Australian for child-rearing.

[randomness]

From the Economist's Democracy in America blog:

There's reason to believe that contemporary American child-rearing gets some things better than other countries. There's also reason to believe it gets other things worse. On the one hand, American gender roles are relatively egalitarian. However limiting and intellectually repressive parenthood may be in America, it's much more restrictive for mothers in traditionalist gender-segregated societies like Japan, Italy and Greece. That comes out in childbirth statistics: women in Japan, Italy and Greece have simply stopped having children. In other societies with gender-segregated traditional family roles, like Vietnam, higher birthrates result from intense Confucian pro-natalist social pressures that leave women extremely unhappy, and birthrates there are likely to drop rapidly as women achieve greater social independence. American women, meanwhile, are still choosing to have kids, and that's partly because they can continue to have careers, and their male partners share at least some of the child-rearing duties.

On the other hand, as Ms Senior writes, America's lack of paid parental leave or subsidised day care makes parenthood much more stressful than in similarly wealthy France or the Scandinavian countries. In part, the anxiety and over-protectiveness of American parents criticised in Lenore Skenazy's FreeRangeKids blog stems simply from the absence of such support systems. But it's always seemed to me that this anxiety is also driven in part by high levels of inequality. In a society with a large gap between excellent and inadequate schools, parents face tremendous psychological pressure to raise and educate their kids the "right" way. In societies with a more egalitarian distribution, parents don't reproach themselves so much for laying off the kids a bit.

This, I believe, also explains why in highly egalitarian Australia, child-rearing consists of turning the tykes loose barefoot in the backyard for 12 years and hurling them slabs of meat thrice daily. They seem to turn out pretty well, actually.

Comments

[muffyjo]

"In 2005, the United States ranked 30th in the world in infant mortality, behind most European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Israel. " From the NCHS Data Brief. So sure, the ones we give birth to don't die as often as other countries, but I think our actual birthrate is significantly slower than most of the other populations in the world. I'll try and find the statistics.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

In this case, ranking 30th behind those countries means ours die *more* often. See the chart lower down on the page for actual numbers.

(Even excluding pre-22-week births (due to iffy data from some countries), we're still worse than most of Europe.)

[muffyjo]

Ah, right. I did read that wrong. But yes, I know that the understanding is that we are actually not growing as a nation at the same rate as other nations and, in fact, have slowed significantly. It was used as an argument for immigration not too long ago.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Our total birth rate is actually much higher than most of Europe, though you are correct that first-generation immigrants to America tend to have larger families than other American families. But most of Europe as well as Japan is well below the 2.1 replacement rate at this point - hence the incentives for having children in places like France.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

The version I've seen in print is that the "established" population of the US (neither immigrants nor children of immigrants) have Europe-like birth rates; the higher birth rate of the US is entirely due to immigrants and their children.

Tis true that the infant mortality rate in the US is higher, and IIRC there's some reason to believe that immigrants have a higher than average infant mortalilty rate, but I've not heard of someone trying to break out the data that way.

In any case, the low birth rates in Europe will gradually reduce their influence in the world (Russia in particular), whereas the US's high GDP per capita and ability and willingness to grow its population will maintain its global influence. (For better and worse...)

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

There's a strong counterargument that if individuals have more resources and more familial attention, they'll have happier and more successful lives than if those resources are shared out among a larger population.

Rome managed quite well as the dominant world power for several centuries despite panics about its declining population among the "established" citizens. America hasn't even hit 250 years old.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Best. Punchline. Ever.

Also, the recent discussions on parenting in America have really made me think about the social structures that might have made me decide that having a kid was OK for me.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

>Best. Punchline. Ever.

Yah, that was the line that convinced me I should post. :)

>Also, the recent discussions on parenting in America have really made me think about the social structures that might have made me decide that having a kid was OK for me.

It sounds like there's a conversation behind that, and I hope for a venue where that could happen, because I'd like to hear what you think.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

A lot of Americans won't even leave a pet dog in the backyard with food and water and shade for an entire afternoon, anymore. (I wonder which would dig up my garden worse, kids or dogs?)

[eeyorecol.livejournal.com]

America's lack of paid parental leave or subsidised day care makes parenthood much more stressful than in similarly wealthy France or the Scandinavian countries. In part, the anxiety and over-protectiveness of American parents criticised in Lenore Skenazy's FreeRangeKids blog stems simply from the absence of such support systems

As someone who reads "Free Range Kids", I don't think lack of paid leave is the reason for paranoia - it's an overabundance and overreporting of terrible, rare occurences that happen to children. It may sound counterintuitive, but ever since I became a "fan" of AmberAlert.com on FB, I have seen more and more that the alerts happen maybe one per day, and 9 of 10 seem to be a kidnapping by a non-custodial parent (which is something that Free Range Kids points out).

Granted, not having more paid leave or subsidized child care are definite issues. However, I don't know if the paranoia involved in leaving your child in the care of a stranger would be lessed if child care were subsidized.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Parenting obsession also seems to be concentrated in the affluent suburban classes, and especially in the highly-educated classes. But they're the ones that write what we read.

In contemporary middle-class American culture, parenting is seen as an awesome responsibility, an unforgiving vigil to keep the helpless infant from falling behind in the great race of life. [... This is] part of the same mentality that sends yuppies to "learning centers" to buy little mittens with bull's-eyes to help their babies find their hands sooner. -- Steven Pinker, "The Language Instinct"

But if you will settle for nothing less than Harvard, if the kids aren't really smart, they've got to work relentlessly.

in highly egalitarian Australia, child-rearing consists of turning the tykes loose barefoot in the backyard for 12 years and hurling them slabs of meat thrice daily.

FTW!