Wednesday
Oct262011
Overworked, Debt-Laden Gen X Opting For No Kids
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
I originally posted this last week at Care2.com, but wanted to have a discussion about it with my readers too. I hope you'll chime in with your thoughts.
According to a new study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, 43 percent of Gen X women and 32 percent of Gen X men do not have any children. According to the study, Gen Xers, those born between 1965 and 1978 (currently 33 to 46 years old) should be at the stage of their lives where they are “stepping into crucial leadership roles and starting families.” Instead, ambitious Gen Xers feel stalled in their careers and are working 60+ hour weeks trying desperately to keep their debt levels under control. The combination of huge student debts (Gen X is the most educated generation and is now paying for it) with the current financial turmoil and lack of advancement opportunities (those boomers aren’t retiring quickly enough!) leave little extra cash to pay for diapers and day care.
Opting Out or Feeling Forced Out of Parenting?
In a Washington Post article, Petula Dvorak writes:
She then goes on to talk about the issues of debt, ambition, stalled careers and long hours that were mentioned in the study and ultimately concludes that this isn’t just some contemporary trend toward being child free. Rather, despite the supposed choices that women of our generation have, as significant contributors to the family income (91% of Gen X women are part of a dual-earning couple and one third of them out-earn their spouses), many Gen Xers may feel there is simply not enough financial wiggle room to have children.
Where Are Our Choices?
If these women truly do not want to have children, then there is no problem. The earth is already overpopulated and the decision to be child free is one that people should be able to make freely. However, if the women and men of Gen X do want to have children and feel like they cannot, then there is a problem.
That problem is a multifaceted one. On the one-hand, at a macro-level there is insufficient support for parenting in the United States. The key supports that are needed to allow one parent or the other to take some time off to have and raise children are missing. Those supports include maternity and parental leave, decent affordable health care options and subsidized day care.
On the other hand, society also needs to be more accepting of men as parents. This shouldn’t simply be about women choosing not to have babies. Feminists have been pushing for more options for women, but if we want a family friendly future we need to push for more:
Women also need to be willing to let go, work with their partners and accept that they cannot do it all. Parenting while having a career is challenging, requires sacrifices and necessitates an acceptance of less than perfect.
Support is Key
Parenting is hard and people need to feel supported in their choice to become a parent. That is true in the best of times, but is even more true in difficult economic times where families are having trouble making ends meet and where fear of job loss has people putting in longer hours for less money. When societal support for parenting does not exist, it is no wonder that more people are opting out.
Why do you think a larger portion of Gen X are opting not to have kids?
Image credit: eflon on flickr
According to a new study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, 43 percent of Gen X women and 32 percent of Gen X men do not have any children. According to the study, Gen Xers, those born between 1965 and 1978 (currently 33 to 46 years old) should be at the stage of their lives where they are “stepping into crucial leadership roles and starting families.” Instead, ambitious Gen Xers feel stalled in their careers and are working 60+ hour weeks trying desperately to keep their debt levels under control. The combination of huge student debts (Gen X is the most educated generation and is now paying for it) with the current financial turmoil and lack of advancement opportunities (those boomers aren’t retiring quickly enough!) leave little extra cash to pay for diapers and day care.
Opting Out or Feeling Forced Out of Parenting?
In a Washington Post article, Petula Dvorak writes:
I see them downtown, these women my age who have no haunted look of sleeplessness in their eyes. They don’t have suspicious stains on their clothes. They aren’t picking smashed Cheerio bits out from between their BlackBerry keys. (We working moms live in a world of perpetual BlackBerry outages, constantly explaining the latest apple-juice incident to the IT dude.) My first thought when I see these women in their 30s and 40s is, “Right on, sister.”
Nearly half the women who make up Generation X — 43 percent — have no children.
Attribute it to more opportunities in the workforce, relaxing social pressure, advances in contraception or watching women such as myself slip into an increasingly disheveled state of hysteria for years after childbirth and vowing not to follow suit.
She then goes on to talk about the issues of debt, ambition, stalled careers and long hours that were mentioned in the study and ultimately concludes that this isn’t just some contemporary trend toward being child free. Rather, despite the supposed choices that women of our generation have, as significant contributors to the family income (91% of Gen X women are part of a dual-earning couple and one third of them out-earn their spouses), many Gen Xers may feel there is simply not enough financial wiggle room to have children.
Where Are Our Choices?
If these women truly do not want to have children, then there is no problem. The earth is already overpopulated and the decision to be child free is one that people should be able to make freely. However, if the women and men of Gen X do want to have children and feel like they cannot, then there is a problem.
That problem is a multifaceted one. On the one-hand, at a macro-level there is insufficient support for parenting in the United States. The key supports that are needed to allow one parent or the other to take some time off to have and raise children are missing. Those supports include maternity and parental leave, decent affordable health care options and subsidized day care.
On the other hand, society also needs to be more accepting of men as parents. This shouldn’t simply be about women choosing not to have babies. Feminists have been pushing for more options for women, but if we want a family friendly future we need to push for more:
We need to push for a society that values family and parenthood. One that recognizes that role that parents play in raising the next generation. One that recognizes that fathers, like mothers, may need to strike a balance between their career and their family life. One where women don’t feel that they have to be an equally uninvolved parent in order to reach their goals, but where they can ask their partner to step up too.
Women also need to be willing to let go, work with their partners and accept that they cannot do it all. Parenting while having a career is challenging, requires sacrifices and necessitates an acceptance of less than perfect.
Support is Key
Parenting is hard and people need to feel supported in their choice to become a parent. That is true in the best of times, but is even more true in difficult economic times where families are having trouble making ends meet and where fear of job loss has people putting in longer hours for less money. When societal support for parenting does not exist, it is no wonder that more people are opting out.
Why do you think a larger portion of Gen X are opting not to have kids?
Image credit: eflon on flickr
Reader Comments (68)
I'm on the cusp of Gen-X (b. 1978) and pregnant with my first kid (I hope - it's early). This is the right time in my life, though I have panic attacks a couple of times a week about how my partner and I are going to juggle work and parenting and manage our finances. We feel confident we'll figure these things out, but how is not at all clear at this point!
When I was in my early twenties I announced to both of my parents that I didn't plan to have children - and I meant it, or at least wanted them to know I meant it for the foreseeable future. My mother got pregnant with my older sister when she was 22, and she and my father went through a messy divorce when I was ten. I excelled academically and knew I wanted to prioritize being able to take care of myself before trying to take care of anyone else as an adult - an opportunity I don't think my mother really gave herself, and a privilege I enjoyed growing up upper middle class in the wake of the women's movement.
I knew I wanted to have kids when, in grad school, I started babysitting for my professors - women who were juggling families and very successful careers. It took me a long time to come to this realization, which coincided with me getting my first job. Moreover my partner - an amazing, intelligent, talented man - took a long time to figure out his path, get a graduate degree that was right for him, and find the right job in a wretched market. So we both only recently felt ready, personally and financially, to take on the challenge of parenthood. I think some pundits out there might read this as a tale of extended adolescence, but I really don't: we've been fending for ourselves since college, living far away from our families, and doing plenty of other great, grown-up things with our lives in the meantime. No keggers since 2005, I promise.
We seem to be able to conceive, and are grateful we haven't missed our window - but for women (AND men) who've made the decision to explore opportunities for professional and personal growth in their 20s, that window is just smaller. And I'm not sure that's a tragedy - I think it's a sign that couples like us are making informed decisions about how we want to live as grown-ups.
So I guess my question is: even if there's a sense in which it's not possible for all 43% of these childless women to confirm, now or in the future, that they do OR don't want to have children, is that a problem? (Does it become more of a problem if we view these women with pity or even concern?) Aren't there many ways to give back - adoption, foster care, volunteer work, being the best aunt or uncle in the world - in which non-parents can participate? And perhaps they *are* doing these things - that'd be some interesting data to think about.
1. The 46 year old. How sure are you that she "really" wants/wantted to have kids and/or get married? Maybe the 'excuses' and the exclusive interest in unavailable men were ust that - excuses to cover for the fact that she really DOESN'T want those things and isn't comfortable coming right out and saying that in public.
2. Aside from various takes on living at home, why do we assume that not being interested in getting married or having children indicates a lack of maturity? Considering all the social-cultural pressures on us to do these things, being willing to decide against them could be a sign of greater maturity, than simply following the lifescript laid out for us, because it is the 'done' thing to do. For that matter, if workign at a specific kind of job/career is fulfilling to you and makes you happy, why should you have to give that up to get a 'better' career, to fit in with an external standard of 'success'?
"If you’re broke and not even supporting kids, then you’re doing it wrong."
Because everyone who is Childfree has a well paying job, no unpaid research to doand low rent?
"Honestly, I think for a large number of these women and men, it comes down to the fact that being a parent and spouse wasn’t a primary goal (some other people have touched on this too)."
Or, for that matter, even a goal AT ALL.
"I don’t know any couples in their 30′s who have (both) decided not to have kids. Nearly all my friends in couples have kids, the house, the car, the career etc."
--You clearly need to get out more and start meeting people who live in the real world (i.e., not breastfeeding stuffed animals).
"It is all my single friends who can’t seem to settle down for some reason or another that seem to be making up the stats."
--Relationship and parental status do not equal "settling down". It is people like you who perpetuate the myth that single people are selfish, immature, and childish. Do yourself and your kids a favour and read the research that clearly shows single people are just as happy as married people.
I'm a 33 year-old physician who made a conscious decision not to get married and have kids. What has this cost me? Absolutely nothing. What has it gotten me? Everything. I own my own home (mortgage-free), plus three additional rental properties (all houses) in one of the most expensive cities in North America. I also own my own clinic. I'm not plagued by sleeplessness anymore (I was in med school, but not anymore). I'm healthy and happy, I have great friends and family, I love my job, and I love life. People like you, Mama, will likely never understand that women CAN be happy when they're single and child-FREE.
People can find joy and fulfillment pursuing other things. There are so many experiences to be had in this world that using parenthood as a vice for your own fulfillment is actually quite selfish. If you need parenthood to feel fulfilled, then your life was, and continues to be, pretty pathetic.
I do know couples in their 30s that have both decided not to have children.
Really, Mariana? Pathetic? So the only fulfilling experiences are those which are not parenting-related, those that are outside the realm of motherhood? Your posts are rather vitriolic. I do have to wonder whether you have some issue with your choice to remain child-free as you sit there slamming moms who can't imagine life without their children, and life outside of the families they created.
It's not wise to speak so harshly of what you do not know. I am a young mother and could not feel more fulfilled.
Ingrid, you did not read what I wrote. I never said the only fulfilling experiences are those which aren't parenting-related. I said that if a person must rely on parenthood to feel fulfilled, then their life prior to, and including today, that is pathetic. That demonstrates they did not have any interests and hobbies prior to their children being born. If you must rely on another being (whether it be a child or partner), then I question your general mental health and well-being. Oh, and that makes you selfish, too, if you must rely on others for your own personal fulfillment.
Rest assured, I don't have any "issues" with my choice to remain child-free. If parents want to think that, they are free to do so. I am not going to remain quiet about my choice to remain child-free and how happy I am that I didn't cave to parental/peer/societal pressure.
Yes, but then you reach an age where men are no longer sexually attracted to you, your parents are either dead or old and sick and you must care for them alone, and your friends have families of their own, and you realize, "wow" my best years are behind me and I will die alone with nobody on earht that truly love me. Doesnt sound very fulfilling to me. My mother had me a t 25 and 4 kids by the time she was 32. We are al best friends now, have expanded to incldue in-laws and mor kids, cousins, friends etc....
what??? nurturing a human life is the most selfless choice one could ever make. Ont he other hand, choosing to dedicate your life to "me" is the most selfish decision a human being can probably ever make.
And I hate to break it to you, but we all have careers, all have traveled, and yes, we still get to have plenty of un with or without the kids. People take parenting way too seriously nowadays. For heaven's sake, tehy wont be kids forever! They will grow up to be younf mena nd women before you know it and they will jsut happy to be alive! They wont give a shit if mommy and daddy didnt do arts and crafts every sunday with them. they wont be traumatized by stayign witha babysitter because you went on vacation.
people on this blog take kids waaaay too seriously. They will be adults oen day. relax! You dont have to be perfect. They'll forget all teh hard work one day anyway and will become independent people, and your best friend. People thinkthey ahve it ll figured out when they are young, and then they realize that someday they will be all alone, because npbody gives you teh unconditional love like a child or a grandchild. Beleive me, the couple with 4 kids and 13 grandchildren in their 60's (or maybe even 50's) are generally the happiest people out there at that age.
No, Dave. "Nurturing a human life" is the most selfish choice an individual can make. You are dedicating all of your time and resources to one person (i.e., your child) instead of helping out your community and, by extension, the world.
I've read your other comments and it's clear that you don't have a life beyond your family and the four walls of your home. That's sad. Just because people choose not to have kids does not make them selfish. It makes them selfLESS.
I don't think we need to have a pissing contest over who is more selfish or selfless. There are selfish, entitled people in the world. If they choose to have children, they are likely to raise selfish, entitled children. There are community-minded, generous people in the world. If they have children, they are likely to raise community-minded generous children.
I don't think people who choose not to have children are automatically selfish or selfless. Some are selfish and it is probably a good thing that they are opting not to have children. Others are selfless and have simply chosen to dedicate themselves to the world in a different way than those selfless people who have children.
I am merely pointing out the errors in Dave's comments, not trying to win a "pissing contest." I have a feeling that he (and others like him) probably wouldn't understand my comment above. It's unfortunate that the narrow-minded, unintelligent are having kids.
Thank you for posting an important article for our times. It amazes me that so many people are concerned that women don’t want kids. With regard to overpopulation, society should be giving out rewards and honor single folks volunteering to keep the world less crowded.
Recently, the topic of people who are childless by choice is making news. On June 5, CNN aired a segment proclaiming that “49% of women ages 40-44 are voluntarily childless,” and Time Magazine will be releasing a feature story, The ChildFree Life, this week.
- lmm, sologenxwarriors.com
I'm one of those tail-end ('78) gen-xers who can't afford kids. My student loan debt is too high. I only went to law school because I thought it would be a good investment to ensure my future family's wellbeing. I make a decent wage but after taxes, mandatory health insurance and $1200 in student loan payments (public and private-paying min. and in ibr) each month, rent and gas is a struggle to pay without credit cards. If I made more, I could afford kids on my own. If I made less, I'd get assistance. If I didn't have such a huge student loan burden, I'd already be a mom.