Published August 30, 2024
A recent New York Times article chronicled the plights of American families who feel compelled to go into debt to offer their children—or themselves—regular Disney vacations. The feature led off with a Connecticut couple in their late 30s who earn $250,000 a year but had to pile up debt to take their first child, age 2, for the Disney experience that had been an annual ritual for them since 2015. We should not judge anyone too harshly based on a Times profile, but there are several problems with this picture.
As poster children for the DINK (“double income no kids”) lifestyle until age 34, this couple seem, like Peter Pan, determined to never grow up, chasing a fairy-tale world of perpetual youth and the habits of hand-to-mouth consumption that go with it. Their son, too young to ever remember any of this experience, appears merely as a prop for his parents’ vain quest to relive their own childhoods. In this, he is far from alone.
As birth rates plunge in America and worldwide, one would expect a theme park designed almost entirely around children to see steadily sagging revenues. Instead, after a temporary COVID-19 hit, revenue from Disney’s theme parks surged to a record $32.5 billion in 2023. Even as fewer children visit its parks every year, Disney has succeeded in getting more of its guests to think of themselves like children, charging extra for those without the patience to wait in line. And as Americans have fewer and fewer children, they seem determined to spend even more on those they do have; witness the fact that rising Christmas spending has significantly outpaced inflation since 2009, even as the number of children in each home has decreased.
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Brad Littlejohn, Ph.D., is a Fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping public leaders understand the intellectual and historical foundations of our current breakdown of public trust, social cohesion, and sound governance. His research investigates shifting understandings of the nature of freedom and authority, and how a more full-orbed conception of freedom, rooted in the Christian tradition, can inform policy that respects both the dignity of the individual and the urgency of the common good. He also serves as President of the Davenant Institute.
