Wishing Daughters Ill

by Will Wilkinson on April 6, 2008

I’m not sure Bryan’s adding much to his initial posts. Most importantly, he still seems to avoid my main point: children are costly to women in terms of education, career, income, status, and happiness, and most likely devastating to a teenager. I simply don’t see that these points have been addressed. Bryan basically keeps insisting on asking whether you, the parent, would rather your daughter produce a grandchild as a teen or produce none at all. Given everything we know about how teen motherhood tends to limit girls’ life prospects, and how ceterus paribus childlessness will leave her as well off or better, Bryan’s insistence that he’d rather risk the ruin of his daughter’s potential than have her go childless strikes me as perverse. I simply can’t make any sense of it.

Bryan says, “I think that a lot of parents would share my preference if they calmed down and weighed the alternatives.” Maybe. But why? AGAIN the evidence I cited, which Bryan ignores, is that she will be less well educated, poorer, lower status, and less happy. What kind of person wants this for his or her daughter? The only way I can make sense of this is to imagine Bryan thinking that a woman’s life is in some sense deeply incomplete without having reproduced, so just about any cost must be worth it. Bryan, please tell me that’s not it!

One might think powerful, gifted women like Ayn Rand, Camille Paglia, Simone de Beauvoir, Jessye Norman, Frida Kahlo, Harriet Tubman, Oprah Winfrey, Katherine Hepburn, Dorothy Parker, Condoleeza Rice, etc., etc. might, in some respect or other, be good role models for girls. But since nothing could be worse than not ever having a baby, I suppose Britney Spears’ idiot little sister outshines them all!

Viewing 4 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I don't really think that is a fair reading. He does state "If I had a daughter, I wouldn't want her to get pregnant at 16, for the reasons Will names." I also think it's a bit extreme to conclude that "he’d rather risk the ruin of his daughter’s potential than have her go childless."

    In the case that a parent agrees with Caplan's analysis and would prefer an early grandchild above no grandchild, then they would likely have the incentive and desire to help their child to become a success despite poor decision making.

    Given that I'm young and childless (and will remains so for the near future as far as I can help it) I'm not convinced that Caplan is wrong. Like Caplan I might prefer an early grandchild to none at all, though certainly not hoping it happened. If you just look at the way some grandmothers react to grandchildren or potential grandchildren I think Bryan might be on to something.
    • ^
    • v
    Personally I would prefer that my daughters have children very very early than not at all, though I also hope that they will do what THEY want and not try to please me in the matter.

    Think about a very rich couple with children. Should they buy their children whatever they want, shower them with gifts, secure jobs in their firms for them, etc.? Surely this will make their children happy, rich, high-status, and well-educated. Alternatively, they could give their children a strict allowance based on merit and hard work, help them with college payments but not pay the whole thing, encourage them to find summer work, etc. The children may end up less happy, less rich, less high-status, and even less well-educated, but they will have fantastic growth experiences that will more than make up for these defecits, growth experiences that will make them masters of their own destiny.

    In my experience, having a child is a growth experience unmatched by just about any other. It's not about wanting my daughters to be happy (though of course I want that very, very much). It's about wanting my children to experience the same amazing growth that I have had as a father. I'd hate for them to miss out on it, despite the cost to them in terms of happiness, wealth, status, and formal education.

    In the Hindu tradition, marriage and children are "yogas" -- disciplines. It's a good way to think about them.
    • ^
    • v
    Bryan’s insistence that he’d rather risk the ruin of his daughter’s potential than have her go childless strikes me as perverse. I simply can’t make any sense of it.

    Really? You might disagree with it, but you can't even figure it out? A moment's rumination on Darwin's theory of evolution might do the trick (i.e., people have an instinct to see their genes preserved).
    • ^
    • v
    There's a possible non-gendered position there, though I don't know to what extent it would describe Caplan. That position would say that it a person's life was terribly incomplete without producing children. That this bears differently on men and women would be a combination of unalterable biological fact, and social norms (which would then be the sorts of things we should try to change).

    I think you can also try and make sense of the idea that having a child is a tremendously important default purpose of a person's life, though one which can be canceled by a sufficiently noble goal that replaces it. If I'm not misremembering, Phillipa Foot suggests this line in Natural Goodness.

Trackbacks

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus

View My Stats