Okay, so this danced across my news feed this AM -

[kyburg]

Some Taiwanese women are reluctant to have children.

"We think it's not suitable to raise children, especially in Taiwan. In Taiwan, when a girl gets married she has to sacrifice a lot," one says.

"Once she reaches a certain academic level she can't just stay at home and take care of kids and her parents-in-law, but that's still what the older generation expects from them."

Another says: "Taiwan's work hours are really long. That makes it difficult to get married and have kids. You might not have much free time and it's hard to relax."

My agency right now is placing more children born in Taiwan than are born in mainland China. Why? The kids are there, needing families. More of them now than in the China program.

The wait right now is about two years - for an infant, mind. The hardest kind of adoption to find. If you are willing to adopt from foster care, older child? No problem. Six months, most of that court process time. For the China program? Check my profile - our LID for China was 02/27/07. Right now, five years and could go to seven.

In our case, our child was left at the hospital by the first mother. He was not the product of the marriage she was in - and at the time, presented with minor medical need. He was placed for adoption essentially at birth, but waited over two years before being released for a placement overseas. He wasn't special in that regard, as I'm finding.

So - not only do you have a significantly reduced birthrate, even infants released for adoption at birth aren't finding families. It's that tough and if you have a choice? You don't chose to become parents.

Here in the States, the primary indicator for declaring bankruptcy if you're female is whether or not you have children, married or single.

We are still positive on birthrate. But our children live in poverty at a rate most people would find horrifying - if they knew and actually processed what that meant. Remember, bankruptcy indicator.

It's not simple enough to say the wrong people are having children - ANYONE having children are subject to this risk of absolute financial disaster, no other factors consulted.

And still, the CW is 'I got mine, screw you! I don't want to pay for ANYONE else but me!'

Gosh, this just doesn't work. I don't know that we need to be overly concerned about global warming or not. A species that doesn't reproduce...and then rejects their young? Um. Yeah. That. That's painting with a broad brush, but geez.

(By comparison, even places that provide all kinds of incentives aren't doing much better - but being an absolute indicator of whether you're going to be a winner or a loser? It doesn't get much starker than this.)

Comments

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I perceive am absurdly strong trend driving younger teen girls toward an emphasis on their fertility, on the importance of having a boyfriend, of being infatuated rather than thoughtful, of being "impulsive" enough that they end up getting pregnant (cf., the whole Twilight craze.) The whole red state idea of babies having babies so they end up being forced to grow up together as a couple because they have *no* choice--well, that trend is being pushed even though (as you pointed out) the economics of that class of blue collar skills won't work at all. The whole rightwing push to remove women's reproductive rights and their access to medical care strikes me as totally bizarre, given the counter-pressures at work. Politics seems to love the model of the Handmaid's Tale, which ought to make all of us want to puke.
And the zeitgeist! I am seeing fashion designs and dolls and pictures of models who have enormous hips and thighs and tiny little heads and tiny little upper bodies, and spindly arms. They look like a nightmare out of old-skool Golden Age SF where the mothers are basically reduced to brooding pods and nothing more.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

There just doesn't seem to be any sense of reality about 'this is what you do, normal everyday sort of thing' about kids. You either have trophies or trainwrecks.

[gallo-de-pelea.livejournal.com]

About half our friends who've had kids have declared bankruptcy at some point. :/

Things were chill until I hit 33, and now it's like every week I'm getting asked when I'm having kids, and then, inevitably, why not. We barely have our heads above water now -- financially, housekeeping-wise, in sleep deficits, in work -- there's no way. Even if we wanted kids, there's just no way it would work.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I remember my Mom raised four of us on one salary - it wasn't a spiffy living, but we weren't on food stamps and so forth either. I'm out.

[sekl.livejournal.com]

Children are a commodity. It used to be kids were. Period. They went to public school, they needed clothes and food. Wasn't always easy to provide, but needs were simple.

Now, you are expected to push yourself to the financial limit to provide a house in a good public school district or private school, after school care, activities and technologies.

Alone? On one income? Seems like the deck would be stacked against anyone, but especially against women because we tend to concede more to social pressures.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Pushing to do what is possible, more like. Best? God, if I only knew what that looked like.

Cover the bases - make the ends meet. Period.