Storified by Brian Empric· Sun, Mar 10 2013 14:36:39
See this link for the full 56 page report: The Rise of Post-Familialism: Humanity's Future?
“For most of human history, the family — defined by parents, children and extended kin — has stood as the central unit of society…”
“Today, in the high-income world and even in some developing countries, we are witnessing a shift to a new social model. Increasingly, family no longer serves as the central organizing feature of society. An unprecedented number of individuals — approaching upwards of 30% in some Asian countries — are choosing to eschew child bearing altogether and, often, marriage as well.”
“The reasons for this shift are complex, and vary significantly in different countries and cultures. In some countries, particularly in East Asia, the nature of modern competitive capitalism often forces individuals to choose between career advancement and family formation. As a result, these economies are unwittingly setting into motion forces destructive to their future workforce, consumer base and long-term prosperity.”
“The new emerging social ethos endorses more secular values that prioritise individual personal socioeconomic success as well as the personal quest for greater fulfilment.”
“The change in the role of women beyond sharply defined maternal roles represents one of the great accomplishments of modern times. Yet this trend also generates new pressures that have led some women to reject both child-bearing and marriage. Men are also adopting new attitudes that increasingly preclude marriage or fatherhood.”
“The current weak global economy, now in its fifth year, also threatens to further slow family formation. Child-rearing requires a strong hope that life will be better for the next generation. The rising cost of urban living, the declining number of well-paying jobs, and the onset of the global financial crisis has engendered growing pessimism in most countries, particularly in Europe and Japan, but also in the United States and some developing countries.”
“Societal norms, which once almost mandated family formation, have begun to morph. The new norms are reinforced by cultural influences that tend to be concentrated in the very areas — dense urban centres — with the lowest percentages of married people and children…”
“A society that is increasingly single and childless is likely to be more concerned with serving current needs than addressing the future oriented requirements of children… We could tilt more into a ‘now’ society, geared towards consuming or recreating today, as opposed to nurturing and sacrificing for tomorrow.”
“[F]or many people, the basic motivation for hard work is underpinned by the need to support and nurture a family. Without a family to support, the very basis for the work ethos will have changed, perhaps irrevocably.”
“Seeking to secure a place for families requires us to move beyond nostalgia for a bygone era and focus on what is possible… Amidst all the social change discussed above, there remains a basic desire for family that needs to be nurtured and supported by the wider society.”
“First, for many younger Americans and especially those in cities, having children is no longer an obvious or inevitable choice. Second, many of those opting for childlessness have legitimate, if perhaps selfish, reasons for their decision.”
“Postfamilial America is in ascendancy as the fertility rate among women has plummeted, since the 2008 economic crisis and the Great Recession that followed, to its lowest level since reliable numbers were first kept in 1920. That downturn has put the U.S. fertility rate increasingly in line with those in other developed economies—suggesting that even if the economy rebounds, the birthrate may not…”
“The global causes of postfamilialism are diverse, and many, on their own, are socially favorable or at least benign. The rush of people worldwide into cities, for example, has ushered in prosperity for hundreds of millions, allowing families to be both smaller and more prosperous. Improvements in contraception and increased access to it have given women far greater control of their reproductive options, which has coincided with a decline in religion in most advanced countries. With women’s rights largely secured in the First World and their seats in the classroom, the statehouse, and the boardroom no longer tokens or novelties, children have ceased being an economic or cultural necessity for many or an eventual outcome of sex.”
“A plurality of Americans—46 percent—told Pew in 2009 that the rising number of women without children ‘makes no difference one way or the other’ for our society.”
“It’s time for us to consider what an aging, increasingly child-free population, growing more slowly, would mean here. As younger Americans individually eschew families of their own, they are contributing to the ever-growing imbalance between older retirees—basically their parents—and working-age Americans, potentially propelling both into a spiral of soaring entitlement costs and diminished economic vigor and creating a culture marked by hyperindividualism and dependence on the state as the family unit erodes.”
“Forty-four percent of millennials agree that marriage is becoming ‘obsolete.’ And even among those who support tying the knot (including many of those who say it’s obsolete), just 41 percent say children are important for a marriage—down from 65 percent in 1990… On the flip side of the coin, the percentage of adults who disagreed with the contention that people without children ‘lead empty lives’ has shot up, to 59 percent in 2002 from 39 percent in 1988.”
“In 2007 the fertility rate in America was 2.12 and had been holding nearly steady for decades at about replacement rate—the highest level of any advanced country. In just half a decade since, the rate has dropped to 1.9, the lowest since 1920 (when reliable records began being kept) and just half of the peak rate in 1957, in the midst of the baby boom, according to the Pew Research Center.”
“In the short run, the falling birthrate has coincided with the emergence, for the first time, of the single and childless as a self-aware, powerful, and left-leaning political constituency. Yet what’s proven good for the Democratic Party may not be so good for the country in the long term. Even using the more optimistic 2008 projections, the proportion of retirees to working Americans—sometimes called the ‘dependency ratio’—is likely to rise to 35 retirees for every 100 workers in 2050, twice today’s ratio. That sets the stage for a fight over debt, austerity, benefits, and government spending that will make the vicious battles of the last four years seem more like, well, a tea party.”
“The strong correlation between childlessness and high-density city living has created essentially two Americas: child-oriented and affordable areas, and urban centers that have become increasingly expensive and child-free over the last 30 years—not coincidentally the same span over which middle-class incomes have stagnated…”
“This trend is likely to reshape American politics in the coming decades. As the number of single women swelled by 18 percent in the last decade, they have emerged as a core constituency of the Democratic Party, a group pollster Stan Greenberg has identified as ‘the largest progressive voting bloc in the country’ and a key part of demographer Ruy Teixeira’s ‘emerging Democratic majority.’ That majority emerged with a vengeance in the 2012 presidential contest, as married women narrowly favored Mitt Romney, according to exit polls, while two out of three single women backed Barack Obama—and their overwhelming support accounted for the president’s margin of victory in the popular vote.”
“But if singletons are swelling as a voting bloc and interest group now, the demographics of childlessness mean that they’re likely to lose out in the long term. Already, retirees have bent government to their will, with people 65 and older receiving $3 in total government spending for every dollar spent on children younger than 18 as of 2004…”
“There are several steps our government could take that might mitigate postfamilialism without aspiring to return to some imagined ‘golden age’ of traditional marriage and family. These include such things as reforming the tax code to encourage marriage and children; allowing continued single-family home construction on the urban periphery and renovation of more child-friendly and moderate-density urban neighborhoods; creating extended-leave policies that encourage fathers to take more time with family, as has been modestly successfully in Scandinavia; and other actions to make having children as economically viable, and pleasant, as possible…”
“In the coming decades, success will accrue to those cultures that preserve the family’s place, not as the exclusive social unit but as one that is truly indispensable. It’s a case we need to make as a society, rather than counting on nature to take its course.”
“While the Harrisons are a fictional family, they are like many of the families I met as I traveled the country in my campaign last year. Not only are there harsh economic realities stacked against the Harrisons, but the message they hear from Washington and hear and read in the media doesn’t offer much hope. In communities that once thrived on the strength of the economic base, strong institutions and strong families, our leadership in Washington makes climate change and gay marriage its priority. Our liberal leaders go out of their way to protect teacher unions and environmentalists while stepping up regulation on promising new industries.
“Instead of addressing the widely accepted root causes of poverty head on – having out-of-wedlock children and dropping out of high school – we get the message that family structure is unimportant. Promoting marriage and creating incentives through our tax code is now politically incorrect. And encouraging our young people to postpone sex is treated by the mainstream media as right-wing nuttiness. Hollywood doesn’t help, of course, and seemingly celebrates the rejection of the American family and the once strong communities of the heartland.”
“The solutions that will create hope and opportunity for the Harrisons and those who remain on their block will not be bigger and fatter federal entitlement programs that provide gasoline in the engine of dependency and poverty. Obamacare is not going to save the Harrisons. And they don’t want food stamps. What will give the Harrisons’ sons a better life will be a vision and policies that address their community – incentives for manufacturers and small businesses, tax policies that encourage and reward marriage and strong families, education that is affordable and practical and rhetoric from the top that inspires.”
“There is only one statistic needed to explain the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. An April YouGov.com poll—which mirrored every other poll on the subject—found that only 33% of Americans said that Mitt Romney ‘cares about people like me.’ Only 38% said he cared about the poor.
“Conservatives rightly complain that this perception was inflamed by President Obama's class-warfare campaign theme. But perception is political reality, and over the decades many Americans have become convinced that conservatives care only about the rich and powerful.”
“As New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown in his research on 132,000 Americans, care for the vulnerable is a universal moral concern in the U.S.… citizens across the political spectrum place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak... Raw money arguments, e.g., about the dire effects of the country's growing entitlement spending, don't register morally at all.”
“The irony is maddening. America's poor people have been saddled with generations of disastrous progressive policy results, from welfare-induced dependency to failing schools that continue to trap millions of children… Meanwhile, the record of free enterprise in improving the lives of the poor both here and abroad is spectacular… It occurred because billions of souls have been able to pull themselves out of poverty thanks to global free trade, property rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship.
“The left talks a big game about helping the bottom half, but its policies are gradually ruining the economy, which will have catastrophic results once the safety net is no longer affordable. Labyrinthine regulations, punitive taxation and wage distortions destroy the ability to create private-sector jobs. Opportunities for Americans on the bottom to better their station in life are being erased.”
“Raging against government debt and tax rates that most Americans don't pay gets conservatives nowhere, and it will always be an exercise in futility to compete with liberals on government spending and transfers.”
“[T]he core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens…”
“By making the vulnerable a primary focus, conservatives will be better able to confront some common blind spots. Corporate cronyism should be decried as every bit as noxious as statism, because it unfairly rewards the powerful and well-connected at the expense of ordinary citizens. Entrepreneurship should not to be extolled as a path to accumulating wealth but as a celebration of everyday men and women who want to build their own lives, whether they start a business and make a lot of money or not…”
“With this moral touchstone, conservative leaders will be able to stand before Americans who are struggling and feel marginalized and say, ‘We will fight for you and your family, whether you vote for us or not’—and truly mean it. In the end that approach will win. But more important, it is the right thing to do.”
“Organized labor's instantaneous support for President Obama's recent proposal to hike the minimum wage doesn't make much sense at first glance. The average private-sector union member—at least one who still has a job—earns $22 an hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a far cry from the current $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage, or the $9 per hour the president has proposed. Altruistic solidarity with lower-paid workers isn't the reason for organized labor's cheerleading, either.”
“The data indicate that a number of unions in the service, retail and hospitality industries peg their base-line wages to the minimum wage… The two most popular formulas were setting baseline union wages as a percentage above the state or federal minimum wage or mandating a flat wage premium above the minimum wage.”
“Minimum-wage hikes are beneficial to unions in other ways. The increases restrict the ability of businesses to hire low-skill workers who might gladly work for lower wages in order to gain experience. Union members thus face less competition from workers who might threaten union jobs.”
“Such considerations are worth keeping in mind when contemplating the president's wage proposal and the fervent Democratic support for similar and often more ambitious measures, such as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin's bill to raise the minimum wage to $9.80. Labor unions spent an estimated $174 million on the 2012 election, with 91% of the money going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Now many union members could see their paychecks grow as the result of a Democrat-backed mandate—even though the overwhelming majority of scholarly evidence says that these wage increases have a negative effect on employment.”
“A growing push to get Republicans to alter their position on same-sex marriage could put some of the party’s major donors and political strategists in conflict with social conservative activists who make up a large part of the GOP at the grassroots level.”
“The bipartisan Respect for Marriage Coalition has already released a pair of ads seeking to sway Republicans in favor of gay marriage… More than 130 Republicans signed an amicus brief advising the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8, California’s popularly enacted ban on gay marriage.”
“A November 2012 Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans ‘believe same-sex marriages should be recognized by law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages.’ That was tied for the highest public approval of gay marriage since Gallup began polling on the issue… But only 30 percent of Republicans supported gay marriage, while 69 percent were opposed…”
“’Only an elite that believes the Republican Party can exist in abandoning traditional marriage,’ (National Organization for Marriage president Brian) Brown told The Daily Caller News Foundation, saying that support for gay marriage is limited to ‘the country club wing’ of the party and that alienating social conservatives would be like ‘severing a limb’ from the GOP.”
“Social conservatives nevertheless say that the Republican movement for same-sex marriage is exaggerated. Most of the Respect for Marriage Coalition members are, according to their website, liberal interest groups…”
“In fact, some social conservatives liken it to 1980s and early ’90s attempt by GOP strategists, donors, and blue state elected officials like then New Jersey Gov. (Christine Todd) Whitman and Massachusetts Gov. William Weld to delete the pro-life plank from the Republican platform.”
“Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, for example, has said that while he opposes same-sex marriage, it should be a state issue… A Supreme Court decision could nationalize the issue and renew social conservative calls for a federal marriage amendment.”
