Are we ready for Christians considering childlessness?

The cause of intentional childlessness is going mainstream. Time magazine gave its cover to the cause with a lead story on the childfree life called The Childfree Life: When Having it all Means not Having Children. In that story, Lauren Sandler writes, "women who choose not to become mothers are finding new paths of acceptance. As their ranks rise, so do positive attitudes about leading a life in which having it all doesn't mean having a baby." The thrust of the article is a desire for the intentionally childfree (not to be confused with those who have been unable to conceive) to avoid any judgment for their choice and even to be celebrated. We should not be surprised to see bold advocacy for the childfree life in a culture that has come to prize the homosexual pattern of coupling with its intense emphasis on sexual expression, wink-wink attitude toward monogamy and disconnection between intimacy and reproduction. We should expect in a culture that values autonomy and sexual expression above all, a moral revolution in which the childfree are initially addressed as moral outliers, then elevated to victims of cruel judgment, then promoted to a place of moral enlightenment, while any who would esteem having children as an integral aspect of human flourishing are increasingly deemed morally backward. We should expect this among those who breathe the air of daily life in contemporary Western civilization. The preoccupation with sex as the highest good leaves little vision for the sacrifices required by the children that sex might produce.

But we should also increasingly expect to see this in our churches.  Even though Jonathan V. Last, Mary Eberstadt, and others have been explaining that churches are among the last communities who value children as part of a life with a cause bigger than themselves, we increasingly see church attendees who believe instead that the church should be more like the world around it.

A good example is a recent post by Relevant magazine, Why I Decided to Not Have Kids. This post, as well as the comments that follow an article Kathleen Neilsen wrote for The Gospel Coalition (The Problem with the Childfree Life), give us an indication for how the childfree aspiration is showing up in the church. Are we ready with the hope of Christ for Christians considering childlessness?

Are we ready first with accurate information?

JaJa Yang, author of the Relevant article raises an alarm about overpopulation. "...we have filled the earth to the tune of 7.1 billion people and one birth every 8 seconds," she says, adding: "(I am watching the world population clock ticking away as I write)." We have been hearing warnings of overpopulation since 1968 when Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb and prophesied that growing population would outrun available resources and threaten the survival of mankind. The gross inaccuracy about population growth has been the assumption that the problem comes down to so many people having so many babies.  The reality is that most of the world population growth has been tied to health advances that extend life, not to a spike in more planned births. As demographer Nicolas Eberstadt explains, "it's not that people have been multiplying like rabbits, it's that they stopped dying like flies." Even the United Nations and numerous countries that believed Paul Ehrlich's warnings and then implemented radical efforts to cut birth rates are now reversing course and warning of the population implosion that is occurring as the childfree vision is taking root and countries with expanding elderly populations face dismally low new birth rates.

Are we ready with good theology vs. a "Precious Moments" religion?

Our churches and even pro-family organizations often have little to offer those who ask the question, "Why have children?" In part, this is because people over 50 rarely heard that they needed solid answers to that question before becoming parents. Today, singles and couples are warned to think long and hard about the world they would bring children into, are counseled to count every penny those children would cost and are prodded to take on the venture only once they have compelling reasons to do so. When they ask their parents, "So, why should we have kids?' they often get blank stares from parents who never wrestled with such a question or at times will cause their parents to doubt their own course and to wonder if maybe they should have waited on kids or avoided having children themselves.

What won't serve skeptical singles and couples is a "Precious Moments" religion that simply dotes on the blessings of children ("You'll just love their first smile" "There's nothing like unconditional love of a baby," etc.). Sentimentality about babies and childhood only goes so far in the face of the counterevidence mounting in the trial against parenthood. As my wife and I wrote in our book Start Your Family,"the realist will tell you that for every precious moment comes hours of toil. The consumer in you will remember that a lot of those superficial joys can be had, or nearly so, with the swipe of your credit card. Alternatives abound promising instant gratification and generous return policies."

Those who have received the Spirit of God should have answers that are compellingly distinct from those who are limited to the spirit of the world. Our answers must be marked by:

1) a reverence for a God who created us with the miraculous ability to create new life from sexual union

2) a trust in His revealed Word that is filled start to finish with an expectation of fruitfulness that will spread His glory to the ends of the earth--a vision of fruitfulness that clearly grows from a biological context to a spiritual context, but continues to stand in bold contrast to a consumeristic culture that rejects both biological and spiritual fruitfulness

3) a theology of sanctification that doesn't whitewash the sacrifices children require, but demonstrates the kindness of God in making one of the primary means of our sanctification also one of the greatest means of our blessing

4) a compassion for those who have been unable to have children, who worry that past abuse will make them poor parents, or who feel overwhelmed by debt and other financial obstacles to starting a family--but a compassion that points to the hope of Christ and not identity politics or other hopeless cultural grievances

5) and a life that incarnationally bears the fruit of the Spirit and demonstrates loving marriages that spill over into new life, a commitment to not only bear new life, but to bear the responsibility to discipline and disciple that life as unto the Lord.

The child free moment is here, are you ready with the hope of a God who is faithful to all generations?

Family Declines Prompt James Dobson to Write Dystopian Novels

Dr. James Dobson, author of over 25 books on marriage and family, recently released his first novel, Fatherless. With his co-author Kurt Bruner, Dobson portrays a dystopian future in which foundational family realities, taken for granted for eons, grow increasingly marginalized. Dobson recently answered questions about this new work in an interview with Religious News Service.  Here are some highlights:

Q: Why did you venture into fiction after writing about real-life parenting for so long?

A: This is my first novel, but not my first foray into fiction. I have always believed in the power of narratives to influence thought and shape the spiritual imagination. While with Focus on the Family I challenged the team to create a radio drama series called “Adventures in Odyssey.’’ My co-author, Kurt Bruner, led that team for several years. We couldn’t be more excited about the potential of this new trilogy to embody themes on which I have been writing, speaking and broadcasting for decades.

...

Q: What are some of the real-life issues today that made you write this future fantasy?

A: The single threat to our future is the trend away from forming families to begin with. Marriage is in drastic decline. For the first time in history more women are single than married. Raising children is now considered an inconvenient burden rather than life’s highest calling. For the first time in our history there are fewer households with children than without. The most basic human instinct, forming families, is in dramatic decline. And the implications of that reality, as we’ve depicted in these novels, are breathtaking. That’s why we chose the looming demographic crisis as the backdrop to these stories.

We're hopeful this creative storytelling approach will engage people who otherwise wouldn't have heard about these pressing demographic trends or may have glazed over seeing them presented outside of a narrative context.

Link Between Spiritual Formation and Family Formation

As I was finishing my master's degree in public policy I needed to find a topic for my thesis. For several years, I had been interested in the differences between baby boomers and the generation I grew up in that has been called generation X, baby busters, mosaics, etc. Around that time, I read a variety of articles about how my generation voted at lower percentages than their parents did at their age. I decided to take that on as my thesis topic. I was going to discover what shared life experiences and attitudes of my generation was driving down our voter participation. Not too long into my research, however, I had to throw out my original hypothesis and start over. While popular news articles kept speculating that my generation wasn't voting because of various cultural influences, the research pointed strongly to another less publicized factor--life stage. People who are married and have children have more tangible motivations to vote. They are motivated by what some call "bread and butter" issues related to property taxes, schools, safety and other day-to-day issues that tend to be of less interest to singles. The drop in voter participation tracked fairly neatly with the generational delay of marriage and starting a family. As my generation has gotten around to these life stages, we've improved on voter participation.

Something very similar is going on in churches. Increasingly, churches are concerned about what some call the "graduation evacuation"--the tendency of people who were raised in Christian homes to disconnect from church shortly after graduating from high school and not finding their way back. As young adults show greater detachment from the church, all kinds of theories are proposed about what's keeping them away and what churches can do to get them back. Many of the speculations are similar to the ones I read back in the nineties about my generation and their voting habits--all focused on various generational attitudes that needed to be addressed through creative ministry engagement such as coffee bars, cool music, casual services, movie clips, etc.

In his book, After the Baby Boomers, Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow shows the shortcomings of this approach:

In the absence of solid information, speculation about the religious needs and interests of the next wave runs rampant. Self-styled cultural experts have been arguing that young adults will be the leaders of a great spiritual revival. ... Other forecasters are placing their bets on technology. Persuaded that religion is somehow a function of gadgets and electronics, they predict an Internet revolution in which congregations will be replaced by Web sites and chat rooms. Still others see in their crystal balls that young adults will flock to jeans-and-sweatshirt ministries where everything is warm and supportive -- as if that were something new.

The truth is, these futuristic speculations make headlines, but seldom make sense. The reason is that they are the product of someone's imagination, rather than being grounded in any systematic research -- or, for that matter, a very good understanding of young adulthood and social change. Pastors and interested lay leaders can titillate themselves reading such speculation in religious magazines. But they need to realize how flimsy this sort of information is.

Wuthnow goes on to show what research actually reveals:

Religious involvement is influenced more by whether people are married, when they get married, whether they have children, and how many children they have than almost anything else.

Similar to voting, marriage and kids give young adults more direct reasons to connect to a congregation. I like how Dr. Leon Kass puts it in the book Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar:

Marriage and procreation, are, therefore, at the heart of a serious and flourishing human life, if not for everyone at least for the vast majority. Most of us know from our own experience that life becomes truly serious when we become responsible for the lives of others for whose being in the world we have said, "We do." It is fatherhood and motherhood that teach most of us what it took to bring us into our own adulthood. And it is the desire to give not only life but a good way of life to our children that opens us toward a serious concern for the true, the good, and even the holy. Parental love of children leads once wayward sheep back into the fold of church and synagogue. In the best case, it can even be the beginning of the sanctification of life--yes, even in modern times.

For pastors, parents and mentors who are praying for spiritual formation in the twenty and thirtysomethings they know, it appears that an investment in family formation is the better investment.

Do-It-Yourself Family Making

It seems that couples who want to get married and start a family today are on their own--whether they want to or not, they are left to do it themselves. Consider the observation of sociologist Dr. Leon Kass in his anthology Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar:

...for most of America's middle- and upper-class youth--the privileged college-educated and graduated--there are no known explicit or even tacit social paths directed at marriage. People still get married--though later, less frequently, more hesitantly, and by and large, less successfully. People still get married in churches and synagogues--though often with ceremonies and vows of their own creation. But for the great majority the way to the altar is uncharted territory. It's every couple on its own bottom, without a compass, often without a goal. Those who reach the altar seemed to have stumbled upon it by accident.

wing to wing

After “stumbling onto the altar by accident,” many couples back their way into parenting. A third of all pregnancies in marriage are unplanned--leaving families formed without much vision or preparation. Unfortunately, it seems that it's only when couples show up in churches with kids that pastors begin to engage and start doing family ministry. Few churches invest in family formation--in actually helping couples to marry well and start a family with vision and preparation to begin with.

For that matter, few parents are investing in their son or daughter's path to family. Consistently, parents will define success in their roles as preparing their children for college and the workplace. Recently, more parents have gotten the message from their churches that success also means preparing their children for eternity–introducing them to a vibrant faith during their formative years. But not enough parents feel it's their role to prepare their children for families of their own.

Too many are stuck in the cultural mindset that parents should be hands-off and let their children follow their own hearts in their paths to marriage and children. Others feel they should take the multi-cultural path and let their children choose whatever form of relationship they want to have as adults without elevating marriage and family among other choices. But when three quarters of high school seniors tell the Monitoring the Future survey that getting married and starting a family are extremely important to them, shouldn't parents be more invested in that goal?

We're told that this generation of helicopter parents have gone overboard in managing their children's lives. But when it comes to helping their children marry well, it seems they are either checking out or actually discouraging marriage. In the Touchstone magazine article, “Unmarried, Still Children,” Joan Frawley Desmond talks about children who've been raised for everything except marriage. She writes:

Today, parents have a tough time understanding their proper role. Not only has the culture embraced the good of individual autonomy—as opposed to parental authority and familial responsibility—but radical social change has bred confusion about what constitutes the proper goal of adulthood. ... Their children are deemed incapable of bearing the weight of marriage. Everything must be in place before they can contemplate such a momentous—potentially “destabilizing”—step.

When we lived in Colorado, I spoke with a mentor who has children my age. He and his wife worked hard to stay invested in their children's lives and paths to family, but he told me about a friend of his who wasn't invested. This friend of his shared his anxiety over the guy his daughter was dating, but then said he didn't think it was his place to inject himself. “Why shouldn't you get involved in your daughter's choice of a spouse?” our mentor asked him, “this guy could potentially be in your life making trouble for a long time and leaving you to pick up the pieces as the dad and grandpa. Now is the time to get involved, even if it's awkward.”

Can't we do better?

Can parents recover their roles in helping their children to marry well and start strong families? Can churches do more pre-family ministry? Can some older couples step up and serve as mentors to fill in the gaps?

A Social Network That Takes Marriage Seriously

Dr. Brad Wilcox is one of the top family scholars in America. His research at the University of Virginia focuses on marriage and cohabitation and on the ways that gender, religion, and children influence the quality and stability of American family life.

A few years ago, Dr. Wilcox took the time to answer a few questions from us about how couples go about forming families today and the role parents, pastors and mentors can play in supporting them. The following is a reprint from that interview:

Based on the research you’ve seen, do you have a sense of how many American couples go into marriage and parenting with a sufficient amount of vision and preparation? Is it the majority or the minority?

Most couples in the United States who marry are exposed to cursory or no marital preparation. They may attend one or two sessions with a layperson, pastor, or priest but generally do not get the thorough preparation they need to increase their odds of marital success.

On the other hand, a large minority of couples who get married in churches are exposed to a premarital preparation that does a good job of inventorying their strengths and weaknesses, preparing them for the key challenges of married life (e.g., money, sex, children, gender differences in relationship styles, and learning to sacrifice for the good of their spouse), and giving them a theological framework for thinking about marriage and family life.

A hundred years ago, parents, pastors and mentors played a very active role in helping couples in the United States to marry well and then to support them in starting a family. Today, couples are much more autonomous in their approach to family making. What difference does that make?

Well, we know that is hard for couples to go it alone, and yet they are now more likely to try to do that, as research by Paul Amato at Penn State and his colleagues indicates. The problem with couples trying to do it all on their own is that no spouse is capable of meeting their spouse’s deepest desires for intimacy and meaning and—of course—no spouse is perfect.

By contrast, couples who have family members, friends, and fellow churchgoers who are committed to their marriage are likely to get advice, as well as moral and practical support, that makes married life easier for them. In fact, we know that one of the best predictors of marital success is being embedded in a social network that takes marriage seriously. So couples should seek out friends who share their commitment to marriage.

What do churches and families stand to gain by coming alongside couples in their paths to marriage and family?

Marriage is one of the most important social supports of faith in America. Adults who are married are much more likely to attend church than are adults who are single or divorced. This is especially true for men. Likewise, children who have been raised in a stable, intact, married home are much more likely to stick with their faith than are children who have been affected by divorce or single parenthood.

What are the simplest things pastors, parents and mentors can do to influence how the next generation of families form?

One of the most important things that pastors and lay leaders in churches can do to strengthen marriage is to provide their adult members, and the youth in their church, with a realistic model of married life.

Marriage is not about finding and sustaining an ideal soulmate relationship. Yes, love is important. But marriage is also about regular sex, having and rearing children, providing practical and emotional support to a spouse, establishing a common economic enterprise, treating one’s kin (including one’s in-laws) with love and respect, and growing in the faith.

Paradoxically, couples who understand that marriage is about many different goods in life (not just an intense emotional relationship) are more likely to enjoy a happy, lifelong marriage than couples who see marriage through a soulmate lens.

———————————-

W. Bradford Wilcox is Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, and a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University.

Brad Wilcox earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Prior to coming to the University of Virginia, he held research fellowships at Princeton University, Yale University and the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Wilcox’s research focuses on marriage, parenthood, and cohabitation, and on the ways that gender, religion, and children influence the quality and stability of American marriages and family life. He has published articles on marriage, cohabitation, parenting, and fatherhood in The American Sociological Review, Social Forces, The Journal of Marriage and Family and The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. With Nicholas Wolfinger, Wilcox is now writing a book titled, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Children, & Marriage among African Americans and Latinos, for Oxford University Press. With Eric Kaufmann, Wilcox is finishing a book on the causes and consequences of low fertility in the West. He is also the coauthor of Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives (forthcoming from Columbia University Press).

A Drought of Children in California

California is the most populous state in the United States, but the number of children there is shrinking, leaving the state “ill-equipped for boomer retirement” according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. Birth rates are now below replacement level for whites, Asians and African-Americans. Rates among Hispanics had been high but are now dropping steeply and are also expected to drop below replacement in the next decade.

“The shrinking pool of youngsters coincides with a bulging population of older people,” the article explains. In other words, California is growing very European—it has promised generous benefits that depend on a growing population while cultivating a culture that doesn’t welcome enough new life to keep the scheme going. This is not sustainable.

WSJ's Pro-Human Ethic

“My editors made it clear they were guided by a very different idea: that human beings ought to be seen as minds rather than mouths.” That’s journalist William McGurn writing in today’s Wall Street Journal about his bosses at the editorial pages, explaining what makes them different from most papers and news outlets culture-wide. McGurn learned that idea well, adding his voice to “the hopeful writing about human possibility” being done by a handful of economists.

In his farewell column as he heads to the New York Post as editorial-page editor, the value of optimism about new life, or rather the implications of the “humans as mouths” view, is on display in another article three pages away. In “Slowing Birthrates Weigh on Europe’s Weak Economies,” we read the story of a city in Portugal where ongoing austerity measures are in view in Every area but one: birth incentives. “The awards of up to $1300 to new mothers, as well as free nursery services and tax breaks on homes for young couples” will continue in a desperate effort to encourage babies. Why? More people are dying there than being born and there aren’t enough young workers to support those aging out of the workforce.

Back when we were making our excuses for delaying starting a family, our professor Hubert Morken challenged our notions of what’s financially responsible:

“Budget for everything but babies,” he said. “Babies are wealth!”

I’m thankful for newspapermen like McGurn who see the reason for his exuberance for new life. (Dr. Morken was bullish on family for many reasons beyond the pragmatic, but that’s another post for another day.)

We wish you well in your new endeavor, Mr. McGurn, and hope your move will mean another newspaper that understands the good gift of human potential and possibility. We may have to add another paper to our morning routine.

(McGurn’s full column, “The Education of a Newspaperman,” is online)

New Christian fiction dramatizes likely demographic trend

We’ve been looking forward to the release of the new book Fatherless: A Novel by Dr. James Dobson and Kurt Bruner.  It’s the first in a dystopian trilogy that looks ahead to see how today’s demographic trends could play out.  Here’s the publisher’s description:

The year is 2042, and a long-predicted tipping point has arrived. For the first time in human history, the economic pyramid has flipped: The feeble old now outnumber the vigorous young, and this untenable situation is intensifying a battle between competing cultural agendas. Reporter Julia Davidson-a formerly award-winning journalist seeking to revive a flagging career-is investigating the growing crisis, unaware that her activity makes her a pawn in an ominous conspiracy. Plagued by nightmares about her absent father, Julia finds herself drawn to the quiet strength of a man she meets at a friend’s church. As the engrossing plot of FATHERLESS unfolds, Julia will face choices that pit professional success against personal survival in an increasingly uncertain and dangerous world.

In the dystopian tradition of books like 1984, Brave New World, and The Hunger Games, FATHERLESS vividly imagines a future in which present-day trends come to sinister fruition.

We’ve traded notes with Kurt Bruner about this demographic trend for several years now and we’re excited to see him collaborate with Dr. Dobson to dramatize what the future may hold as current attitudes about family making play out.

Read the first chapter of Fatherless online.

$31.90 to Vote

We just spent thirty-one dollars and ninety cents to vote in tomorrow's election. I know, poll taxes are a thing of the past. What I didn't know -- till last week -- is that mail forwarding doesn't work on vote-by-mail ballots. When I realized our ballots were overdue, I called the Board of Elections and sure enough, our ballots had been returned to their office undeliverable. Thankfully, They offered to remail our ballots to our temporary address. Mail being what it is, I shouldn't have been surprised that we still hadn't received them as of this morning. My Dad, being who he is, called the post office first thing and asked if we could come retrieve our mail from the carrier's bucket with hope that the ballots would be there.

They were. So we headed back to my parents' to get our voting guide and fill out our ballots. Then we headed to the nearest FedEx. (This is where the $31.90 comes in.) In order for our votes to count, our ballots have to be received by our county elections office by 7 p.m. Tuesday.

That's a lot of money, but a small price to pay to participate in this important election (and they're all important). Lesson learned: vote-by-mail ballots are not the same as voting absentee!

So here's my plea: if you're registered, go vote tomorrow. I suspect it will be a lot simpler for you than it was for us (at least I hope so!).

It's a great privilege to be a voice for liberty. I won't take it lightly.

In Day Care, the Ends Aren't Everything

Last Sunday, after eating scrambled eggs and donuts for brunch, we shifted to the living room for coffee and conversation with our guests, a young newly married couple in the throes of a job search. He, a recent engineering grad is in full-on résumé mode. Suit at the ready, he's pursuing every possible lead so he can provide for his family. She, a liberal arts grad, is content to see where his job search takes them and then look for work once they're settled. They've been married one year and are ready to start their family.

As they talked through their prospects, including one offer that would pay him less than their minimum budget, she teared up with the reminder that she may have to "work indefinitely." If Leah McLaren were in the room, she'd undoubtedly encourage my friend to buck up, get a job she loves and stay with it. Even after the babies arrive. Such is her advice in her recent column "Ditch the guilt, working moms: the kids are all right."

She writes,

... intense stay-at-home mothering isn't the way human relationships work. Parenting involves a lot of chores, but ultimately it's a relationship that, like all relationships, requires delicacy and balance. Even the new mothers who I do know are quitting their full-time jobs these days are doing so in order to pursue more flexible career options. Few if any would consider devoting themselves completely to child care. This is because most women know instinctively what this study and others suggest: that parenting 24/7 won't make you a better mother any more than quitting your job to take care of your spouse will make you a better wife.

Sure, your three-year-old would prefer it if you sat on the floor playing Lego with him all day, but he'd also prefer to eat nothing but Froot Loops. That's the thing about three-year-olds: They don't actually know what's good for them. And they certainly don't know what's good for you.

It was only a generation ago that married women were made to feel selfish and “unnatural” for having careers of their own. Yet miraculously our partners thrived and now our kids will, too. So do yourself and society a favour, moms: Ignore the guilt, buy a new suit and get back to work as soon as you want to.

In McLaren's world, it's all about the Mommies.

The real question is: Is staying home with babies generally good for the mental development and behaviour of most new mothers?

My take, based on the overwhelming anecdotal evidence of my peers, 80 per cent of whom are in the throes of early parenthood, is: absolutely not.

The problem with McLaren's view is what's missing: the babies. It was fairly easy for me to balance work and baby when we only had one. And I worked from home. But Zoe's arrival upped the ante. As I wrote in Start Your Family,

I was figuring out what mothers have known for generations — your child wants you, all of you, and he isn't interested in being a second-tier priority. For all the things you might want to hold on to and fit a child around — your work, your lifestyle, your identity — your child needs you to be the one doing the fitting.

To sacrifice so much, for someone so small, is a call many in our culture never consider. At least not seriously. McLaren is certainly not alone in her zeal to dismiss mother-guilt. In Home-Alone America, author Mary Eberstadt says,

Of all the explosive subjects in America today, none is as cordoned off, as surrounded by rhetorical land mines, as the question of whether and just how much children need their parents — especially their mothers. In an age littered with discarded taboos, this one in particular remains virtually untouched. ... For decades everything about the unfettered modern woman — her opportunities her anxieties, her choices, her having or not having it all has been dissected to the smallest detail. ... the ideological spotlight remains the same: It is on the grown women and what they want and need.

It turns everything upside down when you shift from thinking about what set-up would be optimal for you, to thinking about what would be best for a child. In a startling insight, author and mother Danielle Crittenden applies such upside-down thinking to day care:

So far as I know, there has never been a poll done on three- and four-year-olds, but if there were, I doubt the majority would say that they are happier" and "better off" with their mothers away all day. ... A six-year-old is indifferent to the arguments of why it is important for women to be in the office, rather than at home. What children understand is what they experience, vividly, every day, moment to moment; and for thousands of children who are placed into full-time care before they have learned how to express their first smile, that is the inexplicable loss of the person whom they love most in the world.

McLaren concludes, "Your kids aren't going to suffer for it," based on a longitudinal study of 2,000 kids in the UK 1,400 in the U.S. But it's not enough that most kids who grow up in day care turn out fine. Eberstadt says,

To advocates this is where the controversy over day care begins and ends; case closed. But they are wrong. The notion that "most kids will turn out fine anyway" does not end the question of whether institutional care is good or bad; actually, it should be only the beginning. That other question, about immediate effects, demands to be answered, too. It is not about whether day care might keep your child out of Harvard ten or twenty years from now or launch him into it, but, rather, about the independent right or wrong of what happens to him today during the years that he is most vulnerable and unknowing.

Eberstadt is a realist. She knows some families will have no choice, noting, "Yes, many parents have to use day care." But she is not so calloused to the cries of the very young and vulnerable as to think necessity for some justifies day care for all. "There is a difference," she writes, "between having to use it and celebrating the institution full-throttle."

My friend's tears, at the prospect of being among those who have no choice, well-up against McLaren's vision for a generation of Mommys liberated from Legos and Fruit Loops — at the expense of their own children. They fill me with hope that Isaiah 49:15, "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?" is still, at least for some, a rhetorical question.

The Week in Pictures

It was a bittersweet moment Friday saying thank you and goodbye to the Dobsons after 33 years of serving families through Focus on the Family. Dr. Dobson is both champion and hero to me. What an honor to be able to tell him so! His farewell chapel message is now online. May God bless you and keep you!

Will Having Kids Make Your Marriage Unhappy?

Last week, numerous headlines appeared in the news implying that couples should stay childless if they want a happy marriage. "Kids Marital Satisfaction Study: Remain Childless" said one headline and "Secret to Marital Bliss? Don't Have Kids" blared another. The headlines were based on a new study by scholars at the University of Denver that was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The title of the study was "The effect of the transition to parenthood on relationship quality: An eight-year prospective study," but the way news outlets covered it you would think the study was called, "Why Smart Research Types Don't Think You Should Have Kids."  It turns out that those smart research types actually like children and intended to send a very different message than the one reporters trumpeted.

Candice and I have had the privilege of getting to know Dr. Scott Stanley, one of the co-authors of the study. As soon as I saw his name appear, I knew something was being misrepresented because of the reputation Scott has as a fair-handed family researcher. Shortly after the articles ran, Scott offered some clarifying comments to recipients of the SmartMarriages email update. Here's his take on the media coverage in his typical dry-wit:

Ah, the joys of the media. Surely, that's just what we meant and we merely came up with the wrong title in our journal article. Couples should not have children. Just don't do it.  Just wait until my sons hear about this. Won't they feel like they owe Nancy and me forever?!

And then he addresses the details of the study:

On a more serious note, here are the important points as far as I'm concerned.

- The study focuses on the way declines in marital functioning happen over time for couples who have children and also for those who do not.  Couples having children showed clear declines in marital quality that were concentrated around the time of childbirth.  Yes, transition to parenthood changes couples, and the changes can be challenging.

- Led by Brian Doss's amazing work on this, part of what we found is that the decline is, on average, small to medium in size.  The effect was not hugely negative as some studies before have found.  On the other hand, the decline is real where some other studies have suggested that this may not be true.

Key take-a-way: Transition to parenthood is a particularly identifiable and challenging period for couples.  (Many of you knew that.)

- Couples who didn't have children also declined over the eight years of the study, but they did so more gradually.  While those not having children didn't show some of the declines in terms of communication and conflict management that those having children did, they declined in overall marital happiness, nevertheless.

He goes on to add:

- Studies like this help make the point that people don't need to just let stuff happen to them; they can make choices, including to preserve and protect the great stuff in their marriages.  But they have to decide to do that and then work at it.  As Howard Markman and Frank Floyd were saying 30 years ago, and we¹re all still saying: Key life transitions are important opportunities for helping couples strengthen their marriages.

- Do these findings argue that couples would be better off just saying "no" to children? Of course not. (Just think of the implications for your Social Security!)  Sure, some couples would do better not to have children. More importantly, there are differences between couples who have children and those who do not (apart from mere fertility issues) that make such assertions and comparisons difficult for researchers to attempt. Brian Doss makes the point that we are wise only to look at the trajectories of the two groups but it would be less wise to directly compare them in making too many conclusions. There are too many bases for differences between couples who have children (and when) and those who do not.

Dr. Stanley wraps up his observations with a philosophical perspective:

I'm just speaking for myself in this point, not my colleagues. I believe that we have a narrow definition of marital happiness in America and that there is something harder to measure that is very important that has been called Family Happiness (by Tolstoy; David Brooks did a cool editorial on this a few years ago). This type of happiness is more deeply related to the meaning of building a family together, in life. Most people do not regret having children.  Most people who had children are very glad that they did.  ... We're too over-focused on romantic happiness in life and not on bigger types of contentment and meaning.  Researchers have not really tried to measure this idea of family happiness but those raising a family can very often relate to this on many levels.

Don't worry, be happy (and content).

For more on this issue of marital satisfaction and having children, we encourage you to read the "Mission" chapter in our Start Your Family book.

Population Explosion Followed by Population Implosion

A question we frequently hear is, "Why should we add one more person to an already over-crowded planet?"  The conventional wisdom is that so many new babies are being born that population is threatening to explode beyond control. The conventional wisdom is wrong. What demographers worry more about now is the population implosion that is occurring because of two decades worth of efforts to discourage new births. One of those demographers, Phillip Longman, detailed this problem in an editorial for the USA Today this week:

The U.N. projects that world population could begin declining as early 2040. Those worried about global warming and other environmental threats might view this prospect as an unmitigated good. But lost in most discussions of the subject is the rapid population aging that accompanies declining birthrates.

Under what the U.N. considers the most likely scenario, more than half of all remaining growth comes from a 1.2 billion increase in the number of old people, while the worldwide supply of children will begin falling within 15 years. With fewer workers to support each elder, the world economy might have to run just that much faster, and consume that much more resources, or else living standards will fall.

In the USA, where nearly one-fifth of Baby Boomers never had children, the hardship of vanishing retirement savings will be compounded by the strains on both formal and informal care-giving networks caused by the spread of childlessness. A pet will keep you company in old age, but it is unlikely to be of use in helping you navigate the health care system or in keeping predatory reverse mortgage brokers at bay.

We had the privilege of interviewing Longman about this population reversal for The Boundless Show podcast last year. Longman describes himself as a non-religious progressive who worries that the people who share his views are going to lose the issues of the next generation if they don't get serious about having kids who can be ambassadors of their beliefs in the future.

Longman's warning offers fresh confirmation for the observation our government professor made when we were in graduate school--having babies matters.

Consumer Mindset Drives Desire for Designer Babies

Couples often have certain hopes and dreams for what kind of baby they'll have--hopes about the gender, hair color, personality and so forth but now a clinic is trying to cash in on those desires. "A Los Angeles clinic says it will soon help couples select both gender and physical traits in a baby when they undergo a form a fertility treatment, " says an article in today's Wall Street Journal. The headline of the article reminds us just how much this mindset towards babies has grown out of a consumeristic culture. It's titled, "A Baby, Please. Blond, Freckles--Hold the Colic: Laboratory Techniques That Screen for Diseases in Embryos Are Now Being Offered to Create Designer Children."

Any couple that has found themselves intrigued by the opportunity to create a designer baby should at least stop and watch the 1997 movie Gattaca.  Here's a description from Wikipedia:

The movie draws on concerns over reproductive technologies which facilitate eugenics, and the possible consequences of such technological developments for society. It also explores the idea of destiny and the ways in which it can and does govern lives. Characters in Gattaca continually battle both with society and with themselves to find their place in the world and who they are destined to be according to their genes.

Probably the better read is Psalm 139 where we're reminded that every life is already "designer"--because of the care given by an intelligent designer:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made

Wall Street Journal: Babies are Human Capital

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal made an eloquent connection between Nancy Pelosi's contraception policy and the population bust in Europe and Asia:

Ms. Pelosi's remarks ignore the importance of human capital, which is the ultimate resource. Fewer babies would move the U.S. in the demographic direction of Europe and Asia. On the Continent, birth rates already are effectively zero, and economists are predicting labor shortages in the years ahead. In Japan, where the population is aging very fast, workers are now encouraged to go home early and procreate. Japan is projected to lose 21% of its population by 2050.

The age and growth rate of a nation help determine its economic prosperity. A smaller workforce can result in less overall economic output. Without enough younger workers to replace retirees, health and pension costs can become debilitating. And when domestic markets shrink, so does capital investment. Whatever one's views on taxpayer subsidies for contraception, as economic stimulus the idea is loopy.