Somebody do something about the U.S. birthrate plunge

[This essay was written by Diane Pagen from Caregivercredit.org]

On Thursday, April 21st, USA today had a front page article, "US is getting old fast." It says we are only 25 years away from the impending crisis of having senior citizens outnumber children. The article suggests that the interests of children and the elderly will then compete for precious and limited tax dollars.

The article fails to mention one of the major causes of the crisis: that women all over the Western world are having far fewer children. In the U.S., they are doing this in part because our nation has no financial supports or incentives to bear the children that we need to replace those of us who are aging, or to take care of us in our final fragile years, as we all live about a decade longer than we did years ago.

While some believe that women are not having more kids simply because they don’t want to, there is data to show that is not exactly the case. Phil Longman wrote in his book, The Empty Cradle that for example, women born in 1960 desired an average of 2.3 children, but only produced 1.9.

Despite the fact that a proactive national policy, in the form of expanded refundable tax credits perhaps, plus more societal respect for those who raise kids, would likely reduce the impending disaster of having not enough caregivers to take care of the aging, government has not yet done anything to acknowledge our plummeting birthrates. What's more, it continues to foster an American culture where mothering (or parenting) full time is looked down upon for women who do not have a private source of income to sustain it (such as a high earning husband or a salary of her own from a paid job). Women in their twenties are actively not getting pregnant or choosing abortion, because they want to adhere to society’s expectation that they "make something of themselves" before having kids. As if having children were in itself nothing.

If women, particularly low-income women, felt respected in their role of mother, and if financial supports were available in a way that did not stigmatize, our birthrate would probably rise, and come 2030, we’d have millions more twenty somethings to be their for our seniors. When is our government going to take steps to address this enormous social and economic crisis that is at our heels? A government that promotes family values cannot continue to ignore how U.S. policies discourage having children.

As a 36 year old, college educated woman who still wants to bear children but has been putting it off so as not to be plunged into poverty, I know that I am not alone in this problem that is so ironic because more children are so desperately needed now.

We all need an immediate governmental response in the form of greater respect and income supports for people who are willing to take care of other people, whether children or aging people. Not every job that needs doing is in the paid marketplace. The sooner we free some of us up to do unpaid work, the sooner this crisis will be averted.