I’m a practicing Catholic and have always believed the problem is cultural. If you are Catholic and in a parish that has a lot of young families, you have access to a huge reserve of support. Priests give homilies about how important parenthood is and they value mothers. Grandmothers invite you into their homes so they can babysit and give you a break. The other young Moms in my parish have embraced us so much and bring meals to each other when someone is sick or postpartum. It’s changed my whole perspective on parenthood.
This is so interesting. I’ve interviewed a lot of mothers for my book and it does seem that a lot of Catholic communities are truly supportive and wonderful for parents. But I’ve also spoken to moms from religious Christian groups where they get more judgment than support and where patriarchal norms and expectations outweigh the community support factor. I’ve actually written a couple of other pieces about the intersection of religion and motherhood and whether it’s good or bad for parents. Such an interesting topic IMHO. Thanks for chiming in.
Yes, I definitely believe that too! Like you said, with religious groups is that there are requirements for entry and I think having shared beliefs that differ a lot from the prevailing beliefs in a given society is going to bond you together. But it’s not a universal solution, although I definitely think Christians have an obligation to help everyone as much as possible.
I could write a whole essay on Christianity, Catholicism, and how certain religious communities can be wonderful and others are terribly isolating. I’ll have to read your other pieces on this!
Maybe there’s an advantage to the specifically Catholic space vs Protestant space? I know people try to lump them all together, but Catholicism has traditions from before western societies became super individualistic like the US is now. Meanwhile Protestantism has been cut off from that catholic tradition, and I’m saying this as a Protestant Christian.
Even as a child, raised Presbyterian in a very Catholic town, I liked how Catholics prayed to Mary, and how she was exalted for her motherhood. I felt that there was NO female equivalent in my church; it felt entirely male-dominated.
Something often unappreciated about traditions with saints is how female saints provide such a varied template for religious women. There are saints who are mothers, childless/childfree, married, single, employed, etc.
Agree with this! Adding some additional features: our huge gaggle of siblings play with/ entertain/(fight with) each other all day so I don’t have to, and our parties - including parish and school events and gatherings in our homes - are typically structured like: good food + alcohol, lots of kids of a diverse range of ages running around, making for varying levels of fun and supervision, and a collective understanding that children belong in our shared spaces and even enrich our experiences as a community.
This has been my experience as well. I think the largely secular, third wave feminist culture is to blame. As a Catholic I find so much support in my parish community as a mom of four (and soon to be five). I also think choosing to live in a low cost area (the Midwest) really helps. Maybe not everyone loves it, but we do go to our local fancy coffee shop from time to time. I just believe children belong everywhere and I’ve yet to get anything more than a dirty look and I don’t think anyone would want to mess with a pregnant mother of four 🤣
What all these policy and cultural proposals are attempting to do is mimic the close family structure and tight-knit community in these more primitive societies. I don't believe you can achieve the same organic outcomes of higher birth rate with engineered child-friendly spaces and policies as most places that have tried them have failed to yield much improvement.
The one thing missing in all of this is the trust and character/skill knowledge of others in your community that comes from living day in/day out among your extended family members and those of your closest neighbors. It's one thing to let the community of children, which consists of brothers, sisters, cousins and close neighbors entertain one another in close proximity of the adults doing adult things, and another thing entirely to entrust your child to a random group of other children and random unknown adults in close proximity whose background and character you cannot possibly know well enough to be able to relax or focus enough on any work in front of you.
The home in which there are children being raised is just as much a full-time job in need of a manager and various entrusted supervisors as any job in the workplace. What a network of mothers who are extended family, family friends and neighbors used to be able to provide for each other while caring for children and managing households is mostly gone from our culture. By demonizing the full-time work of child care and home management as slavery and oppression instead upholding it as necessary and valued work that benefits society, we have lost those cultural anchors that provided the playmates, childcare and household help that used to exist. Somehow caring for your own children at home was oppressive but holding a job in which you provide childcare for other working mothers is liberating.
What policy and engineered cultural proposals are attempting to fix is the question of "What do we do with the children and home management so both parents can work or because both parents have to work?" Maybe what we should be asking is, how can we better recognize, value and compensate, the actual necessary in-home work of home management and child raising. We're all in if subsidizing childcare happens away from the home or involves paying a stranger to come into the home to help (and sometimes that may be necessary) but we somehow can't fathom subsidizing the work of the stay-at-home parent, who is raising future workers and tax-payers, or perhaps subsidizing pay for grandparents, aunts, uncles, sister, brothers, cousins or very close friends to do the child care and house care tasks in our own homes.
I've been a stay-at-home parent for 25 years, It was lonely and the task was enormous because the neighborhood was empty during the day. There were no other trusted eyes but mine to supervise the kids outdoors nor were there any other children around for my girls to socialize with. I ended up shouldering more work by providing childcare for working moms not only to help with our income but so there was another child or two for my children to play with. How I longed for a neighborhood like the one I grew up in where the mom's talked over the back yard fence and who were able to provide babysitting for each other. I had a whole gaggle of friends and my siblings to run around the neighborhood with. We can't recreate these close knit communities by outsourcing more childcare and play areas in adult spaces outside the home. We have to start making home a source of socialization and valued work again.
I love this piece so much, and you're totally right, it's culture AND policy that need to go together. I agree that the culture of intensive parenting and the hostility to kids in many "third spaces" is a toxic mix that makes parenting miserable in the U.S. I am on a flight back from Barcelona as we speak and Spain totally has the cafe across from the playground where you can drink a beer while watching your kid. They also have pedestrianized streets and plazas where your kid can run in front of you without dashing into traffic. But their birth rate is low. I think something about the valorization of motherhood that you witnessed in Burkina Faso is key; we need to applaud and value care and celebrate moms!
I so agree!! There’s something in the USA (misogyny??) that just consistently undermines the work of a mother and caregiver writ large. I am a stay at home mom, so some policy things (like the cost of daycare, paid leave) don’t impact me (in theory) but the cultural disrespect for mothers arguably impacts me more. I have not “worked” since 2018, and have two children. Not “working” in a society that worships money/jobs is a special type of ostracization, especially among the left, to be honest. But also, I don’t know if it’s just misogyny, because, do we culturally dislike kids too??? I am progressive, but when I tell my progressive friends I want a third kid they treat me like I am insane. One asked: “are you Mormon?” lol. But the other day I got strawberry plants off fb marketplace from a (likely) conservative woman who had 5 biological children, mostly grown. I asked her advice on if I should have a third kid, and she told me, only because I asked, that her advice is to have two more. Literally would NEVER hear that from a liberal woman in the US in 2025. It made me think!
The politicization of having kids is such a weird cultural phenomenon we are living through right now. Like since when is having kids a right wing thing to do? But TBH it feels that way in the US these days.
One of my "very" progressive friends is anti-natalist, and when I said I actually think the $5000 baby bonus should be done (not ONLY the baby bonus to be clear), she accused me of being "pronatalist." I am not anti-natalist. Does that make me pro? I don't know. But also, I bet you'd like a recent episode of the podcast "Diabolical Lies" called "Who Wants Kids?" In it, they discuss how there's been a trial of the "baby bonus" in Flint, MI, with $1500 at 21 weeks gestation and $500/month for ~year after birth and it's been, on the whole, an effective and helpful policy. Again, not saying it's enough, but beggars can't be choosers.
I think you’re right, and that’s too bad, because liberal policies are actually better for moms than conservative ones (in terms of things like parental leave or breastfeeding protections). In the U.S. we sort of need to mesh culture and policy from different ends of the political spectrum, but without all the anti-woman stuff you get on the right.
100% my experience too. I’m a mom of four (expecting my 5th) and politically homeless. My lefty friends (and moreso the boomer democrat friends of my parents) and aghast by my husband’s and my orientation towards children. Like, they think I am insane or superhuman. When I think I am neither. Just love being a mom and having kids, it’s so interesting to me.
Wonderful article. I appreciate your combination of science, policy, and personal story. I hope to learn to write more like you.
Your experiences also resonate with mine in India. My husband is from India and I've spent time there as a young married woman and after having children. Children are welcome and expected everywhere. They are also expected to be "children" there. They have different rules at the temples for dress and behavior than adults. They are not expected to sit perfectly still or be quiet. That said, if your child is doing something that is too disrespectful you can expect another adult to parent them for you - similar to your experiences in community parenting.
As an American, I also deeply felt your part about hanging out in "child-centric" places. I hate going to these - and honestly my kids get overstimulated there anyways. We started pushing back on this pretty hard by taking our kids to "adult" places. We homeschool and our children are regularly around adults and thus know how to be with adults. We take them to regular yoga classes, museums, Shakespeare plays, natural history talks and the like. I will tell you that my personal experience has been surprising. Adults, even in the West, welcome, interact, and genuinely bend over backwards for respectful, nice children. I wonder how culture would change if children were naturally woven into one's typical day as they do elsewhere.
Thank you again for your writing. It's always thought-provoking and as I said in the beginning a beautiful combination of science and personal.
I appreciate seeing your comment with the homeschooling perspective. Wanted to echo something similar. Sometimes, rarely, I get to experience a small taste of the shared burden of childcare in homeschool settings. Usually when camping with several families and there is shared labor across the board. It's wonderful, I'm even usually a single parent on these trips as my spouse has to work. It can, and does, exist in the US, even in secular communities, yet is fleeting and insufficient. I've also found a lot of welcoming spaces for children here in Colorado. Adults are overwhelmingly pleased to see curious and attentive kids doing interesting things. But it breaks down for me in the shared spaces where kids play while adults socialize, like breweries, bike parks, creeks, and even friends' houses. Many of the kids, who also happen to have been socialized in crowded daycares and schools, are really quite bad at free-play playing so it's just an overstimulating melee with no responding to older kids', or other adults', basic directions. The lack of shared culture and values around a child's expected behavior, in large part due to a misapplication of gentle parenting, makes these third-space areas hard to navigate.
I 100% agree with you about mixed-play in public. That almost never happens for us especially as the kids have gotten older. You point out something that I hesitated to but it has a lot to do with parenting and the other children not being properly socialized (ironic coming from a homeschooler). We don't take our kids to breweries or bike parks, and it's only certain friends that we go to while the kids play together. Thank you for your perspective .
This resonates so much. I'm coming from the other side: I have no children, but I love spending time with them and have spent twenty years volunteering with children. The last few years that's mostly been toddler groups, and of the things I most love is that if I see an unhappy baby or bored toddler, I can dive in and soothe or entertain them as needed, and NO ONE MINDS, even though I'm a man.* I'm always yearning to find more places where I can be part of a 'village' like that, but they're rare.
*For avoidance of doubt, I'm careful never to be alone with a child or do any personal care.
I live in a small city in Maine. We moved here so that our son could grow up in the kind of neighborhood where a multi-age tribe of kids play with minimal supervision. He’s twenty-four. In high school his social group shifted to a big, loose friend group which he still has. Plus in the summer we had the beach, where kids play together and parents can read and chat. I worked part-time as an adjunct. I chose to have one child so I thought it was important for him to live around other kids. Maybe because it’s a tourist area and a lot of foodies live here, kids are welcome most places except dive bars and clubs.
I’m all for more social support from the gov, like that would be great. The thing is that none of the countries with social safety nets are anywhere near above replacement rate, and to sustain the welfare system you need to be above replacement rate. Otherwise, the system will crumble. That’s why being above replacement matters at all.
Eventually both our economy and welfare state will collapse. This is not an issue of evil capitalists wanting to profit off of people vs poor innocent people begging for government assistant. The reality is that both capitalism / economics and the welfare system go hand in hand and we need young workers and tax payers to sustain this infrastructure. In a rapidly aging society, this is a big concern. And immigration is really just a temporary bandaid, it doesn’t fix the problem (and sometimes causes more problems). I’m not anti immigration by any means, but this is a reality. Europe and Scandinavia have many of their own issues despite a generous welfare system, and some of the same ones—they are not these social utopias. Making US policy like theirs simply will not fix these issues, as it’s not like they’ve even fixed their own.
I feel like we may need to reimagine the economic and social system and values entirely to accommodate modern society to flourish, we just haven’t come up with a new system yet but rather keep rehashing methods that have previously worked and no longer do, or methods that have never worked or are simply undemocratic. I think you’re right urban design does play a role somewhat. Cost of housing and urban space. Life in the past 100 years has changed drastically so fast really bc of technology that it’s very difficult to adapt, technology has solved some problems but created new ones. I think people make it more ideological than it needs to be.
I also think the meaning crisis in western society plays somewhat of a large role, broken communities and social issues, etc. People talk about religion a lot in these contexts, and I was never religious but it is true that it served as kind of a glue for society / communities. I think a big problem is we just no longer have this glue… but I think a type of glue is necessary. whether we return to an old glue or invent a new one is up to us ultimately.
You’re absolutely spot on for the need to reimagine economic and social systems given the astonishing pace of modern technology. It’s staggering how much different my daughter’s childhood and now young adulthood was from mine. I’m at a loss for answers, the changes are so dramatic.
Exactly. The right saying “stop being selfish and just have more kids” are not really acknowledging the multifaceted barriers at play (it’s economic, it’s issues finding a the right partner, our individualist culture, urban design, education being too long, etc). But the left saying “let’s just be more like Sweden!” Is just as delusional, if not more so. They have no idea what’s actually happening in europe. Every country is below replacement level, even lower than the US. Southern Europe is literally facing demographic collapse. The economy in general is stagnant, youth unemployment is high, lots of social issues regarding immigration, tons of populism.
Great article, Elena. But I think it’s important to note that this parent-and-child-friendly culture you speak of hasn’t disappeared from the US entirely. It’s still very much alive in tight knit religious communities (Hasidic, Catholic, Mormon) as well as small rural ones. I’m not a member of any of these communities but have friends who live in and among them, and they talk about the packs of kids roaming the neighborhood without iPhones and the moms convening on porches for connection and commiseration and creative practice.
Why is this? Well, something noteworthy about all of these communities is that they tend to be significantly less progressive than the urban and secular communities from which this culture has disappeared (and in which I currently live with my family). I don’t think this is an accident. Progressivism tends to spurn tradition and rootedness and religiosity, all of which serve as the invisible forces that contribute to the cultural environment you call for here. Furthermore, progressive communities (and specifically career-oriented feminists) simply value motherhood less than women in traditional communities (perhaps having internalized patriarchy’s degraded view of motherhood), and I think the society around them has responded in turn. I say all of this as a relatively progressive mother with multiple degrees… rural and religious communities are more parent-friendly because family and hands-on parenting is what matters to those communities, not earning money and outsourcing everything. In the cities, it’s money that matters (the pseudo-value of globalist monoculture), and so our cities are filled with endless places to spend your money as opposed to be in community, and the posher the spot, the less child-friendly it tends to be. Again, not a coincidence.
Again, great piece here. And I agree, but I also think it’s important that progressive women (and men) take a hard look at ourselves and ask how we might have contributed to this, rather than simply blaming external entities.
This is so spot on. I feel like I’ve written a bunch of comments on this post, but I wanted to echo what some of your friends are experiencing. My family and I live outside of Saint Paul Minnesota in a community that is essentially Catholic. Yes there’s lots of other folks in our area too, but we are blocks from our parish and in the past couple of years several families have moved to be closer. So we are creating a village and it feels wonderful.
This is my dream! So happy for you and your family that you have found this. Mine recently relocated to be closer to my extended family and we’re just beginning to build our community… a rich and supportive village is one of the things I pray for nightly :)
Being close to extended family is our dream. My husband and I briefly considered moving to his hometown where all his extended family lives (his dad is one of nine). I love our village here but the one thing missing are all the aunts, uncles, cousins.
Tremendous post. Another potential reason for the birthrate decline that I would throw out is the overall breakdown of extended families and the community.
Much has been made of the breakdown of the Nuclear Family and long-term committed marriages as a societal building block. Still, we are much more distant from our extended families and communities than in earlier times.
Parenting is really, really hard, and it's so much harder when you do it alone. Government programs are helpful in filling some of those gaps, but I'm not sure that they're a full replacement for having grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins (or even a quality neighbor) available and involved to give parents a break, pitch in on house projects, or watch a sick child, etc., etc.
I was born in 1970. I could not begin to count the number of times I was attended to by extended family, my working single mother’s friends, as well as neighbors -those with or without their own kids.
This included being dropped off for overnights and weekends, and tagging along to church, fun outings, or just trips to the grocery store.
My daughter’s childhood was nothing like this. Her grandparents and relatives still had a work schedule and/or lived in other states. Finding other children for her to be with required scheduling play dates or activities, that I had to be present for, and are just not the same as spontaneous play without stop and start times that happen in a neighborhood of free ranging kids.
Arranging for them was a constant anxiety and headache, especially having to network with those who had more than one child and didn’t “need” a play date the way my shy, introverted only child did. It was devastating for her (and me) when plans fell through. That was perhaps the most difficult burden to endure as a parent, and one I never, ever expected.
Loved the essay. Very thought provoking--I have a bunch or disjointed comments:
1. Horrid that having more than 2 children has become a right wing thing. I think the anti-child, anti-mom attitude of the left and the Democratic Party [which is center right by world standards] was one of the factors that gave the current party in power the 1% edge they needed to get elected.
2) The two places we still see large numbers of free range children are military bases ["It's safe because the screen who comes in at the guard gate" said one I know] and right wing religious enclaves such as the ultra trad Catholic intentional community in Hyattsville. Also Amish of course.
3. We have a bit or the tragedy of the commons or perhaps prisoners dilemma: if most moms care for their own young children, have two or more kids, etc., raising kids that way is easier. When a large percentage of the moms pursue professional careers and double the family income, housing costs rise, there are fewer neighborhood kids to play with, fewer slightly older kids to watch out for younger ones, so SAHM mom's are stuck in the playmate role and also it becomes more dangerous for the few children left to play outside without adult supervision. [Don't get me started on families with double our income who thought I should provide free but very closely supervised childcare whenever their normal arrangements fell through because I was home anyway--didn't see them offering a chunk of their savings, future promotions, etc. because they were working anyway and not for the money but just because they were so intellectually superior that they would be bored and caring for kids was more something for stupid, placid, patient people like me--if have an Ivy degree BTW--things we gave up precisely so as not to have those crisis days--it's not just the immediate pay, but also the opportunity costs.
4) When you say you're 'just a mom', there is instant disrespect. When I became a k-12 teacher, the contempt was even stronger. "You're too smart to be a teacher" [said by a neighbor with credentials who invited me and his teen daughter to an opera and was surprised I was capable of explaining a bit about the censorship/political history of the story to the daughter and "You must be really patient and placid" are NOT compliments
When someone tells me they are a SAHM, I want to kneel down before them. Hardest job in the world. I went back to work just to have a break. You're amazing. People are stupid.
I don’t see the anti-mom bias of the Democratic party. The other side wants to celebrate an idealized vision of motherhood, but do nothing for mothers. We need paid family leave for both men and women. Most women want to have a career. And as someone who has seen friends go through financially disastrous divorces, I think it’s a mistake for most women to stay home full time.
The problem is the biggest variable is the extended family/"community of kin" model and that's inherently broken in the U.S. I don't think there's any way to put that toothpaste back in the jar.
> But, having lived for over a year in Burkina Faso, a country that boasts a fertility rate of 4.66 children per woman, I also think there are some positive reasons for why women in poorer countries choose to have so many children.
While I agree culture probably plays some part -- and even if it doesn't affect the birth rate it definitely is affecting how happy American/Western parents are so it should be fixed just for that! -- I think it is really hard to draw any conclusions from a place like Burkina Faso where the birthrate is collapsing despite its culture. Since it is still collapsing and has shown no signs yet of stabilising it is hard to know how much culture is actually helping it.
You note that Burkina Faso's fertility rate is around 4.6. Just five years ago, in 2020, it was over 5. And 12 years before that, in 2002, it was over 6. So it is currently dropping by approximately 1 kid per decade. By the end of the 2020s it will be below 4. By the end of the 2030s it will (likely) be below 3.
There are many countries that have some or all of the aspect of Burkina Faso but still have low fertility rates, just look to Asia. Vietnam has multigenerational households. No government retirement program, so children are your retirement plan. Houses are tiny so you still see a lot of free range kids. The cult of intensive parenting hasn't become widespread there. Women (never men) take their children to work (when not in school and plausible for their job; if you work in a factory or an office that's very different than working at a market or street food stall). People take children to restaurants and drink alcohol with their friends. (There aren't really bars in the Western sense.) There are virtually no playgrounds.
But the fertility rate is 1.9 there, well below replacement level.
Now, I don't want to paint Vietnam as some kind of pro-parent utopia. It has a strong heritage of the Confucian double-edged sword of "family is the most important/only thing". You can rely on family for everything -- when our twins were born some distant aunt of my wife whom I had never met traveled over 1,000 kilometres and lived with us for several weeks, waking up at 4am to handle the 4am-11am baby shift. But it also means people OUTSIDE the family are never to be fully trusted or relied on and you don't get much neighborhood alloparenting happening.
The built environment (no playgrounds, no sidewalks, no open spaces, no fields) kinda works for free-range kids when everyone drives around on a scooter at 10-20kph and is (mostly) aware of kids (you just have much better visibility & situational awareness on a scooter than in a car). But you still see 20something guys who floor their scooter uncaring of toddlers who might suddenly run in front of them. And scooters are being replaced with cars at a fast rate which just heightens the stakes and means the non-arterial streets will probably stop being shared spaces and become the sole domain of cars.
There’s a couple of things going on here. You’ve not cross-checked the birth rate with the infant mortality rate. A reduction in the infant mortality rate is directly correlated with a drop in birth rate.
Women have so many births because 50% of their babies will die before their fifth birthday: you reduce the number of babies dying, women won’t have to have six babies to have three survivors and a growing population.
Burkina Faso does have government provided antenatal, birth and postpartum care, even if it is not perfectly universal, it’s enough to move the needle on infant mortality rates and get it trending down, which lowers the total fertility rate.
The second thing is that for wealthy, urbanised professional classes, kids are a major cost for a long time, decades of education and development before they can start earning a living. In agrarian society kids, start earning their keep from age 3 and by 6 or 7 active and meaningful contributors to the household economy. It makes sense that more children are a productive benefit to a family farm, but not so much to a family of corporate lawyers in schmancy manhattan.
As more of the population urbanises, and shifts to service and professional work, that puts further downward pressure on the birth rate as children are dependants to be fed instead of useful labour.
My dad observed this exact trend in Central America in the 1980s. He got asked by a fancy philanthropic outfit how much it would cost to provide contraception to the entire population of Guatemala to lower the birth rate from 8 babies to 2.
He tried to argue that for half the cost of injecting Guatemalan women with depo provera, they could build universal access to clean water, sanitation, antenatal, natal and postpartum care, and early childhood healthcare. All of which would drive down the infant mortality rate and actually improve the life and health of everyone and by extension halve the birth rate in 5 years.
Said philanthropic outfit went with the inject women with chemicals they don’t want instead because that seemed easier. Go figure.
I have heard virtually no one talk at length about the segregation you talk about here—and good lord, the exhausting need for play. I so want my kids to be integrated into the rest of my life, but I have no pattern for how to do so. Like you, when we’ve spent extended time with family (meaning cousins slightly older than my kids), I am shocked by how manageable parenthood feels. And then I think, oh my gosh, this is how it’s supposed to be.
Resonated hard with the point around other kids to play with. Two thoughts:
1) It is kind of a self-solving problem -> more kids = less need to play with your kids. The total quantum of time I spend "playing" has gone down steadily with each year and child (we have 3, expecting a fourth). You can institute this free outdoor / basement play regime pretty easily in your own home without buy-in from others. I've now regained the ability to, say, do a workout during Saturday morning cartoons when the oldest is 5.
2) You don't need a lot of community buy-in to build some community around this and solve the problem for a neighborhood. But you do need (1) a walkable neighborhood that is relatively safe and (2) a ton of initiative. Nobody really reciprocates, at least to start, but I have found that you really just need 2-3 families where there is a pretty casual, more or less open-door policy. We have a couple families that we will get together with roughly once a week on average, and it is a game changer. They have kids the same age, and everyone just goes in the basement or backyard and entertains themselves while the parents hang out.
The consequence of all of this is still way more cleaning. More kids = more messes, and hosting = messes. But as the kids get older, they are doing more chores (my oldest is not TOO far from being net neutral from a work perspective), and you can also do environment tricks to avoid incremental messes. WHENEVER the weather is decent, we'll just do picnic at the playground near our house. No cleaning, and my wife and I can just relax while the kids play after eating.
I’m a practicing Catholic and have always believed the problem is cultural. If you are Catholic and in a parish that has a lot of young families, you have access to a huge reserve of support. Priests give homilies about how important parenthood is and they value mothers. Grandmothers invite you into their homes so they can babysit and give you a break. The other young Moms in my parish have embraced us so much and bring meals to each other when someone is sick or postpartum. It’s changed my whole perspective on parenthood.
This is so interesting. I’ve interviewed a lot of mothers for my book and it does seem that a lot of Catholic communities are truly supportive and wonderful for parents. But I’ve also spoken to moms from religious Christian groups where they get more judgment than support and where patriarchal norms and expectations outweigh the community support factor. I’ve actually written a couple of other pieces about the intersection of religion and motherhood and whether it’s good or bad for parents. Such an interesting topic IMHO. Thanks for chiming in.
Yes, I definitely believe that too! Like you said, with religious groups is that there are requirements for entry and I think having shared beliefs that differ a lot from the prevailing beliefs in a given society is going to bond you together. But it’s not a universal solution, although I definitely think Christians have an obligation to help everyone as much as possible.
I could write a whole essay on Christianity, Catholicism, and how certain religious communities can be wonderful and others are terribly isolating. I’ll have to read your other pieces on this!
Maybe there’s an advantage to the specifically Catholic space vs Protestant space? I know people try to lump them all together, but Catholicism has traditions from before western societies became super individualistic like the US is now. Meanwhile Protestantism has been cut off from that catholic tradition, and I’m saying this as a Protestant Christian.
Even as a child, raised Presbyterian in a very Catholic town, I liked how Catholics prayed to Mary, and how she was exalted for her motherhood. I felt that there was NO female equivalent in my church; it felt entirely male-dominated.
Something often unappreciated about traditions with saints is how female saints provide such a varied template for religious women. There are saints who are mothers, childless/childfree, married, single, employed, etc.
Agree with this! Adding some additional features: our huge gaggle of siblings play with/ entertain/(fight with) each other all day so I don’t have to, and our parties - including parish and school events and gatherings in our homes - are typically structured like: good food + alcohol, lots of kids of a diverse range of ages running around, making for varying levels of fun and supervision, and a collective understanding that children belong in our shared spaces and even enrich our experiences as a community.
This has been my experience as well. I think the largely secular, third wave feminist culture is to blame. As a Catholic I find so much support in my parish community as a mom of four (and soon to be five). I also think choosing to live in a low cost area (the Midwest) really helps. Maybe not everyone loves it, but we do go to our local fancy coffee shop from time to time. I just believe children belong everywhere and I’ve yet to get anything more than a dirty look and I don’t think anyone would want to mess with a pregnant mother of four 🤣
What all these policy and cultural proposals are attempting to do is mimic the close family structure and tight-knit community in these more primitive societies. I don't believe you can achieve the same organic outcomes of higher birth rate with engineered child-friendly spaces and policies as most places that have tried them have failed to yield much improvement.
The one thing missing in all of this is the trust and character/skill knowledge of others in your community that comes from living day in/day out among your extended family members and those of your closest neighbors. It's one thing to let the community of children, which consists of brothers, sisters, cousins and close neighbors entertain one another in close proximity of the adults doing adult things, and another thing entirely to entrust your child to a random group of other children and random unknown adults in close proximity whose background and character you cannot possibly know well enough to be able to relax or focus enough on any work in front of you.
The home in which there are children being raised is just as much a full-time job in need of a manager and various entrusted supervisors as any job in the workplace. What a network of mothers who are extended family, family friends and neighbors used to be able to provide for each other while caring for children and managing households is mostly gone from our culture. By demonizing the full-time work of child care and home management as slavery and oppression instead upholding it as necessary and valued work that benefits society, we have lost those cultural anchors that provided the playmates, childcare and household help that used to exist. Somehow caring for your own children at home was oppressive but holding a job in which you provide childcare for other working mothers is liberating.
What policy and engineered cultural proposals are attempting to fix is the question of "What do we do with the children and home management so both parents can work or because both parents have to work?" Maybe what we should be asking is, how can we better recognize, value and compensate, the actual necessary in-home work of home management and child raising. We're all in if subsidizing childcare happens away from the home or involves paying a stranger to come into the home to help (and sometimes that may be necessary) but we somehow can't fathom subsidizing the work of the stay-at-home parent, who is raising future workers and tax-payers, or perhaps subsidizing pay for grandparents, aunts, uncles, sister, brothers, cousins or very close friends to do the child care and house care tasks in our own homes.
I've been a stay-at-home parent for 25 years, It was lonely and the task was enormous because the neighborhood was empty during the day. There were no other trusted eyes but mine to supervise the kids outdoors nor were there any other children around for my girls to socialize with. I ended up shouldering more work by providing childcare for working moms not only to help with our income but so there was another child or two for my children to play with. How I longed for a neighborhood like the one I grew up in where the mom's talked over the back yard fence and who were able to provide babysitting for each other. I had a whole gaggle of friends and my siblings to run around the neighborhood with. We can't recreate these close knit communities by outsourcing more childcare and play areas in adult spaces outside the home. We have to start making home a source of socialization and valued work again.
I love this piece so much, and you're totally right, it's culture AND policy that need to go together. I agree that the culture of intensive parenting and the hostility to kids in many "third spaces" is a toxic mix that makes parenting miserable in the U.S. I am on a flight back from Barcelona as we speak and Spain totally has the cafe across from the playground where you can drink a beer while watching your kid. They also have pedestrianized streets and plazas where your kid can run in front of you without dashing into traffic. But their birth rate is low. I think something about the valorization of motherhood that you witnessed in Burkina Faso is key; we need to applaud and value care and celebrate moms!
I so agree!! There’s something in the USA (misogyny??) that just consistently undermines the work of a mother and caregiver writ large. I am a stay at home mom, so some policy things (like the cost of daycare, paid leave) don’t impact me (in theory) but the cultural disrespect for mothers arguably impacts me more. I have not “worked” since 2018, and have two children. Not “working” in a society that worships money/jobs is a special type of ostracization, especially among the left, to be honest. But also, I don’t know if it’s just misogyny, because, do we culturally dislike kids too??? I am progressive, but when I tell my progressive friends I want a third kid they treat me like I am insane. One asked: “are you Mormon?” lol. But the other day I got strawberry plants off fb marketplace from a (likely) conservative woman who had 5 biological children, mostly grown. I asked her advice on if I should have a third kid, and she told me, only because I asked, that her advice is to have two more. Literally would NEVER hear that from a liberal woman in the US in 2025. It made me think!
The politicization of having kids is such a weird cultural phenomenon we are living through right now. Like since when is having kids a right wing thing to do? But TBH it feels that way in the US these days.
One of my "very" progressive friends is anti-natalist, and when I said I actually think the $5000 baby bonus should be done (not ONLY the baby bonus to be clear), she accused me of being "pronatalist." I am not anti-natalist. Does that make me pro? I don't know. But also, I bet you'd like a recent episode of the podcast "Diabolical Lies" called "Who Wants Kids?" In it, they discuss how there's been a trial of the "baby bonus" in Flint, MI, with $1500 at 21 weeks gestation and $500/month for ~year after birth and it's been, on the whole, an effective and helpful policy. Again, not saying it's enough, but beggars can't be choosers.
I think you’re right, and that’s too bad, because liberal policies are actually better for moms than conservative ones (in terms of things like parental leave or breastfeeding protections). In the U.S. we sort of need to mesh culture and policy from different ends of the political spectrum, but without all the anti-woman stuff you get on the right.
100% my experience too. I’m a mom of four (expecting my 5th) and politically homeless. My lefty friends (and moreso the boomer democrat friends of my parents) and aghast by my husband’s and my orientation towards children. Like, they think I am insane or superhuman. When I think I am neither. Just love being a mom and having kids, it’s so interesting to me.
Wonderful article. I appreciate your combination of science, policy, and personal story. I hope to learn to write more like you.
Your experiences also resonate with mine in India. My husband is from India and I've spent time there as a young married woman and after having children. Children are welcome and expected everywhere. They are also expected to be "children" there. They have different rules at the temples for dress and behavior than adults. They are not expected to sit perfectly still or be quiet. That said, if your child is doing something that is too disrespectful you can expect another adult to parent them for you - similar to your experiences in community parenting.
As an American, I also deeply felt your part about hanging out in "child-centric" places. I hate going to these - and honestly my kids get overstimulated there anyways. We started pushing back on this pretty hard by taking our kids to "adult" places. We homeschool and our children are regularly around adults and thus know how to be with adults. We take them to regular yoga classes, museums, Shakespeare plays, natural history talks and the like. I will tell you that my personal experience has been surprising. Adults, even in the West, welcome, interact, and genuinely bend over backwards for respectful, nice children. I wonder how culture would change if children were naturally woven into one's typical day as they do elsewhere.
Thank you again for your writing. It's always thought-provoking and as I said in the beginning a beautiful combination of science and personal.
I appreciate seeing your comment with the homeschooling perspective. Wanted to echo something similar. Sometimes, rarely, I get to experience a small taste of the shared burden of childcare in homeschool settings. Usually when camping with several families and there is shared labor across the board. It's wonderful, I'm even usually a single parent on these trips as my spouse has to work. It can, and does, exist in the US, even in secular communities, yet is fleeting and insufficient. I've also found a lot of welcoming spaces for children here in Colorado. Adults are overwhelmingly pleased to see curious and attentive kids doing interesting things. But it breaks down for me in the shared spaces where kids play while adults socialize, like breweries, bike parks, creeks, and even friends' houses. Many of the kids, who also happen to have been socialized in crowded daycares and schools, are really quite bad at free-play playing so it's just an overstimulating melee with no responding to older kids', or other adults', basic directions. The lack of shared culture and values around a child's expected behavior, in large part due to a misapplication of gentle parenting, makes these third-space areas hard to navigate.
I 100% agree with you about mixed-play in public. That almost never happens for us especially as the kids have gotten older. You point out something that I hesitated to but it has a lot to do with parenting and the other children not being properly socialized (ironic coming from a homeschooler). We don't take our kids to breweries or bike parks, and it's only certain friends that we go to while the kids play together. Thank you for your perspective .
Me too! But those “friends” they make are not going to ever be seen again. My super social kiddos have a hard time with that.
> a young child scooped up and cared for
This resonates so much. I'm coming from the other side: I have no children, but I love spending time with them and have spent twenty years volunteering with children. The last few years that's mostly been toddler groups, and of the things I most love is that if I see an unhappy baby or bored toddler, I can dive in and soothe or entertain them as needed, and NO ONE MINDS, even though I'm a man.* I'm always yearning to find more places where I can be part of a 'village' like that, but they're rare.
*For avoidance of doubt, I'm careful never to be alone with a child or do any personal care.
My son loves to play with older boys and men and it’s so hard to find in our culture
I do see that in homeschooling circles— some of my sons’ best friends are the older boys who are part of our forest school coop.
I live in a small city in Maine. We moved here so that our son could grow up in the kind of neighborhood where a multi-age tribe of kids play with minimal supervision. He’s twenty-four. In high school his social group shifted to a big, loose friend group which he still has. Plus in the summer we had the beach, where kids play together and parents can read and chat. I worked part-time as an adjunct. I chose to have one child so I thought it was important for him to live around other kids. Maybe because it’s a tourist area and a lot of foodies live here, kids are welcome most places except dive bars and clubs.
I’m all for more social support from the gov, like that would be great. The thing is that none of the countries with social safety nets are anywhere near above replacement rate, and to sustain the welfare system you need to be above replacement rate. Otherwise, the system will crumble. That’s why being above replacement matters at all.
Eventually both our economy and welfare state will collapse. This is not an issue of evil capitalists wanting to profit off of people vs poor innocent people begging for government assistant. The reality is that both capitalism / economics and the welfare system go hand in hand and we need young workers and tax payers to sustain this infrastructure. In a rapidly aging society, this is a big concern. And immigration is really just a temporary bandaid, it doesn’t fix the problem (and sometimes causes more problems). I’m not anti immigration by any means, but this is a reality. Europe and Scandinavia have many of their own issues despite a generous welfare system, and some of the same ones—they are not these social utopias. Making US policy like theirs simply will not fix these issues, as it’s not like they’ve even fixed their own.
I feel like we may need to reimagine the economic and social system and values entirely to accommodate modern society to flourish, we just haven’t come up with a new system yet but rather keep rehashing methods that have previously worked and no longer do, or methods that have never worked or are simply undemocratic. I think you’re right urban design does play a role somewhat. Cost of housing and urban space. Life in the past 100 years has changed drastically so fast really bc of technology that it’s very difficult to adapt, technology has solved some problems but created new ones. I think people make it more ideological than it needs to be.
I also think the meaning crisis in western society plays somewhat of a large role, broken communities and social issues, etc. People talk about religion a lot in these contexts, and I was never religious but it is true that it served as kind of a glue for society / communities. I think a big problem is we just no longer have this glue… but I think a type of glue is necessary. whether we return to an old glue or invent a new one is up to us ultimately.
You’re absolutely spot on for the need to reimagine economic and social systems given the astonishing pace of modern technology. It’s staggering how much different my daughter’s childhood and now young adulthood was from mine. I’m at a loss for answers, the changes are so dramatic.
Exactly. The right saying “stop being selfish and just have more kids” are not really acknowledging the multifaceted barriers at play (it’s economic, it’s issues finding a the right partner, our individualist culture, urban design, education being too long, etc). But the left saying “let’s just be more like Sweden!” Is just as delusional, if not more so. They have no idea what’s actually happening in europe. Every country is below replacement level, even lower than the US. Southern Europe is literally facing demographic collapse. The economy in general is stagnant, youth unemployment is high, lots of social issues regarding immigration, tons of populism.
Great article, Elena. But I think it’s important to note that this parent-and-child-friendly culture you speak of hasn’t disappeared from the US entirely. It’s still very much alive in tight knit religious communities (Hasidic, Catholic, Mormon) as well as small rural ones. I’m not a member of any of these communities but have friends who live in and among them, and they talk about the packs of kids roaming the neighborhood without iPhones and the moms convening on porches for connection and commiseration and creative practice.
Why is this? Well, something noteworthy about all of these communities is that they tend to be significantly less progressive than the urban and secular communities from which this culture has disappeared (and in which I currently live with my family). I don’t think this is an accident. Progressivism tends to spurn tradition and rootedness and religiosity, all of which serve as the invisible forces that contribute to the cultural environment you call for here. Furthermore, progressive communities (and specifically career-oriented feminists) simply value motherhood less than women in traditional communities (perhaps having internalized patriarchy’s degraded view of motherhood), and I think the society around them has responded in turn. I say all of this as a relatively progressive mother with multiple degrees… rural and religious communities are more parent-friendly because family and hands-on parenting is what matters to those communities, not earning money and outsourcing everything. In the cities, it’s money that matters (the pseudo-value of globalist monoculture), and so our cities are filled with endless places to spend your money as opposed to be in community, and the posher the spot, the less child-friendly it tends to be. Again, not a coincidence.
Again, great piece here. And I agree, but I also think it’s important that progressive women (and men) take a hard look at ourselves and ask how we might have contributed to this, rather than simply blaming external entities.
This is so spot on. I feel like I’ve written a bunch of comments on this post, but I wanted to echo what some of your friends are experiencing. My family and I live outside of Saint Paul Minnesota in a community that is essentially Catholic. Yes there’s lots of other folks in our area too, but we are blocks from our parish and in the past couple of years several families have moved to be closer. So we are creating a village and it feels wonderful.
This is my dream! So happy for you and your family that you have found this. Mine recently relocated to be closer to my extended family and we’re just beginning to build our community… a rich and supportive village is one of the things I pray for nightly :)
Being close to extended family is our dream. My husband and I briefly considered moving to his hometown where all his extended family lives (his dad is one of nine). I love our village here but the one thing missing are all the aunts, uncles, cousins.
Tremendous post. Another potential reason for the birthrate decline that I would throw out is the overall breakdown of extended families and the community.
Much has been made of the breakdown of the Nuclear Family and long-term committed marriages as a societal building block. Still, we are much more distant from our extended families and communities than in earlier times.
Parenting is really, really hard, and it's so much harder when you do it alone. Government programs are helpful in filling some of those gaps, but I'm not sure that they're a full replacement for having grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins (or even a quality neighbor) available and involved to give parents a break, pitch in on house projects, or watch a sick child, etc., etc.
I was born in 1970. I could not begin to count the number of times I was attended to by extended family, my working single mother’s friends, as well as neighbors -those with or without their own kids.
This included being dropped off for overnights and weekends, and tagging along to church, fun outings, or just trips to the grocery store.
My daughter’s childhood was nothing like this. Her grandparents and relatives still had a work schedule and/or lived in other states. Finding other children for her to be with required scheduling play dates or activities, that I had to be present for, and are just not the same as spontaneous play without stop and start times that happen in a neighborhood of free ranging kids.
Arranging for them was a constant anxiety and headache, especially having to network with those who had more than one child and didn’t “need” a play date the way my shy, introverted only child did. It was devastating for her (and me) when plans fell through. That was perhaps the most difficult burden to endure as a parent, and one I never, ever expected.
Loved the essay. Very thought provoking--I have a bunch or disjointed comments:
1. Horrid that having more than 2 children has become a right wing thing. I think the anti-child, anti-mom attitude of the left and the Democratic Party [which is center right by world standards] was one of the factors that gave the current party in power the 1% edge they needed to get elected.
2) The two places we still see large numbers of free range children are military bases ["It's safe because the screen who comes in at the guard gate" said one I know] and right wing religious enclaves such as the ultra trad Catholic intentional community in Hyattsville. Also Amish of course.
3. We have a bit or the tragedy of the commons or perhaps prisoners dilemma: if most moms care for their own young children, have two or more kids, etc., raising kids that way is easier. When a large percentage of the moms pursue professional careers and double the family income, housing costs rise, there are fewer neighborhood kids to play with, fewer slightly older kids to watch out for younger ones, so SAHM mom's are stuck in the playmate role and also it becomes more dangerous for the few children left to play outside without adult supervision. [Don't get me started on families with double our income who thought I should provide free but very closely supervised childcare whenever their normal arrangements fell through because I was home anyway--didn't see them offering a chunk of their savings, future promotions, etc. because they were working anyway and not for the money but just because they were so intellectually superior that they would be bored and caring for kids was more something for stupid, placid, patient people like me--if have an Ivy degree BTW--things we gave up precisely so as not to have those crisis days--it's not just the immediate pay, but also the opportunity costs.
4) When you say you're 'just a mom', there is instant disrespect. When I became a k-12 teacher, the contempt was even stronger. "You're too smart to be a teacher" [said by a neighbor with credentials who invited me and his teen daughter to an opera and was surprised I was capable of explaining a bit about the censorship/political history of the story to the daughter and "You must be really patient and placid" are NOT compliments
When someone tells me they are a SAHM, I want to kneel down before them. Hardest job in the world. I went back to work just to have a break. You're amazing. People are stupid.
I don’t see the anti-mom bias of the Democratic party. The other side wants to celebrate an idealized vision of motherhood, but do nothing for mothers. We need paid family leave for both men and women. Most women want to have a career. And as someone who has seen friends go through financially disastrous divorces, I think it’s a mistake for most women to stay home full time.
#3 is what Elizabeth Warren and her daughter wrote a book about. I think she was exactly right and wish she had locked onto this more.
Great article!
Housing developments like this one might be a step in the right direction. https://www.candlelighthomes.com/firefly-vision
The problem is the biggest variable is the extended family/"community of kin" model and that's inherently broken in the U.S. I don't think there's any way to put that toothpaste back in the jar.
> But, having lived for over a year in Burkina Faso, a country that boasts a fertility rate of 4.66 children per woman, I also think there are some positive reasons for why women in poorer countries choose to have so many children.
While I agree culture probably plays some part -- and even if it doesn't affect the birth rate it definitely is affecting how happy American/Western parents are so it should be fixed just for that! -- I think it is really hard to draw any conclusions from a place like Burkina Faso where the birthrate is collapsing despite its culture. Since it is still collapsing and has shown no signs yet of stabilising it is hard to know how much culture is actually helping it.
You note that Burkina Faso's fertility rate is around 4.6. Just five years ago, in 2020, it was over 5. And 12 years before that, in 2002, it was over 6. So it is currently dropping by approximately 1 kid per decade. By the end of the 2020s it will be below 4. By the end of the 2030s it will (likely) be below 3.
There are many countries that have some or all of the aspect of Burkina Faso but still have low fertility rates, just look to Asia. Vietnam has multigenerational households. No government retirement program, so children are your retirement plan. Houses are tiny so you still see a lot of free range kids. The cult of intensive parenting hasn't become widespread there. Women (never men) take their children to work (when not in school and plausible for their job; if you work in a factory or an office that's very different than working at a market or street food stall). People take children to restaurants and drink alcohol with their friends. (There aren't really bars in the Western sense.) There are virtually no playgrounds.
But the fertility rate is 1.9 there, well below replacement level.
Now, I don't want to paint Vietnam as some kind of pro-parent utopia. It has a strong heritage of the Confucian double-edged sword of "family is the most important/only thing". You can rely on family for everything -- when our twins were born some distant aunt of my wife whom I had never met traveled over 1,000 kilometres and lived with us for several weeks, waking up at 4am to handle the 4am-11am baby shift. But it also means people OUTSIDE the family are never to be fully trusted or relied on and you don't get much neighborhood alloparenting happening.
The built environment (no playgrounds, no sidewalks, no open spaces, no fields) kinda works for free-range kids when everyone drives around on a scooter at 10-20kph and is (mostly) aware of kids (you just have much better visibility & situational awareness on a scooter than in a car). But you still see 20something guys who floor their scooter uncaring of toddlers who might suddenly run in front of them. And scooters are being replaced with cars at a fast rate which just heightens the stakes and means the non-arterial streets will probably stop being shared spaces and become the sole domain of cars.
There’s a couple of things going on here. You’ve not cross-checked the birth rate with the infant mortality rate. A reduction in the infant mortality rate is directly correlated with a drop in birth rate.
Women have so many births because 50% of their babies will die before their fifth birthday: you reduce the number of babies dying, women won’t have to have six babies to have three survivors and a growing population.
Burkina Faso does have government provided antenatal, birth and postpartum care, even if it is not perfectly universal, it’s enough to move the needle on infant mortality rates and get it trending down, which lowers the total fertility rate.
The second thing is that for wealthy, urbanised professional classes, kids are a major cost for a long time, decades of education and development before they can start earning a living. In agrarian society kids, start earning their keep from age 3 and by 6 or 7 active and meaningful contributors to the household economy. It makes sense that more children are a productive benefit to a family farm, but not so much to a family of corporate lawyers in schmancy manhattan.
As more of the population urbanises, and shifts to service and professional work, that puts further downward pressure on the birth rate as children are dependants to be fed instead of useful labour.
My dad observed this exact trend in Central America in the 1980s. He got asked by a fancy philanthropic outfit how much it would cost to provide contraception to the entire population of Guatemala to lower the birth rate from 8 babies to 2.
He tried to argue that for half the cost of injecting Guatemalan women with depo provera, they could build universal access to clean water, sanitation, antenatal, natal and postpartum care, and early childhood healthcare. All of which would drive down the infant mortality rate and actually improve the life and health of everyone and by extension halve the birth rate in 5 years.
Said philanthropic outfit went with the inject women with chemicals they don’t want instead because that seemed easier. Go figure.
I have heard virtually no one talk at length about the segregation you talk about here—and good lord, the exhausting need for play. I so want my kids to be integrated into the rest of my life, but I have no pattern for how to do so. Like you, when we’ve spent extended time with family (meaning cousins slightly older than my kids), I am shocked by how manageable parenthood feels. And then I think, oh my gosh, this is how it’s supposed to be.
Thanks for your good work and good thoughts.
Resonated hard with the point around other kids to play with. Two thoughts:
1) It is kind of a self-solving problem -> more kids = less need to play with your kids. The total quantum of time I spend "playing" has gone down steadily with each year and child (we have 3, expecting a fourth). You can institute this free outdoor / basement play regime pretty easily in your own home without buy-in from others. I've now regained the ability to, say, do a workout during Saturday morning cartoons when the oldest is 5.
2) You don't need a lot of community buy-in to build some community around this and solve the problem for a neighborhood. But you do need (1) a walkable neighborhood that is relatively safe and (2) a ton of initiative. Nobody really reciprocates, at least to start, but I have found that you really just need 2-3 families where there is a pretty casual, more or less open-door policy. We have a couple families that we will get together with roughly once a week on average, and it is a game changer. They have kids the same age, and everyone just goes in the basement or backyard and entertains themselves while the parents hang out.
The consequence of all of this is still way more cleaning. More kids = more messes, and hosting = messes. But as the kids get older, they are doing more chores (my oldest is not TOO far from being net neutral from a work perspective), and you can also do environment tricks to avoid incremental messes. WHENEVER the weather is decent, we'll just do picnic at the playground near our house. No cleaning, and my wife and I can just relax while the kids play after eating.