I have been reading quite a bit lately about a book called What to Expect When No One Is Expecting about the coming demographic collapse and why the fact that since the end of the much-hyped baby-boom more than forty years ago fertility has taken a nosedive. Now, I freely admit that I haven’t read the book, in fact I have no intention of reading it either, but I have gone over the list of contributing factors (contraception, abortion, women daring to work and have interests of their own, and the costs involved in bringing up a single little bundle of snot)… and the truth is that I have found it highly entertaining.
Sorry, I know I should be taking this seriously, and I agree that the whole cost thing probably does play a role, but I suspect that even there the book is coming at it from a different angle. Anyway, the thing is that most of the commentaries I’ve encountered (okay, let’s be honest, what I’ve read are mostly criticisms) focus primarily either on explaining why the data is flawed and the demographic decline is not really such a big deal, or on explaining why arguing that women should just shut up, shelve their ambitions, and go back to making babies is wrong. As a college educated, middle-class woman with no kids I would like to offer my own perspective (and I must say that this list in unlikely to make anyone happy):