Ep 8: Should You Have Kids?

11/13/24 • 49 min

For most of human history, having kids wasn’t much of a choice. Social expectations, lack of birth control, and limited autonomy for women presented a couple of options: Have children, or join a convent. But the 1960s ushered in a big change. With better options for birth control and expanded career opportunities for women, many people for the first time could choose how many children to have, and whether they should have any at all.

Fast-forward to today: More people are choosing not to have children for a wide range of reasons. Having children, of course, is a personal choice. But it’s a choice that has broader implications. Everywhere across the globe—the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa—fewer children are being born. And strangely enough, having kids has become part of the culture wars. There are pro-natalist public figures like Elon Musk on one side saying everyone needs to have more kids now in order to save humanity. And on the other side, people like climate activist Greta Thunberg say rising sea levels are so catastrophic that having kids in this era is akin to genocide.

But there’s no debate that the fertility rate is plummeting in America and around the world. Presently, American women, on average, have 1.8 kids. In the 1950s, it was 3. The replacement rate in the United States, which is the fertility rate needed for a generation to replace itself without considering immigration, is approximately 2.1 births per woman. Around the world, the fertility rate fell by more than half between 1950 and 2021, as many countries became wealthier and women chose to have fewer children.

For economists like Emily, the speed with which the fertility rate is falling is cause for alarm. Economic growth depends, at least in part, on population growth. Retired people rely on generations of younger workers for support, through contributions to Social Security and taxes. With fertility rates in free fall, the math doesn’t add up.

That’s the big picture. Now back to our own families. Our series so far has focused on the state of our children. Today, we cap things off with a fundamental question: Should we even have kids in the first place, and what happens if we don’t?

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Resources from this episode:

Bryan Caplan: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids (Bookshop)
Gina Rushton The Parenthood Dilemma: Procreation in the Age of Uncertainty (Bookshop)
Leah Libresco Sargeant
Helena de Groot
Ross Douthat

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Resources from this episode:

Bryan Caplan: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids (Bookshop)
Gina Rushton The Parenthood Dilemma: Procreation in the Age of Uncertainty (Bookshop)
Leah Libresco Sargeant
Helena de Groot
Ross Douthat

Previous Episode

Ep 7: How Important is Marriage?

The share of children in America growing up in single-parent families has tripled since 1950—from 10 percent to 30 percent. Children in single-parent families are three times as likely to live below the poverty level and, on average, they have a higher likelihood of poor academic performance and higher dropout rates from high school. Those translate into lower earnings in adulthood. And although it is very difficult to separate correlation and causality in these data, and hard to say whether single parenthood matters beyond poverty, there is no question that the associations are very strong.

Today: What happened to marriage in America? How has the trend divided along class lines and contributed to the widening economic gap? Is having two parents actually better for kids than a single parent? What advantages does growing up in a married family actually confer upon kids?

In the research world, these questions aren’t partisan. They’re questions that can be answered with data.

Resources from this episode:

Books/links:

Melissa S. Kearney The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind (Bookshop)
Melissa S. Kearney on Honestly
Philip N. Cohen’s critique of Melissa Kearney’s The Two-Parent Privilege
Abby M. McCloskey

Next Episode

Episode Feature: ‘My So-Called Midlife’

We have a special bonus episode for the Raising Parents feed. It’s an episode of “My So-Called Midlife” by Reshma Saujani and Lemonada Media.

Reshma Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code. She’s written several books, including Girls Who Code, Pay Up, and Brave, Not Perfect. And now she is sharing her insights from midlife on mic.

Reshma Saujani sits down with Emily Oster to discuss midlife, from scheduling sex to career pivots to parenting struggles to pregnancy and parenting myths.

We want to play that episode for you today. You can check out “My So-Called Midlife.”