Baby fever just isn't spreading like it used to. The United States fertility rate hit an all-time low last year, and some of our biggest musicians, like Charli XCX and Tyler the Creator, are working their parenting anxieties out in their club bangers. This week, host Brittany Luse invites Anastasia Berg, co-author of What are Children For?, to explore the unique way millennials are confronting the age old question of whether or not to have a child.Then, in the wake of media layoffs, there's still a hunger for food coverage. Enter TikTok star and former MMA fighter Keith Lee, whose reviews of local eats have gained him over 16 million followers. Critics of Lee say he's diluting the art of culinary criticism, but fans can't get enough of his casual style. Brittany turns to Detroit Free Press restaurant and dining critic Lyndsay C. Green, and New York Times food writer Korsha Wilson to grapple with the #KeithLee Effect.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Why are pop stars like Charli XCX and Tyler the Creator hesitant to have children?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. All right, Anastasia, if you're ready to go, then I'll start asking questions.
Awesome.
This is Anastasia Berg. She's a professor of philosophy at the University of California and co-author of the book, What Are Children For?
Thank you so much for having me.
My pleasure. My pleasure. So we are here to talk about the question all of us have to face at one point or another. Should I baby or should I brat? Which one are you, baby or brat?
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Chapter 2: What does the phrase 'baby or brat' mean in today's culture?
A bratty baby, I would say. Okay, okay.
I know half of you listening know exactly what me and Anastasia are talking about. And the rest of you think we're insane. The point is that many of you have asked yourself this question at some point in your life because baby or brat is the 2024 millennial and Gen Z way of asking, should I have a baby or not?
Shout out to Shannon Keating at The Cut for being the first to frame the question this way. Baby is, of course, I'm going to have a baby. And Brat is, no, I'm not going to have a baby. I'm choosing to live a child-free life and all that comes with it. Brat is also the name of one of the biggest pop albums of this year by Charli XCX. She even asks this question on the album herself.
Should she have a baby or be the world's biggest pop star?
And while this all feels very specific to millennials... These are actually very old questions. Should I bring more human life? Is it worth the sacrifice and trouble? We see this question raised by the ancient Greeks. We see it raised in the earliest Christian context. So thinking about...
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Chapter 3: How do personal childhood experiences influence decisions about having kids?
What it takes to have children, thinking about bringing children, knowing that human beings are always liable to morally err. All the way up to the 19th century, we have an explosion of what today we would call the antinatalist concerns.
Now, the question may be old, but today's potential parents do face a pretty unique set of concerns around whether to procreate.
The political developments that we disapprove of, climate change, recall of reproductive rights, economic hardship, all these things we see as signs that perhaps it would be irresponsible to bring an unconsenting person into this life, and maybe it would be irresponsible vis-a-vis life on the planet.
And those concerns are creating a lot of anxiety and might be contributing to a falling birth rate. Today, Anastasia and I are going to look at two case studies that get at what's troubling millennials and Gen Zers when it comes to having kids. And they come from two world-conquering musicians who have been wrestling with this question in two of this year's blockbuster albums.
Our first case study, Tyler, the Creator. Tyler, one of the biggest rappers of his generation, dropped a new album called Chromicopia. Throughout the album, there are these clips of his mother giving him advice. And towards the back half of the album, there's this moment where she's begging him for a grandchild. She says, I'm getting old and I need a grandchild, please.
Give it up.
Just one, please. All I need is one. Give it up. We need a little time running around here, okay? Okay, we need a little dookie booty running around here, okay? A couple songs later, Tyler, who's 33 years old, so like squarely in the age group we're discussing, he gets into why he's so hesitant to have a child. And it's all because of his dad. He has this song called Like Him.
And on it, Tyler spends four minutes freaking out about turning out just like his absent father. And this reminds me of a lot of therapy speak we see online all the time. You know, how do I not repeat the mistakes of my parents? And for some of us, for some people, the answer is just to not have a kid, right?
Definitely. Though, interestingly enough, We saw people say, I had a messed up childhood. I don't want to repeat that. We also saw people say, I had a really difficult childhood and I want to create a happy family. Like when I think about why I want to have kids in my life is because I want to give them what I didn't have. And so I feel like that can go both ways. And in fact, I saw people say it.
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Chapter 4: What pressures do millennials face regarding parenthood?
For many of us, it doesn't take something as dramatic as a completely absent father to actually wonder, do I want to recreate the childhood and family life that I've had? And also feeling kind of helpless that I don't even know how I would do different.
Sometimes, like you said, it is something that's quite dramatic. Sometimes it's just something that has made enough of some kind of negative impact that maybe it's not completely debilitating, but you know that you don't want to repeat that or bring that forward into the next generation.
No, I think that's so true. And I think it's not just you're sort of wondering, oh, how do I not create it? You're also thinking, okay. man, like even when it's going okay, it is so tough. I'm not sure I can do a good job of it. And I need to sacrifice maybe my career progress, maybe the quality of my relationship, my own personal growth. Maybe I can't do better.
Maybe it's going to be tough for us as well. And I think that's why a lot of people are afraid to take that risk.
Okay, that is a great segue into our next case study. That's right. Charli XCX. So Charli XCX, she's a UK pop star who's had a huge year since she released her album Brat this past June. The album is full of club music, all about partying and being hot and having a good time. Of course. But then towards the back of the album, there's this one song called I Think About It All the Time.
Mm-hmm.
It's this little ballad where Charlie, who is 31, is wrestling with whether or not she needs to stop partying, stop trying to be the biggest pop star and have a baby.
I think about it all the time That I might run out of time But I finally met my baby And the baby might be mine Cause maybe one day I might If I don't run out of time Would it make me miss all my freedom? Think about it all the time
Time being, of course, this imagined biological clock that fully runs out and Charlie quite literally cannot have a child. And she's dealing with this tension between what life she wants to have for herself as a queer woman versus a mother. And she's feeling deeply, deeply pressured by this biological clock.
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Chapter 5: How does Charli XCX's music reflect her struggles with motherhood?
early, well, until about mid, edging the mid-30s, hearing even from their doctors, like, you don't have to worry about this yet. And we certainly say that to each other. You don't have to worry about it. I think sometimes it can underserve us.
It can underserve us not because everyone needs to have their kids young, but the fact we're taking for granted that the latest we have children, the better. I'm not sure that's always the best strategy.
And I actually think it's a bit refreshing that somebody like Charlie XCX or Tyler, the creator who are younger, are comfortable in expressing the fact that they are thinking about this question, that it's alive for them. Because what happens is it's not that people are, as we were talking earlier, dating with a Vita family and then decide, okay, now I'm in the relationship.
Everything is lined up. Now I'm ready to have them. What happens is they're not even thinking about kids. And so then what happens is that there comes a moment when they think I can't postpone thinking about it anymore. And then there's panic. especially on the side of women who are more limited biologically in terms of kind of extending their timelines indefinitely.
And so one of the things I would like to see is people being comfortable not having the kids younger. I don't care when you have your kids, but I do care that people are given the opportunity. And I think actually this is like a feminist goal is that women are given the opportunity and the knowledge that they need in order to make these decisions and
about how to date and how to live and how to plan out their lives when it matters most. Again, so not to have that decision being made for people as opposed to by the people themselves.
I also wonder about this. It's interesting that you say that it's refreshing for someone like CharlieXCX to bring up these questions. I do think that there is something that is refreshing and really interesting about raising this question in the middle of an album of like club bangers. Yes.
I think what it shows is that there are many people who maybe don't seem like they're thinking about it all the time. When Charlie XCX is talking about using illicit substances in the bathroom at the club, you're not necessarily thinking about that as the person who's considering like, maybe I should have a baby. But very often people are thinking about those two things together.
But I would still argue that we live in an aggressively natalist culture where the expectation is that women will have or want children. And so while I think, like you said, that I think it is a refreshing artistic choice, I bristle at the idea. Yes, I can tell you're bristling. Well, yeah, I bristle at the idea that most people are not already thinking about these things.
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Chapter 6: Are there alternative ways to contribute to society without having kids?
And so I guess, I don't know. I just don't think it's transgressive that this question is being asked by a 32-year-old woman. It is interesting artistically, but I don't know if it's barrier-breaking.
Yeah, I think we live in a society that's both pronatalist and antenatalist. And I think it's important to notice that. So we've heard from women, especially ones, so I'm going to qualify it, especially ones who are in, can call it like avant-garde professions or disciplines. So academics, people in the media, people in the arts. And they'll say, pressure to have kids.
I felt pressure not to have kids.
Certainly.
I felt pressure from parents, certainly from colleagues. It was frowned upon when I was thinking about it, when I had them, etc.
Sure. I mean, I've had friends who were told offhand by employers that they wouldn't have been hired if they had kids, which for the record is illegal. But career pressure can certainly be a factor.
Yeah, so we have, I think, very loud and very strong pressures coming from different directions. Let me give another example. So one thing we look at is film and television. And we find that after years where women played the role of second fiddle, there were wives and mothers and secretaries, we have them now taking center stage, the protagonists of shows and films.
It is remarkable how often they are a protagonist but how rarely they are a mother. So from the stoners of Broad City to the spies of Homeland to the kind of political operatives of Scandal and House of Cards, they're very rarely mothers.
So again, somebody attuned to that messaging will say, well, the message is you could be anything you want to be, lady, as long as you're deprioritizing motherhood. I think both things are happening at the same time. I think your cab driver is asking questions he should not.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of discussing parenting in pop culture?
100%.
You can be a mother, but you can't be the star of the show. You can be a mother, but you can't be the protagonist. Or if you are a mother and the protagonist... then being a mother is the focus of your life as opposed to having both your personhood and your children's personhood both moving along together forward in time. One band, one sound. Usually the mother identity is prioritized.
I absolutely see that. And I'll say, I think looking across at the rest of pop culture, there's like this alternative when looking at like perhaps mega famous, very rich, very wealthy women, like say Beyonce or Rihanna or the Kardashians, where these are people whose careers have only gotten bigger after they've had children.
But in some ways it could be said that's because they've capitalized off of the image of their motherhood, even though their lived experience of motherhood is probably devoid very, very different than yours is or how mine might be or the average person. Here's the thing. This question, to have a baby or not to have a baby, is a binary. There is or there is not a child.
You have a life before and a life after. But I don't know. I think that this kind of thinking is I agree with you. Instead of to have or to not have a baby, what's a better question that would help us understand what we want from life?
I love that. I completely agree with you. And I think that this kind of binary, which is not just a grasp of the question as a binary one, but it's also this binary that we have in identities that we see people kind of doubling down on the identity of the the woes with kids and the childless. I think these are underserving us.
I think the question I would like to have people ask is, do I want to take part in, sometimes I call it a little facetiously, team humanity? Do I think we deserve a future and a good one? And if so, only then, and if the answer is yes, then I can ask, how are you going to do it? Are you going to do it by having biological children?
Maybe you're going to be a parent, but these aren't your biological children. Maybe you're going to be a great aunt. Maybe you're going to be a godparent. Maybe you're going to be a teacher. Maybe you're going to be a politician that secures the right kind of conditions so people can raise their families in comfort and dignity.
Maybe you're going to be an artist who creates an artistic legacy that's going to enrich our lives and that we can hand down to future generations. Maybe you're going to be an amazing interviewer and you're going to help people think through the way they want to shape their own lives and the lives of others.
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