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Birthrate recovering?“Motherhood for early thirtysomethings is back in vogue. Of course women have always had babies and will always have babies, but there has been a definite shift in attitudes, at least among professional women: they want children or at least don’t want to end up childless. They’re having babies earlier and they are having more of them. If you haven’t noticed, four kids is the new three and three is the new two. Having an only child is suddenly frowned upon. The generational shift in favour of motherhood has been reflected in the Australian birthrate, with fertility rising last year in defiance of usual gloomy trends. That the figure rose only marginally - from 1.735 to 1.775 babies per woman—hardly matters: a rise is a rise and maternity hospitals are bursting with bundles of joy. Statisticians have been quick to find logical reasons for the rise, including attributing the baby boom to the last baby birthrate spike in 1971 (coincidentally my birth year). The babies born then, they argued, are breeding in force now. But that can be only part of the equation because having children is an emotional decision as much as anything else. So what has happened to make motherhood fashionable? Well, one can’t go past making a glib salute towards those leaders of cultural change: celebrities. After all, it was downright rude not to be 30-plus and pregnant last year, considering the bulging but stylish bellies of Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow, Collette Dinnigan and Sarah O’Hare, to name a few. (This year’s famous mums-to-be are decidedly younger and naughtier: what are Britney Spears and Bec Cartwright doing throwing away glittering careers for nursing bras at 23 and 22 respectively?) But while celebrities have given maternity a certain street cred, to accuse women of following celebrity trends would be trite, as would be attributing the rise mainly to the $3000 baby bonus bribe the Howard Government has paid new mothers, helpful though that was. Rather, one of the most important reasons for the attitude shift is that three or four years of scare tactics and open and honest discussion from women in their 40s who failed to have babies because they were chasing careers are beginning to sink in. And if that rhetoric isn’t enough to startle women into action, the horror stories of barren and desperate 43-year-old women suffering daily hormone injections while on their 15th round of taxpayer-funded IVF treatments is surely enough to scare the pants off anybody. Not all women want to have children or are in a position to have them, but many younger women are realising that the best way to ensure you get a baby is to start a little bit younger. It used to be said that 40 was the cut-off for women who wanted to have a baby some day, but recent messages have revised that age down to 35. After 35, women are told, their fertility “drops off a cliff”. This may be somewhat hyperbolic because many women start their families at ages older than 35, but I also know many people on, or who have used, fertility treatments. Many of them were younger than 35. ABC journalist Virginia Haussegger, for one, has been pushing the message of starting families younger since July 2002, when she vented her spleen at her feminist forebears for misleading her about the importance of career over a family. “I’m angry,” Haussegger, then 38, said in a now-famous quote, “angry that I was so foolish as to take the word of my feminist mothers as gospel.” Last month, Haussegger published a book on the topic (Wonder Women: The Myth of Having It All) but has been roundly condemned for being selfish and stupid for blaming anybody but herself for her predicament. Well, society can blame away, but younger women are listening to the message that she and others are sending out, and they’re doing something about it: they’re breeding. In my immediate family, for example, three babies have been born to three women—aged 29, 31 and 32 - in the past year alone. Haussegger may be a bit hard on her elders: each generation learns from the mistakes of the last and the women of her mother’s generation were often saddled with many children, few career options and restricted lives. But my generation is learning from the mistakes of Haussegger’s and getting on with it. Hopefully the mini baby boom will continue.” Posted by jonjayray on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at 04:44 AM in Oh Tempora, Oh Mores Comments:2
Posted by jonjayray on July 12, 2005, 06:57 AM | # Asian mothers (the main immigrant group) in Oz actually have a lower birthrate than Anglos 3
Posted by Mark Richardson on July 12, 2005, 07:54 AM | # John Rackell, I don’t think the births are just to immigrants. We had a very virulent bout of feminism here under the Labor governments of the 1980s and 90s which delayed family formation. Then, as the article suggests, there began to be stories about the first wave of women to end up unmarried, childless and unhappy. All of a sudden it became more acceptable for middle-class women to aim at the early 30s for marriage and childbearing rather than the late 30s. Given the existence of a large cohort of women who had delayed having children, the sudden window of opportunity to marry and successfully reproduce, and the election of a somewhat more family friendly right-liberal government which has openly encouraged women to have babies, it’s not surprising that the birth rate has risen a little. The sad thing is that many women will still miss out on having the number of children they might have liked: to meet someone, marry and have several children is not easy to fit into 5 or 6 years - some women still won’t manage it. BTW - something cheering for you. The highest birthrate in my state of Victoria is in the town of Swan Hill - one of the more Anglo parts of the state. 4
Posted by Geoff Beck on July 12, 2005, 11:09 AM | # What kind of births? (Is that a foetus she is holding?)
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Posted by stari_momak on July 12, 2005, 11:10 AM | # Good news, good news! I myself wonder if this might be a bit of self-defense. Though I live in London most of the year I am currently in Southern California. I couldn’t help noticing the number of well-coiffed, fit and tanned women pushing strollers (prams to most of you). Coupled with all the tow-headed kids running along the beach, it certainly seems that in the last 3-4 years there has been an upswing in births amongst upper middle class Whites in California. Could it be that the whole ‘this state is going to be a Latino state’ and ‘whites will be a minority message’ has gotten through to the self-satisfied lawyers, accountants, and lab-techs? Nobody would admit as much, perhaps not even to themselves. But perhaps in the deep recesses of the mind, married couples are saying—well, if the state is going to undergo a population explosion, lets contribute our share. Purely anecdotal evidence and absolutely evidence-free speculation—would be a difficult problem to tease out given the near taboos on such talk. 6
Posted by Dr Peter Kalve on July 12, 2005, 05:37 PM | # How insular and middle-class. The majority of people - and by definition that includes women, are not “professional”. Don’t their views -the views of a majority - hold vogue, rather than a small minority of frighteningly certain members of the chattering class? 7
Posted by Guessedworker on July 12, 2005, 06:50 PM | # I suppose the emphasis on “professional” women is unfair and numerically unimportant - except to those fascinated by the sinking fortunes of feminism. Trouble is, that’s a big slice of the politically aware and pretty well everyone on the right! 8
Posted by Stuka on July 12, 2005, 08:46 PM | # Though I live in London most of the year I am currently in Southern California. I couldn’t help noticing the number of well-coiffed, fit and tanned women pushing strollers (prams to most of you). Coupled with all the tow-headed kids running along the beach, it certainly seems that in the last 3-4 years there has been an upswing in births amongst upper middle class Whites in California. Stari, I’ve also noticed the exact same thing in this area, but I figured it was just me. This place is just crawling with white parents and their little kids. There are tons of white kids at the cinema, the beaches, and the pools. It’s almost annoying, but it’s an ‘annoyance’ I’ll gladly, happily put up with! 9
Posted by jonjayray on July 12, 2005, 09:18 PM | # “The majority of people - and by definition that includes women, are not “professional”.” “Professional” these days seems to include nurses and teachers so the numbers there are not insignificant 10
Posted by Rational Islamophobe on July 12, 2005, 10:12 PM | # Do you have some figures on that, JJR? From what I see, most Asian women are having more than the Whites I see, and that is East Asian. Muslims often have 5 or so young Jihadists in tow. I’d say that the main influence is the baby bonus. 11
Posted by jonjayray on July 13, 2005, 04:51 AM | # Sorry, Next entry: Lies and More Lies Previous entry: Learning To Speak Up and Save Lives |
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Posted by john rackell on July 12, 2005, 04:56 AM | #
Is there an ethnic breakdown of this rise in Australian fertility? The article seems to spin it as older women rediscovering the joys of motherhood. But Australian immigration must have something to do with it (eg families get a leg up in the Aus. immigration process) because immigrants are usually younger and more fecund.
And if it is immigration causing the rise in fertility then ‘old’ Australia is just nailing its coffin shut all the quicker.