All the Single Ladies*...

and, In Defense of the Childless Couples.

Pity poor Ross Douthat. You wonder at the quality of his friendships. What kind of singles and childless couples he actually knows.

Mr. Douthat argues in the NYTimes -- online, print or both, I'm not privileged to say -- that the aforementioned childless peoples are "decadent", and scolds that Western childbearing populations have a moral duty to reproduce themselves to give those uncreated next generations the same amazing opportunities earlier generations permitted us.

Trouble is, I think he's got things mostly backwards.

Many married with childrens, especially if they are doing it right, stop themselves short right there and put their children or the family unit as a whole first, essentially halting their own intellectual growth and ending the journey of curiosities for the purpose of guiding their offspring.

Many of the childless, by contrast, are indeed monk-like or even monomaniacal in their continued solitary pursuits -- the single aunts and uncles, I am thinking of;  the childless by choice married couples -- pursing their careers by growing their skills, not just putting in the time, but actually contributing to the growth -- and quality -- of their chosen professions.  It's a sacrifice, but a knowingly made one.

Some parents, often those working for the paycheck to provide for the growing large and extra-large families that Douthat encourages, necessarily end their pursuit of higher knowledge and competitive growth of their own  -- through time, dedication, cost and just plain variety of experiences -- to put storybook reading, bathtime, playdates, zoo and childrens' museum trips first. If you're doing it right in maximizing the young ones' growth potential.

That's wonderful, and it's great that men like Douthat these days have the opportunity to choose the big-family route if it appeals to his personal satisfactions, and to spend time with their offspring, helping shape their individual family's futures.  But not everyone is willing to make such a tradeoff.**

Not for decadence's sake (really, the decadent and willfully risky individuals in the lifestyles he imagines and describes are exactly the ones we don't want to currently reproduce themselves.)

We want men, and women, to go beyond the 40-hour weeks, putting in the time to earn the paycheck and find family balance. But we also need those who have no Saturday soccer games scheduled, who have no Sunday family visiting time, or early evening homework checks, play outside teaching time, or simple reverting to childhood ways to meet their own children on their own ground, wherever it is they stand this year.

I wonder if Douthat knows those people: who take up their tasks Saturday and Sunday mornings, as they do the weekdays, and I don't mean simple weekly home chores and seasonal house maintenance. Adult reading, delving further and further into one's field(s) of choice -- it's hard to justify that when your creations are calling for you to be there in the present, today, while they are still growing themselves and need your simple presence.

Truth be told?
I think many of the ones who choose home and hearth in 21st Century America can be considered amongst the decadent. Registering for the gifts prior to the wedding, and the birth of the offspring. Collecting material goods that someone needs to work solely to pay for. The necessary childhood accoutrements -- the trips, the toys, the activities, the joys...

No one can deny the intrinsic rewards of parenting, but Mr. Douthat seems to think it's all noble sacrifice and austerity to raise children these days. If only.

For every man (or woman) coming home to a stay at home spouse and children -- like George in It's a Wonderful Life -- you probably now have three or four single ladies opening their own doors after a week at the salt mines, making their own meals, taking care of routine household chores*** AND managing to live the "decadent" lifestyle Douthat so enviously imagines. Which is to say: time to one's self. More freedoms of choice, to do with one's time and treasures, rather than putting the future first.

That's not decadence. That bachelorhood and spinsterdom done responsibly. (Again, we don't want the continuously rutting males reproducing and running, anymore than we want to encourage the party girls to begin reproducing just to qualify for this proposed tax credit or that, with all the free daycare and assorted incentives we can imagine...)

How can we get the "good ones" -- the Western women and men who have maximixed their opportunites in the land of plenty -- to choose children more and more? I'm afraid to say, we can't. (Most studies show these hyped incentives to essentially pay people to breed more fail, again and again.)

Nor should we.
Mr. Douthat needs to recognize that in nature, botany or biology/breeding say, many species essentially "spend" themselves. That is, like so many of today's Western families, as the stock gets richer and richer, the quality doesn't necessarily increase correspondingly. (See Dharun Ravi, or talk to any "good" students at competitive public high schools about the culture of success. I often think that what turns many off to corporate careers and supposed cultural advantages is the poverty of personal values in such places.)

I think in so many of today's "advantaged" children, society is trading character development for expensive opportunity. Plus, more is not necessarily better, as any grown child of an extensively large family could probably tell Douthat.

[The columnist comes from a small family himself, and is a newcomer to the Catholic faith, whose tenets who believes he touts.]

More and more singles, and childless couples, are choosing to sacrifice parenthood not to pursue decadence, but to practice simplicity -- something generally not very affordable in the competitive Western parenthood game these days. Ok -- you win.

We'll turn away from the parenthood tracks, the tax breaks and the emotional rewards, so that we can sacrifice our time and talents in other ways for the future. If this means people in other situations have an advantage over Western countries in breeding, well what exactly does Douthat think happened to the WASPy generations of natives and pre-WWII Roosevelt-types when the immigrants and Catholics came in greater and greater numbers last century to our shores?

In short, Douthat is sensing a "problem" only because he hasn't put in the time, or doesn't have the natural skills, to envision an alternative future. One in which, quality not quantity, matters most. One in which some plants flower out, while others interbreed, expand, and vary their range. Meanwhile,  it's true:  some garden species indeed lose their dominance.

One of the best gifts Mal and I ever gave ourselves was to call off our wedding a few weeks -- days? -- before the ceremony was set in 1998. I simply could not do that to him: make a "family" man out of someone so uniquely special and still growing, not yet ready to set his own pursuits aside to provide. For my part, I had the Alice Cooper-like realization: walking down the aisle in a fancy dress with all eyes on me was not what I'd been dreaming of since girlhood; it would be welcoming others to my nightmare.

The things we've done -- together and apart -- since those days are not exactly decadent. Him: Caring -- properly -- for elders. (Like children, there is no substitute for time, listening, and repetitive performance of routine tasks.) Travelling abroad, reading ahead, visiting museums and cultural sites, befriending others and growing from exposure to different cultures. Risk taking, absorbing losses and watching dedicated efforts pay off. Living simply, but according to one's dictates, rather than being directed by a hierarchy of others. Me? Law school, moving about, time with my sister's family, and practicing more than one career. Suffice it to say, we're both happy with the sacrifices we've made in rejecting the safety and security of home and hearth as Douthat sees necessary to collectively build a democratic American future.

If the Ponzi scheme of Social Security is eventually ended, our generations (late Boom, and early-mid X) will end up bearing the burdens twice: paying in for our elders, and taking care of ourselves too in the long run, if the safety net gives out. We also paid into the tax fund for the generous childbirth/rearing entitlements that many -- perhaps not the families Douthat is rallying to breed -- of today's growing generation needed simply to get to tax-paying age themselves.

It's all good. It's not complaining, or asking for thanks or recognition. Just the opposite in fact. A quiet pursuit of the future that need not entail reproducing ourselves to extend the journey. Simply allow us to continue further and further on the path of adulthood, unencumbered with expectations of slowing down to accommodate children, and instead seeking other, perhaps ultimately more effective, ways of influencing the future and preserving some of what we enjoyed as the simple freedoms of responsible personhood for those yet to come.

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* For purposes of this essay, "single ladies" refers to nevermarried childless women.

** Perhaps that is why Sean Duffy (6), say, is not in the political limelight like Paul Ryan (3). Sometimes more in one arena means less in another.  Like women, men are learning they really can't have it all if they want to perform several tasks simultaneously and successfully.   Something's gotta go, whether it's quality "being there" time, or specialized personal growth.

*** Single career women who live alone and still manage to feed/clothe/shelter themselves compared to their career fatherhood counterparts remind me of Ginger Roger's quote about doing everything Fred did, but backwards and in heels. This is not decadence, it's discipline, self reliance, and decent planning.