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Jan
30
Secure people have babies
January 30, 2008 |
Oh baby, Alberta has another boom to deal with.The province yesterday released the most popular names for newborns in 2007 as Alberta appears to be in the midst of a baby boom, smashing the previous record number of births set 24 years ago. Amorous Albertans produced 48,589 children — 24,748 boys and 23,841 girls — last year, a 20% increase from the number recorded four years ago and 3,000 more than the record figure hit in 1983. calgary sun
Low taxes, high wages, low unemployment. Yup, it’s time to have a baby. Sadly, apparently it is also time to name your boy Ethan and your girl Ava. But, pace Dr. Morganthaler 20 years on, you actually have the baby.
There is a good conversation happening over at Dr. Dawgs about immigration. It has not got to the short strokes yet but I suspect it might. The underlying argument for immigration is that native born Canadians have allowed their birth rate to drop to non-replacement level.
One or two children per couple was the norm through much of the 1980’s and 1990s. This will not work. As an Aussie Cabinet Minister once remarked: one for Mum, one for Dad, one for Australia. In fact, looking at three children as a low end and five or six as a good sized family is one excellent way of limiting the need for additional immigrants. But that sort of rate of reproduction requires conditions in which parents feel secure enough to have several children. It may, and sorry to be so shockingly un-PC, make it possible for Mum to stay at home to raise those kids. Dawg in his 20th Anniversary of Morganthaler post writes:
But let’s get back to the here-and-now. The pronatalist image of woman-as-mother is enormously powerful. We refer to “motherhood issues,” those that require no debate because the positive side is obvious. And what images does the metaphor “motherland” conjure up? Motherhood in the abstract is presented as an unqualified good. It is, dare I say it, a fetish. And every young woman, even today, is seen as a mother or as a potential mother. dr. dawg
He is entirely correct: every young woman is indeed seen as, and is, a mother or potential mother. By her own choice if I have anything to do with it; but also as a welcome and respected member of a society which desperately needs more children.
Alberta, with its wealth, has been able to make motherhood an attractive option.
This is a very good thing and the sign of a healthy, vibrant society. The rest of Canada, blessed with the potential for similar abundance, might take a serious look at the policies which have Alberta women voting with their wombs.
Comments
3 Comments so far
Whatever you guys do, don’t make the mistakes we made here in Australia. The previous Prime Minister, John Howard, who for some reason became a poster boy for the right everywhere except Australia, introduced a Baby Bonus, an across the board sum of $5,000. Like all his ill conceived ventures into the market (and there were many), it had a perverse effect.
Of course it was far more attractive to the poor than to the middle class, with predictable results. While there has been an increase in births, they are disproportionately amongst the less educated, i.e. the demographic least likely to help pull the cart full of ageing boomers. Immediate confirmation of this came with reports of a boom in poker machine usage, and sales of plasma TVs. Nice one, Johnnie – just the sort of people we should be encouraging to breed.
Our kids were born in a hospital in a sound middle class catchment area, where the midwives told us that the average age of a first time mother is 34. Across Sydney in the heart of underclass territory, at Blacktown Hospital the average age is apparently 18. So not only are these folk having more kids, they are also having them at twice the frequency. The problem is compounded in Australia by high unskilled wages coupled with relatively low skilled salaries, steeply progressive taxes, and high interest rates. This makes it financially impractical for one parent to stay at home, yet at the same time it is prohibitive to hire childcare when both work. Disincentive all round.
Clearly a society whose fertility runs inversely to education will compound the ageing crisis with one of a less skilled workforce.
To motivate the educated, incentives should be based on tax relief rather than on handouts.
Well I’ve got five kids, so I’m doing my part!
But even here in AB, I’m amazed at the stigma that stay at home moms still have to endure. My wife stayed home to raise the kids (our 2 and the older three from marriage #1), and if she had a dollar for everytime someone asked her “what do you do all day?” I could retire early.
When she worked in corporate-land in TO before she came out here, she wondered why all the women she worked with were in such a rush to get back to work. When she met me an took on my three older kids (all in school by then) and we had two more, she realized that it wasnt so much for the money, it was because it was a hell of a lot easier to go back to work than take on parental responsibilities 24-7-365.
Even now the situation is grim, stay at home moms are not encouraged at all to do so, all the breaks are for ones that want to rejoin the work force. It’s pathetic to see how many parents are taking a minor role in upbringing their kids and leave most of it to daycare centers and schools. Rest assured we’ll pay for it down the road. Both my sisters teach and even being on the left side of the spectrum they tell me that the situation is very grim.
Yup, once again this proves quite clearly that Alberta ‘works’ and the rest of the country does not. Everybody I know in Ontario works long hard hours and says they can’t afford to have a kid. How is this a first world successful jurisdiction if people are feeling that way. read my new piece about gaza at the top of http://www.darrellepp. and here’s a bit about founding father john witherspoon
http://www.darrellepp.com/?p=87