Breeding Envy: Do You Need to be a Millionaire to Have Kids?

By Vanessa Richmond, The Tyee. Posted September 6, 2008.

"Unlike the rest of us, sex lies and scandal never take a vacation, instead they take the Long Island Expressway and head east to the Hamptons," says the narrator on the season two opener of Gossip Girl. But unlike in Gossip Girl, many people are taking a permanent vacation from breeding, and the show provides one clue as to why.

As I look around at my friends who have adorable spawn, what strikes me is what a good job they're doing, but also how they're consumed by an ever-increasing list of things they should be but aren't doing and buying for their kids. It's a list that no one but those with abundant time and money can even hope to stay on top of -- like, say, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. If you don't want to join 'em, you can beat 'em by shunning mainstream values and expectations, but then you run the risk of being called a bad parent, possibly the worst slur there is.

I think it's one of the main reasons that breeding is in danger of becoming a spectator sport for the middle class. In the U.S., the birth rate is still high enough to replace the population at 2.09 babies per woman, but in Canada, it's at 1.53 and falling. And in both countries, the middle class is playing well below the average.

Silver spoons mandatory

Until the 1970s, says Nathanael Lauster, a professor of sociology at UBC, the expectations for what was required to be a good parent were that neither parent was still attending high school, that they had their own household (which just means they no longer lived with their parents, though renting or owning were equally OK, as was living in an apartment or house), that the man was employed and that his income was enough to provide for a stay-at-home mother (rarely inconceivable, ahem). And if you could meet those expectations, you were qualified.

Now, "we have defined upward the kind of staging required to be a parent; it's increasingly tied to affluence," says Lauster. Potential parents need to be able to not only afford daycare (which in Vancouver is around $1200 a month, if you can get a place) or a nanny, expensive kid gear like strollers and fashionable baby clothes and the keys to their own house. There's a growing expectation that one parent will take a year off work, and given the cost of living and housing, that means an even higher level of affluence is required. "Until you can afford this list of things, you're not ready," says Lauster, which means more people put off parenting until later or forever. And, if you do have kids, the list of expectations continues to grow with them.

So it's no wonder that viewers are glued to Gossip Girl. In addition to having the most compelling (kind-hearted) bitch on TV, some of the best writing around, fantastically soapy drama, perfect half-sincere and half-satirical tone and great music, Gossip Girl epitomizes the new über-consumerist kid-raising ideal.

The narrative, according to Lauster, is that as a parent, your job is to help your kids in every way, and money is essential to doing that. In the season two opener, Jenny Humphries, who comes from the wrong side of the bridge (a large, loft apartment in Brooklyn), has an internship with a prominent fashion designer (all the rich kids bypass Manhattan's internships, spending the summer in Europe and the Hamptons). That designer doesn't even remember her name and brushes off Jenny's attempt to show her one of Jenny's own designs. So she calls on her friend to take her to the very exclusive White Party in the Hamptons, to which the designer also has an invite. After that, the designer calls her by name and looks her in the eye. Message: hard work and talent is a dime a dozen; respect and opportunity are pricey.

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