Who needs the responsibility?

Twenty years ago, men and women had similar attitudes towards children - young women, on average, wanted slightly more children than young men, but the differences were nothing to speak of.

Now, on the other hand....

I'm not going to commit sociology here - I don't have time to do a serious analysis of what's behind the drop in young men's fertility intentions.  Just two observations:

Children are expensive and, as described in my last post, the real incomes of single men have been gradually falling over time.

The internet (and just about every product Apple has ever manufactured) make it good to be alone.

Comments

[Bob Smith]

See, I would have read your data and made the observation that, generally, demand for children appears to have equalized between the sexes in the 25+ groups (who I would expect have most of the children). And while demand for children generally appears to have dropped among men (consistent with the falling male income hypothesis), in those age groups who are actually likely to be working (the 25+ groups), the drop is relatively modest - and teenagers all think they'll have a 6-figure starting salary anyhow.

The more interesting question is why has the demand for children amongst woman increased over the past 20 years?

[LInda Welling]

I can think of several reasons for the drop in young men's fertility intentions - significantly worse job prospects, more personal experience growing up without both parents... What I find more difficult to understand is why young women's intentions seemed unchanged.

[Neil]

This seems like a case where actions are more informative that intentions as revealed by surveys. There's relatively little movement in the older cohorts, and I'd suggest that these are more likely to be attitudes that shift as we age, rather than as a cohort moves through the age brackets.

I suspect it has to do with the changing responsibilities that men face in the family. 20 years ago, young men probably expected most of the responsibilities of children falling on their spouses, with the rewards being shared equally. In this situation, more young men would want children.

Now that our society has a more equal view on family responsibilities, the expectations of the young have probably changed. Based on my own experience, I know when I was 15-24, I didn't want to have that responsibility, and couldn't picture a future in which I'd want to deal with the work of raising a family. Now that I'm in my 30s (with my first child expected in the next couple of weeks), my perspective on taking on that challenge is much different.

For young women, the work expectations have likely stayed constant or declined (and the mat leave benefits are much better), so there'd be no reason for substantial reductions in their reproduction intention.

[Frances Woolley]

Bob - "why has the demand for children among women increased"

- first of all, I wouldn't be confident that it has. The question asked is kind of a weird combination of actual number of children + intended number of children, and some of the answers don't make sense (i.e. the intended total number of children for 35 to 44 year olds, who presumably have, on average, about 1.3 children each, given that's the Canadian birth rate). That drop in young men is so huge I'm confident it's capturing something real, but I wouldn't be so sure the smaller differences aren't statistical artifacts due to, e.g., changes in the age composition of the 25 to 34 year old age group
- these are intentions. Intentions sometimes collide with reality. Over time intentions and reality tend to converge. That convergence may be happening more quickly or more slowly than it did in 1995
- the big ramp up in the generosity of parental/maternity leave in Canada has made having kids more attractive
- young women don't have the illusions about careers etc that their mothers did - so this may be partly a reaction to 1970s feminism
- there has been a significant change in the ethnic and cultural origins of Canadians in the past 20 years as a result of immigration, and fertility is correlated with cultural background

So, yes, I can come up with lots of explanations of why women's fertility intentions would have changed - but in fact what's remarkable to me is that the fertility intentions of women aged 15 to 24 are more or less exactly the same in 2011 as they were in 1995.

[Vladimir]

Am I wrong or has the way we calculate and enforce child support become more favourable to mothers? If that's true then it raises the expected cost of having children for men. If you want to get sociological: The 15-24 is surely made up of people who have never had children nor been in a long term relationship - more so than other cohorts. Men and women do influence each other, the younger cohort is probably more egocentric in its stated intentions.

[Frances Woolley]

Neil - congratulations! As Stephen Gordon would say "this changes everything" - best wishes to you and your partner.

I think you're right about the importance of shifting expectations of male contributions.

Still, I disagree with you when you observe " There's relatively little movement in the older cohorts" -

That doesn't tell us anything. Suppose that in 1996, with the publication of Flight Club, a totally new version of what it means to be a man came into existence. In the UK it's known as "Lad Culture." If you spend too much time on the internet you'll find yourself in places where men get labelled as "alphas" and "betas" and the alphas are the ones who get lots of fun+sex, and the betas are the ones who end up spending their time slaving away at boring jobs to provide for unappreciative demanding wives and kids. Young men don't want to be betas.

The older cohorts didn't come of age in a world of Tinder and on-line dating and pick-ups and hook-ups and whatever - their life experiences are fundamentally different.

Forget the past .

[Frances Woolley]

Linda - it may be a case of a situation when so many different things are pushing young women in so many different directions, and it all ends up a wash?

[Frances Woolley]

Vladimir "child support"

Do other parents give their sons a long lecture on child support legislation when they're doing the "Use a condom!" talk or is that just me?

[Neil]

"That doesn't tell us anything."

Well, it does tell us something: that the people who are making short-run decisions are making much the same choices as 18 years ago, but that preferences for a more distant future have changed.

It tells us less about what will happen when the current lot of 15-24 year olds are faced with a more immediate decision about how many kids to have.
Hypothesis 1 - There was a sudden and dramatic shift in procreation intentions among men, who currently form the 15-24 age bracket, but whose attitudes will remain constant as they age.

Hypothesis 2 - There has been a gradual shift in procreation intentions among young men, but as they become older and more prepared for handling the responsibilities of parenthood, they revert to attitudes similar to those who came before.

With more data points, the possible explanations would be easier to distinguish, but with only two we really can't tell.

[Nick Rowe]

Looks to me like men on strike. The young guys have finally figured it out. They aren't daft enough to "man up" (NSFW). Maybe Canada will soon be all Amish!

The 1995 data surprised me a bit. I had thought that men on average would have wanted fewer kids than women, even back then.

[Shangwen]

Speculation: is the decline of expected offspring part of a long-term spiral, absent a boom in incomes? That is, did those whose ancestors had 12 kids raise adults who then wanted 5, whose kids wanted 2...with each generation perceiving child-rearing as a costly displacement of other options?

It makes me think of this post at MR. If income is philoprogenitive, is education antiphiloprogentive?

[Bob Smith]

"Suppose that in 1996, with the publication of Flight Club, a totally new version of what it means to be a man came into existence. In the UK it's known as "Lad Culture." If you spend too much time on the internet you'll find yourself in places where men get labelled as "alphas" and "betas" and the alphas are the ones who get lots of fun+sex, and the betas are the ones who end up spending their time slaving away at boring jobs to provide for unappreciative demanding wives and kids."

Perhaps, but has young male culture really changed that much in the last 20-years? Have "alphas" and "betas" just replaced "jocks" and "nerds" as the preferred label? I don't know the answer, but I do seem to recall back in 1995, there was a very real dividing line between the "fun/sex" guys and the "scrubs" (see TLC's "No Scrubs", circa 1999:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Scrubs). Sure the internet and "hook-up" culture may have made it easier for guys to "live the dream", i.e., changed their actual behaviour, but I question whether it would really change their preferences for children all that much.

"some of the answers don't make sense (i.e. the intended total number of children for 35 to 44 year olds, who presumably have, on average, about 1.3 children each, given that's the Canadian birth rate"

I suppose the intended number of children could be less than the actual number of children, if some of the real children weren't intended - but I take your point about it being an awkward question.

"Do other parents give their sons a long lecture on child support legislation when they're doing the "Use a condom!" talk or is that just me?"

They should, there is no faster way to destroy your life than a bad marriage/relationship.

Vladimir: "Am I wrong or has the way we calculate and enforce child support become more favourable to mothers? If that's true then it raises the expected cost of having children for men."

Sorta. there were tax changes in the 1990's which made it more favourable for receiving parents (overwhelmingly mothers) and governments have stepped-up its role in enforcement (though they still do a lousy job). That being said, hard to see that having an impact. First, because your average 20 year old knows nothing about the family law system. Second, because to the extent they have any exposure to the family law system, it would likely be their custodial mother complaining about its inadequacy or non-payment (since late or non-payment of child support is a real issue, for a host of reasons), rather than the non-custodial father complaining about paying it (While non-custodial fathers certainly complain about the child support regime in Canada - not without reason in some cases - are there a lot of fathers who complain TO THEIR CHILDREN about how much they cost?).

[Patrick]

The lefty feminists I know (like my wife) all hate the 'man-up' ethos at least as much as Nick seems to.

I see those numbers for young men as a good thing. People between 15 and 24 generally make gawd awful parents. The fewer of them that do it, the better.

I also wonder if it's just a case of the young men not really answering the question. Wouldn't surprise me if they're really answering the question: "how many kids do you want sometime in the near future". Young men aren't noted for their ability to make long term plans.

There wasn't that much change for those in their prime reproductive years. Wouldn't surprise me if the young cohort converges to roughly the same numbers in time.

[Bob Smith]

"Looks to me like men on strike. The young guys have finally figured it out."

Have they? Or have the ladies just figured out they're better of without them? My recollection is that marriage is still going strong among the "alpha" males (high income, high education, etc.), who presumably would be better situated to reap the alleged rewards of single life (maybe I'm old fashioned, I'm assuming that marriage is a barrier to doing so - but see the rise of websites like Ashley Maddison or sugardaddies.com to prove me wrong).

On the other hand, marriage has imploded among the poor, the uneducated, etc., i.e., the "losers" in modern society. Given the increasing economic success of woman, if I were a single woman, I might just see such a male as another mouth to feed. A "strike" only works if you're selling something someone wants to buy.

[Bob Smith]

"Wouldn't surprise me if they're really answering the question: "how many kids do you want sometime in the near future". Young men aren't noted for their ability to make long term plans."

Agreed, although the same would have been true in 1995 (young men having never been known for the long-term decision making). One possibility is that with the increasingly delayed onset of adulthood (i.e., being out of school, being employed more or less full time, not living in your parents' basement) plus the increasing debt burden of the modern youth, the prospect of having children may be less imminent for 15-24 year olds now then it was in 1995. In 1995 men in that cohort may have actually started to turn their mind to the question, whereas in 2011 they hadn't.

[Nick Rowe]

Bob: "Have they? Or have the ladies just figured out they're better of without them?"

Maybe. But that wouldn't explain the massive drop in Frances' data for young males' intended number of kids. From 2.2 to 0.8 is a very big drop, in only 16 years.

My view is that questions like this are far more important than macro. That's why I waste so much reading manosphere/PUA sites, including the massive numbers of comments. It's *research* ;-). I can't tell how representative that data is, of course, but then young men aren't going to say what they really think in public, especially in a university. So it's all I've got. The official "conversation" on these matters is not a conversation at all. But it has been very interesting watching the unofficial conversation very slowly filter into the mainstream, nearly always without acknowledgement (because it would be imprudent to acknowledge you read that stuff).

[Nick Rowe]

Patrick: "The lefty feminists I know (like my wife) all hate the 'man-up' ethos at least as much as Nick seems to."

Yep. But they probably hate it for very different reasons. My guess is they hate "masculinity" (and they would speak it in quotation marks too). I don't. I hate it for much the same sorts of reasons Roissy and his commenters hate it. Young men are being shamed into something that's a very bad deal for many of them. Except the shame isn't working any more. They are not buying it. (And the numbers on how married men are better off and live longer etc than single men don't contradict that; there is massive selection bias; the single men include divorced men, and many marriages end in divorce.)

[Nick Rowe]

BTW: I think that Frances' posts on stuff like this are far more important for human well-being than all my posts on short run macro. As she said in one old post: the biggest investment that most of us make isn't a house, it's a partner. That matters more than stuff like unemployment and inflation.

[Frances Woolley]

Shangwen: " is the decline of expected offspring part of a long-term spiral, absent a boom in incomes?"

It's hard to say. Birthrates seem to have stabilized or risen slightly in Canada over the past 10 years or so, and there is a lower bound to birthrates - they can only go so low. Interestingly enough, there's a lot of interprovincial variation in Canada, with BC having the lowest birth rate (numbers here). Not too hard to think of theories to explain that!

Patrick "Young men aren't noted for their ability to make long term plans."

I split the numbers up into smaller age groupings because I wanted to make sure I hadn't made a mistake - this is *such* a big drop. It's really unusual to see anything like this in social science-y data. The drop is really coming from the younger age groups, e.g. the 15-16 and 17-19 year olds boys, who in 1995 answered much like the girls, but by 2011 were answering very differently. The exact question asked was the same in both years (here's the 2011 question):

FI_Q110

Do you intend to have ^a/another child sometime?

1. Yes
2. No
DK, RF

Fertility intentions (FI) - Question identifier:FI_Q120

What is the total number of children that you intend to have ^including/those you have now/ ^and the child that you are currently expecting?

Minimum: 1 Maximum: 20

There might have been a slightly different skip pattern in 1995, i.e. different questions leading into the fertility intentions question, but it's hard to imagine it would have made that much difference.

Nick - I thought this post would be right up your alley!

[Determinant]

Hehehe, as a man in this demographic, I want two kids. That may be affected by the fact that my brother has two girls and I adore my nieces.

[Chris J]

It takes longer now to get educated and get started. At 27 I was ready for my (awesome) daughter. Who at 22 is thinking of kids? I think Nick has it backwards - being masculine and strong in the good sense is much easier when the economy is ticking along and you can earn. Bitter resentment is so much more prevalent in a bad economy.

[Joseph]

As a 23 year old male, I "see" myself with a family with 1 or 2 kids in 10 years, but I don't know how viscerally I want that. A large part of that is because I have trouble empathizing with 33 year old me. I do say I want to get married and want that right now much more than I want kids. I feel like most men around 20 feel that way, and I suspect that has always partially been true. Idk how I would answer that survey question, it would probably depend on my mood that day.

Having had talks about this with close female friends, I think they have similar feelings in wanting to get married but not actually wanting to have kids right now, so I suspect that this is a youth but not a male thing. I wonder if the drop in the male survey response is driven by men answering more truthfully to how they feel right now and not just giving the "scripted" answer of " Yea of course I want a house with a family and 3 kids in 15 years". At the same time I think young women still have that pressure to want kids and a family and so maybe are more likely to answer according to the above script.

This also probably ties in to what Nick and Frances have been saying, in that the traditional life plan of having a family and kids isn't the only socially acceptable one any more. Sometimes it expresses its self in an ugly lad culture way, a more biegn desire to live the bohemian lifestyle forever, to even something like the acceptance of same sex couples, whose primary socially acceptable objection was their inability to have a traditional family in the traditional way.

[Frances Woolley]

Chris J: "being masculine and strong in the good sense is much easier when the economy is ticking along and you can earn. Bitter resentment is so much more prevalent in a bad economy."

I completely agree with this. But does the timing work for this as an explanation: why the drop between 1995 and 2011? The years leading up to 1995 weren't particularly bright spots economically - that was basically the point when things started to take off for that long expansion. Around 1990 we had that "made in CAnada" recession; nothing like the 2008 crash, but still.

Joseph: "I wonder if the drop in the male survey response is driven by men answering more truthfully to how they feel right now and not just giving the "scripted" answer"

I suspect that's a good bit of it. Or that the scripted answer has changed.

[Patrick]

Nick, I think it's about equality and making women pathetic and servile.

I can't disagree that the conservative traditionalist man-up stuff is a bad deal. Seems to me it sucks for all involved, just in different ways. Better to have a partner with whom you can negotiate life (literally).

[Nick Rowe]

Patrick: I disagree with you. But unfortunately, we cannot (yet) have an honest conversation about this. Let me just say I hope you never need to change your mind. Stay very skeptical. Spend a little time reading on the dark side. And think about that fantasy book that a lot of women have been reading recently. Hamsters spin trying to explain that one away.

[Gobanian]

The gap vanishes by the time people get to 25. Maybe men are taking longer to grow up.

[Frances Woolley]

Gobanian: "The gap vanishes by the time people get to 25"

The people who were 25 in 2011 were 9 in 1995. O.k., that's younger than the 15 year olds surveyed in 1995, but not a lot younger. In 1995 we see hardly any differences between 15 year old boys and 15 year old girls in terms of intentions to have children.

We don't know that today's 15 year olds will look like today's 25 year olds in ten years time. They might, but they might not. At any given point in time it's very hard to separate age effects and cohort effects.

[Chris J]

Let me turn this around on you Frances: What if this is a sign of responsibility. That men in their young 20s don't want kids (yet) because they and their partners are buolding thier lives before having kids.

In my thinking here the you men's answer of zero means "not yet" rather than "not at all". and I mean that in a good way.

[Chris J]

you men's -> young men's.

Hate typing on my phone.

[Frances Woolley]

Chris J - "what if this is a sign of responsibility"

To say nothing of people who take the environment seriously, worry about over-population and depletion of resources, and don't contribute mountains of disposable diapers and other kid stuff to landfills.

Any change this large probably reflects numerous interconnected factors.

[Jim Sentance]

I think the big divide between these younger males now and everyone else including the young ones twenty years ago is the advent of the internet and the growth of computer gaming, and those have affected men in very different ways from how they affect women. I'm interested when Francis says it the under 20s that are driving the lower numbers in 2011, as that suggests the 20 to 25 year olds might be a bit more 'normal' in their responses. I think they're young enough to have been affected by the same forces as the 15-20 crowd, so maybe it is a transition they go through.

[Chris J]

I don't want to commit sociology (not being a sociologist) so I will simply say that these charts do not surprsie me after listening to Dan Savage for the past few years.

[Patrick]

Nick, I've been reading you for a long time now and you seem like a decent guy, and your WCI colleagues who know you clearly hold you high esteem, so I just don't get why you'd read a guy who writes stuff like [links removed - FW]

[Frances Woolley]

Patrick - yuck. If you don't mind, I'm going to go in and remove the hyperlinks to those sites.

And I thought the market value for women/market value for men tests were obnoxious.

What can I say? Nick is a decent guy, who treats all of his students and colleagues - regardless of race or gender - with the utmost respect and consideration. He is the first one to spot - and try to put an end to - stupid bureaucracy that hurts students. He's told me why he reads these sites - there are good reasons which I can't share with the world.

[Patrick]

Frances - Yup. And I believe you.

[Chris J]

It's the weekend and this is an econ blog so I can link to Brad DeLong, right? It is on the "manliness" topic: Gird up your loins:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/10/for-the-weekend-gird-up-now-thy-loins.html

[Nick Rowe]

Patrick: because I think that many men lead miserable lives because they follow bad advice, and that reading him would make that less likely to happen, and would be good for them, and for women too. They've been lied to. They are told to "be a nice guy", for example, while a cute young woman marries decrepit old jailbird Charles Manson (true story). Wouldn't it be better all around if she had instead married some truly nice young guy who just acted just a little bit like Charles Manson?

There are young men who can't find girlfriends, and women who can't find suitable husbands and fathers for the children they want to have (see Frances' data above). And many marriages that do happen end badly. And this problem is much bigger than bad monetary policy. And if the only people who are looking at this problem honestly say some things that shock us, that's too bad.

Yes, he goes overboard at times (all the time?). That is inevitable, given the circumstances, and what he is trying to do. But if you keep reading, you eventually come out the other side with a much deeper and more genuine respect for others, as well as for yourself, because it's not based on those falsehoods.

Thanks Frances. But how do you know I'm not just faking it, like everyone else? ;-)

[Frances Woolley]

Nick "Thanks Frances. But how do you know I'm not just faking it, like everyone else? ;-)"

Because you're too lazy to put in the effort if you didn't actually care about students.

[Jacques René Giguère]

Nick "They've been lied to. They are told to "be a nice guy", for example, while a cute young woman marries decrepit old jailbird Charles Manson (true story). Wouldn't it be better all around if she had instead married some truly nice young guy who just acted just a little bit like Charles Manson?"
In the end, how many women marry Charles Manson? How many really marriageable women do that? It makes news precisely because it's man bites dog.Despite the "nice guy don't get girls" trope, in my experience it's not the nice guy who don't get the girls, it's the misfits. And the girls they don't get matched with are also misfits.

[Patrick]

Nick, fair enough. I get the sense that this is an issue that has personal resonance with you, and it really doesn't for me. Quite the opposite. Maybe I've been lucky, maybe I'm an alpha in beta clothing. Maybe I'm so beat down I don't even know I'm beat down anymore. Either way, I don't know.

I only have experience with one long term relationship, and it certainly can be hard. Especially when you throw in money and kids (which has the perverse advantage of making people too tired and stressed to care about sex). We don't always get what we want, and sometimes for long periods of time. Negotiating those times can be really difficult. FWIW, my experience is that it can be done, but it requires communication, caring and empathy, not to mention a plan to come out the other end of the tunnel. It's difficult for two mature, well adjusted, well educated people with a reasonable household income and very few vices. I can imagine it's damn near impossible for many, many people.

I don't know if 'game' is the solution, but speaking from my own experience, it would be the surest path to divorce. On the other hand, if there's something not working in the relationship I can always just go talk about with my spouse and we sort it out. Likewise for her. The important point is that it's symmetrical. The same 'rules' apply for both of us. It's a pretty good arrangement from my point of view, and I would hope that others could manage something similar. Not really useful advice for the masses, I know. But that's all I got.

In any case, I wish you well in your pursuit of a better understanding of relationships.

[whitfit]

JRG says: "Nick "They've been lied to. They are told to "be a nice guy", for example, while a cute young woman marries decrepit old jailbird Charles Manson ...How many really marriageable women do that? It makes news precisely because it's man bites dog.Despite the "nice guy don't get girls" trope, in my experience it's not the nice guy who don't get the girls..."

I agree with this - I had the same reaction to the Charles Manson story. Sure, there are women out there who will be attracted to this (Paul Bernardo too). But, it is probably way out there on the tail of the distribution. For that matter, I suspect that the anecdotes of the PUA community are also selected from a specific group. Maybe not, though. Part of the point is that it doesn't seem like we have a lot of data driven knowledge about the makeup of society on this point, and I am wary of all internet chat board datapoints. Not that they aren't interesting, or that the narrative isn't important, just that compelling examples can overwhelm the truth.

I wonder how that narrative, though, affects the survey responses of young men? Does reality bend to a narrative, for them? I suppose we need 20 years to see how their intentions play out.

[Floccina]

Good healthy children are NOT EXPENSIVE, they are quite cheap. It is true that a sickly or criminal child can be very costly. My children cost me next to nothing.
I worked with a single mother who said, "if you have $20 left over at the end of the week you have enough money to raise a child" I think she was right. On teh other hand having children is risky, you could have a child who requires life long care or who is born for trouble and you have to bail him out repeatedly but most children are cheap and can be raised without much trouble see Economist Bryan Caplan's writing on this.

[Jen]

I became firmly childfree around the age of 21 or 22. And remain so now at 28 despite having found the person whom I intend to be with for the remainder of my natural life.

Who needs the responsibility?... and the cost!!... Yes, that would be the way to put it. My intended number is 0. My boyfriend's is also 0, but I suspect if he could afford it, it would be 1 or 2.