This perspective almost completely externalizes the reason why women/couples are having less children. Informed preferences due to socioeconomic pressure is missing from this no doubt interesting perspective.
>>Informed preferences due to socioeconomic pressure is missing
I wouldn't say so. Parent shaming is in the "socio" part of socioeconomic. Parent shaming, parent praising, other social circumstances and material circumstances together form an environment in which individuals make their informed choices.
Fascinating article. I slightly disagree with this statement, though: “Some people don't deserve to have children” is an ordinary phrase among less cultured people where I live.
I don't think that saying or thinking this makes someone less cultured. Most of us can't stop oursleves judging, for example, if we see a man hitting his child in the street, or a woman smoking while heavily pregnant. Or when we read about a child being abused or killed by its parents. Most of us can't fathom how someone could mistreat their own children, and even though we know we shouldn't judge, we do. Likewise when a child goes missing. We almost always ask 'Where were the parents?' even though we know it's very easy and common for a child to wander off and get lost (my brother used to do this and the whole neighbourhood would be out looking for him!) Surely this shame worked in an ancestral environment, as parents who were shamed or judged by other members of the tribe were less likely to neglect their children.
Ah, no, I don't mean that saying "some people don't deserve to have children" makes people less cultured. I mean that the phrase is considered a bit unsophisticated. Only people who aren't aware of that will use that precise wording. People who are trying to be sophisticated will typically refrain from judging openly. Instead, they will express concern of the kind "I really wish they can get help for this". For the people who are being judged, the latter isn't necessarily better than the former - it can be much worse, since it implies that it is possible to "help" them (which it is often not).
Judging people the right way simply is one of many kinds of status signaling. It has nothing to do with morality.
"Higher-status females take the children from lower-status females, probably to the detriment of the children, among humans too."
Many decades ago, when I lived in a middle income (not western) country most urban families had 1 or 2 child maids aged from about 5 up to puberty. So its not just Karens working for CPS who are commandeering kids.
And my wife's father (as a child) was cared for by a childless woman ("the Nanny") and her young assistant (the family had several other servants too). Resources can be used for multiple ends including suppressing the fertility of others.
Let's call it an instinct that comes to the fore when a parent feels their kids are being allocated a lesser portion of one's community's 'spare' resources than they want for them. As you say, "Some people don't deserve to have children." It seems to mean that shame (felt for failing to meet the accepted parenting norms) is just one weapon that is wielding in this battle.
I think parent shaming found in modern societies owes entirely to the spirit of meliorism (the belief that the world can be made better by human effort) which runs amok in the modern age and which arose as part and parcel of 18c Enlightenment.
So, the traditional societies that lack parent shaming, they haven't culturally evolved to get rid of parent shaming. The parent shaming itself is cultural evolution present in modern societies.
I wish you would re-examine your disdain for contraception. Its wrongness is not merely a Christian idea but present in other great religions, Hinduism for one.
>>So, the traditional societies that lack parent shaming, they haven't culturally evolved to get rid of parent shaming. The parent shaming itself is cultural evolution present in modern societies.
In the narrow sense this is true. "Shame" is the wrong word for what both animals and primitive societies are doing. "Aggression" is a more correct word. Animals don't have the idea that children should always be spared from aggression. And humans only slowly and painfully evolved that idea. Both aggression against children and non-support for parents precedes parent shaming: If no one provides for a woman with a newborn, shame is not the most obvious problem. Pure parent shaming, the situation where families are allowed to live and provided for but looked down upon, is a product of civilization and affluence.
>>I wish you would re-examine your disdain for contraception.
I'm for contraception. I'm a heavy user of the stuff myself.
>>Its wrongness is not merely a Christian idea but present in other great religions, Hinduism for one.
Isn't that a sign that anti-parent-shaming is cultural evolution? The idea that contraception is bad evolved all over the world.
Hunter-gatherer bands aside, the ever increasing size of human societies, first into villages of few hundreds, then into towns of few thousands, then into Rome like metropolises, then into empires and now world cities of tens of millions and nations like India of billion-plus----this is strong evidence that aggression towards parents and children is not a dominant force in past ten millennia.
I've thought of this conclusion before, but I wasn't sure it was a very big cause for low birth rates, and I'm extremely skeptical of the chain of reasoning you use. The Chinese government instituted a one child policy for reasons involving parent shaming? Chimpanzees steal babies, so the child protective services do too?
I do agree that ignoring other people's attitudes towards What Should Be Done For The Children is a component in a high fertility lifestyle, but the demographic transition always followed a clear pattern, with falling birth rates attributed to socioeconomic factors like:
* contraception,
* urbanization,
* increase in the status and earning power of childless women,
* reduction in agriculture,
* reduction in the market value of unskilled (children's) labor,
* increase in in the cost and necessity for educating children, and
* reduction in social norms (& network effects) regarding marriage and childbearing
These aren't necessarily all particularly important causes for the drop in childbearing, but they are all at least established as having had an impact. And while the idea that culture matters is definitely a good general rule of thumb, *how* culture works, and how much exactly it matters, is usually a lot more complicated than just "parent shaming is the cause with a big C for the demographic crisis." Given everything we already see influences fertility rates, are you sure there's even the *possibility* for a big Cause? If the other factors I listed explain only 10% each, there's only even 30% left to explain.
I don't think shaming itself is that significant either. But I could believe that it's mainly shame that sets the normal standards and prospective parents then look at those standards and get discouraged without being directly shamed themselves.
I think all your causes mentioned are compatible with the parent shaming hypothesis. After all, I said that parent shaming is the cause with a big C - not that UNREASONABLE parent shaming is. When contraception is developed, people are shamed for not using it. When women can have careers, they are shamed for being housewives, when children's labor is no longer necessary people can afford to shame people for not sending their kids to university.
I think the Ultra-Orthodox Jews are a good example that the factors listed aren't that important after all. They use contraception, they are urban, their women are educated and have jobs, they most definitely aren't farmers, their children go to school all wake hours to 25 (I made that number up, for lack of statistics). Only the last one, norms for marriage, fits. I think that the high fertility of Ultra-Orthodox Jews is a strong indicator that shaming and counter-shaming is the most important factor behind high or low fertility. (Actually, I changed my mind when I learned about them. As long as I only knew about the Amish I made multi-factor models just like you.)
Yes, obviously I should have included "religion" in the long list of numerous influences on fertility. And I am dismayed that you keep wanting to think of sociology like a murder mystery where all the pieces have to fit, instead of in terms of statistics where outliers and exceptions neither prove nor disprove a rule.
Out of curiosity, I do wonder why you think the two of us had so many kids while (for two other examples) Aella and Kryptogal had none? This isn't a question that I necessarily think needs an answer, because I'm not concerned with all the pieces fitting. But if you think you have a big C cause, why doesn't it explain these four cases?
The truth is that I am confident shame is not the big C cause of differences in fertility decisions across the planet because this is something I think I really do understand: People have kids because they want to. And people who don't want to, don't. It all just comes down to that. Norms, economic incentives, personal preferences, moral outlooks, and emotional drives all influence, either directly or indirectly, what people want to do. Yes, shame is there somewhere, and yes, it exerts an influence, but it was never more effective at preventing people from becoming alcoholics, nor homosexuals from having sex, than it was making people want, or not want, kids.
In sociology, just like in mathematics, every line of reasoning that can be simplified should be simplified as much as possible (but only as much as possible).
And that's why we have philosophy. Simplifying "religion" and "social norms" in a certain context into "parent shaming" gives a more transparent line of reasoning, in my opinion. And that's why I'm doing it. "Shame people less, praise people more!" is clearer and more concrete than "change social norms!".
>>But if you think you have a big C cause, why doesn't it explain these four cases?
I said it was the big cause behind the aggregate fertility rate. Not the cause behind the decisions of individuals: Parent shaming is an important part if the landscape in which individuals make decisions. Since all four of us are probably unusually shameless we feel free to make non-typical decisions. As you say, people have children or abstain from children because they want to. Other people's shaming, laws and material circumstances are only background factors against which people make decisions.
And organized religion is obviously very strongly connected to social shaming. Leah Kaplan, an ex-Ultra Orthodox Jew, wrote about the social condemnation of childless women in the group in which she grew up. She described a woman who happened to be childless and how her childlessness made her seem ugly (although she was technically beautiful). If Leah Kaplan is right and her observation can be generalized, some organized religion is doing rather intense anti-fertility shaming.
Edit: Leah Vincent. I mixed up her different names.
I don't think there is a campaign of social condemnation of childless women and I assume Leah Vincent never meant that.
I think it is just the natural consequence of a society which views fertility as important. All humans have a sense of shame and failure when they don't accomplish something which their society views as important.
However, I that the critical factor is not valuing fertility but rather deemphasizing 'productivity' and human intervention. I think this is why religion in general, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Amish in particular are high fertility.
Yes, she only wrote about it very figuratively. A childless married woman couldn't appear attractive because childlessness made her unattractive. That was all she wrote, as I remember it.
I vehemently agree. This is true based on own my experiences with a high fertility culture. If you want people to have kids, you have to be very understanding and accommodating to children’s behavior, both good and bad. I think a having a lot of kids and acceptance of children in every facet of life (even when annoying) go hand in hand.
I just thought of something potentially related to the chimp mom at the beginning of your post. For whatever reasons I have yet to fully understand, two of my kids are really weirded out by babies/toddlers and don't like to touch or look at them. I have yet to figure out anything I can do about this--in a family of 5, they've certainly been exposed to babies, so exposure therapy is out. I've never asked them to help with their younger siblings, so it's not that. My autistic kid can't explain himself, but his sister reports that babies look like gross aliens and are constant sources of disgusting liquids like poop and barf, so I think it's partly a contamination phobia? Now I'm wondering if there are other kids like mine. If so, they'd be hard to find due to low birth rates...
I was somewhat like your kids. I never liked to play with baby dolls. Before I had children myself I very seldom met any babies. But when I did I didn't feel any desire to look at them or touch them. I didn't find them cute. They just didn't concern me at all. In summary, I'm not sure that children with baby aversion tend to grow up into adults with few children.
My daughter left dolls behind when she left toddlerhood. Her favorite toys have always been non-humanoid. But she loves anything creative--playdoh/clay, paint, drawing, cooking, etc. She makes her own bread and made mozarella cheese the other day, all on her own.
I think having an aversion to *other people's* babies might be a good way to make sure people don't accidentally devote resources to the wrong child.
In Mother Nature, Sarah Hrdy writes that herd-living animals tend to be very fussy about which baby to raise and not, while some solitary animals are so indiscriminate that they can even raise the young of other species.
"The most likely reason why Western social workers err predominantly in one direction, is that the public can't stand that children fare badly in the homes of their birth parents, while the public can stand that children fare badly in foster homes. At least it can stand it much better.
Why is that? Because, I think, parenting enrages people."
I think there is a second factor: people tend to count intentions as mattering more than unintended effects. For example, Nazism and communism both killed lots of people, but most people see Nazism as worse because Nazis killed people on purpose, while communism's mass famines were, mostly, unintended. (We can debate about whether they were actually unintended or the philosophy of morality here, but I think most people see the famines as unintentional, which is my point.)
If the intention is good but the execution is lacking, the logic goes, then we just need to get better at doing the thing. If CPS is bad at saving kids, then CPS needs more funding/training/guidelines/whatever to make CPS good at its job. By contrast, if the intention was bad in the first place, then getting better at doing it doesn't fix the problem! No one wants more efficient Nazis (except maybe Nazis.)
I think this is a very fundamental flaw in people's logic that makes it very difficult for them to abandon bad ideas with terrible results simply because the ideas were dreamed up with good intentions.
Yes. But most parents who lose their children to the system are accused of exactly that - incompetence. I don't have all the numbers straight for America, but in Sweden neglect is by far the most common accusation against parents of removed children.
Yes. nice cultural comparison. Its all part of the _noyaux_, the messy hubbub wherein we chase our tails, the diversity of outcomes in their contexts (kindness, privileges) betray a limited number of actual risks and their negotiated responses that swivel around innate and drummed-up perceptions of risk (to nature, to morality, and who will think of the children).
Thank for a enlightening piece on a truly fundamental problem.
I think it is beyond doubt that rising demands on parenting are part of the problem in the Western world (including the advanced economies in East Asia). What about the rest of the world, where (with the exception of sub-Sahara Africa) fertility has been plummeting, too?
While more instruments may be available to facilitate the raising of children, one should consider not only the even increasingly demanding standards of parenting but also the increased opportunity cost of raising children in terms of professional opportunities or simple opportunities for ‘fun’.
Back when corporal punishment was more accepted, there was a certain expectation among parents that there be a certain amount of spectacle associated with it.
One could argue that it the spectacle served as a warning to other kids (especially siblings) of what could happen to them if they misbehaved.
But it seemed like the biggest spectacles often happened in public, or in front of other parents, and most importantly out of the presence of any siblings or other affiliated kids, as a demonstration that one was a fit parent that was in control of their kids.
The fact that this runs contrary to the tried and true rule of "praise in public, reprimand in private" just reinforces the point.
Maybe this is the reason why corporal punishment has been so difficult to eradicate--at least in cultures where there's an expectation of highly performative punishment.
I think root cause of all of this is belief that your society (or certain parts of it) is closer to the zero-sum "fixed pie" scenario, as opposed to positive-sum "growing pie" belief.
Chimpanzees are almost certainly correct that they live in a world where someone (other than close trusted relatives) else's babies are likely to be a negative for them, so... them living isn't that important, and their deaths might actively be pursued for one's own benefit. Chimps are jerks.
Humans very quickly (perhaps the basis of our civilization?) realized that expanding your circle of cooperation (with important tests of trust and loyalty) could be positive-sum, and therefore circle members' children (exposed through upbringing to the same tests) could also be beneficial to everyone. And advice/shame about parenting would focus on that: discipline your kids so they pass the "loyalty/benefit to the tribe" test, (spare the rod, spoil the child) but otherwise more kids = good (be fruitful and multiply).
But I think many societies have gotten much larger than the "loyalty tests" can credibly claim to cover. In the US, you will often see families with many children (usually assumed to be low-income) denigrated as "just more mouths on welfare." There was the (disputed) famous data showing that abortion led to a decrease in subsequent crime rates, with the implications of that quietly (or loudly) stated. There is a lot of debate about the costs or benefits of immigration, which basically an identical argument (delayed by 16-25 years). I don't think it is a coincidence that the most strenuous anti-birth program in history was enacted by the largest communist (an ideology much closer to zero-sum thinking) state in history, and then it attempted to reverse course after it adopted more non-communist ideology/policies.
I think (again in the US) that we have reached a point where we again believe that a large portion of other people are burdens (politically, economically or environmentally, either in general or directly to potential parents) and by definition our statements, advice/shaming reflect our desire to A) reduce the # of burdensome offspring and B) if those burdensome offspring have already been born, shame their parents into parenting them in a way that minimizes their cost to us. I think this is most obvious when we look at exactly which people parent shame the most, which people are targeted for that shaming, and what reasons are cited.
Really interesting explanation. It seems to bridge the gap between the economic vs. cultural explanation for fertility decline.
If parental shaming is a large cause of low fertility rates, what aspects of being a parent that make childrearing so expensive, that are mostly culturally motivated, should be suppressed? Obviously some parental shaming is beneficial overall to the lives of outcome of children, but I can imagine quite a few expenses that go into childrearing, that have become social expectations, that can probably be done away with;
- Every child having their own room (Housing is very expensive)
- Extracurricular sports (Very expensive/time consuming, few children continue when schooling ends)
- Expensive clothing (They quickly grow out of it)
- Yearly birthday parties (Relatively recent social innovation)
- Expensive toys (iPhones, gaming consoles, more than one Christmas gift etc.)
- Exotic Vacations (2 Kids essentially doubles the cost of most vacations)
- Not working (Kids should start at least a summer job when they turn 13)
Of course there's the taboos, expectations, and shaming that goes along with all these things, so I have absolutely no idea how they could be changed without changing the entire culture, which is basically impossible. It's hard to limit the consumption of your kid if they're in a school where their peers are constantly given all these things, and exposed to social media where people are constantly flexing, setting their expectations high, and breeding resentment if they don't get what they want.
>>It seems to bridge the gap between the economic vs. cultural explanation for fertility decline.
Yes, now that you're saying it... The explanation says that it really is costs that deters people from having children, but that those costs are determined by culture. Could someone from Camp Economy maybe be interested?
I basically agree with your list, but disagree with the idea that social shaming is the problem. I have five kids. Our house has basically 2 bedrooms (and a home office). Three of the kids(teens) share the master bedroom. Two of the kids (the little ones) share the smaller bedroom with us parents.
Our extracurriculars are limited to free activities that multiple kids can do at once (such things exist, yes!)
Their clothes are by and large hand-me-downs. Holiday and birthday gifts are mostly whatever their relatives provide; parties are basically gatherings with said relatives + homemade cake. (My eldest finally got a cell phone at 16, and then only because he inherited it from his grandfather, sadly.)
We don't go out to restaurants or go on big vacations.
I admit that my teens don't have jobs, but there aren't a whole lot of jobs available for teens within walking distance of our house.
Despite our frugal lifestyle, people don't criticize or shame us for it. (My mother did once tell me that each of my kids should be doing two extra curriculars a week, but I'm good at ignoring my mother.) How would strangers know how many extra curriculars my kids do, anyway? Or the size of our birthday celebrations?
If people feel anxious about how they "have" to spend money on these things, it's generally not because other people are out there shaming them, but because they are shaming themselves.
Even this sounds like a lot of effort and money to me. How much time/expense would you say it saves compared to the average? 20 maybe%? I think you'd need a norm that cut back even further than this to get fertility back over replacement.
I think most people are a lot more sensitive to shame compared to you and me. And I think it is that lack of sensitivity that allows us to have more children than average. Normal people don't need to be shamed in person. All it takes is the anticipation that something would probably count as vaguely shameful.
> I think most people are a lot more sensitive to shame compared to you and me.
Yeah, I thought of this at first too - "the real problem is that all these people that want to shame other parents have the CPS at their beck and call, and can enforce their shaming with violence."
But then I thought about it, and I think social pressure is more than enough even without the capacity for violence / legal action behind it.
You would move birth rates trivially if CPS could no longer take kids away so easily, because only a small portion of the iconoclasts who don't care about social opinion but DO care about legal threats of kidnapping would have more kids, so it's certainly no solution.
I think you have made a really good list, and I think you are right that "I have absolutely no idea how they could be changed without changing the entire culture" but I think they are 100% all downstream of the "zero-sum" mentality. (Explicitly in the case of any of the "status competition" items like "oh we need 5 sports and 3 charitable activities on your college application")
I'm certainly debating with my kids about the vacations, toys and sports they want to do - and of course, "but Timmy has one" is a big factor. I've literally talked to other parents at school of similarly aged kids and we've made a pact to help each other by not giving a phone to our kids)
I think you could go back to the root of the parent shaming thing: it was a tactic by Person A to affect how Person B raised their kids, so that B's kids would be more beneficial to A. As mentioned in the article, Lenore Skenazy's tactic (shaming and reverse-shaming) is essentially to lower the social status of giving kids wealth/material/stuff (you're hurting your kid by giving them an iphone, screen time makes them depressed - Haidt) and raise the status of the other stuff (walking to the store grants independence!) The entire social stigma around "spoiled" kids seems to work in this direction (though can definitely be taken too far).
I don't think it would be TOO impossible to slowly change culture to value that stuff more.
Secondarily, I think general good society policies that reduced the cost of housing/education/transport and parenting-assistive labor (nannies) for double worker households would help for this and many other reasons.
Reverse shaming could work if applied to the norms and social pressure aspect of competing through giving kids expensive things that were luxuries well within living memory. If instead of making iPhones and expensive holidays the norm, these were viewed as disastrous indulgences that undermined a child’s long term wellbeing, the way educated parents these days restrict rich foods and discourage overeating among their offspring. So people ambitious for their child could be shamed out of such practices.
However I think it would be very hard to reverse-shame parents from competing to give their children educational advantages. These are so ingrained as the base requirement of being a ‘good parent’. So the arms race of extracurricular activities and fighting to get Junior accepted by the most prestigious schools will continue. And resources will be poured into that arms race, and most parents will get the message that they can only afford one or two kids.
"So the arms race of extracurricular activities and fighting to get Junior accepted by the most prestigious schools will continue" but only until those schools change their selection criteria. Select on skin colour, height or IQ and parents priorities and efforts (so far as they can) will change accordingly.
The schools benefit from the arms race. Their status is raised and they will probably attract more resources as long as high-status parents are fighting to push their kids up the greasy pole of education.
I recall in NZ about 95% of school students go to state funded schools with that state funding inversely proportional to the 'wealth' of their students.
Most high status schools, like Wellington Boys College, actually receive, combining state funding with donations and their commercial business profits (foreigh students), receive less $ than most high schools educating students from the poorest NZ neighbourhoods. Actually the worst off schools are the mid-ranked (middle class) schools.
You might have overlooked my words about high status parents. The school system in NZ is warped by the obsession with ‘grammar zones’ and getting your kids into the ‘right’ school. Those schools that play the game successfully do well.
>>However I think it would be very hard to reverse-shame parents from competing to give their children educational advantages. These are so ingrained as the base requirement of being a ‘good parent’.
In America, yes. In Sweden it is seen as shameful to try to educate your child more than the public school system offers. (I have personally been parent shamed by my then about seven-year-old daughter's teacher because I showed her my daughter's home-math book in order to demonstrate my daughter's real level of math ability.)
This is so outlandish as to be a pathology of extreme egalitarianism which, I suppose, prevails among Swedish educationists. Nothing of normal human can be inferred from such a pathology.
Most probably it is tall poppy syndrome. I don't think most Swedes know about the American credential arms race. At least not the type of Swedes who become the teachers of young children. I have never heard anyone say "we shouldn't do this here". We just don't because there are no elite universities anyway. No elite universities, so nothing special to compete for.
Thanks for the insight into Swedish norms. I agree that in the USA (and probably most of the anglosphere) the ideal of investing in your children’s educational advantage has been mainstreamed for middle class families. Immigration from China has reinforced this, at least in New Zealand, where I live.
Not so long ago among humans, if you fed your offspring, put a roof over their heads, and didn't beat them so badly that they never got to be big kids, you were thought to be doing a Pretty Good Job of parenting.
On the social contagion aspect of fertility I think this comment is very revealing.
https://www.f0xr.com/p/the-amish-fertility-miracle-part/comment/70826727
This perspective almost completely externalizes the reason why women/couples are having less children. Informed preferences due to socioeconomic pressure is missing from this no doubt interesting perspective.
>>Informed preferences due to socioeconomic pressure is missing
I wouldn't say so. Parent shaming is in the "socio" part of socioeconomic. Parent shaming, parent praising, other social circumstances and material circumstances together form an environment in which individuals make their informed choices.
Fascinating article. I slightly disagree with this statement, though: “Some people don't deserve to have children” is an ordinary phrase among less cultured people where I live.
I don't think that saying or thinking this makes someone less cultured. Most of us can't stop oursleves judging, for example, if we see a man hitting his child in the street, or a woman smoking while heavily pregnant. Or when we read about a child being abused or killed by its parents. Most of us can't fathom how someone could mistreat their own children, and even though we know we shouldn't judge, we do. Likewise when a child goes missing. We almost always ask 'Where were the parents?' even though we know it's very easy and common for a child to wander off and get lost (my brother used to do this and the whole neighbourhood would be out looking for him!) Surely this shame worked in an ancestral environment, as parents who were shamed or judged by other members of the tribe were less likely to neglect their children.
Ah, no, I don't mean that saying "some people don't deserve to have children" makes people less cultured. I mean that the phrase is considered a bit unsophisticated. Only people who aren't aware of that will use that precise wording. People who are trying to be sophisticated will typically refrain from judging openly. Instead, they will express concern of the kind "I really wish they can get help for this". For the people who are being judged, the latter isn't necessarily better than the former - it can be much worse, since it implies that it is possible to "help" them (which it is often not).
Judging people the right way simply is one of many kinds of status signaling. It has nothing to do with morality.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification!
On the whole I'm on board with this thesis:
"Higher-status females take the children from lower-status females, probably to the detriment of the children, among humans too."
Many decades ago, when I lived in a middle income (not western) country most urban families had 1 or 2 child maids aged from about 5 up to puberty. So its not just Karens working for CPS who are commandeering kids.
And my wife's father (as a child) was cared for by a childless woman ("the Nanny") and her young assistant (the family had several other servants too). Resources can be used for multiple ends including suppressing the fertility of others.
Let's call it an instinct that comes to the fore when a parent feels their kids are being allocated a lesser portion of one's community's 'spare' resources than they want for them. As you say, "Some people don't deserve to have children." It seems to mean that shame (felt for failing to meet the accepted parenting norms) is just one weapon that is wielding in this battle.
Interesting but not entirely convincing.
I think parent shaming found in modern societies owes entirely to the spirit of meliorism (the belief that the world can be made better by human effort) which runs amok in the modern age and which arose as part and parcel of 18c Enlightenment.
So, the traditional societies that lack parent shaming, they haven't culturally evolved to get rid of parent shaming. The parent shaming itself is cultural evolution present in modern societies.
I wish you would re-examine your disdain for contraception. Its wrongness is not merely a Christian idea but present in other great religions, Hinduism for one.
>>So, the traditional societies that lack parent shaming, they haven't culturally evolved to get rid of parent shaming. The parent shaming itself is cultural evolution present in modern societies.
In the narrow sense this is true. "Shame" is the wrong word for what both animals and primitive societies are doing. "Aggression" is a more correct word. Animals don't have the idea that children should always be spared from aggression. And humans only slowly and painfully evolved that idea. Both aggression against children and non-support for parents precedes parent shaming: If no one provides for a woman with a newborn, shame is not the most obvious problem. Pure parent shaming, the situation where families are allowed to live and provided for but looked down upon, is a product of civilization and affluence.
>>I wish you would re-examine your disdain for contraception.
I'm for contraception. I'm a heavy user of the stuff myself.
>>Its wrongness is not merely a Christian idea but present in other great religions, Hinduism for one.
Isn't that a sign that anti-parent-shaming is cultural evolution? The idea that contraception is bad evolved all over the world.
Hunter-gatherer bands aside, the ever increasing size of human societies, first into villages of few hundreds, then into towns of few thousands, then into Rome like metropolises, then into empires and now world cities of tens of millions and nations like India of billion-plus----this is strong evidence that aggression towards parents and children is not a dominant force in past ten millennia.
Only if there are not even stronger forces that work in the opposite direction.
I've thought of this conclusion before, but I wasn't sure it was a very big cause for low birth rates, and I'm extremely skeptical of the chain of reasoning you use. The Chinese government instituted a one child policy for reasons involving parent shaming? Chimpanzees steal babies, so the child protective services do too?
I do agree that ignoring other people's attitudes towards What Should Be Done For The Children is a component in a high fertility lifestyle, but the demographic transition always followed a clear pattern, with falling birth rates attributed to socioeconomic factors like:
* contraception,
* urbanization,
* increase in the status and earning power of childless women,
* reduction in agriculture,
* reduction in the market value of unskilled (children's) labor,
* increase in in the cost and necessity for educating children, and
* reduction in social norms (& network effects) regarding marriage and childbearing
These aren't necessarily all particularly important causes for the drop in childbearing, but they are all at least established as having had an impact. And while the idea that culture matters is definitely a good general rule of thumb, *how* culture works, and how much exactly it matters, is usually a lot more complicated than just "parent shaming is the cause with a big C for the demographic crisis." Given everything we already see influences fertility rates, are you sure there's even the *possibility* for a big Cause? If the other factors I listed explain only 10% each, there's only even 30% left to explain.
I don't think shaming itself is that significant either. But I could believe that it's mainly shame that sets the normal standards and prospective parents then look at those standards and get discouraged without being directly shamed themselves.
Yes. People are exactly that sensitive.
I think all your causes mentioned are compatible with the parent shaming hypothesis. After all, I said that parent shaming is the cause with a big C - not that UNREASONABLE parent shaming is. When contraception is developed, people are shamed for not using it. When women can have careers, they are shamed for being housewives, when children's labor is no longer necessary people can afford to shame people for not sending their kids to university.
I think the Ultra-Orthodox Jews are a good example that the factors listed aren't that important after all. They use contraception, they are urban, their women are educated and have jobs, they most definitely aren't farmers, their children go to school all wake hours to 25 (I made that number up, for lack of statistics). Only the last one, norms for marriage, fits. I think that the high fertility of Ultra-Orthodox Jews is a strong indicator that shaming and counter-shaming is the most important factor behind high or low fertility. (Actually, I changed my mind when I learned about them. As long as I only knew about the Amish I made multi-factor models just like you.)
Yes, obviously I should have included "religion" in the long list of numerous influences on fertility. And I am dismayed that you keep wanting to think of sociology like a murder mystery where all the pieces have to fit, instead of in terms of statistics where outliers and exceptions neither prove nor disprove a rule.
Out of curiosity, I do wonder why you think the two of us had so many kids while (for two other examples) Aella and Kryptogal had none? This isn't a question that I necessarily think needs an answer, because I'm not concerned with all the pieces fitting. But if you think you have a big C cause, why doesn't it explain these four cases?
The truth is that I am confident shame is not the big C cause of differences in fertility decisions across the planet because this is something I think I really do understand: People have kids because they want to. And people who don't want to, don't. It all just comes down to that. Norms, economic incentives, personal preferences, moral outlooks, and emotional drives all influence, either directly or indirectly, what people want to do. Yes, shame is there somewhere, and yes, it exerts an influence, but it was never more effective at preventing people from becoming alcoholics, nor homosexuals from having sex, than it was making people want, or not want, kids.
Your accusation that I want the pieces to fit is an interesting one. Spontaneously I would call it an interest in philosophy, the way I define philosophy. https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/philosophy-is-the-mathematics-of
In sociology, just like in mathematics, every line of reasoning that can be simplified should be simplified as much as possible (but only as much as possible).
And that's why we have philosophy. Simplifying "religion" and "social norms" in a certain context into "parent shaming" gives a more transparent line of reasoning, in my opinion. And that's why I'm doing it. "Shame people less, praise people more!" is clearer and more concrete than "change social norms!".
>>But if you think you have a big C cause, why doesn't it explain these four cases?
I said it was the big cause behind the aggregate fertility rate. Not the cause behind the decisions of individuals: Parent shaming is an important part if the landscape in which individuals make decisions. Since all four of us are probably unusually shameless we feel free to make non-typical decisions. As you say, people have children or abstain from children because they want to. Other people's shaming, laws and material circumstances are only background factors against which people make decisions.
And organized religion is obviously very strongly connected to social shaming. Leah Kaplan, an ex-Ultra Orthodox Jew, wrote about the social condemnation of childless women in the group in which she grew up. She described a woman who happened to be childless and how her childlessness made her seem ugly (although she was technically beautiful). If Leah Kaplan is right and her observation can be generalized, some organized religion is doing rather intense anti-fertility shaming.
Edit: Leah Vincent. I mixed up her different names.
> Said it was the big cause behind the aggregate fertility rate. Not the cause behind the decisions of individuals
OK, that makes sense. I don't really agree with the rest, though.
I don't think there is a campaign of social condemnation of childless women and I assume Leah Vincent never meant that.
I think it is just the natural consequence of a society which views fertility as important. All humans have a sense of shame and failure when they don't accomplish something which their society views as important.
However, I that the critical factor is not valuing fertility but rather deemphasizing 'productivity' and human intervention. I think this is why religion in general, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Amish in particular are high fertility.
Yes, she only wrote about it very figuratively. A childless married woman couldn't appear attractive because childlessness made her unattractive. That was all she wrote, as I remember it.
>As things are, rather few people seem consciously aware that holding parents to high standards is not only a good thing
This makes more sense as "not _always_ a good thing"
I vehemently agree. This is true based on own my experiences with a high fertility culture. If you want people to have kids, you have to be very understanding and accommodating to children’s behavior, both good and bad. I think a having a lot of kids and acceptance of children in every facet of life (even when annoying) go hand in hand.
I just thought of something potentially related to the chimp mom at the beginning of your post. For whatever reasons I have yet to fully understand, two of my kids are really weirded out by babies/toddlers and don't like to touch or look at them. I have yet to figure out anything I can do about this--in a family of 5, they've certainly been exposed to babies, so exposure therapy is out. I've never asked them to help with their younger siblings, so it's not that. My autistic kid can't explain himself, but his sister reports that babies look like gross aliens and are constant sources of disgusting liquids like poop and barf, so I think it's partly a contamination phobia? Now I'm wondering if there are other kids like mine. If so, they'd be hard to find due to low birth rates...
I was somewhat like your kids. I never liked to play with baby dolls. Before I had children myself I very seldom met any babies. But when I did I didn't feel any desire to look at them or touch them. I didn't find them cute. They just didn't concern me at all. In summary, I'm not sure that children with baby aversion tend to grow up into adults with few children.
My daughter left dolls behind when she left toddlerhood. Her favorite toys have always been non-humanoid. But she loves anything creative--playdoh/clay, paint, drawing, cooking, etc. She makes her own bread and made mozarella cheese the other day, all on her own.
I think having an aversion to *other people's* babies might be a good way to make sure people don't accidentally devote resources to the wrong child.
In Mother Nature, Sarah Hrdy writes that herd-living animals tend to be very fussy about which baby to raise and not, while some solitary animals are so indiscriminate that they can even raise the young of other species.
"The most likely reason why Western social workers err predominantly in one direction, is that the public can't stand that children fare badly in the homes of their birth parents, while the public can stand that children fare badly in foster homes. At least it can stand it much better.
Why is that? Because, I think, parenting enrages people."
I think there is a second factor: people tend to count intentions as mattering more than unintended effects. For example, Nazism and communism both killed lots of people, but most people see Nazism as worse because Nazis killed people on purpose, while communism's mass famines were, mostly, unintended. (We can debate about whether they were actually unintended or the philosophy of morality here, but I think most people see the famines as unintentional, which is my point.)
If the intention is good but the execution is lacking, the logic goes, then we just need to get better at doing the thing. If CPS is bad at saving kids, then CPS needs more funding/training/guidelines/whatever to make CPS good at its job. By contrast, if the intention was bad in the first place, then getting better at doing it doesn't fix the problem! No one wants more efficient Nazis (except maybe Nazis.)
I think this is a very fundamental flaw in people's logic that makes it very difficult for them to abandon bad ideas with terrible results simply because the ideas were dreamed up with good intentions.
Yes. But most parents who lose their children to the system are accused of exactly that - incompetence. I don't have all the numbers straight for America, but in Sweden neglect is by far the most common accusation against parents of removed children.
Yes. nice cultural comparison. Its all part of the _noyaux_, the messy hubbub wherein we chase our tails, the diversity of outcomes in their contexts (kindness, privileges) betray a limited number of actual risks and their negotiated responses that swivel around innate and drummed-up perceptions of risk (to nature, to morality, and who will think of the children).
Thank for a enlightening piece on a truly fundamental problem.
I think it is beyond doubt that rising demands on parenting are part of the problem in the Western world (including the advanced economies in East Asia). What about the rest of the world, where (with the exception of sub-Sahara Africa) fertility has been plummeting, too?
While more instruments may be available to facilitate the raising of children, one should consider not only the even increasingly demanding standards of parenting but also the increased opportunity cost of raising children in terms of professional opportunities or simple opportunities for ‘fun’.
Back when corporal punishment was more accepted, there was a certain expectation among parents that there be a certain amount of spectacle associated with it.
One could argue that it the spectacle served as a warning to other kids (especially siblings) of what could happen to them if they misbehaved.
But it seemed like the biggest spectacles often happened in public, or in front of other parents, and most importantly out of the presence of any siblings or other affiliated kids, as a demonstration that one was a fit parent that was in control of their kids.
The fact that this runs contrary to the tried and true rule of "praise in public, reprimand in private" just reinforces the point.
Maybe this is the reason why corporal punishment has been so difficult to eradicate--at least in cultures where there's an expectation of highly performative punishment.
Many female cats cooperate in feeding, raising and defending their litters. When my mom disappeared, her friends fed me and my siblings for a time.
Many toms, on the other hand, kill kittens, and that is why I had to flee the barn I was raised in.
I think root cause of all of this is belief that your society (or certain parts of it) is closer to the zero-sum "fixed pie" scenario, as opposed to positive-sum "growing pie" belief.
Chimpanzees are almost certainly correct that they live in a world where someone (other than close trusted relatives) else's babies are likely to be a negative for them, so... them living isn't that important, and their deaths might actively be pursued for one's own benefit. Chimps are jerks.
Humans very quickly (perhaps the basis of our civilization?) realized that expanding your circle of cooperation (with important tests of trust and loyalty) could be positive-sum, and therefore circle members' children (exposed through upbringing to the same tests) could also be beneficial to everyone. And advice/shame about parenting would focus on that: discipline your kids so they pass the "loyalty/benefit to the tribe" test, (spare the rod, spoil the child) but otherwise more kids = good (be fruitful and multiply).
But I think many societies have gotten much larger than the "loyalty tests" can credibly claim to cover. In the US, you will often see families with many children (usually assumed to be low-income) denigrated as "just more mouths on welfare." There was the (disputed) famous data showing that abortion led to a decrease in subsequent crime rates, with the implications of that quietly (or loudly) stated. There is a lot of debate about the costs or benefits of immigration, which basically an identical argument (delayed by 16-25 years). I don't think it is a coincidence that the most strenuous anti-birth program in history was enacted by the largest communist (an ideology much closer to zero-sum thinking) state in history, and then it attempted to reverse course after it adopted more non-communist ideology/policies.
I think (again in the US) that we have reached a point where we again believe that a large portion of other people are burdens (politically, economically or environmentally, either in general or directly to potential parents) and by definition our statements, advice/shaming reflect our desire to A) reduce the # of burdensome offspring and B) if those burdensome offspring have already been born, shame their parents into parenting them in a way that minimizes their cost to us. I think this is most obvious when we look at exactly which people parent shame the most, which people are targeted for that shaming, and what reasons are cited.
Really interesting explanation. It seems to bridge the gap between the economic vs. cultural explanation for fertility decline.
If parental shaming is a large cause of low fertility rates, what aspects of being a parent that make childrearing so expensive, that are mostly culturally motivated, should be suppressed? Obviously some parental shaming is beneficial overall to the lives of outcome of children, but I can imagine quite a few expenses that go into childrearing, that have become social expectations, that can probably be done away with;
- Every child having their own room (Housing is very expensive)
- Extracurricular sports (Very expensive/time consuming, few children continue when schooling ends)
- Expensive clothing (They quickly grow out of it)
- Yearly birthday parties (Relatively recent social innovation)
- Expensive toys (iPhones, gaming consoles, more than one Christmas gift etc.)
- Exotic Vacations (2 Kids essentially doubles the cost of most vacations)
- Not working (Kids should start at least a summer job when they turn 13)
Of course there's the taboos, expectations, and shaming that goes along with all these things, so I have absolutely no idea how they could be changed without changing the entire culture, which is basically impossible. It's hard to limit the consumption of your kid if they're in a school where their peers are constantly given all these things, and exposed to social media where people are constantly flexing, setting their expectations high, and breeding resentment if they don't get what they want.
>>It seems to bridge the gap between the economic vs. cultural explanation for fertility decline.
Yes, now that you're saying it... The explanation says that it really is costs that deters people from having children, but that those costs are determined by culture. Could someone from Camp Economy maybe be interested?
I basically agree with your list, but disagree with the idea that social shaming is the problem. I have five kids. Our house has basically 2 bedrooms (and a home office). Three of the kids(teens) share the master bedroom. Two of the kids (the little ones) share the smaller bedroom with us parents.
Our extracurriculars are limited to free activities that multiple kids can do at once (such things exist, yes!)
Their clothes are by and large hand-me-downs. Holiday and birthday gifts are mostly whatever their relatives provide; parties are basically gatherings with said relatives + homemade cake. (My eldest finally got a cell phone at 16, and then only because he inherited it from his grandfather, sadly.)
We don't go out to restaurants or go on big vacations.
I admit that my teens don't have jobs, but there aren't a whole lot of jobs available for teens within walking distance of our house.
Despite our frugal lifestyle, people don't criticize or shame us for it. (My mother did once tell me that each of my kids should be doing two extra curriculars a week, but I'm good at ignoring my mother.) How would strangers know how many extra curriculars my kids do, anyway? Or the size of our birthday celebrations?
If people feel anxious about how they "have" to spend money on these things, it's generally not because other people are out there shaming them, but because they are shaming themselves.
Even this sounds like a lot of effort and money to me. How much time/expense would you say it saves compared to the average? 20 maybe%? I think you'd need a norm that cut back even further than this to get fertility back over replacement.
What part of what I described sounds like a lot of effort/expense beyond just having infants to care for?
I think most people are a lot more sensitive to shame compared to you and me. And I think it is that lack of sensitivity that allows us to have more children than average. Normal people don't need to be shamed in person. All it takes is the anticipation that something would probably count as vaguely shameful.
> I think most people are a lot more sensitive to shame compared to you and me.
Yeah, I thought of this at first too - "the real problem is that all these people that want to shame other parents have the CPS at their beck and call, and can enforce their shaming with violence."
But then I thought about it, and I think social pressure is more than enough even without the capacity for violence / legal action behind it.
You would move birth rates trivially if CPS could no longer take kids away so easily, because only a small portion of the iconoclasts who don't care about social opinion but DO care about legal threats of kidnapping would have more kids, so it's certainly no solution.
I always want to kick people for that. "You aren't actually being pressured! You're doing it to yourself!"
I might dicker with some of the details, but yes.
I think you have made a really good list, and I think you are right that "I have absolutely no idea how they could be changed without changing the entire culture" but I think they are 100% all downstream of the "zero-sum" mentality. (Explicitly in the case of any of the "status competition" items like "oh we need 5 sports and 3 charitable activities on your college application")
I'm certainly debating with my kids about the vacations, toys and sports they want to do - and of course, "but Timmy has one" is a big factor. I've literally talked to other parents at school of similarly aged kids and we've made a pact to help each other by not giving a phone to our kids)
I think you could go back to the root of the parent shaming thing: it was a tactic by Person A to affect how Person B raised their kids, so that B's kids would be more beneficial to A. As mentioned in the article, Lenore Skenazy's tactic (shaming and reverse-shaming) is essentially to lower the social status of giving kids wealth/material/stuff (you're hurting your kid by giving them an iphone, screen time makes them depressed - Haidt) and raise the status of the other stuff (walking to the store grants independence!) The entire social stigma around "spoiled" kids seems to work in this direction (though can definitely be taken too far).
I don't think it would be TOO impossible to slowly change culture to value that stuff more.
Secondarily, I think general good society policies that reduced the cost of housing/education/transport and parenting-assistive labor (nannies) for double worker households would help for this and many other reasons.
Reverse shaming could work if applied to the norms and social pressure aspect of competing through giving kids expensive things that were luxuries well within living memory. If instead of making iPhones and expensive holidays the norm, these were viewed as disastrous indulgences that undermined a child’s long term wellbeing, the way educated parents these days restrict rich foods and discourage overeating among their offspring. So people ambitious for their child could be shamed out of such practices.
However I think it would be very hard to reverse-shame parents from competing to give their children educational advantages. These are so ingrained as the base requirement of being a ‘good parent’. So the arms race of extracurricular activities and fighting to get Junior accepted by the most prestigious schools will continue. And resources will be poured into that arms race, and most parents will get the message that they can only afford one or two kids.
Interesting thought experiment however
"So the arms race of extracurricular activities and fighting to get Junior accepted by the most prestigious schools will continue" but only until those schools change their selection criteria. Select on skin colour, height or IQ and parents priorities and efforts (so far as they can) will change accordingly.
The schools benefit from the arms race. Their status is raised and they will probably attract more resources as long as high-status parents are fighting to push their kids up the greasy pole of education.
Umm, you're clearly not referring to NZ schools.
I recall in NZ about 95% of school students go to state funded schools with that state funding inversely proportional to the 'wealth' of their students.
Most high status schools, like Wellington Boys College, actually receive, combining state funding with donations and their commercial business profits (foreigh students), receive less $ than most high schools educating students from the poorest NZ neighbourhoods. Actually the worst off schools are the mid-ranked (middle class) schools.
You might have overlooked my words about high status parents. The school system in NZ is warped by the obsession with ‘grammar zones’ and getting your kids into the ‘right’ school. Those schools that play the game successfully do well.
>>However I think it would be very hard to reverse-shame parents from competing to give their children educational advantages. These are so ingrained as the base requirement of being a ‘good parent’.
In America, yes. In Sweden it is seen as shameful to try to educate your child more than the public school system offers. (I have personally been parent shamed by my then about seven-year-old daughter's teacher because I showed her my daughter's home-math book in order to demonstrate my daughter's real level of math ability.)
This is so outlandish as to be a pathology of extreme egalitarianism which, I suppose, prevails among Swedish educationists. Nothing of normal human can be inferred from such a pathology.
"In Sweden it is seen as shameful to try to educate your child more than the public school system offers."
Is this because of tall poppy syndrome or to limit run-away credential arms races? The latter is much more reasonable imo.
Most probably it is tall poppy syndrome. I don't think most Swedes know about the American credential arms race. At least not the type of Swedes who become the teachers of young children. I have never heard anyone say "we shouldn't do this here". We just don't because there are no elite universities anyway. No elite universities, so nothing special to compete for.
Thanks for the insight into Swedish norms. I agree that in the USA (and probably most of the anglosphere) the ideal of investing in your children’s educational advantage has been mainstreamed for middle class families. Immigration from China has reinforced this, at least in New Zealand, where I live.
Shame about the weather. Summer will arrive one day.
Not so long ago among humans, if you fed your offspring, put a roof over their heads, and didn't beat them so badly that they never got to be big kids, you were thought to be doing a Pretty Good Job of parenting.