Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Esme Fae's avatar

I think there is something in this. I grew up in a very wealthy NYC suburb, and having children in one’s 20s was just not done. When I moved to a southern city in my 20s, I was shocked at how many women my age had children and I couldn’t shake the feeling that what they were doing was somehow quite trashy - even though they were all middle class married women. It wasn’t until I was visiting my hometown and realized you seldom saw a woman under 35 with a small child that I realized I had absorbed the norm that “having a child in your 20s is for low class people”. Similarly, having more than two children (unless triplets) was also seen as rather déclassé...when I was pregnant with my 3rd, rather than congratulations I got some ribbing about “so, when will you be moving to a trailer park?”

I’m not sure if the 2-child or less thing is due to the enormous amounts of parental investment involved in raising an upper-middle-class child; or if it is a side effect of delaying motherhood to 35 or older with the associated fertility issues and need for expensive fertility treatments.

Expand full comment
Paul Brassey's avatar

How do you tease all this out from some more obvious facts, namely: the widespread availability of cheap and reliable contraception, thus decoupling the pleasure of sex from childbearing, and the extension of education and full human rights to women resulting in their full entrance into the commercial work force? For most of human history, and still for all of the rest mammalian history, producing offspring was the natural consequence of pursuing sexual desire. Now it is a conscious choice.

Expand full comment
46 more comments...

No posts