the all girl army forums: "Feminism is the new natalism."

"Feminism is the new natalism." -David Willets, Conservative UK Politician

I found this quote in an article I just read in The New York Times Magazine. It's an interesting quote period, but made even more interesting in that it is coming from a conservative.

From the article:
"The accepted demographic wisdom had been that as women enter the job market, a society's fertility rate drops. That has been broadly true in the developed world, but more recently, and especially in Europe, the numbers don't bear it out. In fact, something like the opposite has been the case. According to Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania, analysis of recent studies showed that high fertility was associated with high female labor-force participation . . . and the lowest fertility levels in Europe since the mid-1990s are often found in countries with the lowest female labor-force participation. In other words, working mothers are having more babies than stay-at-home moms."

Read the entire article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

A very very short summary:
What they are finding (with the big exception of the US) is that in so-called "first-world" countries, woman/mother-friendly policies have a positive effect on birthrates while countries that lack these feminist policies cause the birthrate to fall.
According to the article most women tend to want children, at least two according to one study done (considered desirable by most countries re pop. stability). However women are refusing to do so if they are stuck with zero appreciation from both the child's father and from the society at large (their jobs and their countries).
The article also goes on to make points about the pros and cons of a less-peopled earth in general, the percentage of women who don't want to become mothers at all, the reasons large immigrant influx doesn't always mean a birthrate increase, as well as the fact that the US is an exception to the above mentioned feminist-inspired model.

It concludes that for birthrates to remain stable or to rise, women need either "generosity" (I'd call it fairness) or "flexibility" --what they assert the US gives women, and one of the purported reasons the US has a stable birthrate despite terrible policies re motherhood, childcare, etc).

The poorest model for birthrate, according to this article, is a country that educates and is progressive with women while they are single, but expects them to be stay-at-home mothers and is traditinal with gender roles when it comes to motherhood (aka the norm is that mothers do most of the childcaring).

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"Scratch any woman deeply enough and you find a feminist." -Christina McCall