Evening all :)

Partially in response to Fildien's lament about all the doom and gloom around here, and partially because it's an area of interest to me on multiple levels (population control, gender dynamics), I found this article in the NYT's Magazine this weekend about the population decline in Europe and parts of Asia (specifically Japan and South Korea) interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?em&ex=1214971200&en=bed4d53d7077a0c3&ei=5070

As much as, globally, overpopulation is *still* much more of a concern than population loss (even if the planet reached ZPG today, there are arguably half again to three times as many humans *currently* inhabiting the planet than it can sustainably support over the long haul, and a controlled drop is needed), the birth rate has, in some of the developed countries, dropped to the 'collapse' point, which is about 1.3 children per female, or a 45% rate of decline.

What makes this article interesting takes one about to page 4 to get to, but the authors took at a look at demographic and sociological data for all of the EU countries plus 'developed' Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, India) to try to identify what factors contributed to more or less sustainable population replacement versus steep decline - and the results may surprise some people.

What they found, simply put, is that there is a point in the 'modernization' curve where *demands*, in terms of cost of living, pace of living, etc, have transitioned from pastoral>industrial>post-industrial, but the evolution of gender roles/parity has not caught up - and it is at this 'pinch point', where women are expected to shoulder the lion's share of the costs of childbearing/rearing, employment, *and* cost in terms of lost opportunity/income (in an expensive modern society) if they leave work
to bear and raise children, something has to give, and it is, as the article puts it, that's society's future. Tellingly, the three countries whose populations are in a death spiral, Japan, South Korea, and Italy, all share something in common: cultures where a woman's decision to leave the workforce to raise children is usually enforced as a permanent one.

Later on in the article (page 5 is the real meat of it), the authors discuss two different approaches to dealing with that bottleneck utilized by different countries who have managed to maintain replacement, or near-replacement: the Scandanavian countries and the US. The northern European countries have the highest reproductive rates in Europe (~1.9 children per woman), and it's no mystery why; women who choose to give birth in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, or Iceland are guaranteed a year of maternity leave at 80% salary, and to have their jobs available to them when they return (not to mention receive a payment when they give birth); and fathers are entitled to 6 weeks paternity leave, more under certain circumstances. By contrast, few resources, even such as child care, are available for Italian mothers, yet the cost of living throughout Europe fairly demands the two income family.

In the US, our relatively poor record with regard to maternal support (no subsidized child care, minimal maternity leave, lack of subsidized medicine, real and substantive hits to lifetime income incurred as a result of leaving the workforce for any length of time to raise children, and even if one doesn't (I mentioned this in an article some time back)) is offset by the flexibility of employment options in a general sense in this country, as opposed to elsewhere in the developed world with regard to things like temp work, part time work, and flex time, and the US reproductive rate is back up to 2.1 for the first time since the 1960s, which is right at replacement; we gain due to immigration, as does Great Britain.

I find all of this interesting because, as a woman of a certain age who declined to have children partially because of my own interests outside of childrearing, partially due to (genetic, heritable) health reasons, and partially due to an acute perception of what those 'costs' would be as a woman growing up in the US during the 1970s, I could not help but be aware that a hefty majority of my generation of women (those who grew up during the 'first wave' of modern feminism) delayed and downsized or opted out of childbearing, while those 20 years behind us are already starting families in their '20s. It's a good sign, I think, in terms of where we've come in terms of our expectations with regards to rights and responsibilities in the parenting arena, as well as the employment arena - my own mother did *all* of the housework as well as worked full time, for much less money than my father, who was largely absent, did, once we went back to school,;and her life was more or less continuous drudgery (something that was not lost on my sister and I every time we watched her spend her entire weekend doing all the home entropy-fighting she could not keep up with during the week), whereas it's expected today that males will play a substantive role in raising and caring for their children in ways beyond the financial, and it's also much less common for women to be *openly* denied raises and promotions for absurd reasons such "well, Mr. Y has a *family* to support" or to have their positions engineered out of existence while on maternity leave. Younger women seem to have a confidence that this new social paradigm/contract will be upheld, and thus feel more secure taking on the risks and responsibilities of childbearing than mine, straddling the divide between the old and new, did, and I hope it really is the germ of a more advanced and equitable society here in the US - we're certainly going to need all the help we can get given the looming economic crisis.

Finally, the section discussing European cities and their recognition that some of them are *shrinking*, not growing, and will be for the forseeable future, and the need and opportunity that presents for dealing with this constructively, was a pleasant thing to read. What a nice day it will be when we ourselves can stop tearing up corn and cotton fields for more endless subdivisions, and develop our spaces so as to serve fewer people, better?

In closing, I supposed I'd like to say that I found this article refreshing because of its very balanced perspective; typically, when authors weigh in on population issues, they are either over- or under-population alarmists; the former shrilly declaring that if we don't stop breeding immediately, that we are going to hopelessly poison and degrade the earth (while overpopulation increases the danger of this, a smaller population is as capable of messily exploiting and degrading the earth's resources in the name of profit), and the latter laying the blame for the demographic transition in Europe and Asia squarely at the foot of women and warning us that civilization will be lost if we don't get back in the kitchen (bedroom) and get to outbreeding all those brown folks in the UDCs. It brings up the very valid point that demographic transition isn't a simple curve from high to low but one that has inflection points based on what stresses are present in the populations undergoing them and that, more importantly, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and, isn't it nice that that light might involve/require producing a more equitable society as part of the process?

Regards,
Nydia

It's a very interesting topic.
And it's also one that's been noticed - and of great concern - to all of Europe for some time. Indeed it has gone hand in hand with the immigration debate.
Europe's demographic is getting older, and its population is not growing. The solution, then, for many, has been to endorse immigration from Africa and the Middle East (which is like a flood tide over here) as a sort of future sub-economic work force to replace our aging population. It's a hurrendous solution to depend on, but it highlights the growing concern of many farsighted policy makers. Unfortunately a recent study showed that, while immigrants from places such as Turkey and Poland contributed 5bn to the economy, the administrative costs for controlling, monitoring and caring for immigrants were ever so slightly higher.

Sociologically, it's a tricky one. Maternity leave is pretty terrible over here in Britain. Statistically we're the 'hardest working' member state - it's an Anglo-Saxon thing we share with you Yanks - in that we have the fewest holidays and the longest working day, whereas the Mediterranean members such as France, Spain and Italy have half the day off sleeping in the sun. There's been an interesting 'cultural revolution' in France instigated by Sarkozky in that he's attempting to make the French work more and shy away from long holidays and ciestas. It's a natural immitation of the Anglo-Saxon culture he admires so much in Britain and America (which his policies, of course, reflect. de Gaulle I'm sure is turning in his grave). Anyway, in regards to maternity leave, women receive 9 months paid leave here and, while they're entitled to more time off, the pay unfortunately stops. Recent statistics (I just woke up so these are from memory, I'll trail through the net later for them) show however that 22% of women never return to work once maternity leave ends.
Yet a still larger portion who, in the past two decades, have received the high level of employment unthinkable in the 60s and 70s, can simply not afford through stigma to have babies and remain on their employment/promotional ladder at work. My other half, for example, has just passed the Bar and will (hopefully) soon be a practising Barrister. But Barristers are largely self-employed here, so there is no package for maternity cover, while her sort of work will require 150% of her time and if she comes away from that for any length of period she will suffer for it undoubtedly through dried up contacts, less work and a diminished reputation in the legal world which is quite simply cut-throat over here.

Thanks for the article Nydia.

Maternity leave here in the States sucks. My wife is expecting our second child, and she'll only get 8 weeks off paid after the birth of the child. Normally this is only 6 with her company, but she gets an 'extra' two weeks off for a c section. The first week of her paid leave has to be vacation time that she's saved throughout the year, so she actually only gets 7 weeks off paid.

I get no leave from my company, so I'll be using the 3 days vacation I'll have left at that period to be there when the child comes home. This means I'll have no vacation time at the end of the year when we normally spend time with the rest of our family.

Wow that's major suckage Taleran.

Fortunately at my job we have this thing called EIB (extended illness bank) and your earn (x) number of hours per pay. They actually converted this to STD (short term dis) 2 years ago so you can take as much time as you wish but at 80% pay. They will let you supplement that to 100% if you use your banked EIB or your own PTO. And your spouse can do the same, meaning he can take as much time as he wants too. (if he/she works in the company)

One of my best friends here took 9 weeks off when his wife had their second child. He had almost 300hrs in EIB so he basically got 100% pay during those 9 weeks. I think he used 60hrs of his EIB.

A gal my sister works with (she also works in the company I do) took 1 year off for her maternity leave.

I really do bitch about how much they work us here but they treat us right. I'm fortunate to work for an employer who takes good care of it's worker bees. But, I am not so dumb as to recognize this is RARE and sad. And a damn shame that other companies don't offer similar incentives.

There is one caveat I forgot, we too much spend an amount of our PTO before EIB or STD kicks in. For us it's 3 days though. We also have a PTO/forbearance sharing system. Meaning if my friend didn't have enough time to take off I could donate some of my own PTO to him. This happens allot with folks who have major illnesses either themselves or family members.


Best of luck to you and your wife, I'd give you some of my leave if I could! I should really take a vacation =\

Thank you Nydia for the good news :)

Nydia, I am curious if you know of any published studies of the numbers of those who entered the teaching profession who have made a conscious choice to not have children of their own, and whether any inferences have been made regarding the transference of parental/offspring dynamics via the teacher/student relationships. It is, after all, the subject of many movies and stories, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" being among my favorites.

The dropping birth rate in Japan must be causing some alarm, due to the strong tradition of ancestry and the potential of losing an entire heritage by something so simple as not producing an heir.

Halo, grats on your better half passing the Bar; she may yet be able to support you in your dottage. It is interesting hearing how France is changing , or attempting to make change, under Sarkozky; the degree to which the well-traveled Carla Bruni is influencing his policies will make for many interesting books, I am sure.

Tal, I obviously know little of the private sector, having worked for state and federal employers almost my entire work life; however, I have to ask if your place of employment acknowledges the Federal Medical Leave Act (FMLA)? Granted, leave used under the FMLA procedures is your accumulated sick leave, but if it is an option where you work, and you are able to accumulate and bank sick leave, it may be an option for spending some time with your wife and new child.

And Fil, we have a similar leave sharing arrangement in the Postal Service. Our system allows the donation of vacation time to help those with long term illness or recovery who are running short of sick leave; we cannot donate our accumulated sick leave, only our accumulated vacation time. We can carry a maximum of something like 480 hours of vacation time, but very few people skip that much vacation time to carry over that sizable amount of hours. I have only known one person to do that.

Great topic of discussion, Nydia. As usual. :)

I could take FMLA if i didn't want to be paid for the leave. I've been with the company just over a year and a half. But to that end, both of our employers take vacation/sick time out of the same pool of days off.