GenZedong

It's an idealistic argument to believe that hedonism, a symptom, is the primary cause. It individualizes a structural problem that stems from the material base, since it doesn't question the fundamental causes: real estate speculation, which makes it almost impossible (unless you're saddled with debt for life) to access housing, and therefore impossible to settle down and form a family. Unemployment, precarious, almost slave-like working conditions. Geopolitical tensions and economic blockades that scarce resources and increase their price, thus increasing the price of services and the cost of living.

Before blaming people for prioritizing immediate pleasure, which becomes a cultural problem (superstructure), we must examine how decadent the material base truly is.

I'm not well versed in the causes (and am curious what sources people may have on them), but I do want to say, a curious part of any conversation about birth rates to me is how common the assumption is that "falling birth rates = bad". On reflection, I find it to be kind of odd because we're living on a planet with billions of people. I do sort of get that logistically, you don't want to have a country with a disproportionately aging population and not enough youth to take over the roles they were doing. But also, if a society is organized more around need than expansion, it should be somewhat feasible to pull back on what is built out and so on, especially with the increasing capability of automated tools.

I don't know, maybe there's something I'm missing, some factor as to why it'd "of course be a bad thing". But although I don't believe in the "overpopulation" narrative as a climate change issue, I also don't see how birth rates staying the same / going up is inherently a good thing. My most pressing concern is the people who are alive and what world they have to deal with, and so much of the pain in that has so much to do with where resources are going rather than how many people are alive to do the labor. Like in countries where resources are going to military rather than public services, is it even worth talking about birth rates? What difference does it make (toward a humane, sustainable society) how many are being born if resources are not going to people's needs anyway? I don't mean that as a shutdown of talking about it; just questioning where the narrative on it typically arises from and for whose interests.

But I would like to hear from people who know more on the subject.

Its not about cost of living as much as it is the amount of wage labor expected. Wage labor takes people away from their homes and partners for a significant part of the day. All that time apart means less time to do the deed and less social bonding.

On top of that the rise of dual income homes means all the unpaid labor of house work has to get done in the 8 waking hours not spent doing wage labor or sleeping. So instead of the "bread winner" coming home from work and relaxing while the house spouse does the unpaid labor of cooking and cleaning they have to do that after putting in a day at work. No time to rest means no energy to get frisky.

Homeowner rate in Germany is low, very sexist when it comes to working mothers, single moms even more so (basically a ticket to poverty), unflexible work culture, low capacities of adequate childcare facilities, anti-family society in general --> These are all reasons for the aging population, not hedonism.

The USA, Israel, and gulf monarchies are hedonistic societies and until recently the first had high birthrates.

Ask them to elaborate. What's their proof of hedonism being the culprit for it?

The counter to the cost of living explanation is that people were poorer a hundred years ago and still had kids. This does not factor in that those people 100 years ago were mostly doing slightly better than their parents. Having children while being downwardly mobile feels irresponsible, like you’re betraying those children by being unable to provide for them the advantages and experiences that you had.

Also, as others have pointed out, the current generation crop of young adults is objectively less hedonistic than the previous three. Less sex, less booze, less friends, less partying, less dancing, less music.

I think the primary driver of low birth rates is stress. When you are a subsistence farmer in a rural undeveloped country, things are simple and having children doesn't complicate things very much. In a modern industrialized country having children clashes with rigid time demands of 9-5 jobs and there is a lot more legal headache to worry about. Even if the government subsidizes the money issues that doesn't make up for the loss of communal support and lack of time to adequately take care of children.

Completely nonsensical take.

Hedonism means more sex and more sex means more babies (also more STDs). Hedonists aren't the type to care about protection.

I think you'll have to get them to define their meaning of hedonism. Do they mean Caligula-style orgies or someone eating a gummy after work and vegging out in front of a video game? Are you seeing hedonism as a bad thing and why? Who sets the standards of "acceptable" behavior? Cost of living versus hedonism sounds like an interesting conversation/debate to me, and definitely not one you should try to avoid.

Capitalists are framing a low birth rate as an economic disaster, racists as a problem of numbers for their tribe, but is it actually a bad thing from a communist viewpoint?

This is a really wierd analysis given that hedonistic behaviour is what has been making babies since forever... like, we have biological reward systems in our bodies for mating.

Also protecting against and cancelling accidental pregnancies demands an effort and a sense of long-term thinking that is quiet the opposite of hedonism.

Given that any industrialised country has declining birthrates, even socialist ones, my theory about lowering births is simply that people don't see having kids as the only accomplishment and source of happiness available to them.

The burden of proof is on the claimant, and dollars to donuts they have nothing to back up their vibes-based assertion.

Your opponent's argument is not a very good one, because the issue isn't millenials/genz not having enough kids, it goes back to our parents and grandparents not having enough kids, etc. The cost of living argument is also suspect because like others have said, richer countries are having less kids while underdeveloped ones are having more. So, I don't have an answer either.

Oh, wow. I was expecting this conversation to go the completely opposite way, because usually pregnancy results from hedonism.

Germany in particular is at a breaking point where it cannot really support more people living the big cities without a major national housing initiative. If you don't want to raise your kid in the boondocks of Lower Saxony, tough luck