The new work-life balance: Don’t have kids

By Sarah Green Carmichael

In 1992, Wharton professor Stewart D. Friedman — having become a father a few years earlier — asked graduating MBA students if they, too, were planning to become parents. Yes, said 78 per cent of the class. Twenty years later, he put the same question to the class of 2012 and was shocked to find that number had plunged to 42 per cent.

The reason? The millennials were deeply invested in having successful, meaningful careers, and they just didn’t see how they could juggle those jobs and the demands of parenthood.

Yet 10 years on from Friedman’s poll, it’s a choice more are making: The US birth rate has fallen by somewhere between 14 per cent and 20 per cent since 2012, depending on the estimate. Today, about 35 per cent of women ages 25-44 have never given birth, almost double the number in 1976.

Having children is still a powerful ideal. Yet more people are deciding that there are too many obstacles to integrating children into their lives — inflexible jobs, soaring day-care costs and the challenge of finding a spouse willing to share the household load.

For decades, such work-family conflicts have pushed moms out of the workforce. Now it appears they are blocking a growing number of young adults from pursuing parenthood.

Friedman is now a grandfather — and professor emeritus — and he is troubled by all of this. A new edition of his book Baby Bust is out, and as he notes in the preface, young people today don’t have fewer worries about the future — they have more.

National polls of childless young adults say they fret about the medical and financial toll of raising children. Some 42 per cent say they’re worried about bringing a child into the world because of climate change. And they’re much more likely than older adults to think parents “very often” rue the choice to have children.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with deciding not to have children. But most people who become parents are very happy that they did. When I interviewed Dan Pink about his book The Power of Regret, he said that in his survey of 20,000 people, fewer than 20 regretted having kids. Sure, not all those he surveyed were parents. But even if parents accounted for half his sample, that would work out to a 0.2 per cent chance of regret. It would be tough to find a safer bet.

Credit: Bloomberg

If parents are so happy, why are young people so reluctant to join their ranks?

The financial pressures are real. It has not gotten easier to pay for rent, health care or tuition over the last 30 years. The costs of having children have risen, too — day-care costs have soared, and today most financial planners tell parents to start saving at least $300 a month for college from birth. You don’t need a Wharton MBA to figure out that this is some tough math.

But I think this goes beyond dollars and cents. There is social honor in pursuing a prestigious career. By contrast, the joys of parenting are profound, but private.

Affluent Americans treat work as a calling, exhorting their children to “do what you love and love what you do.” In fact, despite the delight most parents take in their children, far more parents say it’s vital that their children enjoy their work than have kids of their own.

Credit: Bloomberg

But no matter how much you love your job, it will never love you back. A boss isn’t going to hold your hand on your deathbed.

Millennials and Gen Zers know that. So I think to really understand younger people’s ambivalence about becoming parents, we must confront another hard truth: American society does not value children.

Sure, kids are cute. But as a matter of policy, we almost always find something else to prioritize. We know parental leave reduces infant mortality, but we think corporate profits should come first. We know that guns are the leading cause of death among kids, but we’ve decided Second Amendment rights are more important. We chronically underpay teachers and caregivers; we underfund education, especially for the youngest kids; we hand out tax cuts to grownups and saddle our children with staggering government debt. We have spent decades avoiding meaningful action on climate change.

And in the workplace, it’s often still legal to discriminate against people with family responsibilities. A pregnant, nursing or disabled worker can request certain accommodations, but parenthood is not a federally protected characteristic like race or sex.

America could make different policy choices. We could decide to make it easier to be a parent and much safer to be a kid. We could run our companies in a much more family-friendly way. But we won’t make these choices if we keep heading down the path we’re on — to a world where children are seen as a luxury rather than our future.