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When we baby boomers grew up, we revolutionized demographic history by postponing childbearing and reducing the number of kids to below replacement levels. While this is a dream-come-true for Thomas Malthus and his latter-day disciples, it may turn out to be a nightmare for ordinary families, far beyond any sentimental longings we might have at holiday time. The "population bomb" has turned into a population implosion with the "Sandwich Generation" and sparsely filled holiday tables among its unintended consequences. I helped create the Sandwich Generation. Like many women my age, I postponed childbearing until my career was established. I thought it was smart and responsible. I was 38 when I had my first child. By contrast, my mom was 31 when she had me. But she wasn't just getting started: I was the third of six kids. If I had had my first child ten years sooner, I'd have been 28, not an outrageously early age at first childbirth. But look at the difference those ten years would have made to my mom. Instead of being in her sixties, she'd be in her fifties. Instead of being infirm when my kids are school aged, she would have been young enough to enjoy them, and incidentally, to help out. Likewise, by the time she got old enough to need significant help from me and my siblings, my kids would have been teenagers. I wouldn't be driving them to ballgames and dance classes; they could drive themselves places. In fact, they might even be some help with their grandparents. Today, both economic pressures and the cultural ethos encourage women to delay childbearing, and to have only one or two children. Of course, there have always been some families that fit this description. But now a larger percentage of families have this wide spread between generations. If another generation continues the pattern of delayed childbearing and small families, women like me won't have a batch of siblings to help take care of grandma. Each married couple will have to take care of two sets of elderly parents, or even more if the grandparents have divorced and remarried. These same adults will also be taking care of young children. The only possible result of this trend is some form of institutional care for the very old, the very young, or both. There simply will not be enough hands available inside the family to take care of that many dependent people simultaneously. More kids will end up in daycare and more elderly people will end up in nursing homes. Some people think daycare is a woman's right, and that women shouldn't be forced to take care of aging relatives at home. Sure, we shouldn't be forced. But when we anticipate care for ourselves, do we really want to create a situation in which our children will be "forced" to place us in nursing homes? In our family, we adopted our first child, a son, from a Romanian orphanage when he was two and a half years old. My plan, like any self-respecting career woman, was to pop him into daycare, so I could get back on the career ladder. It eventually dawned on me that he did not need "socialization" with other children his age. He had already had enough institutional care, thanks. He needed a mommy. It would have been inhuman to insist that he spend full time in daycare. When my mother-in-law became ill with Alzheimer's and cancer, our home was the obvious place for her to live. As it happened, the most-suitable room in the house for her bedroom, was the room of this very same son, by this time, twelve years old. We proposed that he give Grandma his room, and move into a makeshift room elsewhere in the house. He hesitated. He knew his bedroom was the logical choice since it was close to our room, and to a bathroom. Still, he asked if there wasn't some other place Grandma could go to live. I told him she could go to a nursing home. He asked me what's a nursing home. I told him, (in a truly inspired moment of motherhood) a nursing home is an orphanage for old people. He thought for about a heartbeat and said, "no way." He gave Grandma his room, without complaint. Families with shorter spacing between the generations can stagger the care of its dependent members across time. The youngest members of the family aren't dependent infants at the same time the oldest generation most needs care. My daughter recently asked me, "Mom, how old should I be when I get married and have kids?" I said to her, "Honey, I was 28 when you were born. If you are 38 when you have your first child, how old will I be?" I gave her a minute to do the math. "76." "Right. If you wait that long, you may have me and your baby, in diapers at the same time." We baby boomers didn't realize it at the time, but postponing childbearing until our late thirties and early forties was not an entitlement, but a rare privilege. The very same choice will have quite different consequences for the next generation. The social norm of delayed child bearing is not sustainable in any humane way. So while we cherish those memories of childhood Christmases, we should whisper a silent thanks to our parents and grandparents who gave us families so richly textured across the generations. And say thanks out loud to young couples who have the courage to start families in their twenties. — Jennifer Roback Morse is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She is the author of Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work. |
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s we share our memories of Christmases past, some of us will be struck
by how much smaller our family gatherings have become. Many of us grew
up with grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, an array of "greats"
— great grandparents, great aunts, great uncles — and lots of
siblings and cousins. But today, many native-born white American families
don't even need to add an extra leaf to the Christmas table. 
