Pronatalists Need Some Sticks With Their Carrots

Last week, two pieces from Stephanie H. Murray ignited a debate over how exactly to encourage people to have more kids. Murray’s arguments touched on a few themes but essentially amount to the idea that becoming a parent is beneficial to society, and thus we should play that up. In the same way people who join the military or become doctors reap social rewards for doing something that benefits everyone, so, too, should parents be valorized for doing something that is, in Murray’s words, “prosocial.”

This point is not far off from the idea I and others have made while arguing that we need to elevate the status of parents, especially stay-at-home moms. And it’s common in debates about fertility to see this type of focus, with the goal of identifying what incentives might spur more births. Perhaps those incentives are more validation and a sense that parents are doing something good for society, as Murray argues. Or perhaps the incentives are financial. Perhaps it’s cheaper housing or reinvigorated institutions. But whatever the specific argument may be, the idea tends to be that between the carrot and the stick, we need more carrots.

And we surely do. But I wonder if also in the race to find the right carrots, we’re ignoring the perhaps uncomfortable possibility that the stick—which is to say, penalties—might also be an unavoidable part of the solution.

What do I mean by sticks and penalties?

Well, one example is what I’ve watched unfold in my religious community, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons.¹ In fact, probably the best example I’ve ever seen of this is unfolding right now in my current congregation.

I live near downtown Salt Lake City, where Mormon populations are shrinking. As a result, church leaders recently reorganized the congregations in my neighborhood. Mormon congregations are defined geographically, and leadership² routinely shrinks or expands boundaries based on changing demographics. So the reorganization itself wasn’t surprising. But this time they did something highly unusual: They put all the families with kids into one congregation, and everyone without kids in a different congregation.

This is a wild experiment for Mormon congregations—or “wards,” as we call them—because so much of the religion is based on family. A typical Sunday service is usually dominated by the din of fidgeting kids. Teenagers are asked to give brief sermons each week. A significant portion of the adults are assigned Sunday “jobs” that involve teaching kids. Children are omnipresent at most church functions. Aside from rare, specialized congregations—those in nursing homes or those designed to help young singles meet and get married—a ward without kids is a very strange idea in a Mormon context.

Most of the people in the family congregation seem to be adjusting well, but the transition has been harder on some of the people in the non-family ward. Effectively, there is one ward that is cool and fun, and then there is a ward that isn’t quite any of those things.

I can’t speak to the reasons church leaders organized the congregations this way. Whatever the motivation, though, the result is that it has effectively created a reward for having kids along with a penalty for not having them. Want to be in the cool congregation? Well, you know what to do. There are carrots, and there are sticks.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such an explicitly pronatalist tactic, and there’s no doubt this is an experiment with results to be determined. Maybe it will encourage young couples to have kids, or maybe it’ll backfire and leave some people less connected to their religious community. I myself am not even entirely sure how I feel about this set up. But right or wrong, there’s no question that in the most basic sense, it's a system that links rewards and penalties to fertility.

Whatever happens with my congregation’s experiment, though, my religious community has always had many carrot-stick incentives for family formation. On the carrot side, my own parents had eight kids. That was atypical even by Mormon standards in the 1990s, but it certainly didn’t hurt my parents’ standing in the community. They both served in various leadership positions, with my dad in particular gradually rising in the ranks of the church’s volunteer lay priesthood. I’m sure there were some of our coreligionists who thought my parents were insane, but the community rewarded them with significant status despite—or, maybe more likely, because—of that huge family.

My parents were not outliers in this, with leadership roles in my church almost always going to adults who are married and have kids. In some cases, such as the couples that manage Mormon missionaries, the requirement to be married is codified into church rules.

Alternatively, those who eschew conventional milestones may face social penalties. When I was kid, a beloved young guy returned to our congregation after having served a two-year proselytizing mission abroad, as is traditional for young Mormon men. Somewhat unusually, however, this particular young man did not quickly get married—something that prompted considerable chatter and concern within the community.

Is chatter and concern a good thing? Perhaps not. It certainly doesn’t make people feel good. But that’s what a stick, or social penalty, is. This young man wasn’t excommunicated, and I don’t remember anyone being mean to him. He just took a bit of a status hit, which later evaporated when he eventually did get married and have kids.

In other words, in Mormon communities, there are many carrots for people who get married and have kids. But there are also some sticks. And if my now apparently experimental congregation—which is located in the equivalent of Mormonism’s Vatican City—is any indication of what’s coming, those sticks might be getting more intense.

I don’t know how to translate this idea into a bigger policy proposal. But I do suspect sticks are a factor in most high-fertility communities. Lyman Stone hinted at this idea in his lengthy response to Murray’s posts. He noted that religious communities “create pronatal bandwagons by conferring moral prestige on familistic choices,” which is exactly what I’ve witnessed in Mormon communities. And he pointed out that there are “strong norms punishing conspicuous consumption, discouraging doing too much for your kids, limiting helicopterism, etc.” That, too, is true in Mormon communities, with the caveat that the punishing social norms apply to those who avoid marriage and family as well.

Stone goes on to say that “pronatalism depends more on making childless people feel like the odd-man-out […] than making big families feel like heroes.” I can’t speak to the balance between ostracism and valorization. But I can say that Mormon communities are quite efficient at making some people feel like odd-men-out. People, including me on many occasions, chafe at this. But it is also no coincidence that Mormons have famously high birth rates.

This is a difficult thing to discuss. Or at least, it makes me uncomfortable because on an individual level, I don’t want anyone to feel like an odd-man-out. Religious communities in particular—but probably all communities as well—could certainly benefit from trying to be more charitable. It’s worth figuring out ways to better tend to all members of a flock, including and especially people whose life circumstances are atypical. Indeed, my anecdotal experience in communities with strong social norms is that there’s a quiet but constant balancing act going on between the need to enforce those norms and the need to embrace members.

Murray also seems to sense the stickiness of this idea when she points out that people ought not be coerced into having kids — which, of course, is true. But does relegating people to an inferior congregation count as coercion? What about withholding leadership positions? Is gossip coercion? I have no idea, but I understand why the conversation consistently focuses on carrots. It’s much more palatable to look for incentives and to valorize than it is to even consider the possibility of more or bigger sticks.

Still, as I reflect on my experiences in a niche community with high birth rates, it is very obvious that both sides of the equation exist. Rewards and costs. Carrots and sticks. If there is some other way, I’m all ears. But ultimately, I’m not sure people will ever choose to have more kids unless they see their choices leading very clearly to rewards on the one hand, or to obvious costs on the other.

Jim Dalrymple II is a journalist and author of the Nuclear Meltdown newsletter about families. He also covers housing for Inman and has previously worked at BuzzFeed News and the Salt Lake Tribune.

1. I’ll be using the term Mormon here for two reasons. First, because while the current church president has asked that the term be avoided, the church has also not provided a suitable alternative that is concise, widely recognizable, and not confusing. Most media publications continue to use the term purely because there is no other practical choice. Second, I continue to use the term because I myself am a Mormon and believe that term is a useful way to refer to my people. 

2. Unlike many other denominations, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints maintains a strict hierarchy with top leaders overseeing the formation and organization of congregations. Members don’t choose where to attend but are rather assigned congregations based on their address. That means if you’re a believing member and your congregation is reorganized in a way you don’t like, you can’t just choose to attend the next congregation down the street. Mormon wards don’t compete, in other words, in a marketplace.