I’m an aunt!

Aside from the change in my relationship status, the biggest change in my life over the last few years is that I became an aunt! My nephew, B, turns three this weekend and is pretty much the cutest kid ever (yeah, I’m biased but that doesn’t mean it’s not true!).

When my nephew was born, I went through a brief spell of thinking that maybe I did want a kid after all. It’s hard not to be seduced by an adorable baby who doesn’t do much except sleep, eat and poop – especially when I didn’t have to deal with the poop part! I made enough comments wondering if I wanted one that I think J started getting a little freaked out (he’s already a dad but with his daughter finally out of the house, he has zero interest in starting all over again). As usual with me, rationality eventually took over again, but I do love being an auntie. I get to love and spoil the little guy without any of the real responsibility. At the same time, unlike with other kids, if I feel like B is doing something he shouldn’t, it’s generally OK for me to say something to him (mostly without annoying my sister :-)).

One interesting thing about becoming an aunt is that it has given me a clearer understanding of why having kids is often such a huge divider of people (particularly women). As someone who does not have kids, and has no intention of ever having kids, I have never really understood why it is that when people have kids, they inevitably stop having a life of their own. It’s not just that their activities revolve around their kids but it seems like there are many women who can’t/don’t want to even talk about anything other than their kids. That used to be something I found really annoying. But now that B is in my life, I feel like I understand it a bit better. I still think women who really can’t talk about anything but their kids are fairly annoying, but I have a much better appreciation for why they do it, because I find that I have a similar desire to talk about B a lot. He’s just so damn cute and smart, how could people NOT want to hear about how cute and smart he is? I don’t actually talk about him that much (at least, I don't think I do...) but it sure is fun that when other people bust out with annoying stories about their kids, I can now match them with equally annoying stories about B!

Children as 'investment goods'

Two Italian economists have a new study that asks why birth rates are falling in more developed countries. They look at an Italian policy change that decreased expected pension income for a lot of people, and found that couples with a bigger drop in future income prospects were significantly more likely to have a child. They conclude that children are more likely seen as "a source of future financial support for their retired parents, as opposed to the traditional 'consumption' motive which suggests that a reduced pension income should lead to a reduction in parents' consumption and, therefore, fertility." In other words, one way to see kids is as a future source of financial support (investment) or a drain on one's budget (consumption). I assume that the connection to lower birth rates in developing countries in general is that as people have higher incomes and better standards of living, there is less of a concern about having that future financial support.

Even if this makes sense, I have to say that it's stuff like this that makes people think we economists have no heart...

Do conservatives think women are clueless?

Over on Have Children or Not, Beth asks whose 'fault' is it that women have delayed having children? She quotes an article that essentially blames feminism for giving women so many choices that they don't think about having kids until it is too late. My first thought was, "Who could possibly believe any woman could 'forget' to have kids?" Even as someone who is pretty darn sure that I don't want kids, I still sometimes worry that I might wake up one day and suddenly realize I really do want kids and what if that happens when it's 'too late'? The fact that I can't shake that possibility from my head is what keeps me from saying I'll never have kids. And I just can't believe there are very many single women who don't have similar thoughts - it's simply too deeply ingrained in our society that as women, we are supposed to want kids so it's virtually impossible to make the opposite decision without giving it some serious thought.

Or maybe what the author of that article was thinking was that women don't know that they don't have all the time in the world, that there are women who do want kids but don't know there is a biological limit on their ability to do so and therefore they just go about their single, career-driven lives (which feminism now allows us to do) and then when they do get around to the kids thing, they are shocked to finally be told that there's an expiration date on their eggs? I'm not going to say that's not possible (I am often surprised by the bizarre ignorance of many people about many things - maybe these clueless women see the stories about older women having babies and think that means it's easy?), but again, the idea that every woman has a biological clock that must be ticking down is so prevalent in the media and society that I have a really hard time believing that any woman could possibly get to her mid-30's without knowing her fertility days are numbered.

I guess my point is that whenever one is trying to change the status quo, one naturally focuses on the changes, just as feminism has focused on telling women that they do have options, options that didn't used to be available to them. Feminism doesn't spend a lot of time educating women about the options that have always been available because it assumes we already know all about those and it is obvious that these new options are additions to the choice set. The fact that more women are choosing not to have kids doesn't mean they are clueless - for many, that choice is a very difficult one - but it simply means we are taking advantage of our new options. Maybe there will come a day when there truly is no 'norm', when it is so established that every option is equally valid that women will need just as much education about the kid option as the non-kid option, but even if you live in California, we've got a long way to go before that's a reality...

Baby Boom

Somewhere in the last couple years, I passed the kid tipping point: I now have more friends with kids than without. There are several things I find interesting about that. One is that I passed the marriage tipping point ages ago but somehow never noticed. I think that’s largely because my married friends tend to act the same as when they were single (or they live far away and my primary communication with them is via phone and email so I just don’t see the changes). But while going from dating to married doesn’t necessarily involve a huge lifestyle change, there’s no question that having kids means major changes. Interesting observation #2: I like having friends who are parents. I may change my tune in a few months when my closest friends in San Diego have their first and I’ll have to find other people to go see the new Batman movie with me*, but since I don’t have any intention of having kids of my own, talking to my friends about their experience is the closest I’ll get and I often find it fascinating. Which leads to interesting observation #3: a lot of people assume that because I don’t want kids of my own, that must mean I don’t like kids and/or don’t want to hear about kids. I think I’ll address that in more detail in a future post but for now, I’ll just quote one of my friends (who has a 7-month-old), “I’ve never liked other people’s kids but I always knew I wanted one myself. So why can’t you like kids and not want one? One doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the other.” Or as another friend put it (who has a five-year-old), “I don’t like kids, I only like my kid.” Of course, the fact that I have friends who say stuff like that is probably exactly why having so many with children doesn’t seem to be affecting my friendships much…
* Informal poll: Your wife's due date is July 19th. The Dark Knight opens July 18th. She has said you can go. Do you go?