The Decibel - Baby boomers mourn a future without grandkids

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Canada’s birth rate is at an almost 20-year low. People are deciding not to have kids for a variety of reasons and the pandemic has only intensified this drop. While Millennials and GenZ’s are saying no to kids, the declining birth rate is leaving their parents with an identity crisis: Baby boomers coming to terms with a future without grandkids.The Globe’s Zosia Bielski recently looked into the rising trend of grandchildless boomers. She explains what this new normal means for family dynamics and the pressures that come along with it.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

When he told me what he had done, I literally was crushed momentarily. Zinni Kirshenbaum recently spoke with The Globe's Zosia Bielski about her reaction to her son getting a vasectomy. And then I regrouped because and I said, look, I'm not going to tell you to have kids for me. I mean, I would never say not going to tell you to have kids for me. I mean, I would never say anything. I would never tell you that. And if that's your decision, that's your decision. And I'll deal with it. I mean, I'll get over it.

Canada's birth rate is the lowest it's been in almost 20 years. And Zinni is part of a growing group of boomers who are coming to terms with the fact that they will never be grandparents. Many retirees are adjusting to a new idea of a life without grandkids and what that means for their own identity. I make a great grandparent. I really would make a great grandparent. When I do get access to my friends' grandchildren, I mean, I'm good at it. Especially because when it gets hard, you just give them back. Today on the show, Zosia will tell us how this is changing family dynamics and the pressures that come along with it. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Zosia, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. So we heard from Zinni off the top there, but can you just tell me a little bit more about her? Yeah, so Zinni is 66. Zinni Kirshenbaum is 66. She lives in Thornhill, Ontario. She has two children in their 30s, Sarah, 34, and Jesse, 38. And they were just a wonderful family, a very direct, honest, candid family. And they've been sort of grappling with this demographic shift, small scale in their own family. So Sarah, who's 34, sort of made it clear throughout her life that she really wasn't interested in having kids. It was just never something I thought about. I also don't want a turtle. Like it's just something about I never thought I was going to have kids. So Zinni knew very well there wouldn't be sort of grandkids coming from Sarah. She did hold out some hope that her son Jesse, who's 38, might be a father and she might be a grandparent through him. But seven years ago, he to tell her, I said, hey, by the way, last week I had a vasectomy. We're done. It's just not something we're looking to do. And she threw her hands up in the air and said, f**k. And then that was that. She's a very reasonable person who really trusts and

respects her kids and knew that they are intelligent adults who deserve to make their own decisions. But at the same time, she was sort of wrestling for years with with a real sense of loss. And she sort of exemplified to me a very sort of modern day boomer in Canada sort of going through this, respecting her children's choices, but at the same time experiencing a real grief on a number of fronts. And so, Zosia, what did Zinni say, though, about why she was so upset by this realization that she wasn't ever going to be a grandparent? For starters, she really had envisioned grandchildren in her retirement years. And that was echoed with a lot of people I spoke with, that they were sort of brought up to believe that your elder years are sort of filled with grandchildren and you get to sort of redo the most memorable parts of parenting and you've got more money and time and patience and experience to do this again, you know, do your parenting again

in a new way. It's kind of this expectation that this is how it's going to be. Exactly. And then that bottoms out. And what are you supposed to do with the next 20, 25 years, 30 years of your retirement? There are a lot of really emotion filled reasons why boomers grieve not having grandkids. Maybe they loved being parents themselves and they don't understand why their adult children might not want to repeat that experience. For some, it actually stirs insecurities. They start to wonder, did I do something wrong in my own parenting that my child doesn't want to repeat this experience themselves and have kids themselves? So there's a deep emotional well here. Zinni also mentioned she's been widowed for 15 years.

So in a way, she was counting on grandchildren to help fill up those years. Another layer for her was this concept of the end of the lineage, the end of the family line. The other part of this that I would never put on him or my daughter is that my parents are Holocaust survivors. And you almost feel that as a child of a Holocaust survivor, you almost feel like this obligation or expectation to continue the family, because look what my parents went through to survive. And damn it, they survived, and the generations will continue, and now they won't. She made it clear she's never burdened her children with that because it's just so heavy. But she also made it clear that that's something she had sat with herself.

So Zinni's situation is actually becoming more common because more people in this country are deciding not to have kids. And we know this from the numbers, Osha. So what does Canada's birth rate actually look like now? You know, ever since the advent of the birth control pill, this is decades in, you know, whenever women are given choice in their reproductive health, when they are educated, when they are given opportunities to pursue other paths, we see time and again that the birth rate steadily declined. So by late 2020, we did see sort of a precipitous drop with people sort of delaying their childbearing plans, rethinking their childbearing plans. As a result of the pandemic, basically there. Exactly. Understandably, not wanting to be in a health care system through a pandemic uncertainty.

So we saw those numbers drop in 2020. Then in 2021, we saw a bit of an uptick. I guess people surmised that families were making up for lost time or catching up. But by 2022, we saw something surprising, which was approximately 351,000 live births, a 5% drop in birth rates from 2021. And is 5% significant in these numbers? Absolutely, because it amounts to the lowest birth rate since 2005, which is the lowest birth rate in nearly two decades. And 34% of Canadians, 15 to 49, also relate to StatsCan that they did not intend to have any children. So there are sort of myriad reasons why this may be, but we are seeing some really startling declines, at least in 2022. Can we talk a little bit about what some of these reasons

might be? I mean, we talked a little bit about the pandemic causing kind of that momentary change, but do we have any other ideas about why the birth rate is so low in Canada right now? I mean, you had sort of pundits and economists scratching their heads and positing sort of a wide array of things. So obviously we have an inflationary crisis. We have a cost of living crisis, really untenable, unaffordable housing in a lot of cities in Canada.

We have a precarious gig economy and precarious work and environmental catastrophe and climate change as a real sort of factor that has a lot of young people questioning how and when and if they want to build a family and raise children. So for some, there are medical reasons they want to, but they can't. For others, people may not have the right partner or feel settled. But interestingly, the Pew Research Center out of the States in 2021 found that like 56% of non-parents straight up said they just weren't interested in having kids. They weren't

qualifying it anymore with the economy or housing. So this is becoming a bit more of a speakable sentiment, you know, among non-parents that obviously varies depending on your culture and your values, but certainly simply not having a desire to is a feeling that more people are uttering out loud. So there are, of course, implications of a falling birth rate in a number of different areas, on the economy, for example. But, Zosia, you really focused on the impact that this changing birth rate is having there'd be an uptick after the pandemic with everybody catching up with their childbearing plans. It was just curious to me that once again, we've seen a really significant drop. And I was interested in sort of mining maybe why that is, but also the ripple effects and the reverberations for others beyond the couple sort of making this decision. And one thing that became pretty clear was the real angst among

their parents, among the baby boomer cohort, which has always sort of charted its own course and self-determining is something that we use to describe them. How does this look when baby boomers' expectations are completely upended by their adult children's decisions? And you mentioned a few of the reasons why Zinni was so shocked by the realization of not having grandkids. I guess what else did you learn, though, about what baby boomers were worried about? Certainly what we hear a lot among those criticizing people who choose not to have kids is, you know, who's going to take care of you when you're old. And certainly a lot of us have those thoughts ourselves. Whether or not this is sort of a valid argument remains to be seen. Like we know a lot of fractured families

and far flung families who certainly their children are not acting as full time caregivers. But certainly this was on the mind of boomers, like, who will take care of me when I'm older, who will take care of my adult kids'm older? Who will take care of my adult kids when they're older? We certainly heard from sort of like immigrant communities that they had put so much into getting here and transplanting a life. And what does no grandchildren mean for like laying down roots, setting a foundation after so much, you know, hustle put into establishing yourself here. So it really spans the gamut for people. That's a really interesting point about immigrant communities,

because you have families that, you know, often have to sacrifice a lot to come to a new country. And so that's kind of just exacerbating these feelings, it sounds like. Exactly. And on the flip side, there's a lot of like pressure, guilt, disappointment that these adult children are feeling. And certainly they want fulfilling lives as well. And they aren't loving the feeling that they've let their parents down. And some of the researchers I spoke to talked about estrangement, people sort of no longer being invited to family gatherings or distance. And, you know, you've got to question that in terms of family sort of creating distance over this. This is how important this becomes for many people, some people. Talking about the baby boomers and kind of this, you know, change in retirement

years, there's also kind of like a social loss, isn't there, too? Like if you've got friends who have grandkids, you're, you know, you're feeling something really acute that you're missing out on then. Absolutely. I loved speaking to Jane Isay, who writes a lot about families and grandparents in particular, and the way that grandparents and children can clash when it comes to raising children in our current parenting culture. But anyway, she talked about like, what would Facebook be without photos of grandchildren? You know, that's like a sizable portion of Facebook is sort of now that. So, yeah, we certainly heard from people who of felt left out when their boomer aged friends just sort of disappeared for babysitting duty and, you know, would disappear for weeks on end. So there are real like social losses that may sort of sound like high school-ish, but people

feel this when they feel like the odd man out. We'll be back after this message. So we talked about the impact that this is having on boomers, but there can also be social pressures on the other side of things, right, on the adult kids. I'm wondering if you heard anything from boomer parents about understanding, I guess, the reasons why their kids aren't necessarily having their own kids, like the different financial situation they're in compared to when their parents were younger, housing crisis, financially, it's difficult. I guess, did you hear anything about an understanding of these different circumstances? We talked about this with Zinni, and she sort of laughed and said, well, you know, people still had kids during the Great Depression, right? And in the 20s. And so I think some parents, I'm not going to say Zinni, but some parents can sort of see it as a cop out like they went through sort of tough eras, too. When I spoke with Laura Carroll, who has written many, many books on people who choose not to have children, she talked about parents, modern parents, boomers, understanding that more people are choosing not to have kids. But once it comes home to roost in their own family, once their own kids make that decision, it's still a real moral injury to them.

And I think Laura called it nymphism. So like not in my family. So a general understanding, but then still sort of a resistance when it comes knocking at their own door. Zosia, a lot of what we're talking about is kind of related to this concept called pronatalism. What exactly is that? And can you tell us how does that fit into this conversation? And that this is the right way to live your life. This is the right way to go through life. Like parenthood is like the saintly correct thing to do. This is the right way you go through life. There are stages to life milestones. This is the path you follow. spoken pressures or spoken pressures. But thinkers who sort of study pronatalism will also make clear that these are like broader institutional pressures. So, for example, religious pressure for congregants. We heard Pope Francis opining several years ago about families without children being selfish and people having fur kids and pets being sort of immature and stunted. So why is Pope Francis interested in this? Well, obviously, the church needs adherence, right?

Same thing with growth-based economists. We need a steady economy, steady tax base. Politicians buy into this rhetoric as well. We hear a lot of stoking of fears around what, you know, declining birth rates will mean for our economy, for potential labor shortage, healthcare. I always remind critics, we have a robust immigration demographic here in Canada. But again, a lot of that fear is rooted in pronatalism, right? And these institutional pressures that keep our birth rate steady. Let's go back to Zinni for a second here, because we talked about her feelings. I'm wondering about her kids. Like when we talk about the pressure on adult kids, too, did they feel any kind of obligation or was that really not something that they felt?

Certainly in some families, like they've let go of that concept of obligation, like Jesse talked about, you know, nobody is obligated to give anybody else a baby. You don't understand where the outrage is coming from. But who are you letting down if you don't have kids? Who's missing out? I feel like that's one of those things where if you break down the argument, the answer is that you're an obligation to know one. That's not an obligation. So that there is a modern sense that you aren't obliged, but certainly

in families that sort of prize marriage and children above all else, that that obligation obviously weighed heavy on people. And I spoke to researchers who, you know, study these cohorts. And in those families, you know, adult couples would just sort of avoid family gatherings or avoid the topic of, you know, avoid the question year after year, because they knew it would be explosive to just come out and say, we're not doing it. I'm wondering also about different social pressures for men and for women. So when we're talking about adult kids kind of facing these pressures, yeah, have you heard that women face things differently than men do? Certainly, like much of the discussion around the child-free choice has centered on women

for obvious reasons. I speak often to Therese Schechter, who has a documentary called My So-Called Selfish Life, about the child-free choice and the sort of assumptions that get lobbed at you. And, you know, by and large, it's sort of women carrying this burden of this choice and of being judged for this choice and the assumptions about around motherhood. Sometimes fathers get off easier in this regard, but increasingly, you know, Teresa and others have sort of had men coming to their panels and others who are advocates in this field have talked about sort of men coming forward, especially in cultures where this is still really verboten. Men really struggling with this choice, too, and facing pressure from their own families, facing even pressure in workplaces. You know, myths around like the bachelor, the guy who doesn't settle down. And the sort of corporate punishment that you can sort of face when you're not talking about your kids going to hockey or, you know, like all the standard water cooler tropes. So

certainly men face this as well. But much of the discussion has hinged on women for sure. So before I let you go, we've talked a lot about the negative feelings, really, for people without grandkids. I just wonder, though, is is there an upside? Like, are there people of that generation who are actually maybe embracing a life without grandkids? And that's an interesting question, because I certainly wouldn't say I found anyone who would tell me they were relieved as a baby boomer not to have grandkids. But for those who were certainly not going to have grandchildren in their lives, more and more of them are beginning to sort of adjust to that demographic reality and adapt. So we heard quite a bit from boomers who were just sort of rounding out their retirement, using it as a window of time to focus on other people in their life, their adult children, their partners, their friends. They were traveling, they were studying, they were learning

new things. Of course, some of these people sort of will face a charge that they're selfish, which is something that people without kids hear a lot, that you're selfish. But again, that's something we have to interrogate and ask why, right? A lot of these boomer age parents were forming much closer bonds with their adult children, traveling with them and sort of getting to know them as adults and becoming friends with their adult kids. Which sounds like a really positive thing. Yeah. And there was just a sense that these relationships could be fulfilling too, and that we've sort of cast them as lesser than or not as important or sort of a poor substitute. But again, we have to question why that frame. Some of these boomers are like stepping in as step in grandparents and substitute bubbies and grandparents for their kids, friends, families or their coworkers, families.

I spoke to one woman in New York State who never had her own children or grandchildren, and she was helping raise a friend's kids. She has four kids under five, so a pretty heavy load. And the mother had actually reached out to a number of like, grandchildless boomers in her small community to like help raise her kids. And the woman I spoke with an interfaith Reverend named G. Brees really described this, filling her life in another way and really speaking to her caretaking nature. But at the same time, as a grandchildless woman, she was still setting boundaries. Like she didn't want to be a full-time grandmother. She wanted to play pickleball. She wanted to go to museums.

She didn't want to be saddled with, you know, daycare pickup every day. So it was a really interesting evolution of expanding your family to be able to nurture in that other way without sort of biological kin. So the question is, you know, can we be open-minded about these types of configurations, given the way our fertility rates are going? Socia, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms. Thank you for having me.