Parents don’t get no respect…how about a tax cut?

Glenn Reynolds (otherwise known as Instapundit), writing for TCS Daily, suggests that people (and, of course by “people,” we mean “white people,” since, as John Gibson so helpfully noted to justify his “procreation not recreation” recommendation, “half the kids under 5 years old in this country are minorities”) aren’t having kids anymore because:

~ Kids aren’t typically used as slave labor anymore. “Children used to provide cheap labor, and retirement security, all in one. Now they're pretty much all cost and no return, from a financial perspective.”

~ Parenting isn’t fun anymore. “We've taken a lot of the fun out of parenting… [I]n recent decades, a collection of parenting ‘experts’ and safety-fascist types have extinguished some of the benefits while raising the costs, to the point where what's amazing isn't that people are having fewer kids, but that people are having kids at all.”

~ People don’t automatically have prestige conferred upon them simply by reproducing anymore. “There's also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids.”

And you know what all of this financially unrewarding, unfun, unprestigiousness adds up to for a reliable conservative-who-claims-to-be-a-libertarian like Instapundit, don’t you?

A tax on parenting!

In these sorts of ways, parenting has become more expensive in non-financial as well as financial terms. It takes up more time and emotional energy than it used to, and there's less reward in terms of social approbation. This is like a big social tax on parenting and, as we all know, when things are taxed we get less of them. Yes, people still have children, and some people even have big families. But at the margin, which is where change occurs, people are less likely to do things as they grow more expensive and less rewarded.

…If people want to see Americans have more children, they should … look at ways of making parenting more rewarding, and less burdensome, in social as well as economic terms.

A splendid idea. A cultural tax cut is exactly what we need! We should definitely encourage parents to be less responsible and less involved, eschew safety mechanisms like car seats and bike helmets, tell Child Protective Services to get out of our grills, and then get back to the good old days when becoming a parent was the best possible thing you could do with your life. (If you’re a woman, please read: the only possible thing you could do with your life.) You know, back in the good old days when it didn’t matter what kind of parent you were—good, bad, eager, reluctant, indifferent—as long as you were one.

Reynolds’ argument for making parenting more desirable by making it “fun” and “rewarding” (financially and socially) misses the point. There are some people who just don’t bloody want to be parents. There were probably just as many of them in “the good old days,” but they had no means of controlling it. If they wanted to be married and have sex with their spouses, they were, inevitably, going to have kids. Maybe there are fewer people having kids these days simply because it’s an option.

One of the best things about control over one’s reproduction is that it allows people who really don’t want to be parents to avoid parenting. The anti-choice crowd tells us that every life is precious, but is that really true? The lives of a lot of unwanted kids have been pretty fucking horrible. If your own parents don’t regard your life as precious, it’s a pretty tough road to hoe. And it’s not just about people who never have kids; on the flipside, people who really do want to become parents can control how many children they have, and there’s something to be said for that, too. Being able to have only two kids instead of ten is a pretty good deal for parents—not to mention the kids they have.

“Making parenting more rewarding and less burdensome” to try to encourage people to have kids sounds like a patently dreadful idea to me, particularly on behalf of the kids born to parents who think the whole gig should be a breeze. Of course, what’s best for kids didn’t figure much into Reynolds’ argument. Do kids really benefit if their parents get more “social approbation” and “prestige” just for breeding? Look, if there are people who are disinclined to become parents because it’s not “cool” enough, they’re probably making the right decision to stay childless.

As for people who don’t have kids because it’s a financial struggle, maybe we could use those billions in actual tax cuts instead to guarantee free healthcare for every American child. That would be a good start to make parenting more affordable—and it has the additional benefit of being useful to kids. It’s certainly not as glamorous as suggesting that anyone who figures out how to successfully fuck ought to be rewarded with lavish admiration, but I just can’t help thinking what would be best for children. Even in spite of my selfish reluctance to birth them.