There’s one sub-theme in the piece I do disagree with, and I want to make sure to note it:
From Catherine:
> Keeping the door open for another child trades on a wisdom offered by the mothers I interviewed: that more people are never a problem for a family, a nation or any one child.
Of course they can be a problem! Kids are always both gift and cross, even in the best of circumstances. Eve Tushnet has written about her experience working at a crisis pregnancy center, and, for the women she served, her kids were definitely people who brought problems: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/why-they-call-us
From Eve:
> Most of our clients believe strongly that they have a moral responsibility to attain financial stability. They feel intense familial and internal pressure to graduate from high school, then college, and then to get a stable job. They want to be, if not homeowners, at least people who live independently from their parents. A baby will never help them do this. A baby (a first or second or third baby) will always make the snakes-and-ladders upward scramble slower and harder and more uncertain. Sometimes the conflict between baby and financial stability is blunt and brutal: last year, two D.C. police officers came forward to say that, when they were cadets, they aborted their pregnancies because a sergeant told them that having a baby would cost them their jobs.
As Eve writes, some of these pressures are deeply unjust. But even in a much more pro-woman, pro-baby world, a baby would still put some plans out of reach.
> We are undeniably seeing fewer people having kids, but conditional on a household having >0 kids, we aren't actually seeing a substantial drop in kids-with-any-siblings
Totally agree with this piece and your caveat! I absolutely think pregnancy and children are such a gift, but I do find sometimes Catholics and religious people in general are too glib about the very real medical and financial challenges having many children can present. Having 5, 6, and more kids is always challenging on the body no matter how healthy you are, and I have seen some young women have pregnancy complications that put their lives (and the lives of their babies) in immediate peril.
I was blessed in childhood to have a church and school community (largely overlapping) that was relatively small, and therefore not age-segregated. When I was in grade one, it was common for older kids to help us (e.g. by helping us put our mitts on at recess in the winter), and there were a lot of games or projects that the teachers orchestrated that involved the whole school. My husband and I recently moved back to that area, and I've been delighted to see that while the church has grown, that same mentality exists. After church, I can chat with other parents knowing that there is likely one or two (or more) older kids and teens keeping an eye on my three-year-old as he plays outside. I hope my kids do the same for other families when they're older.
Extended family relationships have been a blessing in this way too. My older nephews and niece often play with and take some responsibility for the littler cousins when we have family get-togethers.
“If you have kids, what are the least age-segregated spaces you go?”
Homeschool co ops are some of the least age-segregated spaces that we visit. This has been one of the best things about homeschooling. It is not something that everyone can or should do – I myself have doubts about it. But mitigating the strict age segregation of our society has been one of the biggest rewards I’ve found doing it. I feel like this could be recreated in schools to some degree. I mean, you wouldn’t have to make everything a one-room schoolhouse, but there could be more intentional effort to mix the ages.
Church is another place where the kids can often interact with a variety of ages. But this is hit or miss because a lot of churches themselves are very age segregated. We happen to go to a small church where there’s a lot of interaction with adults just because there aren’t that many other kids.
We are very lucky that we live in a neighborhood with a lot of kids. One of our neighbors started kickball at the local park on Friday nights. There’s a decent-sized group, and there are mixed ages from high school down to elementary. I don’t know how common something like this is- it’s very informal, and the kids are mostly in charge. Sometimes adults do come and play as well. But mostly it’s the group of kids playing and working things out. To me, this seems like something from a bygone era, but I’m really grateful that our kids get to experience it.
I’m looking forward to what other commenters have to say because as my kids age – there are four of them, ages 9 through 16- I find that we’re spending less and less time with babies and toddlers. But I think it’s so important for people to spend time with ages across the lifespan, so I really hope to continue to mitigate age segregation, and I look forward to seeing what your other readers say.
My daughter is my youngest (of 3) and she has adored our neighborhood babies. She only has one set of first cousins, and they live far away. But she has had two neighborhood babies - both are younger siblings of her buddies. The first was when she was 8/9 years old and this latest one she is 11/12 years old. She absolutely delights in these kids and notices that while the members of their families tire of holding or catering to them, she does not. The baby is always happy to see her because she provides adoration. :-) It's been so good for her to really become comfortable with babies and feel confident with babies. One of the delights of community and neighborhood life. (BTW, both of these babies are 4th children.)
Leah, as the mother of five, I can tell you that it's a beautiful thing when you realize that the "baby" has four older siblings who love him/her when things get tough in teen and early adult years. In a way, he/she has six "parents" who are watching out for him/her. That's a whole other layer here. :)
P.S. I had only one sister, a year and a half older, and while she was my world in so many ways, I see how that (more siblings) has only become exponentially more helpful as my children grow and begin to have adult relationships with one another. Our kids have so much more than I did with just one sister. Again, it was a great relationship but we were less connected at this stage than most of our kids are now. They just got done having a "Salonen kid" party at our oldest daughter's lake town -- without us. Which is great, because we're likely to be gone from this earth sooner than they and they will have each other. :)
It kind of feels like playing 4D-Chess, trying to make the adjusted-risk-calculation about adding another child. Is there a NET benefit? How do you know? You can't. Will the benefit of having a younger sibling and the potential for closeness and character formation and how-to-live-in-a-social-unit skills outweigh the consequences and real suffering of being further removed from that snakes-and-ladders financial 'stability'? Which, therein lies the rub: our current system forces poor people (and even not-poor-but-not-cushioned) people to make utilitarian risk calculations about the value of their lives and decisions, and to compare apples to oranges. There is a misalignment of values and practice: They SHOULD NOT have to make those kinds of calculations in the first place. Until we stop prizing individualism above a common good, and see-in-practice new children as actually being a common good (social security! not having a demographic cliff!), we will continue to foist all risk and consequences on the individual.
Oldest is school-age and youngest is a baby, so I like to think we help desegregate the places we go for oldest. Older kids are fascinated by the baby! It's fun to ask if they know any other babies or explain what the baby's up to.
There’s one sub-theme in the piece I do disagree with, and I want to make sure to note it:
From Catherine:
> Keeping the door open for another child trades on a wisdom offered by the mothers I interviewed: that more people are never a problem for a family, a nation or any one child.
Of course they can be a problem! Kids are always both gift and cross, even in the best of circumstances. Eve Tushnet has written about her experience working at a crisis pregnancy center, and, for the women she served, her kids were definitely people who brought problems: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/why-they-call-us
From Eve:
> Most of our clients believe strongly that they have a moral responsibility to attain financial stability. They feel intense familial and internal pressure to graduate from high school, then college, and then to get a stable job. They want to be, if not homeowners, at least people who live independently from their parents. A baby will never help them do this. A baby (a first or second or third baby) will always make the snakes-and-ladders upward scramble slower and harder and more uncertain. Sometimes the conflict between baby and financial stability is blunt and brutal: last year, two D.C. police officers came forward to say that, when they were cadets, they aborted their pregnancies because a sergeant told them that having a baby would cost them their jobs.
As Eve writes, some of these pressures are deeply unjust. But even in a much more pro-woman, pro-baby world, a baby would still put some plans out of reach.
Also appreciated this data note from Elliot Haspel: https://x.com/ehaspel/status/2072088335947018268
> We are undeniably seeing fewer people having kids, but conditional on a household having >0 kids, we aren't actually seeing a substantial drop in kids-with-any-siblings
Totally agree with this piece and your caveat! I absolutely think pregnancy and children are such a gift, but I do find sometimes Catholics and religious people in general are too glib about the very real medical and financial challenges having many children can present. Having 5, 6, and more kids is always challenging on the body no matter how healthy you are, and I have seen some young women have pregnancy complications that put their lives (and the lives of their babies) in immediate peril.
I was blessed in childhood to have a church and school community (largely overlapping) that was relatively small, and therefore not age-segregated. When I was in grade one, it was common for older kids to help us (e.g. by helping us put our mitts on at recess in the winter), and there were a lot of games or projects that the teachers orchestrated that involved the whole school. My husband and I recently moved back to that area, and I've been delighted to see that while the church has grown, that same mentality exists. After church, I can chat with other parents knowing that there is likely one or two (or more) older kids and teens keeping an eye on my three-year-old as he plays outside. I hope my kids do the same for other families when they're older.
Extended family relationships have been a blessing in this way too. My older nephews and niece often play with and take some responsibility for the littler cousins when we have family get-togethers.
“If you have kids, what are the least age-segregated spaces you go?”
Homeschool co ops are some of the least age-segregated spaces that we visit. This has been one of the best things about homeschooling. It is not something that everyone can or should do – I myself have doubts about it. But mitigating the strict age segregation of our society has been one of the biggest rewards I’ve found doing it. I feel like this could be recreated in schools to some degree. I mean, you wouldn’t have to make everything a one-room schoolhouse, but there could be more intentional effort to mix the ages.
Church is another place where the kids can often interact with a variety of ages. But this is hit or miss because a lot of churches themselves are very age segregated. We happen to go to a small church where there’s a lot of interaction with adults just because there aren’t that many other kids.
We are very lucky that we live in a neighborhood with a lot of kids. One of our neighbors started kickball at the local park on Friday nights. There’s a decent-sized group, and there are mixed ages from high school down to elementary. I don’t know how common something like this is- it’s very informal, and the kids are mostly in charge. Sometimes adults do come and play as well. But mostly it’s the group of kids playing and working things out. To me, this seems like something from a bygone era, but I’m really grateful that our kids get to experience it.
I’m looking forward to what other commenters have to say because as my kids age – there are four of them, ages 9 through 16- I find that we’re spending less and less time with babies and toddlers. But I think it’s so important for people to spend time with ages across the lifespan, so I really hope to continue to mitigate age segregation, and I look forward to seeing what your other readers say.
My daughter is my youngest (of 3) and she has adored our neighborhood babies. She only has one set of first cousins, and they live far away. But she has had two neighborhood babies - both are younger siblings of her buddies. The first was when she was 8/9 years old and this latest one she is 11/12 years old. She absolutely delights in these kids and notices that while the members of their families tire of holding or catering to them, she does not. The baby is always happy to see her because she provides adoration. :-) It's been so good for her to really become comfortable with babies and feel confident with babies. One of the delights of community and neighborhood life. (BTW, both of these babies are 4th children.)
Leah, as the mother of five, I can tell you that it's a beautiful thing when you realize that the "baby" has four older siblings who love him/her when things get tough in teen and early adult years. In a way, he/she has six "parents" who are watching out for him/her. That's a whole other layer here. :)
P.S. I had only one sister, a year and a half older, and while she was my world in so many ways, I see how that (more siblings) has only become exponentially more helpful as my children grow and begin to have adult relationships with one another. Our kids have so much more than I did with just one sister. Again, it was a great relationship but we were less connected at this stage than most of our kids are now. They just got done having a "Salonen kid" party at our oldest daughter's lake town -- without us. Which is great, because we're likely to be gone from this earth sooner than they and they will have each other. :)
It kind of feels like playing 4D-Chess, trying to make the adjusted-risk-calculation about adding another child. Is there a NET benefit? How do you know? You can't. Will the benefit of having a younger sibling and the potential for closeness and character formation and how-to-live-in-a-social-unit skills outweigh the consequences and real suffering of being further removed from that snakes-and-ladders financial 'stability'? Which, therein lies the rub: our current system forces poor people (and even not-poor-but-not-cushioned) people to make utilitarian risk calculations about the value of their lives and decisions, and to compare apples to oranges. There is a misalignment of values and practice: They SHOULD NOT have to make those kinds of calculations in the first place. Until we stop prizing individualism above a common good, and see-in-practice new children as actually being a common good (social security! not having a demographic cliff!), we will continue to foist all risk and consequences on the individual.
Oldest is school-age and youngest is a baby, so I like to think we help desegregate the places we go for oldest. Older kids are fascinated by the baby! It's fun to ask if they know any other babies or explain what the baby's up to.
---> If you have kids, what are the least age-segregated spaces you go?
Maybe this is a Christian cop-out but it's true: Our church and small group!