Overview
When House Speaker Paul Ryan urged U.S. women to have more children, and Ross Douthat requested āMore babies, please,ā in a New York Times column, they openly expressed what policymakers have been discussing for decades with greater discretion. Using technical language like āage structure,ā ādependency ratio,ā and āentitlement crisis,ā establishment think tanks are raising the alarm: if U.S. women donāt get busy having more children, weāll face an aging workforce, slack consumer demand, and a stagnant economy.
Feminists generally believe that a prudish religious bloc is responsible for the protracted fight over reproductive freedom in the U.S. and that politicians only attack abortion and birth control to appeal to those āvalues voters.ā But hidden behind this conventional explanation is a dramatic fight over womenās reproductive labor. On one side, elite policymakers want an expanding workforce reared with a minimum of employer spending and a maximum of unpaid womenās work. On the other side, women are refusing to produce children at levels desired by economic planners. By some measures our birth rate is the lowest it has ever been. With little access to childcare, family leave, health care, and with insufficient male participation, U.S. women are conducting a spontaneous birth strike.
In other countries, panic over low birth rates has led governments to underwrite childbearing and childrearing with generous universal programs, but in the U.S., women have not yet realized the potential of our bargaining position. When we do, it will lead to new strategies for winning full access to abortion and birth control, and for improving the difficult working conditions U.S. parents now face when raising children.
This book title, Birth Strike (The Hidden Fight over Women's Work), ISBN: 9781629636382, by Jenny Brown, published by PM Press (April 1, 2019) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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