Babycult
Having Children in an Age of Affluence
Read and Rachel Schuchardt
January 1, 1998
"A child is the ultimate pet."
-JOOP! Jeans Ad
At first blush, it might not seem that the New Jersey Prom Girl (a.k.a. Melissa Drexler) and the McCaughey septuplets are manifestations of the same cultural malaise. In the middle of her high school prom, Drexler gave birth and then dropped her newborn in a trash can. Bobbi McCaughey, on the other hand, became the world's first mother of surviving septuplets, a fact achieved by modern medicine (and its unpredictable side effects) but celebrated by the McCaugheys with the famously ironic line, "We're just trusting in God."
These two examples point to a culture of ambivalence that has grown up in the U.S. around the conception and care of children. On the one hand, Americans spare no effort to conceive and consume for wanted children; on the other hand, they leave the care of all too many of those children to nannies, illegal immigrants, and daycare workers. More ominously, Americans leave unwanted children to trash cans, abortion clinics, and contraceptive devices.
Our ambivalence to children is rooted in the thoroughgoing worldliness of American life and in the premium Americans place on raising our children with access to the best schools, toys, and neighborhoods. In the early years of their adult life, many Americans don't want children because (a) they impinge on careers, degrees, leisure, romantic relationships, and various and sundry material goods (cars, a home, and so forth) and (b) children seem to require more than adults think they can give in the way of material and emotional support. As they move closer to middle age, however, these same adults realize that the biological clock is ticking and, as their worldly pursuits grow less meaningful, that the one objective they ...
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