Work, Sex, and Babies
March 27, 2021
Earlier this week, Ross Douthat suggested that even if we are about to experience economic and technological breakthroughs, the most convincing evidence of an escape from cultural stagnation would be “sex and romance making a comeback at the movies.” According to Douthat, there has been a decline of the love story, a “cultural void where romance used to be.” There is “very little adult smoldering” and few marriage proposals on offer at the cinema today. “It doesn’t seem coincidental,” he continues, that this cultural void “opened at a time when the sexes are struggling to pair off—with fewer marriages, fewer relationships, less sex.” As if on cue, The Guardian chimed in with an ode to asexuality.
Also this week, or at least I only saw it this week, The Institute for Family Studies and the Social Trends Institute published More Work, Fewer Babies: What Does Workism Have to Do with Falling Fertility?, authored by Laurie DeRose and Lyman Stone. That report notes that “birth rates have reached extremely low levels in many countries around the world,” including countries with high incomes and generous family benefits. It would appear that universal child care or parental leave programs are not merely insufficient to boost fertility but may actually make things worse as they entrench a “workist” life script. That is, if and when individuals elevate work and careers as the purpose of life, fertility is likely to fall. Kids just don’t provide the desired meaning, it turns out. Many are choosing not to continue our civilization, and it’s not due simply to secularism, or poor economic prospects, or lack of family-friendly policies, or Disney princesses who don’t marry at the film’s end. It’s due to a sense that the meaning of life is best accomplished through a career.
