Thread by @DouthatNYT

Quick thread on this big @annalouiesuss essay in our Sunday pages and some of the rejoinders from my friends on the right.
nytimes.com/interactive/20…

@annalouiesuss A few ppl have questioned the essay's framework of "late capitalism" as the best way to understand fertility decline, given the baby bust's consistency across both Yankee-capitalist and social-democratic case studies -- US and Scandinavia.

@annalouiesuss I think the phrase is imperfect but defensible: Scandinavia is ultimately capitalist too, capitalism has a shaping role in most places (developing as well as developed) where fertility is plunging ...

@annalouiesuss ... and the essay does a good job of emphasizing both "workism" and "secularism" as crucial drivers of fertility decline, which makes her framework more usefully capacious than the simplistic, "we need a Scandinavian welfare state!" argument that's common on the left.

@annalouiesuss What's missing, I think, is a more substantial discussion of marriage's decline, and the whole nest of issues surrounding romance, pairing-off, declining sex, possible declining sexual interest, etc.

@annalouiesuss The essay's "reproductive justice" conclusions implicitly assumes the rejection of a normative framework for romance + reproduction. But that position needs to concede that the retreat from that normative framework is a big factor in recent fertility declines.

@annalouiesuss e.g. in the US, married fertility is actually *up* slightly since the Great Recession; it's the declining marriage rate (and a slight decline in unmarried childbearing) driving fertility declines.
ifstudies.org/blog/fertility…

@annalouiesuss In this sense a Q for left pro-natalists is whether the problems with pairing-off, too, can be subsumed under critique of capitalism. Or is "late capitalism" is being used to describe (and avoiding critiquing?) trends that are fundamental to sexual/social liberalism?

@annalouiesuss And as to whether conservatives are too quick to blame sexual liberalism alone for trends that are connected to the culture of late (middle?) capitalism writ large -- yes, definitely, they are.

@annalouiesuss But talking about what we think is happening with marriage and pairing-off is a good place to bring the conversations together.