The first and second childhood...

(Tim) Thinking about this comment, my dear brother David T. writes:

"There are certain things in life which just have to be done, including having children, raising them, educating them, and caring for the elderly. Someone has to do these things. When we set up our government, we must be very, very careful in the incentives we set up for individuals. When the government takes over the responsibility for doing something, that has long-term effects. Currently in our country, by guaranteeing people financial and health care support in their old age, we have significantly reduced their incentive to have children (who otherwise would be their primary financial and caretaker security). As a result, people are less likely to have children and care for them properly. Their own old age no longer depends upon it."

Comments

[David Wegener]

Dear Tim and David:

In traditional African culture, there are a few main reasons for having children: It is a sign of prestige and virility, but it is also a form of social security, just as you mentioned.

Children are expected to take care of their parents when they are aged. So the larger the family, the better the care that the parents expect to receive.

Unfortunately, two results often flow from this: Most parents do not save up for the time when they can no longer work. Nor do they save up for their children or their children's children (Proverbs 13:22: "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous"). Whatever money is earned is spent.

And sadly, many children are neglected while they are growing up. Their value is not in who they are as created in God's image, but what they can provide for the parents.

This does get pretty complicated, doesn't it?

DW

[Tim Bayly]

>>This does get pretty complicated, doesn't it?

Yes, in its various implementations; but not so much in the underlying biblical principles.

[Ross]

In terms of social security affecting family formation, the evidence is that other factors have much more of an effect.

In this essay published in 2006,

http://www.henryinstitute.org/commentary_read.php?cid=318

an SBC leader called Russell Moore drew attention to the declining birthrate in the SBC, especially when compared to more working-class and lower-class Christian movements such as the Pentecostals. He made a direct connection between upward social mobility and a reduced birthrate, observing that thirty percent of SBC women have bachelor's degrees.

The point is that as people get wealthier they have fewer children. As women get more educated they have fewer children; the evidence for that is carved in stone. From my own country, I have seen statistics that show that the teenage pregnancy rate in the poorest areas is ten times as high as what it is in the wealthiest ones. I think the reason is that wealth and education give women, and Christian women, more choices, so they take them. (And before you say that we should be teaching Christian women to get married and have lots of children, there are not nearly enough Christian single men to go round for this to be possible in all cases).

So, I don't think the presence of social security is encouraging smaller families, not nearly as much as the growth in general overall wealth (so the original analysis is not that far wrong). When Social Security was put in place, mean life expectancy in the USA was around sixty years - so not all that many people lived long enough to collect it. Now, mean life expectancy, if you are middle class, is comfortably around eighty, even for men. This growth in life expectancy, as much as smaller families, is what is putting pressure on social security funding.

[Tim Bayly]

>>So, I don't think the presence of social security is encouraging smaller families

Actually, I think it does have a negative impact, but not as much as wealth and impiety.

From my study of fertility and demographics years ago, it's my recollection that, always, the strongest correlation to fertility is religious piety (or its absence). So Russ Moore might talk about education, others about socioeconomic levels or social welfare programs; but at the very top, sitting as the king of the hill, is religious piety. The less religious someone is, the fewer children he has; and the more relgious he is, the more children he has. It's also my recollection that this is true across faiths.

[Adam Spaetti]

"I think the reason is that wealth and education give women, and Christian women, more choices, so they take them. "

Ross: Another way of looking at this is, more wealth gives people more of a chance to live selfishly with a mind only to their immediate gratification which goes right along with what David T. is saying and with the fact that personal savings has plummitted and debt skyrocketted since the pre-social security generation.

Archie, wanna help me make this point better?

[Ross]

Hi Tim, you wrote:

From my study of fertility and demographics years ago, it's my recollection that, always, the strongest correlation to fertility is religious piety (or its absence). So Russ Moore might talk about education, others about socioeconomic levels or social welfare programs; but at the very top, sitting as the king of the hill, is religious piety

Are you saying that the Pentecostals are more pious than the SBC?! LOL. Seriously, it would be interesting to see what the numbers are on this basis for the Reformed Churches, before saying too much more. If your family sizes are measurably smaller than those of other Christians, what is this telling you? The other factor is that educated Christian women tend to marry later, and have more time between children, which also affects natural growth rates.

[Tim Bayly]

>>Are you saying that the Pentecostals are more pious than the SBC?! LOL.

Well, dear brother; maybe. This isn't my discipline, so I need to tread lightly. But I'm not making a statement about truth and error; only about the depth of belief.

[Mark]

We could start a count of our own stats. I am reformed. My wife is college educated. And we have 10 kids. Of course we are on well water, so that may have something to do with it.

[Stephen Baker]

I would say that, if you define "piety" as the self-conscious application of one's faith to every aspect of life, Pentecostals in general are in fact more pious than Southern Baptists in general. At least that would fit with my experience of believers in both groups. Many of the "traditional" Southern Baptist church members that I have known have a very compartmentalized approach to their faith. Of course, there are wonderful exceptions, and I hope this trend is falling away. But the prominence of a merely civic religion in the South is largely the fault of the traditional SBC culture. Pentecostals, on the other hand, have always been the outsiders, the "holy-rollers." They have not generally been seen as the "respectable" members of society. They take their religion "too seriously." This is actually a help to their piety.

I suspect that what is true of Southern Baptists in the South is also true of Reformed believers in the North. The Dutch, for example, are notorious for having a civic religion that does not have much of an influence on "normal life." Those in other Reformed groups that are not as ethnically-defined as the Dutch Reformed also fall into the same error. "True Religion" is defined by the purity of ones'intellectual grasp of the faith, not so much by the piety that Calvin himself so wonderfully promoted.

[Tim Bayly]

So how many children do you have, Stephen, and do you and your wife drink well water? If so, do you add flouride?

[Ross]

To add to Stephen's comments, what was true of the Pentecostals was also true of the Fundamentalists. They, unlike the Reformed tradition AFAIK, had a long history of withdrawing from the world around them, as well as being more of the middling sort economically - but then, there are post-Civil War politics and the South's attitude to the rest of America tied up in that as well.

Having grown up as a Pentecostal, and having been matured in my own faith in a Charismatic Anglican setting, (and saw wonderful Christians in both)... I think I would put more weight than what Tim does on economic factors. Education, for men as well as women, means that you tend to marry later, meaning a lower family growth rate overall anyway (fewer children as well as longer to have them). And it does affect the choices of Christian women; to repeat a point I've made before, a good marriage trumps a good career, but a good career will trump the prospect of a bad marriage.

let's keep talking about this - some more gems to mine in this thread.

[Adam Spaetti]

"a good marriage trumps a good career, but a good career will trump the prospect of a bad marriage."

Ross:
I have no idea what that means. Will you explain?

Also, it seems like you might be using text messaging abbreviations. As one who doesn't "text," I would be helped if you spelled things out, BIDKTA (because I don't know the abbreviations).
Thanks.

[Ross]

"AFAIK" = "as far as I know"

a good marriage trumps a good career, but a good career will trump the prospect of a bad marriage

OK: if you have an educated young Christian woman, and none of the young men in her orbit are considered to be realistic prospects, she will put her effort into her career - I have seen this happen several times. On the other hand, if someone comes along who does "tick all the boxes" she will happily leave her working life behind to start a family.

At a singles' camp many years ago, I led a discussion group for the men. I was amazed to hear several of them tell me that they had been turned down for relationships because their material situation was perceived to not be up to the mark. Now - given the number of times we singles are told that it is better to be single than be in a bad marriage - this is the possibly-unintended consequences of this message.

[Adam Spaetti]

Dear Ross,

Thanks for clarifying.

I wanted to make sure I understood you because I'm still stuck on this recurring theme of "choices" in your comments. I can't help but reading your comments about women's growing number of choices -- set in a discussion about life, death, babies, and marriage -- and thinking about how our culture views choice.

Certainly, we all must choose this day whom we will serve. Likewise, we moment by moment choose to obey God or not. And of course there are countless choices that God leaves up to our wisdom (or lack thereof) without giving us clear commands. Most of the time, however, some of the choices seem superior to others.

In contrast, I hear my school, my radio, my coworkers, my TV, and so on telling me that choice -- just for choice's sake -- is good and therefore more choice is better. Education does indeed increase the number of options women have to choose from regarding having babies, but I disagree that with the idea that all these choices are equally valid.

It sounds to me like you may be taking the "more choice is good" in and of itself position, but that might be an over-read on my part. Regardless, I think the values associated with these choices drive the trends which is why I agree with Tim that ultimately, religious piety is a bigger factor than education. Education increases the number of choices (and comes with a whole host of values from the academy) and religious piety helps you make choices.

[Ross]

Yeah, but all I can do is report on the choices I see Christians making. And while we can say with hand on heart that once a couple are married they should be choosing to have children, we cannot say that someone's choice to remain single instad of marry is necessarily wrong (which is what I read as an underlying assumption in your comment, though I might be wrong).

Again, from the Christian single women I know, even the educated ones would choose marriage and family if they could; but if you look closely, in most cases, that option is not really open to them. But their education gives them other options which can equally, I think, be turned to God's glory.

[Adam Spaetti]

Ross,

As someone who just finished twelve years of post-high school education and someone who wouldn't have married the woman he did if she hadn't waited until she was 30 to get married, I'm surprised and almost amused that you understood my statements about choices, education, and fertility as an argument that getting an education and remaining single are necessarily wrong. In fact, I'm still not sure when we switched from married women not having children to educated women not getting married, though the two are clearly related.

All throughout, I've had in mind the countless educated, professional couples I know who are educated, married, and willfully sterile. I've been arguing that religious piety, more so than education, is the key since it determines what you'll do with the education and your body.

The decision by educated women to marry or not is another good topic, but I've already blogged more today than I have in six months . . .

[Ross]

OK, let us argue that piety is the issue. In the Reformed Community, specifically the PCA, what share of women have bachelor's degrees or higher; what is the mean family size; and how does that compare with other Christian groups?

Since the Reformed tradition places a high value on learning and study - much more than the Pentecostals do (I used to be one) and more than the SBC used to: my hypothesis is that its family size and educational data will be far more like those of the SBC than those of the Pentecostals.

[Kevin Donald H.]

And if piety is the issue, what does that say about Tim Bayly? Wouldn't one expect him to have more than just three children?

[Tim Bayly]

The number's five, but it's still a good question, Kevin.

[John]

The last comment by Ross brought Al Mohler's blog article from today to mind.
"Is Matriarchy the Shape of the Future?"
http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=1082
What happens when college educated women outnumber college educated men in our churches?

John Ohlmann

[Stephen Baker]

Tim,

To answer your questions:

Five (four, plus one on the way).

City water (probably fluoridated, unfortunately).

Your preaching.

[Kamilla]

John,

I suppose it depends on the both the woman and the man. For myself, a college and seminary educated woman, I couldn't care less what any prospective husband does for a living - whether it's digging ditches or a college professor holding an endowed chair - so long as he takes pride in a job well done *and* loves and cherished me, and a big, big, *and* doesn't mind getting embarrassed when I laugh out loud at something silly in the grocery store.

Kamilla

P.S. I can't tell you what I laughed at today - that really would be too embarrassing -;)

[Kamilla]

Did anyone notice the book review Dr. Mohler also posted today? "Boys Adrift"

Hmmm,

Kamilla