Life in the Rear-view Mirror

Fertility and the Feminist Revolution

I note that my role here is that of observer, and not judge. I am documenting what I recall, hopefully without bias; and If any is perceived, it was not intentional. As the father of three daughters, I fully support gender equality in every aspect of life.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When we arrived in Canada, the typical nuclear family was a couple with two or three children. Up until the early 1960s, the husband was the breadwinner, and the wife looked after the children and the house. Until then, the family could live the American dream with a single wage earner. After that, the middleclass family with one breadwinner fell behind. A single salary was no longer sufficient to afford a comfortable life, with all the new technological conveniences that sprouted on a daily basis, or so it seemed. In an effort to keep up with the Jones’s, married women entered the workforce en masse. I note here that the first wave of women to enter the workforce was during the Second World War, to support the military effort. The next, and bigger wave, started in the 1950s, but really took off in the 70s, when the birth-control pill became socially acceptable. While the pill was available in the 60s, it didn’t come into widespread use until the 70s.

This was the beginning of a new revolution, the feminist revolution. The nuclear family would not be the same again. It affected all aspects of society in profound ways. But was it a grassroots revolution for liberation? Or were there other factors that caused it? Factors such as the increasing demand for labour by the capitalistic behemoth. It’s not clear whether the desire to consume more brought married women into the workforce, or the other way around. There are proponents for each theory. It’s like the chicken and egg situation – hard to prove which came first. Nevertheless, the mass entry of women into the workforce was a watershed event. It fired up overconsumption and changed middleclass family life significantly. For the poor working classes nothing changed: married women were always expected to find gainful employment to help support the family.

The first thing that happened was that middleclass women now had two jobs: one at home and one in the office, factory, or department store. However, any change is bound to come with a price, and this was a major change; so, the price was huge. The stress of doing two jobs affected family relationships. Heightened levels of tension in the home led to a higher incidence of problems, and the family became more vulnerable to external forces. The fast-food industry wasted no time in exploiting this social change, leading to a higher incidence of health problems – obesity being the most visible one.

The increased incidence of divorces was the second thing that happened. A job, or career, gave married women a newfound power of independence, and many used that power to free themselves from unwanted relationships, some even abusive, or oppressive. So, in some cases the result was to free women from a relationship of servitude, not uncommon in some sectors of society in those days. However, broken relationships also had a downside, such as the effects on the children of ‘broken homes’, as they came to be called; and it seemed that their numbers were on a path straight up.

The third was the advent of nurseries and childcare centres. In my youth age, they were uncommon. Children were reared by the parents or grandparents, in a loving environment, but this environment slowly gave way to the barren places that parents dropped off their kids in the morning and picked them up in the evening, to be reared by people who where not necessarily loving, and even if they were, had too many to look after, to provide properly for the toddlers’ needs. Many of these children came from broken homes, so they not only got short-changed during the day-care time, but also the rest of the time. Of course, there are many exceptions, and children from broken homes did well, and even very well, but others were not so lucky.

The fourth was the reduced fertility rate. After the 1950s peak, at about 25 births per 1000 of population, it fell to 15, where it has remained more or less constant for the past forty years. When my father was born, the American birth rate was about 30, when I was born it was about 25, and when my children were born, it had dropped to 15. Put differently, my grandfather had 10 children, my father had five, I have three, and my children have none. With the additional demands of a career, women started having fewer children, and some no children at all. Living together, rather than marrying, became a more acceptable lifestyle. Mother Earth must have been happy, as there were fewer mouths to feed than there would otherwise have been.

The number of marriages per 1000 of population bounced around between 8 and 12 for the entire twentieth century. Only after the year 2000 it fell below 8. Divorces rose steadily from a 1960s low of about 2.2 to a 1980s peak of 5.3 per 1000 of population. Both marriages and divorces have been on a downward slope, but the number of divorces rose to 50% of marriages. That is, one out of every two marriages ended in divorce. This is about twice the rate before the 1960s. With the rate now pretty steady at 50%, divorce has become socially accepted. It’s the new norm, along with living together.

Happily, one of the best things that resulted from the feminist revolution is that, nowadays, there are as many women as men graduating from university. Moreover, there are now as many women as men in management positions. But inequality of the sexes still exists, particularly at the highest levels of government and corporations. Hopefully, one day soon, that gap will be eliminated.

These are pretty fundamental societal changes, which do not appear to be linked to the capitalistic-driven need for overconsumption, but I believe they are. The craving for keeping up with the Jones’s, and the new income stream from working women, aided by a huge advertising machine that fired up that desire daily, catapulted consumption to nose-bleed levels. With a declining birth rate, population growth was insufficient to supply the labour force of a rapidly expanding economy. The difference was made up with immigration. In Canada, and Toronto in particular, as it received the largest share, immigration had some profound effects, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

The decline in North America’s birth rate reduced the overpopulation problem in other countries, but didn’t make a dent on global population growth. While wealthy countries, in general, went through a similar social adjustment as North America, poor countries did not. Despite increased levels of migration from poor to rich countries, world population growth continued unabated. Imagine how much worse the situation would have been, if wealthy countries hadn’t gone through the feminist revolution.

It’s really axiomatic: if women are at work pursuing careers, they are not at home having and raising children. Therefore, poor countries also need a feminist revolution!

Clearly, wealth and education have had an immense impact on slowing population growth in some parts of the world, which suggests to me that the world needs better sharing of wealth to slow down the runaway freight train of population growth. However, just when we needed a better distribution of wealth and income, we actually got the opposite – more concentration in the hands of the few. Growing wealth and income inequality has thus fuelled global population growth. This connection wasn’t evident to me when I started writing this book, but it’s very real. By keeping the rest of the world in poverty, we inadvertently fuelled global population growth. So, we cannot point to poor countries and say, “This is your problem. You are the cause of the problem,” because we helped to create the problem. We helped to create the inequalities!