by farleyj at flicker

The New York Times Sunday magazine did a cover piece this weekend on the falling birth rate in Europe. While my reaction was mostly, “Isn’t this basically good news? Isn’t overpopulation still one of the main strains on our human survival?” the part that made me chortle and sigh was the broad and deeper reason for Europe and Japan and Greece and Thailand’s falling birthrate is… women are fed up. No more second shift, buddy. No more being chained to the house while you have all the fun in the world, no thanks. In countries where women are educated yet society doesn’t support their working after they become mothers, the birth rate is falling– far and fast.

“…women who do more than 75 percent of the housework and child care are less likely to want to have another child than women whose husbands or partners share the load. Put differently, Dutch fathers change more diapers, pick up more kids after soccer practice and clean up the living room more often than Italian fathers; therefore, relative to the population, there are more Dutch babies than Italian babies being born. As Mencarini said, ‘It’s about how much the man participates in child care.’”

This is a personal “glass ceiling” being played out in bedrooms across the world. We’re voting with our wombs– voting for quality of our lives, refusing to give in to a double standard

“rooted in the tradition where the husband earned all the money. Things have changed, not only in Italy and Spain but also in Japan and Korea, but those societies have not yet adjusted. The relationships within households have not adjusted yet.”

We will remake the world to be more gender equal– what the outcome will be may surprise us all.