Disappearing Babies, All-Too-Visible Narcissists

There are four things in America for which there is little forgiveness. The first is killing your wife, as O.J. Simpson discovered. The second is allegations of child molestation, as Michael Jackson found. The third is being old, as John McCain is rapidly discovering. And the fourth is having too many children, as I have found. Looking down at primitives with "too many" children is one of the last acceptable prejudices in the West. With our ninth child expected imminently, G-d willing, I find myself pitied and pilloried wherever I go. "Wow, that's a lot of kids," is a refrain I constantly hear. What a shame I didn't have instead, say, eight antique cars, or better, eight homes around the world, for which I would have been thought a success. But eight kids? That's proves your either a religious kook or someone ruining the environment by overpopulating the earth.

Enter the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday with a cover story called "Childless Europe" that claims that the Germans, Italians, the French and the Bulgarians are disappearing off the face of the earth due to a shockingly low birthrate, or what demographers call "lowest-low fertility." The truly ominous article relates that for the first time on record birthrates in many parts of Europe have dropped below 1.3 per family. "For the demographers, this number has a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country's population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover." In Germany "where the births-to-deaths ratio now results in an annual population loss of roughly 100,000, the government's family minister declared 'that if her country didn't reverse its plummeting birthrate, "We will have to turn out the light."' Italy is dealing with the crisis by paying parents to have children and Russia has national make-love days where they encourage couples to go home and conjure up a child.

Pope Benedict summed it up best. "Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present."

While the article blames the falling birthrate on poor government policies that do not enforce maternity leave or subsidize post-natal care, as well as inflexible working conditions for women, a far more important reason is growing Western narcissism. As the west becomes richer it is also becoming more self-absorbed.

Children consume time and resources both of which young adults would rather focus on themselves. Better to have the availability, and the cash, to jet to Paris for the weekend then push a kid on some dumb swing. Not that we don't love kids any more. We do, but in an abstract as-long-as-it-doesn't-interfere-with-our-freedom kind of way. Having them in our thirties, and about one or two max, minimizes the disruption.

Never before in history has a civilization skewed more away from the needs of the community and toward the aggrandizement of the individual. In the United States, a warrior class consisting of about two percent of the population fights bad guys in Baghdad and gets blown up in Kabul while the rest of us go on Facebook to update our "friends" as to our emotional state. The regular flow of Facebook status updates telling us that "Jane feels like shopping today" or "Mort misses his ex-girlfriend Linda" feeds the Truman Show mentality of American youth who are taught to believe that the whole world revolves around them. Sacrifice be damned.

The most powerful TV show in modern American history is American Idol. The title is telling. It promises that you too can grow to be a puffed-up celebrity. Meanwhile, when I approached several television executive friends and pitched a family healing show for the brave military families that have to be re-integrated after a hero returns from Iraq, I was told that the military doesn't rate on TV. We simply don't want to be reminded of the selfish lives we are leading by watching the selfless lead theirs. Better to post the video of our vacation to the Bahamas on YouTube in the certainty that the whole world waits with baited breath to see us on a surf board.

So, when you ask twenty-something Westerners to contemplate parenthood -- with its diapers, school runs, and estimated $250,000 cost of raising a child to adulthood -- they think you fell off the moon. Spend my life focused on someone else, even if it is my own child, have you gone mad? When you later tell them that the very future of their nation depends on it, they gaze with the same incredulity. The idea of doing almost anything for their country, baby-making included, is utterly foreign to them. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Jewish singles continue to attend a truly staggering variety of singles events in Manhattan in a never-ending quest to find the best. Do they deserve any less?

But look at what is lost when young people delay having children until their mid-thirties and then have one kid. At risk is not only the morbid disintegration of once great nations, like Japan and South Korea, both of whom average 1.1 child per family, or half the replacement rate, but something far more fundamental. When children have no siblings, they don't learn to share as much and they don't assume responsibility for taking care of one another. And the condition of being an only child runs the risk of fostering the very narcissism we decry, as the child becomes the epicenter of his parent's life with no other children to distract them. And is it good for boys to grow up without sisters, given that one of our society's greatest problems is growing male disrespect for women? The boy who feels a filial connection with a girl who is his sister remembers the feeling of how he wants her to be treated when he dates someone else's sister.

I know the complaint that too many kids in a family means that each will get less parental attention. The simple response to this absurd argument is that attention is a poor substitute for real love. Celebrities get attention, while family members get love. A child who is immersed in an environment where he is surrounded by the love of both parents and siblings is a child who never feels alone.

Everywhere you look these days, people are becoming grandparents at about seventy. But how many years does that leave a child to grow close to his grandparents, learn from their wisdom, and connect with an older generation? By the time the child is ten, his grandparents are already octogenarians who are often growing more physically dependent and infirm.

The Western cult of narcissism is spoiling our kids, making us neglectful of our elders, spawning an out-of-control material insatiability, and destroying us -- quite literally -- by having us die off without a replacement generation.

And of all the many remedies available that might free us from our growing self-absorption, having one more baby than we originally planned for our marriages is the best remedy of all.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach hosts a daily national radio show on "Oprah and Friends" and has recently published The Broken American Male (St. Martin's Press) www.shmuley.com

Comments

[TheBlackCat]

It's not about people being more selfish than they were in prior generations, its about children now being a CHOICE, whereas up until the last few decades in human history, there was no choice. If you were a woman, you had to get married and have children. Birth control did not exist or was not widely available.
Throughout history there have been PLENTY of people who would have forgone children had they been ABLE to. Not everyone wants kids, and its ridiculous (and communist) to say that now that people can choose different avenues in life, but they should continue to have kids solely for the good of society. How good are parents going to be who do not WANT the children they bring into the world?

Also the rabbi acts like all these people not having kids are taking expensive vacations instead, living a life of luxery. Again, until recently, low income couples had no opportunities to limit their family size. Now they can, and isn't it MORE responsible for people to limit their children, or not have them at all, rather than have children they cannot afford and are ill equipped to care for?

And finally, it is absolutely ABSURD for the rabbi to criticize people who dare to wait until they are older and economically solvent to have children. The rabbi is so utterly misguided he views being financially responsibie as selfishness!!


I give this article two thumbs down!!

[Rockerbabe]

Rabbi, there are 6,000,000,000+ people on this earth; there has never been this many people before! Natural resources are being strained as we speak. Too many are without food, clean water, medical care, housing, basic education, clothing, companionship and yes love. There is way too much violence in the world and between 5-6 million people die of malnutrition every year! Lots of women would like to have families, but sometimes finding decent men to be husbands and fathers can be a futile endeavor. AND, there is so much religious disapproval of women having children when they aren't married!
Pray tell, just what would you like for us to do?

[esgabel]

Evangelical preachers and the Catholic Church tie having children to being married --- you must be married if you have children and you must have children if you are married. Unfortunately, there are many people who were abused verbally, sexually or physically by a parent who will never feel confident that they themselves will not carry on that same abuse...yet according to these churches they must remain unmarried or roll the dice and have children.

[jeskiley]

Aw, ignore the cynics. Don't forget to mention that being open to God's blessings keeps you open to God's blessings...it doesn't get more materialistic than that, maybe that will help some to relate.

[zaneblue]

Words fail me. The world's population MUST decrease. The only issue for places like Japan is having enough resouces to care for the aging population as the young population contracts; it won't impact the nation's productivity or nationhood. But people are ingenious; we will figure out a way to care for the old.

I suspect that you will have less grandchildren than children, and your grandchildren will be half-goy.

[MajorKong]

Last time I checked the world wasn't running out of people.

[OtayPanky]

What Schmuley is concerned about - which he has talked about in other venues - is the declining population of Jews because of low birth rates and high inter-marriage rates.

He's not the only one, of course. Lots of Jewish leaders - particularly the religous leaders - are concerned about the same thing.

Even though I come from a Jewish background, it's not something that ever bothered me - not even a little bit. I've chosen my partners in life based on attraction, not based on race or religion. I make no apologies for that.

And I also make no apologies for choosing to have two children rather than twelve.

And people shouldn't have to make ANY apologies for having no children at all. To say it's a sign of NARCISSISM is to deliberately (or ignorantly) misuse this clinical term.

I actually APPRECIATE people who decide the child-rearing experience is not for them - and choose to have canaries instead. What's really tragic is when people have more children than they can financially, physically or psychologically handle.

That's when children start to suffer - and the world becomes a sadder place.

[OtayPanky]

Schmuley writes: So, when you ask twenty-something Westerners to contemplate parenthood -- with its diapers, school runs, and estimated $250,000 cost of raising a child to adulthood -- they think you fell off the moon. Spend my life focused on someone else, even if it is my own child, have you gone mad? When you later tell them that the very future of their nation depends on it, they gaze with the same incredulity. The idea of doing almost anything for their country, baby-making included, is utterly foreign to them. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Jewish singles continue to attend a truly staggering variety of singles events in Manhattan in a never-ending quest to find the best. Do they deserve any less?

===

Maybe the REAL narcissism lies in our penchant for maintaining competing nation-states...and fostering religious separatism.

Things that make you go HMMMMMM...

[blueroses70]

Many well-educated single professional women approaching 40 are not childless by choice, but by circumstance. I know many women in this age bracket who would have liked to have a family, but their husband just never showed up. This is especially true for highly educated women of color that I know. I also know many men in this age bracket who waited until later to marry, but married young 20-somethings with whom they are now building families. Narcissism isn't why many of these women are childless -- at least not their OWN narcissism.

[holtfinder]

I've been reading HuffPo for a couple of years and never posted a comment, but this time I had to.

This has to be the most ridiculous argument/article I've read on HuffPo.

I'm a High School teacher and I can tell you the number one problem I face in the classroom is that 'parents' aren't parenting. People decide to have kids either by not using protection or because it's what their 'supposed' to do and seem to forget that raising a child takes at MINIMUM 18 years. I have parents of students who stopped raising their kids at age 12.

What we need are not more kids but more parents. People who actively raise and participate in their childs lives.

And if an adult can't make that commitment then PLEASE FOR SAKE OF ALL OF US DON'T HAVE KIDS!!!! Choosing not to have kids does not make one selfish, in fact it often the responsible thing to do!

[TheBlackCat]

"What we need are not more kids but more parents"


Well said! Particularly with all the children all over the world who desperately need parents to adopt them. We need more parents, not more kids!

[Landgeek]

Even for an openminded Liberal like me, this just plain pisses me off. I have only one child, by choice. So you think that as a single mom , I should just become a breeder, live in poverty and have children I cannot afford to take care of simply so that I can prove that I am not a self-centered human being? How incredibly arrogant!

Believe it or not, some people decide to have only one child so that they don't burden the already overpopulated earth and cause the standard of living of the child(ren) they have to suffer. And no, I am not taking any European vacations or owning 3 houses. We live in an apartment, lead a frugal lifestyle, and I am paying my way through grad school, WHILE spending the necessary time caring, raising and teaching my son. By only having one child I am helping to ensure that he is able to afford to go to college and I have a close bond with him that I don't think I would be able to have if I had 8 kids.

Don't get me wrong, I don't bemoan people who choose to have a lot of kids...to each his own. But don't you dare label people who either choose to not have children or only have one as self-centered or narcissistic.

Why don't you try walking a day in our shoes pal before you go all high and mighty...

[TheBlackCat]

here here!

[HeresJohnny]

I guess evolution works more or less as intended! The narcissistic people die off because they fail to reproduce, leaving those behind who actually are willing to raise and care for their kids. Outstanding! See ya later!

[wondering]

Or, just leave behind those who can best be described as "baby-factories".

What the R-bb- B-teach is actually advocating is a return to a pre-industrial, women-as-second-class-citizens, child-labor past. What value is there in a huge herd of mal-nourished, poorly-cared-for, unloved children growing up in a world of dwindling resources and mounting pollution? The truth of the matter is that our population is already about 4 billion too large.

What are B-teach's views on global warming? Is he a denier? That would answer much.

[AZBunny]

If you are seriously suggesting that EVERYBODY has the resources to raise 9 children I'm amazed. I could barely afford to raise one child and NO we didn't take European vacations jetting over there every summer. We went to Disneyland TWICE and that was a stretch. Paying for braces, keeping my car running (no I NEVER bought a new one) and just getting groceries on the table was tough.
I can NOT even understand with todays wages how anybody afford a child today. With job instablibity, lack of medical care and bleak prospects for children born in this country you'd be fool to bring them into this world. Thank god I have no grand children because I worry about my son enough, I'd never sleep if I had grand children.

[BonnieJW]

I agree that the greatest gift parents can give their children is a sibling. Parents die, friends come and go as do husbands and wives, but sibs are forever. I'm so grateful for my sister and my three daughters have grown so close as they have become women. But I also agree that if you want a large family, adopt some children that have no hope for a good life without your love and care. There are so many of them and they need us desperately.

[ejay579]

It seems to me that the Rabbi's assertion that attention is not a substitute for real love is a rationalization on his part. Children are individuals. One formula does not fit all.

[rini]

Yes, we are too materialistic. In some ways, however, wanting more out of life, such as a career and/or education is a good thing. Women do not belong barefoot and pregnant. We have to change.

Worldwide resources are limited. We have never had as many humans on the planet as we do now, and human quality of life, and quantity in some countries, is suffering.

If a couple is truly selfless, they will adopt. There is no shortage of babies, and going back to old ways in this country will only make things worse.