The panic over the declining birth rate is everywhere: when it’s not being used to peddle great replacement theories, it’s used to browbeat women into acquiescing to the unrealistic demands of modern motherhood. In response, women have been clear: the bare minimum requirement for many is paid maternal leave and childcare. Pro-natalists often respond to these common sense demands by arguing the government shouldn’t replace the role of the family; this argument neglects that the role of the family was destroyed by corporations emboldened by the government’s inaction.
For decades corporations have been demanding more and more productivity from workers, leading to the theory that pre-industrial workers worked less and had more autonomy while working. The focus on extracting as much labor as possible has played a role in the fracturing of extended families and their ability to treat childcare as a communal effort, thus making motherhood a solitary activity for the first time in human history—solitary, in part, because husbands and fathers still lag behind when it comes to participating in, what should be, their share of childcare and domestic labor. Yet those over-burdened mothers are still expected to go right back to work and participate in the relentless demand of increasing productivity, regardless of her needs or the needs of her child.
Women have often taken their children to work when childcare was hard to find and this has been a part of communal raising. Of course the other employees weren’t expected to participate in raising the child directly, rather this experience played a role in socializing the child, teaching them manners and responsibility. Small businesses, mostly family-owned, often looked the other way when children were brought to work in a pinch. But many of those small businesses, especially in the poorest parts of the country where mothers have no option but to work, have been driven out of business and replaced by corporations: walmart and dollar stores like dollar general and dollar tree dominate rural and poorer communities, and amazon warehouses typically open in poorer regions with larger populations of people of color. These corporations don’t care about individual women, their children, or the communities they’re a part of; all that matters is how much productivity and profit they can squeeze from them. Women working for these corporations are no longer able to resort to bringing their child to work—or even alter their hours—when an emergency arises; doing so leads to harsh penalities that, when accumulated over time, lead to the loss of her much needed job.
Extended family members often stepped in when a mother needed childcare so she could work, but as prices continue to soar while wages stagnate—especially within rural and poor communities dominated by corporations—extended family members who historically played a role in child care, like grandparents and even great grandparents, often have no choice but to work for those same corporations. The rigid rules of these corporations has made it so that these extended family members struggle to help out with childcare; they, too, are penalized for needing flexibility and understanding when childcare needs arise.
Other countries have responded to this shifting in family structure and work culture by giving women the resources to heal after childbirth and focus on her child in their most vulnerable and needy life stage without worrying about finances or work—the best countries allocate resources for fathers to do the same, leading to the father having healthier and longer lasting relationships with both the child and the mother—and by creating high quality, subsidized childcare. These aren’t one to one replacements for what came before, but the goal remains: sharing the workload of childcare and socializing children within a community.
Yet in America, where birth alone can bankrupt a woman, there has been no replacement for the way corporations have shaped families and communities. Thus women must work harder and longer hours under the expectation of exponential productivity growth—without any return in wages or benefits—while burdened with nearly all the childcare (and often, all of the domestic labor) that was previously a communal responsibility. No wonder so many are opting out.
This theory has been proven by a 2019 study for the UN Population Fund that found most women have less children than they actually want, while a 2015 study found wealthy women with careers continue to have more children because they have the money to supplement community and their own time investment. And this, too, can partially explain the phenomenon of the "iPad child"—most of whom are from lower income families—and the subsequent growing illiteracy rate principally affecting working class children: many children are no longer being socialized or invested in by a community, much less by their overworked and underpaid parents.
So why shouldn’t the government step in when they gave free reign to corporations to cause this radical change? The answer is obvious: pro-natalists are often corporatists. The government replacing the community and family structures that corporations decimated would mean a rise in corporate taxes and more rights for workers, i.e. less profit for corporations. Thus the declining birth rate directly caused by corporate interests is simultaneously harming corporate interests: they can’t continue the trend of exponential growth—both in profits and in labor productivity—while the population declines and workers gains more rights.
Through this understanding of the birth rate panic it becomes clear that the biggest—and potentially only—risk of women having less children (and more specifically, women having only the children they want) is to corporations and their bottom lines. Corporations have always put their profits before all else: public health and safety, education, environmental protections, democracy. And so Melvin Konner, M.D. had a salient point when he argued in his book Women After All, “Replacing quantity with quality in childbearing will not save just women, or even just struggling, impoverished countries. It will save the planet and make it habitable for our species. It will greatly reduce the necessity for violence of all kinds, as it has already begun to do. Male domination has outlived any purpose it may once have had. Perhaps it played some role in our success as a species so far, but now it is an obstacle. Empowering women is the next step in human evolution, and as the uniquely endowed creatures we are, we can choose to help bring it about.”
Corporations want to have their cake and eat it too: they want women to have more children, but they deny women the time and energy, the community and familial bonds, the public and environmental health required to raise those children, much less educate and socialize them. Corporations are devoted to the birth rate panic because to acknowledge the role they played in manufacturing it—in breaking up families and communities, in increasing the demand on worker's time and energy with no additional compensation—is to acknowledge that corporate interests are diametrically opposed to so-called family values.
Exactly. Powerfully and precisely said.