Brother, Can You Spare A Thought?

There is a genre of story in The Atlantic (and in other publications, I would guess) that strikes me as: "Won't somebody think of the impoverished?" The general pattern of the stories is as follows: Some beneficial activity, X, is easier to successfully pursue under set of circumstances Y. Because set of circumstances Y is more accessible to people with money, poor people are locked out of activity X, and isn't that terrible?

Caroline Kitchener's piece on women having children (especially their first) after the age of 40 is an example of the type. The advantages of having children after the age of 40 are established: "For both affluent and low-income women, it seems to help to circumvent the gender-wage gap." The idea that it's easier for people of means is put out there: "'It is a privilege to be able to wait—to have more economic advantages when you have kids,' Feinberg said. But for the vast majority of mothers, that’s not an option." And finally, we're told why this is terrible: "If only the most affluent mothers are able to reap the rewards that come with older motherhood, Shreffler told me, 'that might perpetuate the inequality that we already see in children born to women with and without a college degree:' lifting up the fruits of the fortysomethings, leaving behind the kids of the moms who couldn’t afford to wait."

By the end of the article, I could almost feel Ms. Kitchener leaning over me, looking to see if I was wringing my hands properly. But it seems to me that these articles, focused as they are on reminding us yet again of the unfairness of the fact that people without money aren't as well-off as people with money, don't then take the discussion to the next level - fixing things.

This article is an advocacy piece, and it strikes me that the goal is for readers to go out and press policymakers for fertility and maternity care that's more readily available and of lower cost. Which is fair enough. There is nothing wrong with either of those goals. But it strikes me that it may be easier, not to mention far less expensive, to see what can be done to make the advantages of becoming a parent at 40+ available to people who become parents in their twenties, when they don't have as much need for expensive medical interventions to become pregnant, deliver a healthy child and come out of the experience in good health themselves. Likewise, encouraging more people to take time away from work, for whatever reason, when they are young would go a ways towards remedying the wage gap that maternity leave tends to open without asking the currently childless to subsidize their coworkers' childbearing choices and timing.

And, to be sure, the options put forth are not necessarily bad choices. They may, in fact, be the best available options, in which case, go for it. But the formulaic nature of stories lamenting the inability of the less well off to behave in the same way as their wealthier peers seems to blind people to the idea that there is more than one road that leads to Rome.