Killjoys will inherit the future

Combining work and family is hard. Combining leisure and family is even harder.

As I stressed in my previous post, the culture position in the fertility debate is right. The best thing the government, and people in general, can do to make people have children is to honestly say “having children is good”. That message seems to have a much greater effect than various expensive reforms. 

If credibly telling people that having children is good is what it takes to make them have children, then that certainly is a cause for optimism. However, with this post I aim at souring the mood a bit again. Saying “having children is good” certainly will help on the margin. It would make people have three children instead of two, and thereby get nearer their ideal number of children. It won't, however, make people change their ideal number of children upward toward the number of high-fertility cultures. 

High-fertility cultures like the Amish and the Ultra-Orthodox Jews do indeed say children-is-good. But they are doing other things too. In spite of their glaring differences, they have one other important thing in common: both groups heavily restrict the leisure time and the leisure activities of their members.

The Ultra-Orthodox Jews are most of all known for causing political tensions in Israel because of their reluctance to serve in the army and the workforce. During the last few months I have learned about a lesser-known aspect of the culture of Ultra-Orthodox Jews: They also have very little leisure time. From about the age of eight, boys spend little time at home. As teenagers, the boys spend more or less all waking hours scheduled, most of them dedicated to religious studies. Grown men are supposed to spend a few hours every day studying and praying, also if they work full-time. (This comment by Yehoshua is my reference here).

An excerpt from the chapter One day in the life of an Ultra-Orthodox woman in the anthropological book Strictly Observant illustrates the point:

6:00 A.M. The sun is already shining on the Jerusalem neighborhood. A bus passes under the window. The neighbor’s baby is crying. The cell phone’s alarm rings. “Good morning!” says Sara to Avi, her husband. Near each bed stands a small bowl with a water jug for the morning ritual handwashing. Both wash their hands and quickly get organized. Avi says, “Goodbye, I’m running to the synagogue,” and leaves the house. Sara takes her prayer book and says a short prayer for busy mothers. The prayer book is old. She received it for her bat mitzvah (literally “daughter of the commandments,” a coming-of-age Jewish ritual) when she was twelve years old; she is now thirty-six. The worn pages show it is well used, but since having children, she does not usually have enough time for the Morning Prayer—what takes her husband about forty minutes in the synagogue takes someone praying alone at home about twenty-five minutes. What mother has twenty-five minutes in the morning? she thinks as she turns on the electric kettle.¹

In other words: If Sara wants to lead a devout life, she has a choice: Spend 25 minutes every morning reciting a prayer or being a busy mother. If she thinks that spending her mornings organizing breakfast for her numerous children is more fun than reciting a prayer for 25 minutes, having numerous children will make her life more exciting. I don't accuse Sara of having made such a calculation. She doesn't seem to be the calculating kind of person at all. Nonetheless, in reality that is her alternatives: Being busy with children or being busy with prayer. 

Everything is forbidden

If the Ultra-Orthodox Jews are infamous for not working, the Amish are famous for the opposite reason: They work hard. They need to, because they restrict both technology and formal education. Compared to the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, they spend very little time dedicated to organized religion. They don't even go to church every Sunday: Only every other Sunday they take turns hosting church services in their homes. The other Sunday they have free time and socialize or spend time with hobbies as they prefer. 

So the lives of the Amish are not very scheduled. To the contrary, as farmers and homesteaders, they are on their own, with their families, for more time than most people. 

However, the options for what to do with their time are restricted, since so much is forbidden: Electricity, television, the Internet, computer games, recorded music. And also, the Amish tend to live at a safe distance from the most vibrant city centers.

The Amish do not entirely lack free time. A book called Chasing the Amish Dream: My Life as a Young Amish Bachelor by Loren Beachy explains in detail what an unmarried young Amishman can do to have fun: Riding a racing bike everywhere. Teasing other young Amishmen for being late. Telling stories based on slapstick humor. Holding auctions. Taking a long train trip just for fun. Participating in a gang of rogue young Amishmen who let loose someone's cows and then offer help to retrieve them. From other sources I also know that the Amish do hunting and birdwatching for fun.

However, most of the things that people from the majority population do for fun are forbidden for the Amish. They are not allowed to play computer games, use social media or even telephones, watch television and buy fashionable clothes. They are also discouraged from using airplanes for transportation.

Religion makes people have more children, is the message of Eric Kauffman's 2010 book Will the Religious Inherit the Earth. But only some religions, Kauffman points out. Some religions have the  opposite effect. The most extreme example is the 19th century Shakers, who discouraged sexuality and procreation completely. They lived on communal farms and raised orphans from other parts of society. 

But in general, the principle told in Will the Religious Inherit the Earth is that the more devout a population, the more fertile it is. Why is that? Because religion says that children are good and devout people obey religion? Probably, yes. But also because traditional religion says that various earthly pleasures are sinful. If deliberately amusing oneself is sinful anyway, the opportunity cost to having children decreases. 

And the workaholics too

I believe this is not only a reason for religious people to have children. It is a reason for people in general to have children: That they aren't having that much fun anyway. 

I'm a prime example of that myself. I never planned to have a big family. Anders’ target number of children was four. When we were in our mid-thirties and had four children, we started building a house. We worked from early morning to late evening and I learned every nuance of the concept of exhaustion. We hoped to finish the project in five years. After two years like that, I felt that having another child was a great idea. When the choice stood between a monotonous and predictable life filled with hard work or a more dynamic and unpredictable life with both young children and hard work, I chose the latter. Although the house is still not habitable, six years after we started, it was a great choice.

In general, I suspect that most people who defy the norms of mainstream society through having more than three children are some kind of workaholics who enjoy free time less than average. At least I am that way. For example, I'm pathologically unable to watch movies. There is only one kind of movie I can stand: Slow French drama films. Almost all other movies make me feel emotionally caught up. Usually, I watch the 20 first minutes of movies and then I read the plot summary on Wikipedia to get to know what happens instead of watching anymore. Computer games are completely out of the picture for the same reason: I don't like to feel excited for nothing. All this means that the opportunity cost for having a baby is lower for me than for someone who enjoys computer games and movies. For me just as for people in cultures that forbid computer games and movies or pressure people to work or pray instead of enjoying themselves.

I don't think that people who successfully combine children and leisure are necessarily happier than those who have less leisure and more children. What is pleasurable does not always make people happier in the longer term. A lot of new entertainment has been developed since the 1950s. And people do not claim to be any happier now than then. For example, since the beginning of industrialism, the food industry has done its utmost to develop as pleasant food as possible. That should mean that people eat more pleasant food than in 1950. That doesn't make people in general happier - only fatter. And still, making people choose less pleasant and less fattening food without outrightly banning the most pleasant food is very difficult. The same way, only religions that outrightly ban earthly pleasures are capable of pressuring their adherents to avoid them. 

Be bored, have a child

Thinking about it, modern Western society more or less expressively advises people to have children out of boredom. When I was young the general mood was that in order to become a good parent, one should make sure to have a lot of fun before having children. Restless parents are bad parents, the thinking went.

The result was that far from all of us got bored enough to ever have children. And it seems like the threshold for being bored enough is ever-rising; it is not generally expected to happen before approaching the age of thirty. 

Now and then when I spend time with my youngest children I think: This is as fun as in the stone age. My stone age ancestors probably enjoyed carrying their babies the way I do. They rejoiced in hearing a toddler learn to talk the same way. The joy of family life is eternal, as old as the human race itself. Which means it doesn't get more pleasurable with time, while everything that depends on technology does.

Most people who are utility-maximizing will want to have both children and sparetime. Children, like most other products, come with falling marginal utility to parents. A family with three children is a family as much as a family with ten children. But it is much easier for the parents to combine family and leisure if they have three children than if they have ten children. Modern mainstream Western parents typically dedicate half a decade or so to raising infants and toddlers. Then they expect to be past that stage and can resume a more leisurely lifestyle again. Most people who can choose freely are likely to find a family with few children maximally appealing, because that makes a combination of both family and leisure possible. 

As long as contraception is a thing, people will utility-maximize that way, regardless of how family-friendly society becomes. The less capable people are at amusing themselves, either because of culture or because of personality, the more children they are likely to want, everything else being equal. Prepare for a future dominated by killjoys.

Prohibition signs under the information panel in the portico of the Church of All Nations, East Jerusalem, Mount of Olives, 2009, Wikimedia Commons.

1. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar, Strictly Observant, 2024, 26 percent of e-book