratitude to their companies for providing maternity leave. I haven't (yet) taken the time to look up these companies to see what kind of leave they offer, but the babies in the photos? Babies. They're nowhere near crawling and certainly not toddling. So, I'm guessing the leaves were six weeks? Eight weeks? Twelve weeks, maybe, if they were "lucky."
You know why magazines in places like Norway don't have articles every other page about how to use a breast pump at work or how to get your company to accommodate your need for a clean, quiet room to do so? Because their maternity leaves are long enough that women are no longer breastfeeding when they return to work. And their maternity and paternity leaves are not provided at the whim of wealthy companies that decide to throw them a bone of time off and then fire them whenever they want. They are required by law and EVERY company is required to follow the law regarding them.
Ours aren't. We don't HAVE a safety net. We never have. We just have a few little bandages politicians insist we slap on our problems and call it good.
I didn't have a FT/permanent job when I gave birth, so my "maternity leave" was staying home. The corporation my ex worked for gave him five days off. FIVE DAYS. This is a global company, and his cousin who worked for the SAME COMPANY was eligible for a full year of leave at 100% pay and even longer at reduced pay. That's because the country it was doing business in REQUIRED IT BY LAW to provide that. THAT is (only part of) a real safety net.
This: "We just have a few little bandages politicians insist we slap on our problems and call it good."
Absolutely the best article ! A great way to begin my day!! Thank you 🙏🏻
Enjoy your views as I generally see things from a point of view different from my own, and I learn. I think I understand your statement ‘affects women and people of color disproportionately’, at least from the women side. Can you tell me more about the people of color side of it?
In a recent article - possibly in The Guardian - it stated that over 40% of UK families have only one child, and in a few years it's expected to reach 50%.
This is a country with paid maternity leave, free health care, and much lower rates of maternal deaths.
So while all those things are an absolute necessity, when women do have them, they still don't want more kids because men everywhere are still not picking up their share of the load.
For all the business school gradates churned out every year by the Ivy Leagues, not one has come up with a better ideas then "force women to have a bunch of kids. Make women take care of them for free. Then those fully-formed humans come work for us and we get all the benefits with no investment required." That's our country's plan, as far as I can tell. This is what the best and brightest have to offer. What fun.
I'm always surprised that someone doesn't stand up in one of those classes and propose on-site daycare as an unlock/competitive advantage. This wouldn't alleviate the core issues Lyz poses here, but it would mitigate a lot of them.
Because I would bet those same elite circles see childcare as "a woman's problem" or "not manly" so people are cultured into ignoring/shaming it. A lot of senior leaders (who happen to be white men) have stay at home wives who take care of every other part of their life. You're asking them to notice something that's invisible, free and they take for granted as their birthright? I agree with you - it's a win. But it's a cultural no-go.
Oh, definitely! I'm saying if it's proposed as a competitive advantage in the marketplace, it might suddenly become more noticeable.
I agree. However, what's standing in our way is an intractable foe: the male ego. Following your proposal would require a CEO to admit that he has some sort of unfair advantage. Or the system works to benefit some more then others. As we've seen time and time again, they would rather everyone suffer and be worse off rather then change to make things better for all. It's the classic crab in a bucket/ladder pulling syndrome.
Emily’s List has been working for decades to elect more women to office.
Emerge is another newer group doing the same.
The women who run for office and win are changing the culture.
It’s not a no-go, it’s changing over time because women are taking positions of power to advocate for themselves and other women.
I think we need more people to stand up on the floors of congress to pass laws to make these things happen (and fewer Ivy Leaguers and more regular folks). Scandinavian countries made paternity leave available, but they found that men weren't taking their fair share of the family leave. Instead of shrugging and saying, "Oh, well, we tried," they passed laws that required fathers to take family leave or lose it. THAT turned things around.
But when you have lawmakers who are millionaires and don't even need the salary that most of us will never see, they don't have the personal daily financial experiences the rest of us do. So, they don't pass laws that are in our best interest.
Sooooooo true! I might have had a child if I had met a man who was willing to put in the work…but I never did, I chose poorly among a pool of shitty prospects and ended up with a petty, self centered man who was too lazy to even put the juice bottle in the recycling bin, instead leaving it in the icebox with a quarter inch of juice in it. Ugh.