Are Marriage and Parenthood Only for the Wealthy?
by Patrick T Brown, Public Discourse:
In a post-industrial society where marriage and fertility are expressions of values, rather than buttresses for economic security, policies that strive to make it as easy as possible for people to get married and have children should be at the forefront of the agenda. Broader state investment alone cannot take the place of a pro-family culture, from media outlets to religious institutions to schools.
There are a lot of reasons why family formation—marriage and fertility—has seen a long downward trajectory. But one key driver is how the years of peak childbearing and peak human capital formation (education and job training) now directly conflict. Two factors typify why the post-industrial economy has curbed family formation: more people are going to school for longer, and many have higher standards for themselves as parents. Better approaches to public policy can help people build wealth over the long term, which can smooth out some of the inherent tradeoffs. But perhaps the biggest way we could reset the conversation around wealth, independence, and family formation is by revisiting some of our cultural expectations.
Family as Consumption
Through most of history, children were both an investment and an insurance policy. They were expected to help contribute to the family—first in the fields, then in factories. And as one reached the end of economic self-sufficiency, children were a backstop against penury in old age.
As our society has grown richer, we have cordoned off childhood from economic production. We became more able to guarantee seniors respect and freedom from indigence in the form of welfare state programs like Social Security. The economic rationale for having children as a hedge against poverty, therefore, is no longer as salient as it once was.
Similarly, cohabitation has made forming a permanent household less economically necessary. Marriage, formerly the only socially sanctioned way of enjoying the economic and personal benefits of sharing a roof and a bed together, has become more of a social statement or lifestyle choice than a partnership undertaken for its economic rewards (though there is still a “marriage premium” in wealth and earnings.)
And so marriage and childbearing have become closer to an act of consumption than one of production. When people marry or have children, they are just as often reflecting their personal values and self-conception, rather than aiming for the economic benefits. This realization doesn’t need to fill social conservatives with dread. But it should make them interrogate what cultural factors, often operating through the channel of economics and economic expectations, might influence those aspirations and desires.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
