Vox Sentences - Millennial mom dread

Monday, December 4, 2023

Happy Monday,

Welcome to the working week. (I’m on an Elvis Costello kick. Hit me with your new-wave recommendations: dylan.scott@vox.com.) 

Here’s the agenda today:

UP FIRST: How millennials learned to dread motherhood

CATCH UP: Israel moves into southern Gaza after a week-long truce

— Dylan Scott, senior correspondent

How millennials learned to dread motherhood

Eleanor Davis for Vox

Bleak depictions of motherhood have taught younger Americans that having children is a burden, rather than a complicated — but often rewarding — tonic of stresses and pleasures.

US birth rates are dropping and, while it is appropriate to cite America’s dismal social safety net for families as an important factor behind this problem, a less obvious reason people are having fewer children may be the constant reinforcement from the news media and entertainment industry that motherhood is a nightmare.

Vox’s Rachel Cohen lays out the problem in a striking essay, replete with her own internal dialogue about one of the biggest decisions that a person can make. She details how the cultural discourse can leave people deciding not to have kids not because they don’t want to but because the prospect feels too daunting — or, on the opposite side of the ledger, deciding to have kids but only with great apprehension.

I’m a dad, and much of Rachel’s writing also resonated with me. When I tell people I have three kids under the age of five, they will often ask how my wife and I do it. Baked into the question is the presumption there are a multitude of challenges that come with raising all those little ones. And I will be the first to admit, I will often indulge such a question with a half-serious shake of my head and a shrug of my shoulders — because being a parent can indeed be trying. 

But yielding to that pessimism is also easier, in a way. People usually empathize with the struggles of being a parent. But I am wary about gushing about the more rewarding parts of being a parent, because I worry about alienating other people — even though, in my experience, the benefits of having children do easily outpace the difficult parts of the job.

And that is Rachel’s point. It seems the culture may have undergone an overcorrection. We certainly shouldn’t minimize or ignore the difficulties that come with childrearing, especially for women, who still on average bear the most burden, both in pregnancy and in parenting. Past generations weren’t better off because they shoved those problems off to the side.

But at the same time, our conversation needs more balance — because, if you take a closer look, as Rachel did, parenting in reality is not always what the modern culture would lead you to believe.

• People are bombarded with messages about the difficulties of parenting. If you are on TikTok, you might have seen “The List” (of reasons not to have kids) that went viral last year. Novels, TV shows, and movies are often lauded for portrayals of the existential struggles that parents experience. Nonfiction books, opinion articles, and even straight news reporting seem to come with implicit assumptions about how difficult it is to be a mom — and the audience is likewise trained to be skeptical of people who seem to be enjoying parenthood.
• Being a parent has become increasingly politicized. Republicans continue to lean on family-focused messaging — but often with an emphasis on traditional gender roles, not to mention their crusade against reproductive freedom. Democrats, in response, tend to ignore the positives of parenthood in favor of emphasizing reproductive rights (i.e., the right not to have children) and fixating on the weaknesses of the safety net. 
• Popular portrayals miss the more complex reality of parenting. One of the most striking passages in the essay concerns a recent Pew poll on parenthood. The data had served as the basis for an NYT story on the increasing difficulties of parenting. But when Rachel took a look at the survey herself, she discovered that about 80 percent of respondents said they enjoyed being a parent most or all of the time, and they found it rewarding most or all of the time. 

Read Rachel’s essay on millennials and motherhood in its entirety.

Israel moves into Gaza after week-long truce

Amir Levy/Getty Images

The Israel-Hamas truce is over and the war is back on. The fight is moving into southern Gaza, Vox’s Ellen Ioanes reports, where 2 million Palestinians are stuck with insufficient access to food, clean water, or medicine.

The week-long ceasefire led to 105 hostages being released by Hamas and 240 Palestinians being released from Israeli prisons, most (but not all) women and minors. A limited number of trucks were also allowed to cross into Gaza and supply much-needed humanitarian aid. But as the Israeli military resumes its operations in the Palestinian territory, it is unclear what long-term objectives the Israelis are working toward.

• At least 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in two months of fighting. That includes more than 700 people who have been killed since Israel began bombarding Gaza again on Friday morning. International pressure to minimize civilian casualties seems to be having little effect on the Israeli military’s tactics.
• Israel continues bombing to target underground tunnels. The Israel military is fixated on using an aerial bombardment campaign to eradicate Hamas’s underground tunnel networks. Nearly 100,000 buildings have been demolished or damaged during the war, and roughly 60 percent of Gaza’s housing has been destroyed or damaged.
• It’s not clear what Israel’s end goal really is. As experts told Ellen, the Israeli campaign has caused a lot of damage and killed a lot of people, but has not realized many concrete strategic successes. Hamas’s leadership remains intact, the costs of degrading its military capabilities are rising, and there’s the long-term risk that such a brutal war will only serve to radicalize more Palestinians.

• Native Americans are building their own solar farms. Driven in part by continued incursions into their historic territory by fossil-fuel projects, American Indians have begun investing in solar energy, supported by $14 billion in tax credits through the Inflation Reduction Act. For communities where as many as 30 percent of homes lack electricity, these projects could be a lifeline. [BBC]
• Nuclear fusion is so hot right now. Nearly $3 billion was spent on fusion research last year. One start-up has raised $500 million and now has 200 employees, with the goal of producing electrical output by the end of 2024. The next goal would be to produce more electricity than is required to run their machinery. From there, they could finally be on the path to commercialization. [NPR]
• Robot wars are the future. More drones and fewer aircraft carriers are the future of warfare. The US military is working to find both four-star generals with the vision to prepare for that inevitable future and the coders who can do the necessary grunt work. As in all things geopolitical these days, the first and foremost concern is how America’s capabilities stack up against China’s. [Axios]

It’s okay to suck when you try something new

Why is dating advice on TikTok so sexist — and so bleak?

The first results from the world’s biggest basic income experiment

Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, briefly explained

Today’s crossword

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