Archive: Opinions

Seen at the Children’s Garden: “We Grow Through, What We Go Through”.

As I write this week’s musings, I am in an anticipatory mode. I am preparing to see my granddaughter for the first time since early March. She lives in Cortland, is twelve years old, and is very much the epitome of her given name. Serenity has seen and experienced much in her life and seems to carry on in such a level-headed and ‘old soul’ manner that as an adult I can truly appreciate.

She is an amazing kid – sharp, perceptive, and wise beyond her years. I know that I am prejudiced in this regard, as most grandparents are, but this child has been through what most children have never experienced and learned well some life lessons. She kind of reminds me of Louden Wainwright III’s line about distrusting “… if your I love you is an IOU”, but without any distrusting nature about her. Just an observant attitude and acceptance that I can admire.

But, gee, I miss her, and there will be a lot of catching up to do over takeout pizza while we sit in a Cortland park. She’ll have changed, I know, and maybe grown an inch or two. I worry that those months missed from her schooling and socialization can never really be regained. I’ve watched her traverse adversity before, and I think the young pre-teen will be a lesson in serenity and perseverance. Funny how the child can teach the adult sometimes, isn’t it?

I’ve been wondering about what else will be noticeably changed in the last three months, and what will be more subtly manifested. Something that caught my eye recently was a headline sighting a continuous concern by demographers: U.S. birth rates have hit a record low. U.S. births are down to their smallest total in thirty-five years. That’s according to federal figures released recently.

Here are a few numbers to ponder: 3.75 million babies were born in the country in 2019, down 1% from 2018. What is known as the ‘general fertility rate’ (how cold and calculating is that?) fell 2% to 58.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, the lowest level since the government started keeping that statistic in 1909.

It seems that the decline took a steep downward turn during the recession of 2008-09 and has not yet recovered, even though the economy returned to normal level, until our current pandemic-driven recession. So these current numbers are not a flash in the pan. They’re serious enough to ponder a potential ‘trend’, as we used to say in the finance business.

From what I read, the speculation is at least partly focused on our newest generation, whom some call the millennials, but maybe we need another name. In any case, it is well known and accepted that this newest iteration of young Americans are much less optimistic about their financial future and much more pessimistic about, how shall we put it, the messiness of our present world.

Since I’m tossing about some numbers, here’s a few more, cited by Harper’s Magazine Index: the percentage change in the past twenty-five years in the net worth of Americans 65 and older is a positive 42%, while the percentage change in the same twenty-five years of Americans 35 and younger is a negative 68%.

Note the correlation of the time span considered and the current age of our average millennial.

Try this number: the number of college graduates currently working as astronomers, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and web developers is 216,000. The number of college grads working as waiters and bartenders is almost precisely the same, 216,000.

I know that “figures lie and liars figure”, as well as the grand quote about three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. But when the birth rate is considered in the same breath as those figures I just cited, it may very well be something to contemplate. No matter how old you are, the idea that things about us aren’t good, that something seems wrong, is not necessarily pessimistic or dystopian. As Howard Beall put it in the movie Network: “I don’t have to tell you that things are bad.” And while many of us would prefer to limit our intake of daily news headlines, we are still inundated with what seems to be a firehose-like swooshing of angst, anger, and maybe even apathy.

Our childbearing population is, if nothing else, more savvy than we may give them credit for, and this phenomenon of falling birth rates is not unique to the United States. Europe, after decades of warfare, has been experiencing it, and Japan is so worried about the same issue that they are loosening up their immigration laws, an astounding reversal of decades of a Japanese closed-door policy.

A couple more figures, according to our statisticians (with a nod to the idea that number crunchers have found a real gold mine): since peaking in 1991, the teen birth rate has plummeted 73%, perhaps not a pessimistic number, considering how ‘children having children’ has affected poverty and other negative social ills.

In almost every year since 1971 (a year some economists consider the beginning of the two wage earner family), the total fertility rate in the U.S. has ticked downward to 1.7 children, below the 2.1 needed for the population to replace itself, discounting immigration.

The above number is critical for we ‘older’ folks, as the demographics necessary to support Medicare and Social Security begin to diminish and threaten two huge programs that depend on younger workers to replenish federal retirement coffers.

If the younger generation finds no reason for optimism or limited opportunities in their future, their tendency to reproduce could be diminished as well, and the loss will manifest in more than broken social programs for older Americans. It may show itself in other, more subtle ways, all potentially damaging to the commonweal, the psyche of America. And none of this even takes into account what has happened, and has yet to happen in the current atmosphere of pandemic and disillusion.

Of course, things can change. The young may find themselves in a position to change things – to begin to feel a new optimism in their activism, their participation in civic affairs, voting patterns, and advocacy in the form of volunteerism and involvement.

They need encouragement, they need leaders, and they don’t need the nihilism that many are trying to sell them in the form of democratic socialism or Marxism or other snake oil. They need to see the dream that drove many of us baby boomers and our parents. Yes, it was a materialistic dream, to an extent, but they can couple that dream to better themselves economically with a deeper understanding and empathy for our fellow humans, ending racism and carrying forward the idea of universal participation in a shared future. That’s what the ‘new’ generation wants and needs to do.

This millennial generation needs optimism, and that’s going to be hard to come by. But it can be done. America did it in 1941, it did it throughout the Depression and the war years, and you know what? We survived the 30’s, we survived 1941, and 1968, too. This time the stakes are even higher, and I truly want to place my hope in our newest generation – angry and demonstrating, they are our newest hope in a very damaged world. The least I can do is tell them I have hope for all of us and faith in them. Let’s encourage them in their quest for a better world and hope the United States keeps leading the world with our dreams and aspirations.

They’re kind of new to this mess of a world. Let’s keep encouraging them to think, to act, to hope. We probably ought to stand aside and express our own hopes for them and their children. In the meantime, take care of each other.