Okay, I was reminded by this article to write about the youth policy work I was doing. The article is about Nashi, Putin’s youth organization which apparently includes around 7% of all Russians aged 17-25. There you have a highly nationalistic pro-natalism – babies for the fatherland – aimed at making Russia great again, all tied up with the pastime of making threats against neighbouring countries and harking back to a time before they were born.
For me, the concern about demographic developments is an opportunity to change society for the better. Narrowly, with regard to youth policy, it is a chance to have a largely ignored and patronized section of society have more involvement in development of policies which affect them; it’s opportunistic, but that’s not an argument against it, and anyway only a minority of the agenda is about more money ‘for young people’.
More exciting in my view is that talking to young people about their reasons for fertility decisions recognizes that you can take a non-laissez faire approach to this area of policy; on the back of which: a) governments will do something, so it’s better that their policies are in line with other goals about gender equality, participation, individual choice and are aware of related areas (e.g. housing, reproductive health). Which is where U. N. technical advice comes in… b) perhaps luckily, there is more and more evidence that policies which increase fertility tend to be those which also support gender equality, and the wider restructuring of our priorities, particularly about the relationship between work and the rest of life, but also about the role of the market and state intervention. Which means there is a pretty strong case to make in contrast to more militant, wombs-and-soldiers pro-natalism.
Countries with higher female labour force participation and better parental and paternal leave entitlements and flexible working options tend to have higher birth rates. If the young Romanians you talk to tell you they don’t have kids because they can’t afford to live independently, then maybe you would consider a policy which mitigates the shameful effect of western European property speculation in poorer eastern countries, and that kind of thinking benefits everyone.
That’s a kind of best-case thinking or justification; at worst, this work has no effect (more likely the more rubbish the managers); somewhere in the middle it leads to more involvement of young people in both UN programming and government policy-making, related to gender equality, and sexual and reproductive health, and with any luck education and labour market issues also. It’s links like the latter that show the overlap with other areas of social concern away from ‘just fertility’ – given that fertility-related behaviour is complicated, but is significantly influenced by (actual and expected) job stability, employability (money for vocational training has also been in freefall in non-western Europe, despite all your Polish plumbers…), ability to do things you want to do before having children (mobility policy) et cetera. Market fundamentalists don’t have an answer to low fertility (that I have read – simply paying women to have babies doesn’t really work), so maybe this helps lessen their impact, important in this part of the world as it is further west, south and east. And I guess north, to
4 comments:
Speaking for myself, I would be more inclined to reproduce if I didn't have to work (not that much more inclined, I hasten to add... I have no desire to have children) and if I didn't think that the life that awaited my offspring involved 50 years of some kind of soulless employment.
This doesn't help you, I realise...
Wot to do about "old people"? Look after them. Same as they looked after "young people" when they were babies.
But scaffolder they are going to live for a heck of a lot longer than they used to, and there are much more than them.
And when I am an old person, and have no children (for the reasons mentioned by my girlfriend above, plus others) there will be no pensions provided by the state and their will be no one to look after me, so I will be a problem. Luckily I don't want to be looked after and will kill myself as soon as I find myself deteriorating in some terrible way.
My dad is 84 and he doesn't really need to be looked after. If he ever does he intends to do the same as mentioned above. I happily look out for him as I do for anyone I love, but it shouldn't be mandatory. For example, why should someone who abuses their child be looked after by the child when they are old? Parents are not universally good and responsible. And children often give a lot back at the time, I certainly feel I gave my mum a lot back in terms of support etc… during my teenage years, we were pretty much quits by the time I left home.
In an ideal world the state should look after its elderly (well actually in my ideal world their would be no state and the community would look after the elderly but I’m trying to be realistically idealised!) But the world is not ideal and the advances and wonderful success of technology and science over the natural order of things has made a lot of very complicated issues for us to wrestle with.
And things are looking like they will get even less ideal, with the burden of population and technology expansion putting different forms of pressure on the environment and the global economy.
There will possibly (even arguably probably) be a big global catastrophe or four (environmental devastation creating terrible living conditions, running out of fossils fuels destroying economic systems, nuclear meltdown, whatever…) that may intervene in the problems and trends that affect us. In such conditions most of the elderly will not survive and so will be taken off everyones hands and possibly economic systems will (at least temporarily) be defeated and we will be busy struggling to exist using whatever systems suits the world at that time to do it. Issues such as pensions, over population, care of the elderly, contraception, fair pay, even equal rights etc… will not be the issues that are troubling us.
However if none of the above happens, old people will (and this has begun already) be a big problem for society and for themselves.
As Chris mentions, or alludes to in his blog, it is young people, the people who the media would have you believe get everything and that everything is apparently geared for (read sold to) that are the group who are powerless in western society. The old are in fact in general aware of their rights, get supported by the state, are considered an important part of the electorate who must be appeased and appealed to, they are generally home owners and often have independent means, they even get free travel (to differing degrees). The young have very little power to effect any form of change, they generally have less rights given to them, they also tend to have less hope installed in them. In the UK we are currently experiencing such strong levels of discrimination and media objectification and demonisation focused on the young that you might forget that they are human beings. However it is true that some of the young do get free travel (although the reason for that is arguably that their travel costs their parents generation too much for them to be happy with.) Currently London’s leadership is talking about stopping 18-21 year olds from being allowed to drink (they can kill people in the military but they can’t get drunk!?!?) and imposing police enforced curfews to keep children in their homes from 9pm or 8pm (depending on their ages). The minority of children who are killing other people are killing other children in the main but adults walk around thinking anyone who wears a sensibly designed all weather piece of clothing are going to kill them. Last year 40 children were killed this year only 22 so far (and we are more than half way through so we may end up with less child fatalities) but the media is making out that children killing each other is something new, because it’s the hot new media created fear. And that media influences the youth and so the wheel turns on and on.
On the question of who owes whom what, giving life is neutral rather than a gift, and is an act of self-fulfillment on the part of the parents, albeit with overwhelming social and genetic pressure which probably makes it seem entirely unlike this (few parents-to-be cooing about their inheritable characteristics or contribution to the pension funds of the future...). For that reason I wouldn't equate care for children with care for parents - it's the very least a parent can do, having made a live person, to look after it until it can look after itself.
That said though, they aren't so different, given that most people don't grumble about having been born (which would of course be stupid). I remember reading an article in the LSE student newspaper about how Indians and others with so-called Asian values look after and respect their old people so much better than western folk. It felt a bit holier-than-thou, though I then felt guilty at that reaction. Assuming that I live that long, that my parents need caring for and that I am in a position to help, of course I will help, though I don't know what I or they mean by that. Care homes will always be necessary, however caring offspring are (perhaps they will be living abroad, or predeceasing their parents, or stuck in tiny flats after the recession), not to mention the scenarios suggested by Goosefat. In that these have a bad image, we can solve half of that by throwing money at the shamefully underpaid (often quite young) staff. That and other improvements, like redesigning care homes to take account of people's complaints, requires money and therefore political and social support. And unlike funding youth centres and apprenticeships (1) or childcare (2), funding for old people's homes, individual carers and other services can't even appeal to the threat of crime (1) or population collapse (2). But then, old people vote, maybe because they don't feel in a position to steal cars or lose themselves on skag.
Another thing that suggests that the elderly agenda should be given plenty of political attention: a study I heard of in Geneva suggested that when surveyed about policy options related to social care, working-age adults 30-60 think a significant amount more about care for old people than for young families or young people.
In youth policy and to an extent in demography, there's the nebulous term 'intergenerational solidarity,' of which everyone agrees there is not enough... But I don't see a decent solution with young poeple being taken seriously and old people being happily supported while young people are criminals and old people are pitiable. The idea that everyone is in this (life) together is not very fashionable, partly for good reasons and partly for bad. And perceptions of moral obligations get less with distance (of all sorts, even before online lives came along), so national scale in a country as big as the UK is also a problem.
Jen - Your point raises another problem I have with 'development' work, much bigger than any reservations about encouraging higher birth rates. It's the elitist and snobbish view that there is so little imagination in how 'devt. work' might mean development toward a society which doesn't clone the things I don't like about so-called developed societies. The Lewisham Shopping Centre syndrome: is this really the point of helping people be freer, richer and more equal (though not in terms of wealth or income)? Although it varies according to which bit of 'development work' you are talking about, and I have little problem encouraging sexual and reproductive health, for example.
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