When I attended a business dinner with an infant, the presence of a baby inspired strong reactions from most of the women present. I did not bring the baby to make a statement; it was merely the best option given other circumstances out of my control.
The women with babies said wistfully that they missed theirs (at home sleeping). Two different women separately approached me to say they had fewer children than they wanted. One wanted three but had two. The other wanted six but had four. These were clearly not passing whims for these mothers, now both beyond the childbearing years. They were saddened by a reminder of a desire that they had given up.
Maturity requires accepting the death of dreams. You won’t be an Olympian or run for president, as you might have dreamed up at the age of five. But is this desire for more children, clearly still enduring past the years of having young children, such a fanciful notion that we must be willing to give up? The answer is personal. Some people find due to serious health or lifestyle reasons they cannot prudently welcome more children.
What was awkward about the women who confided the death of their dreams that night is that both of them stated bluntly that their husbands made the judgment call, their husbands who were in the room dining with us. No, they were not oppressed. They were highly successful, otherwise seemingly happily married from the vantage point of a virtual stranger. In both cases, however, the husband deemed another child or two to be too much of a financial burden. “We can’t afford it” is a strange statement in a time and place in which the average person lives more lavishly than the most powerful royalty of centuries past.
Years ago, I listened to a panel discussion of couples who disagreed about the number of children to have (two vs. three). In one couple, the wife wanted to stop at two; in the other, the husband didn’t want to be open to three. In both cases, the couples erred on the side of fewer. Why is the default cultural assumption that restraint and reserve are better when it comes to the life force energy we cannot control?
In a conversation, not one I sought out, a telemarketer asked nosy questions about children. Without my enthusiastically asking, indeed, without my asking at all, he explained that he had had three boys and “was good with that.” His wife really wanted a fourth—just like those other women pining for more children—In his case, “accident” made the decision for them. One of my favorite bumper stickers remains the one advising: “Drive carefully: 90% of people are caused by accidents.” The entirely predictable result? He loves his daughter. All else being equal, why wouldn’t another child be someone to love?
Catherine Pakaluk addresses this cultural phenomenon briefly in her book “Hannah’s Children.” Men and fathers are not the subject of her inquiry, but they are part of every mother’s story. Reflecting on the experiences of the “exceptional” women having more than the average number of kids, combined with the gap between the number of children women say they want versus the number they actually have, Pakaluk speculates that something else might be happening than is generally presumed.
Pakaluk notes that the introduction of widespread contraceptives was assumed to lead to women deciding how many children they will have. She asks, in a world of contraceptives, “do birth rates tend to reflect men’s or women’s preferences, or something in between?”
In her analysis, “The general assumption seems to be that in countries with greater gender equality, childbearing will be resolved in favor of women’s preferred family size. But the general assumption has also been that men want more children than women. It is hard to find reliable evidence for either of these stories.”
Individual stories do not necessarily represent cultural trends, but if you run across similar narratives at business dinners and on the phone with the guy trying to sell you a HELOC, maybe there are undercurrents moving under what we think we all know about the world.