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Holiday
time is family time, a time to turn on festive,
colorful lights. Consumer over-consumption has
caught up with the holiday decorations and, so,
with little effort – and a lot of electricity
– icicle strips, web lights, inflatable
characters and projected images turn houses,
bushes, trees and yards into a “winter
wonderland.”
At
this time of the year it is easy to imagine
happy families gathered around the hearth
enjoying traditions of the season. Moms and Dads
and their kids sharing holiday activities is
just what the ads in MainStream Media suggest is
going on behind all those lights – and you
need to buy a lot of stuff so you, too, can be
happy.
The
Light of Reality
We
all know that is a silly, overly sentimental
fantasy. Census data confirms that less
than one dwelling in four is occupied by a
mother and a father and children – his, hers
and theirs. Our dooryard is typical. Forty
percent of the households with children are
comprised of a minor child living with
grandparents. Only one family out of 10 is a
mom, a dad and their children.
OK,
so the lights fool some folks. New data suggests
a lot of us are misinformed about more than just
moms, dads and kids. We are fooled about
marriage in general and the role of families.
Data
released early this month documents that
nearly four in ten babies born in the United
States in 2005 had mothers who were not
married. At the same time, the percentage of
teenage mothers was at an all-time low.
This
is a startling reality. Upon further review,
this data reflects an ongoing trend: More adult
women are abandoning marriage as a context for
raising children.
Unmarried
women choosing to raise children in the US of A
are not alone. Molly Moore points this out in
“More Longtime Couples in France Prefer
L’Amour Without Marriage" (WaPo 21
November Page 22). The USofA is behind France
and some other nation-states in the trend to
raise children out of wedlock, but not all that
far behind.
No
child regardless of marital status
While
a growing number of women choosing to have a
child are abandoning the whole idea of marriage
for reasons spelled out in Moore’s article,
others have no interest in raising a child –
marriage or no marriage.
More
and more are coming to the conclusion that in a
disaggregated and dysfunctional society they
cannot “have it all.” For many it is a
choice driven by both time and money. The
cartoon that accompanies Carolyn Hax's “Tell
Me About It” advice column in WaPo for
10 December 2006 puts the choice in perspective:
“Okay, We’re all set for careers, marriage,
home, so what do you think. Baby? Or beach
house?” As Hax points out, if you have to ask
that question, do not choose “baby” because
of the enormous commitment entailed in providing
a supportive, nurturing household.
It
has been widely known that birth rates and the
populations in First World nation-states –
e.g. Japan, Great Britain, Germany and Italy –
have been falling for years. These rates are
projected to continue to decline. That is the
case in Russia as well. In Russia, the low birth
rate is said to be exacerbated by the dreary
economic prospect for most citizens in the post
Soviet era compounded by the reality of choice.
Why
have birth rates not been falling in the USofA?
One word: Immigration. Without a huge surge in
immigration – legal and illegal – since the
1990s to foster
economic expansion and consumption, the USofA
and would have birth rates and population growth
similar to other First World nation-states.
The
decision not to have children among
non-immigrants is so prevalent that advice for
women and couples who choose not to have
children now focuses on how to cope with the
lingering peer/family/grandparent sentiment that
there is something “wrong” with the
decision. (See End
Note One.)
Surely
the is no good reason to bring children into the
world except when parents want and have the
ability to provide a supportive environment. As
Carolyn Hax says until she is blue in the face,
“Make sure you would be grateful to have the
parents you’re about to become.”
Surely
there is no downside to having fewer children,
smaller populations and thus smaller ecological
footprints for all regions and all
nation-states. (See Chapter 8 and 23 of "The
Shape of the Future".)
Functional
Settlement Patterns
How
does the stability and future of families relate
to dysfunctional human settlement patterns?
“The Shape of the Future” addresses the issue
of social cohesion and the impact of
scatteration on whole range of “family
value” issues. (See End
Note Two.)
Research
shows, and most agree, that a child has the best
chance to live a happy, safe life if reared in a
stable household with at least two adults and an
adequate income. Household income during a
child’s adolescent years has the highest
correlation of any parameter to a happy and safe
life. Household income correlates strongly with
avoiding drug use, teen pregnancy, low grades,
dropping out of school and other indicators of
social dysfunction.
As
noted in our Backgrounder “A
New Metric for Well Being”, advertising
and political wisdom are driving up the cost of
over-consumption, gadgets and entertainment. In
this context, raising children may become one of
the most important casualties. WaPo’s
Business Section for 17 December 2006 puts it
this way: “High Expectations: With Huge
Expenses on the Way, Parents Had Better Start
Childproofing the Future.”
The
“Financial Futures” feature also on the
first page of the same section chimes in with
these headlines: “2 + 1 Adds Up to New
Priorities: Retirement Planning Goes Hand in
Hand With Deciding to Start a Family.” The
feature story puts the cost of the first six
years of a single child at between $44,340 and
$92,220. Given the previously noted importance
of family income during the adolescent years,
what does this say about decisions to raise a
child, or more than one child? Also note the
difference between the “cost” for the more
well to do and those lower on the economic
pyramid.
The
tragedy is that, the lower on the economic food
chain, the less likely the economic impact
will be considered before the decision is made
to raise a family.
Factors
besides money are also important. There is not yet data on the contribution of
supportive Dooryards. However, it is clear that
scattering those households in dysfunctional
patterns and densities detracts from the
potential of rearing well adjusted children. As
we point out in "The Shape of a
Future", it takes a Dooryard to raise an
infant/toddler. (See Chapter 9 Box 3.) Except in
some cohousing projects, few parents now enter
into formal agreements concerning the raising of
children at the Dooryard or Cluster scales.
Many
parents intuitively realize the importance of
functional settlement patterns, as has been
reflected in the housing market for 40 years.
The value of exactly the same dwelling inside a
Planned New Community or a Planned New Village
is higher than the same unit in orphaned
subdivisions and scattered lots. (See End
Note Three.)
In
the '90s we called this “the $100,000 dollar
difference.” The margin is greater now but
harder to document because builders of scattered
“town centers” and “traditional
villages” have included superficial urbane
amenities in their projects to try to bandage
over the curse of dysfunctional location.
Functional,
balanced human settlement patterns provide for
interaction with individuals and groups in all
stages of life, not just monocultures of
“just like me” places.
In
this context, citizens can make informed
judgments if they want to have children. The
convenience of living in functional settlement
patterns may change the minds of some who, due
to dysfunctional lifestyles, now find that they
do not have time or money to adequately raise a
child.
On
the other hand, for those who do not choose to
raise a family, functional settlement patterns
facilitate opportunities to help raise friends’
and relatives’ children. (See End
Note Four.)
Families
and politics
What
does data on unmarried mothers and childless
women have to do with politics? For starters,
apparently, those who are panicked about the
impact of contemporary society on “the sacred
institution of marriage” do have something to
worry about.
The
critical problem is that political apparatchiks
use government actions to impose preconceived
notions on citizens. They rely upon misconceptions of
real family values to dictate choice on matters
that are clearly personal.
It
is doubtful that amending the Commonwealth’s
constitution, as advocated by some and approved
by a majority of voters in November, will do
much for the unwed mother trend or the
children-no-thank-you trend. Perhaps requiring
functional human settlement patterns would have
a more beneficial result.
As
we point out in the Backgrounder “A
New Metric for Citizen Well-Being”, there
is a need for Fundamental Change in governance
as it applies to this and similar realms of
personal choice.
There
is a lot of rhetoric about family values and
personal rights but not a word about community
responsibility much less Dooryard, Cluster and
Neighborhood values. In other words there is no
discussion of the need to support the common
good, just political pandering to short-term
self-interest.
A
few weeks ago a flier fell out of the stack of
inserts that is larded into the back sections of
newspapers. The title declared that this
circular was about “Neighborhood Values.”
Wow!
Neighborhood Values!
Upon
further review, this was not a communication
about Dooryard Values, Cluster Values or
Neighborhood Values. It turned out to be another
WaPo ad vehicle. The title referred to the fact
that advertisers could buy all or part of
“Northern Virginia.” WaPo is selling
Geographic Illiteracy and Locational
Obliviousness, not a new metric for community
responsibility. (See “Where
is Northern Virginia?” 11 August 2003.)
End
Notes
(1).
Some of the social and physical aspects of this
reality are examined in “Childless: Some by
Chance, Some by Choice” by Nancy Rome in the
Heath section of WaPo for 28 November
2006.
(2).
For many reasons, dysfunctional human settlement
patterns are family unfriendly. These are
spelled out in Chapters 8, 9, 13 and 27 of
"The Shape of the Future."
(3).
The difference in home price is not due to the
fact that it costs less to build in
dysfunctional locations. This lower cost is due
to the failure to fairly allocate
location-variable costs. No builder sells a
dwelling for less than the market will bear just
because his costs are lower. Builders sell for
less only to attract buyers to dysfunctional
locations.
(4).
Some may ask, if Euro settlement patterns are
more functional than those in the USofA, why are
birth rates down there more than in this
nation-state? Settlement patterns are not the
only cause of birth rate variations. In
addition, citizens of the European Union are
subject to some but not all of the same
consumption constraints of the citizens of the
USofA. It may be that they have taken advantage
of the opportunity to make better informed
tradeoffs. There is far more cohousing in the
European Union. It is also true that far more
Europeans are concerned with their ecological
footprint than their North American
counterparts.
--
December 18, 2006
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