Pregnancy is patriotic!

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:45:00 +0000

In the fast-growing canon of literature panicking over the supposed fertility crisis, one alarmist feature on the declining birthrate provides an innovation: an anthropological excursion to a hookah bar in the East Village to hear from the young miscreants themselves. ("Decadence," thy name is hookah.)

There, amid jokes about “popping one out,” and “horrible little grubs,” was a "more serious conversation about their fears of relinquishing sole ownership of one’s own body." At least the authors of this Daily Beast piece asked actual women how they feel about childbearing, and the tensions between making a living, getting by in a city, and being treated like a "womb on legs," in the memorable words of one of the interviewees. Most of the other accounts have left women out of the story entirely, with the convenient but noxious result of waging backlash while appearing to change the subject.

New York Times trolls women

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:40:00 +0000

It’s hard to overstate the role of demographics in shaping the challenges that face the United States over the next few decades. To use one prominent example, the rush to reform entitlements and the focus on restraining health care costs owe themselves to demographics—an unusually large cohort of people are due to retire from the workforce and begin to strain our social insurance programs. Likewise, efforts to prepare for this inevitability—such as the Affordable Care Act—are hampered by, again, demographics—as we saw in the 2010 midterm elections, older voters are loathe to sign on to anything that looks like a change to the status quo.

With that said, if the United States has a distinct advantage over its similarly–situated fellow travelers in Europe and elsewhere, it’s due to demographics. Thanks to mass immigration, our birth rate has held steady, and in a prosperous society, more people is a recipe for more growth.

Salon.com > Birthrate

Pregnancy is patriotic!

New York Times trolls women