How the media avoids the truth

2018-07-05-NYT-americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why

Americans Are Having Fewer Babies. They Told Us Why.
Women have more options, for one. But a new poll also shows that financial insecurity is altering a generation’s choices.
By Claire Cain Miller
New York Times, 2018-07-05

From the article:

The survey, one of the most comprehensive explorations of the reasons that adults are having fewer children, tells a story that is partly about greater gender equality. Women have more agency over their lives, and many feel that motherhood has become more of a choice.

But it’s also a story of economic insecurity. Young people have record student debt, many graduated in a recession and many can’t afford homes — all as parenthood has become more expensive. Women in particular pay an earnings penalty for having children.

“We want to invest more in each child to give them the best opportunities to compete in an increasingly unequal environment,” said Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland who studies families and has written about fertility.

At the same time, he said, “There is no getting around the fact that the relationship between gender equality and fertility is very strong: There are no high-fertility countries that are gender equal.”

As a 70-something reactionary white male, I have a view on why all that is.

In so many ways, the period since 1960 or so has been dominated by waves of propaganda spread by the American media,
selling American women on how wonderful feminism is,
and how they are failures if they choose to prioritize child-rearing and family over that ultra-wonderful prospect, a career.

How well has selling American women on the importance of their career succeeded?
Well, I can give one personal example.
When I asked ah English professor, who at the time happened to be my wife,
why she was demanding a divorce,
she did not cite a list of my failures to be a good husband,
which in many respects I was not.
Rather, she tried very hard to avoid answering the question.
But I persisted with the question, and finally she did give not one but two reasons:
"You are limiting my growth." and "You are cramping my style."

The fact is that women were and are sold on the importance of "growth",
which is defined for them in terms of financial, career, and influence success.
Are those that not the themes the media, and the cultural scene, are pushing?
And, not to kick those who have enabled me to have this blog,
is it not true that Silicon Valley seems very enamored of political correctness, to include voicing support for feminism?
Take the example of Sheryl Sandberg.

And then there are the American institutions.
What was more all-American and wholesome than the Girl Scouts?
However, reading the boxes of today's Girl Scout cookies, they are now selling feminism to their charges.

In an instance of nostalgia, let me recall the rather different values of my high school in the early 1960s.
At Ferguson High School (yes, THAT Ferguson), boys, including yours truly, were required to take a semester of shop.
Girls were required to take a semester of home economics.
Roles were clear.
Was that really so bad?
I think not.
I wish we could go back to those days.
Was “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” really so bad?

---

In my opinion, it is a grave error not to consider the economics of feminism.
First, society, somehow, has to pay for the care of the children of working women.
No doubt the cost is divided between the woman herself, or her family, and society at large.
Still, this is a burden on the economy.

Second, what happens when all those childless women become old?
They won't have a family to support them.
Voila, the cost of caring for the elderly gets dumped on society at large.