Potential parents have become more and more atomized, cutting themselves off from their own parents — and their future children.
The birth rate is a hot topic right now. The right generally agrees that we need more babies in this country. However, politicians and pundits are torn over the root cause of America’s record-low birth rates. The cost of housing? Feminism? Kid-unfriendly offices and neighborhoods? The chemicals in our water supply?
An insightful article from this morning, written by Michal Leibowitz for the New York Times, explores an overlooked reason for the rise in childlessness among young Americans. She writes:
Over the past few decades, Americans have redefined “harm,” “abuse,” “neglect” and “trauma,” expanding those categories to include emotional and relational struggles that were previously considered unavoidable parts of life. Adult children seem increasingly likely to publicly, even righteously, cut off contact with a parent. . . . This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for parenting.
Potential parents have become more and more atomized, cutting themselves off from their own parents — and their future children. Leibowitz dives into this rise of estrangement between parents and their adult children. Most of the time, the offspring (not the parents) initiate the estrangement. As Leibowitz writes,
In 2019, Karl Pillemer, a Cornell sociologist, found that 27 percent of adult Americans reported being estranged from a family member. (The true number is probably even higher.) The most commonly severed relationships were parent/adult child, and in most of those cases, it was the adult child who initiated the estrangement. . . . Many psychologists and sociologists believe that this is becoming more common.
While of course there are cases of real abuse, where the child ought to cut off a parent relationship, this rising trend should astonish us. Leibowitz notes that
many of today’s adult children often cut parents off for what a generation ago would have been viewed as venial sins. Anna Russell, who interviewed estranged families for The New Yorker, found that reasons for estrangement included that people “felt ignored or misunderstood by their parents or believed that a sibling had always been the family’s favorite. Several described a family member as a ‘classic narcissist’ or as ‘toxic.’”
Dr. Coleman, who counsels families experiencing estrangement, has seen children cut parents out of their lives because of financial conflicts, political differences or negative comments about the child’s partner. “There’s a lot of estrangements that actually happen to decent parents,” he told me.
In other words, millennials were inundated with a lot of bad therapy. (Unfortunately, Gen Z and Gen Alpha have been seeped in even more). As Abigail Shrier has relentlessly reported, most of this “bad therapy” isn’t coming from the mouths of licensed psychiatrists, but from school counselors, podcasters, and Insta-influencers. Katy Waldman wrote about “The Rise of Therapy-Speak” for the New Yorker in 2021. “If we are especially online, or roaming the worlds of friendship, wellness, activism, or romance, we must consider when we are centering ourselves or setting boundaries, sitting with our discomfort or being present. . . . We practice self-care and shun ‘toxic’ acquaintances.” Tara Isabella Burton wrote how this “solipsism masquerading as ‘self-care'” destroys relationships, community, and, ultimately, our very humanity.
The idea that we are “authentic” only insofar as we cut ourselves off from one another, that the truest or most fundamental parts of our humanity can be found in our desires and not our obligations, risks cutting us off from one of the most important truths about being human: We are social animals.
This kind of therapy, which chalks up all negative emotions to “trauma” or “toxicity”, encourages clients to Marie-Kondo anything — and anyone — in their life that has “bad vibes.” Even Mom and Dad.
And even their future children.
Neither duty nor obligation, neither reconciliation nor forgiveness, holds water in this therapeutic model. If your family makes you feel icky sometimes, just leave! Dad voted for Trump? No need to answer those phone calls! Mom is upset at your lifestyle choices? Easy, just never talk to her again! Does the idea of having kids make you feel overwhelmed? Then just don’t!
Like the infamous “Divorce Story” published in The Atlantic a few years back, “empowerment” means pulling the plug on family ties. The author, Honor Jones, wrote a 3,000-word essay about why she decided to end her marriage after vacuuming up her children’s crumbs and fantasizing about a kitchen renovation.
I wanted to be thinking about art and sex and politics and the patriarchy. How much of my life—I mean the architecture of my life, but also its essence, my soul, my mind—had I built around my husband? Who could I be if I wasn’t his wife? Maybe I would microdose. Maybe I would have sex with women. Maybe I would write a book. . . . I had caused so much upheaval, so much suffering, and for what? He asked me that, at first, again and again: For what? So I could put my face in the wind. So I could see the sun’s glare. I didn’t say that out loud.
While divorce rates in the U.S. have steadily decreased in the last two decades — nearly returning to what they were in the 1960s — this stat alone is deceptive, for fewer Americans are entering marriage in the first place. The U.S. marriage rate itself has hit rock bottom. Many couples are choosing to “cohabitate” permanently rather than get married. In the last 20 years, the overall share of married individuals has trended downward and the share of cohabitating couples has increased, according to a new study from UPenn. The population share of married individuals decreased from 56 percent in 1996 to 46 percent in 2023, and the share of cohabiting couples has increased from 4 percent in 1996 to 9 percent in 2023.
In a culture with ever greater demands for self-liberation and parental perfection, it’s no wonder more and more Americans are opting out of childbearing altogether. As the late, great Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in the opening lines of Dependent Rational Animals, “We human beings are vulnerable to many kinds of affliction and most of us are at some time afflicted by serious ills. How we cope is only in small part up to us. It is most often to others that we owe our survival, let alone our flourishing.”