I really can't comprehend how someone can look at the state of things and think it is appropriate to subject another person to the rat-ass future that's coming. That's before you even consider the expense of raising children, which is also prohibitive.
They don't "look"... Those are the ones that want kids. Those who weight the pros and cons, most likely reach the conclusion that having kids is not feasible.
Not having kids is the only way some of them are gonna be able to afford to live, and less people 30 years from now means they might even be able to afford a place to live if they can retire.
There's always fearmongering when populations god down, but historically it's the only time periods normal people can claw back some wealth from the 0.1%
Which is why the wealthy always freak the fuck out. They do t care about people, they care about labor supply, and the more people the cheaper labor.
Having fewer children is something that is positively-correlated with a society being wealthy, rather than the other way around.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-fertility-rate-vs-level-of-prosperity
The phenomenon of societies having their birth rate fall off as they become wealthier is called the demographic transition.
And further, that correlation exists across a number of axes:
Time (that is, as societies have become wealthier, the number of children they have has dropped).
Space (poorer societies today tend to have more children than wealthier societies do).
Within a society. Poorer people in society tend to have more children. Here's the US, and more-generally:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
Income and fertility is the association between monetary gain on one hand, and the tendency to produce offspring on the other. There is generally an inverse correlation between income and the total fertility rate within and between nations.[3][4] The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any developed country.
Within a society. Poorer people in society tend to have more children.
That’s why the very wealthy want people to keep having lots of kids. Kids make you more willing to take shit in order to feed them and make you poorer and more dependent on your job. That’s not a bad thing about kids, it’s a good thing about parents, but it also makes parents easier to exploit.
Having fewer children is something that is positively-correlated with a society being wealthy, rather than the other way around.
Correlation is not causation, there's no "other way around"...
But what you're talking about is the drop in fertility due to industrialization and other periods where children worked less and cost more.
That's different than what I'm talking about; when a labor supply shrinks it means workers get paid more.
That's just basic supply and demand.
We're both right, just talking about different things.
I took "rather than the other way around" to mean "rather than negatively-correlated" in this context, since positively was emphasized
There is the real issue of how a society will support its aged population with significantly less young people working than in the past. It requires changes to regulations and taxation and many nations arent ready to accept that and instead somehow expect the smaller number of young people to just pick up the slack and accept they won't get to retire when they age.
Or we could just tax the wealthy...
Yes, i mentioned it requires changes to taxation. A lot of the wealthy are the older so they won't vote in a way that helps young people, they vote in a way to preserve their wealth, even if it means poor social services for people the same age as them but "poor".
Just die at a reasonable age.
Robots for care
maybe giving people the option for an early peaceful end on thier own terms. It was disgusting watching my great grandfather be trapped in his own body for 10 years. What a horror show. Already planned my way out if it looks like im going to be the same.
Maybe even Basic income for people taking care of elderly family members.
Or better yet basic income for sahm up to 1st grade. Lol could you imagine the pop increase.
Just look at Japan. They're screwed.
Maybe if hours reduced to 30 for full time people have more kids. Korea talking about upping hours.
Is this a surprise? People can barely afford to take care of themselves these days, why would they want to further burden themselves with a child?
Stop stealing everything from the lower and middle classes and giving it all to the rich, and this trend will magically reverse itself.
Some of us even say, "fuck no."
Nobody can afford kids with all of the corporate price gouging and wage theft. no shit we're not having more kids.
40 years of a recession will do that to a society. An entire generation fucked.
But there's no problem with the economy*
*According to metrics that ignore working class savings, inflation, and prices for basic goods and services like groceries and housing increasing faster than inflation.
And jobs are so stable, and give great benefits.
Jobs are so great, many people are working 2 or 3 jobs now! /s
Unbounded growth isn't progress, it's a disease.
Literally Cancer's modus operandi
I think previous generations felt they had no choice. And even ITT those who chose to have kids are still smitten with this idea that life has no meaning without kids. Which was historically a coping mechanism for those previous generations who needed a way to deal with not having a choice.
Having kids seems awful 99.999% of the time. Life has a lot to offer without giving your entire existence over to children, despite the popular belief otherwise
well that and having to watch the kids have a lower quality of life than you had and that includes the part you provide as well as their long term prospects.
Right! There's no shortage of reasons not to have kids. If I felt they were easy to afford and I knew they'd turn out well, I might just be interested. But no such guarantees exist so yeah I'm not risking being stressed an insane amount for 25%+ of my life.
The behavior I see in kids alone is probably enough though. My kids would have to go to school with that? All the trauma I experienced in school as a kid? Yeah I'm not choosing that for someone else. And I'm absolutely not home schooling either. I know someone whose life was destroyed by that and other choices his parents made.
Well its never been and never will be a guarantee but its almost a guarantee for not those things this millenium so far and what it would take for it to have good prospects is sci fi level technology.
Guarantee was too strong a word. Replace it with "reason to think that" and my point remains the same
I think previous generations felt they had no choice.
Previous Generation here, you're wrong.
Life has a lot to offer without giving your entire existence over to children
I'm also a parent and if you are giving your entire existence over to your children then you're doing it wrong. Yes being a parent means making time and energy for your children but that demand fades the older they get and even while they are young you should still be making time for yourself and your partner.
How old are you? You're saying you had kids before birth control existed? That's obviously what I meant
Also I would consider giving hours every day mandatorily giving my life up to someone/something. Just like I feel like my job consumes my life. It does.
Societal pressure to have children is a huge factor for sure. I've heard from previous generations in my family that during the baby boom era, rumors would circulate in their community if you didn't have enough children, like "something must be wrong with the Johnsons down the street because they only ever had two kids" (and this was in upper-middle class WASP America).
Obviously this attitude continues today in certain communities (Mormons, small rural towns, etc), but it's no longer as prevalent.
I taught my 3 year old to say 'No, thanks", and it's so cute. He's so polite and I love him so much 🥹
I have two kids. 7 and 3. Parenting is the hardest thing you will ever do.
To raise a child with the correct moral characteristic takes time and input from many people. The saying “it takes a village to raise a child” is spot on.
Further reasons included...not having found the right partner.
I think this reason doesn't get enough attention. I am childless, and there are a lot of complex reasons why that is, but I think I would have been much more likely to try to have kids if I had been able to find a woman I really wanted to have kids with. Of all the women I've been with, only one was someone I would want to have kids with, but she couldn't have kids.
If I could buy a house where I live I could consider one. But that won’t be for a long time or I move and start over
It's not only about "not being able to afford them". Plenty of people in the world "cannot afford" kids and have 7 of them.
It's the mix of being educated and understanding that it's not a great idea to have kids, plus the means of being able to prevent or stop pregnancy. Also a cultural shift that allowed us to think by ourself and not feeling forced to have kids.
But the machine need human lubricant to keep working for its owners so they are going to take that from us to ensure we keep making them workers to exploit.
We are already seeing how anti-pregnancy methods are being attacked. And soon they will take away this new culture to bring back the old hivemind culture. And of course the education. There is already a trend on how bad it is for everyone to have a college degree.
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