The New York Times ran a follow-up report earlier this week on the "childless Americans" story. In this piece, they confronted even more directly the social conservative argument I was worrying about last week. As you may recall, I wrote at the time that conservatives like Vance would almost certainly interpret the decision of many American young adults to pass on raising children as a "selfish" choice.
And indeed, the follow-up article from the Times cites several conservative commentators making exactly this claim. The article quotes one Fox News host, for instance, as saying that young people are choosing not to reproduce because "They just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyoncé concerts. It’s this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace [sic] of fulfillment[.]"
They also quoted Vance's original claims—the ones that sparked so much controversy on this subject initially—at slightly greater length. In 2021, in his original "cat lady" rant, Vance apparently went on to say that career-oriented Democratic politicians "hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games."
Now, my initial response to Vance's claims was largely to point out his hypocrisy. Vance, after all, has sold out the whole nation and the future of its democracy for blatantly self-interested reasons. Here is someone who betrayed every principle he once had—walked back everything he once stood for—in order to pursue political power in D.C.
And so, I quoted Philip Larkin on this subject. In a poem pondering whether his friend Arnold—who is married with children—is less "selfish" than himself, he eventually concludes that there is actually not "such a contrast" between them, because Arnold, too, is "out for his own ends/ Not just pleasing his friends." The same could be said of Vance.
And indeed, the hypocrisy of Vance's original argument emerges even more clearly from the passage the Times quoted at greater length. After all, who—if not Vance—has prioritized "D.C. status games" in their life, over any set of moral values? Vance has spent his career as a Yale law grad, a venture capitalist, and now a U.S. Senator-cum-MAGA demagogue. How's that for "status games"?
And so, indeed, I am inclined to repeat: there is not "such a contrast." Vance is "out for his own ends, not just pleasing his friends." Vance is more selfish than I.
And yet, at the same time—as satisfying as these arguments from hypocrisy may feel to make, I also recognize that they are somewhat sophistical. Indeed, I was really just offering a form of the Tu quoque fallacy.
Pointing out Vance's double standard on the issue of "status games" may impugn his credibility; but this is a mere ad hominem. As such, it does not address the validity of the argument as such, if we could imagine it coming from someone less overtly hypocritical on the issue than Vance himself. Let us, therefore, posit a hypothetical person making this same argument whose record on "status games" is less stained.
How would I respond to such a person? Well, my more serious arguments on the question of whether or not being childless is a "selfish" choice take two forms.
First, there is the pluralism argument. Put simply, it takes all kinds to make a world. This does not mean we need to be relativists, or to argue that having kids is "just as good" as the alternative. To the contrary, I believe that parents are probably able to realize certain values in their lives that I will never be able to achieve in my own life, because I made the opposite choice. And those values are genuine goods.
The point of pluralism is not to deny this fact, but rather to say that I, by making the opposite choice, and remaining childless, am also able to realize certain values in my own life that I would not otherwise be able to obtain—they just happen to be different values from the ones that parents are able to obtain. And these alternative values are genuine goods as well.
The same could be said, by the way, about every opportunity cost in life. Doctors are probably able to achieve certain rewards from their careers that other people will never understand. But that does not mean everyone needs to be a doctor. In fact, society would lose out if everyone became a doctor, because there are so many other values that would go unrealized.
I was talking to my sister about this (who has two kids of her own), and she compared the question "Should I have kids?" to the question "Should I climb Mt. Everest?" The answer is—it could be rewarding; if it's one of the goals you want to realize and devote time to in your life, go for it! But you could spend the same time and energy on something else. Certainly, the fact that climbing Mt. Everest is a rewarding and satisfying achievement does not entail that everyone needs to do it.
Now, it's possible to imagine alternative realities where this argument would not apply. If all human beings were immortal and had unlimited energy, perhaps there would be no justification for such pluralism. It would be reasonable, then, to ask each of us to realize all possible values through all possible life choices, and thereby to lead a "full" life. But since we do not inhabit a universe like that, we are forced to pick and choose. We live in a world where there are always opportunity costs.
We each will only get to maximize a subset of potential values in our life. So we have to decide which ones those are going to be. Parents have chosen to realize the set of values that comes from having kids. I have chosen to maximize values that would be much harder to obtain with offspring.
And by diversifying our labor in this way—by each of us choosing to maximize different values in our life—we don't just end in relativist confusion. To the contrary, we maximize the aggregate number of values that our whole society is able to realize in total. We can accomplish more—achieve more forms of human good—by differentiating our roles in society, rather than by demanding uniformity.
That's response number one, then, to the hypothetical un-hypocritical person who makes Vance's argument. Response number two is a transcendental argument about the definition of altruism.
Note that the conservative critique of the choice not to have kids is that it is self-centered. This is because the choice is framed in terms of trying to maximize one's own well-being, rather than further the good of others. It is, in the words of the Fox News commentator quoted above: the "pursuit of self-pleasure."
But, even supposing arguendo this is true, it does not prove very much. After all, some degree of "pursuit of self-pleasure"—or at least, of the pursuit of one's own well-being and satisfaction in life—is implied in the definition of altruism itself, even though this is often seen as the opposite of "self-pleasure."
The purpose of being altruistic, after all, is to support the well-being of others. If this support comes at the expense of one's own happiness, however, it becomes self-refuting.
Think of it this way. Suppose we frame the categorical imperative of altruism as: "Make yourself less happy in order to further the happiness of others." The dictum implies that the "happiness of others" is a good. But it simultaneously implies that the happiness of oneself is bad. This is a contradiction. It implies that what's good for the goose is not good for the gander.
A categorical imperative, after all, is supposed to be something that can be applied universally. It is supposed to take the form of "do unto others what you would have them do unto you." But if you are supposed to make others happy but not yourself, or vice versa, then you are doing unto others what you would not have them do unto you.
If every person is morally obliged to make themselves miserable in order to make others happy, in other words, then no one actually has a moral right to happiness (because becoming happy is "selfish"). But, if no one has a moral right to happiness, then it cannot be right to try to make them happy. And so, on this theory, it is morally wrong to make others happy. You should instead try to make them unhappy. But in that case....
As you see, altruism—if it is defined in this way—ends up contradicting itself.
We therefore need to conceive of altruism differently. We must recognize that it implies, on some level, both that I have a right to happiness and that others have a right to happiness. I therefore am morally entitled to consider my own happiness, when making a decision—and doing so is not "selfish." Indeed, doing so is the only way to make altruism work as a logical concept.
And for some people—because of their personal idiosyncrasies or for whatever other reason—having kids of their own would make them less happy. And—per this argument—they are morally entitled to weigh this fact, without thereby becoming "selfish." I consider myself to be one of these people, who would be less happy with his own kids, and prefers to be an eccentric uncle.
Okay, all good arguments—if I do say so—but suppose Vance (or our hypothetical more credible stand-in for him) responds: "You wouldn't have so many idiosyncrasies on this subject if we still lived in a society that just forced you to have kids." Or: "If social norms bound you to have kids, you would find that you actually gained real happiness from it in practice, even if you think now that you wouldn't."
In short, the argument is that the childless-by-choice Americans have fallen victim to false consciousness.
Indeed, this seems to be what the Fox News commentator was driving at, in contrasting "self-pleasure" with genuine "fulfillment." She is saying that people would be happy in a deeper sense, even if they would have less superficial pleasure in the short term, if they buckled down and raised families.
And perhaps it's true—how am I to know in the abstract?—that I would find more "fulfillment" in practice from having kids than not having them. And indeed, I think, unlike a lot of other liberals, I'm actually willing to bite the bullet on this one. I think it could actually be true that people are more fulfilled when they live in small-scale communities that are governed by strong social norms.
One can think of the sociological concept of the "Gemeinschaft," or the community, in contradistinction to the "Gesellschaft," or modern society, that we now inhabit. And many people, even if they would not choose to live in one if actually given the choice, can at least see the appeal of the Gemeinschaft. We tend to idealize village agrarian life, even if we do not seek it out.
Indeed, it's possible to over-idealize village life, or to regard the human past through nostalgia-tinted glasses. Ferdinand Tönnies himself—who introduced the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft dichotomy into sociology—was guilty of this. I was reading his classic book on the subject this week, and it must be said he often veers off into frankly mystical depictions of the "Gemeinschaft" idyll at times, when he tries to describe it.
Tönnies's book is really very strange in multiple ways one from a modern perspective. It does not include any of the evidentiary support one would demand today from a sociological treatise. There are no ethnographies, let alone data sets. Rather, the author's reflections are offered as a series of categorical (yet meandering) assertions, which one can either take or leave.
Yet, even admitting this, it must be said that some of Tönnies's framework rings true. His distinction fundamentally depends on the insight that there is a real difference between the types of activities that people do because they want to, for their own sake, and the types that people do because they view them as a means to an end.
In small-scale communities, the "Gemeinschaften," Tönnies argues, human cooperation will arise primarily through the first type of motives, which he dubs the "natural will." Parents look after their children, or spouses for each other, because—at least in many cases—they "love" them, not because they consciously pursue an instrumental purpose or secondary good by doing so.
The alternative motivation—the "rational will," in Tönnies's framework—inspires people to act because they hope to gain some positive secondary benefit as a result of their action. And this motive will tend to predominate the larger a society becomes—the more, that is to say, it ceases to be Gemeinschaft and becomes "Gesellschaft."
I've argued something similar before—in the theory that a friend and I developed of the "Three Motives." Basically, as I summarized in that earlier post on the subject, people living in society need to find ways to cooperate with one another. They can rely up to a point on sheer voluntary altruism—the desire to cooperate for its own sake. This concept is analogous to Tönnies's "natural will."
The only problem with relying on voluntary altruism, however, is that historically it has tended to break down outside of small groups of genetically-related kin or close friends. To get the benefits of cooperation on a larger social scale, including among genetic strangers, societies often need to resort to the other two motives: either coercion by the state or appeals to economic self-interest. These latter two are what Tönnies would call "rational will."
Many of us might wish to live in a world governed entirely by the "natural will" or voluntary altruism of the Gemeinschaft. We might wish that people helped each other not because they were afraid of punishment if they didn't, or because they sought to gain some concrete economic benefit for themselves from doing so, but simply because they wanted to, for its own sake.
Utopian socialist communes and anarchist collectives throughout modern history have been little more than attempts to build a Gemeinschaft under modern conditions. They have sought to construct systems of economic cooperation that rely exclusively on the impulse to voluntary altruism, rather than on the "stick" of coercion or the "carrot" of economic self-interest.
But, so far at least, none of these experiments has managed to operate on a society-wide scale for long. It seems that, when we wish to achieve the benefits of larger levels of human cooperation among bigger groups of genetic strangers, we are forced to resort to the other two motives. This is not to say that altruism must vanish from life; merely that it tends to be supplemented by the incentive structures of the state and the marketplace.
In talking about family life, Vance seems to be hearkening to a Gemeinschaft-like ideal. Indeed, when he says—as quoted in the Times article—that "normal Americans" prefer "family life" over "status games," he is practically channeling Tönnies.
The latter, after all, argues that the common people tend to prefer life in the Gemeinschaft—and it is only the rich, who know they can survive under conditions of remorseless competition—who opt for the "freedom" of the Gesellschaft. And since they are the ones with the wealth and power, they can force their model of society on the recalcitrant majority, who would never have chosen Gesellschaft for themselves.
As the sociologist writes (Loomis trans.): "The great and mighty, feeling free and independent, have always felt a strong inclination to break through the barriers of the folkways and mores. They know that they can do as they please. They have the power to bring about changes in their favor [....] The mechanism is money."
Thus, it is only the wealthy who would choose the Gesellschaft over the more hidebound Gemeinschaft. The rest of us just have to live in the world the "mighty" have chosen. Their "freedom" is actually our bondage. Or so the argument runs.
Vance would seem to agree with this. We will leave aside for now the fact that he has himself chosen the path of the "mighty" and to pursue power in his own life (often echoing meritocratic ideology to explain the poverty of the people he left behind in the Appalachian foothills)—no matter, we are choosing not to use the "Tu quoque" or any other ad hominem argument here, remember? If we forget the hypocrisy of the messenger, Vance's argument would probably go as follows:
"It is only the relatively rich and successful who can thrive under conditions of 'free competition' in the Gesellschaft. Other people prefer to be bound by social norms that protect them. And so, the relative rigidity of social norms in small communities—where people often face significant pressure to have kids—actually represents relative 'freedom' for ordinary people. These norms only seem 'oppressive' to the powerful and rich."
Indeed, this is the part that worries me about the response to Vance's comments: liberals might be overlooking the fact that many people might actually relate to Vance's concerns.
To be sure, Vance's "cat ladies" diatribe is off-putting to ordinary Americans because it was flagrantly mean-spirited. It made below-the-belt personal jabs at rival politicians in a way that was simply cruel. It also stigmatizes people who might actually wish to have children—but can't for various reasons.
Meanwhile, Vance's attempts to justify himself, in the aftermath, have also come across as defensive and insecure. It's the style in which he made this argument, then, that is really alienating to people, and which made the new Democratic talking point about Vance being "weird" actually resonate.
I do worry, though, that Democrats may be missing the fact that some of the content, rather than the style, of what Vance said may not strike ordinary Americans as weird at all.
Many of them may indeed feel that there is something depressing about young people no longer wanting to have families. Many of them may feel that a Gemeinschaft world where we live in small kinship groups where there is a default expectation that adults will try to have children would be preferable to the atomized system of individualistic competition we know in mass society today.
Suppose we posit, then, that Vance is right about all of this. Suppose for a moment we would actually all be better off living in small pre-modern agricultural settlements (could we keep antibiotics at least, if we otherwise had to turn back time?). Let us say we grant all of this. We still have to contend with the fact that this is not actually the world we live in.
We live in a Gesellschaft. Vance might like to reinvent the Gemeinschaft. But the only tools available to do so, in a Gesellschaft, are the instruments that the Gesellschaft knows how to wield. In a mass society, you cannot restore informal social norms, which have ceased to be felt as binding on people, by the means of informal social norms (which are the only means the Gemeinschaft would deploy). You can only do so by appealing to force—that is, one of the motives of the Gesellschaft.
You can use "rational will" and the stick of state coercion to try to force people to obey a social norm. Indeed, this appears to be Vance's program—he would like to reduce the proportional political representation of people without kids as a disincentive to remaining childless. But doing so is not a Gemeinschaft or "natural will"- dependent strategy. It is a Gesellschaft or "rational will" strategy.
You cannot use Gesellschaft-type means to escape the Gesellschaft. Doing so only builds a more totalitarian version of the Gesellschaft. It might be possible, after all, to legislate mandatory reproduction. But this would be a very different thing from the kind of informal social obligations that prevail in the Gemeinschaft. It is to create a totalitarian mass society in place of a real community.
There's all the difference in the world, that is to say, between your parents asking you if they can expect grandkids anytime soon—annoying as that might be—and the faceless bureaucrats of the state mandating that you fertilize an egg somewhere, under penalty of losing your vote or facing other coercive repercussions.
This is how social conservatism often evolves into something quite different: fascism. The cultural conservative may begin with a (partially justified) nostalgia for some aspect of the human past. But the only means "back" to that past are the ones ready-to-hand in a mass society: the motives of coercion and economic incentives. The "rational will."
And so, the fascists try to force their version of social norms on the public by the means of the coercive arm of the state. And they may very well succeed. But by doing so, they have certainly not reinvented the past. They have not returned us to the idyllic village communities that they were perhaps envisioning. Instead, they have created a totalitarian dystopia of the sort only possible under modern conditions.
Is there truly no way, then, to foster Gemeinschaft-type values under Gesellschaft conditions? Are we doomed to reside forever in the Gesellschaft once we have started down that path?
Well, I mentioned above that there are two motives that fall under the heading of "rational will"; or two strategies for fostering cooperation in human societies that have grown too large for voluntary altruism to carry the weight on its own. Those strategies are, to repeat: coercion and economic incentives.
We have seen what happens when conservatives try to use coercion to foster Gemeinschaft-type values. They end up creating fascism. They don't actually recreate a Gemeinschaft, but just a different and far more oppressive version of the Gesellschaft.
But what if we tried using economic incentives to encourage Gemeinschaft values? Suppose, for example, we gave a tax credit to families with children? Suppose, instead of the "stick" of coercion, we used the "carrot" of economic rewards to make it easier for people to afford to raise a family?
Congress in fact tried to do that just yesterday. Republicans were the ones who voted it down. And Vance—for all his talk of "family," and all his accusations that Democrats are "anti-child"—was conspicuously absent from the vote.
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