Studying Fertility with Baby

Most people who know me know I am in a PhD program in demography. However, only the bold few ask, so what the #@%& is demography, anyway? I'm sure there are more eloquent descriptions, but I'll put in a plug here. Demography is the study of populations and how they change over time as a result of health and mortality, fertility behavior and migration patterns. Health and mortality are affected by public health measures, sanitation policies, medical advances, health systems and many other forces. Fertility behavior is affected by marital patterns, female labor force participation, education, use of contraception, and a host of other behavioral characteristics. We learn about all those things, plus theories to describe the forces behind the demographic transition, or the historical shift from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility among developed nations. Demographers also have their own set of analytic tools and are particularly concerned with age-composition effects on various measures in a population, since fertility and mortality rates are different for different age categories.

So, here I am in the spring semester taking a course on fertility, while caring for a new baby. It definitely gives me a different perspective on the articles I read! For example, I just read a paper entitled Why Have Children in the 21st Century? The paper basically asks the question, given the huge costs involved in having children these days (education, etc), and the excellent alternative opportunities available to women in particular (excelling in one's career, living off the fruits of that success), why would anyone choose to have children at all? It highlights three major theories in the literature: biological predisposition, social coercion and rational choice.

As you might imagine, the biological argument suggests that humans have evolved to reproduce. We have a strong sex drive, and genes for pleasure-seeking. We have an underlying biological desire to reproduce. The social coercion argument centers around social institutions that generate different fertility environments for individuals. For example, consider the baby boom in the U.S. -- the economy was good, people were moving out to the suburbs and had lots of free time and space on their hands. Everyone started having lots of babies. The social environment was saying, make more babies! The rational choice argument points out that we make rational decisions to have children. Reasons behind having the first child may be emotional and or psychological (i.e., to have a child to love, to carry on the family name), and reasons behind having additional children may be for family building and sex composition in the family.

So why did we have Noah, anyway?

I definitely think there is a biological predisposition. When I was in my early 20s, I could not imagine wanting to have children. Then around age 27-28, the maternal instinct kicked in, and I knew I wanted eventually to have a family. Also, I think women are genetically wired to respond to their children. When I hear Noah's cry, it causes a surge of adrenaline to rush through my body. I wake right up if I have been sleeping. Other babies' cries however don't have this affect at all. As one of my friends said, "other babies' cries sound like a tape recording." Other women have told me they feel the same way -- even previously deep sleepers will wake up in an instant if the baby starts to cry (of course, on the other hand, you get so sleep deprived that this has to break down at some point...).

I also think there is social coercion. This is not to say that society forced me to have children, but rather, that social institutions matter. One of the reasons I could not imagine having children when I was in my early 20s was the deep fear that had been instilled in me since I was in high school. The dark message booming from all of society was, "getting pregnant will ruin your life." It took a while to get to the point where I realized that message was no longer relevant. Then, of course, I would be lying if I said I wasn't affected by the fact that virtually every single inhabitant of the country of Chile asked Nano and me when we were going to have a baby.

And, of course, we also had Noah because of the emotional bonds we suspected it would create, to watch him grow, to enjoy the warmth of a family, and all of those other motivations behind a "rational" decision.

Another thing that struck me in one of my readings was a series of interviews with new mothers in which two major themes emerged: "1) Women are surprised and overwhelmed by the amount of work and energy their young child requires and 2) they did not anticipate how completely they would fall in love with their offspring." (This is Morgan and Berkowitz King 2001 discussing McMahon 1995).

I completely recognize both of these themes! I knew that you don't get any sleep after you have a baby and that it is exhausting. I knew it wasn't going to be easy. However, superficial knowledge is entirely separate from the intimate understanding of having experienced it! You are completely exhausted from +/- 17 hours of labor, and then you never really get to sleep again. On top of that, it takes infinite energy to keep baby content!

The love is also infinite, and yet continues to grow each day. In the beginning, it was more of a protective kind of love, and that desire to protect him has since grown. I have dreams that I leave him with someone else for a few minutes, and terrible things happen. When he started smiling around weeks 4-5, we finally got some feedback. Now, he interacts all the time, and every day there is something new. I love it when he wakes up fussy and uncomfortable, and then when I smile at him, he beams his beautiful smile back at me and forgets all his fussiness. I love holding his little body against me, and there is nothing more fulfilling then having him with me.