I feel like it's been a long time fretting over falling birth rates and this is the first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people.
It's actually that life is too good for childless people, especially when they're wealthier. Take a DINK couple with high paying jobs, say an engineer and an attorney. Without kids they can have a nice house or condo, regularly take great vacations, and still be saving enough to have the option of retiring in their 40s or 50s. But with kids, that mostly goes out the window. The societal expectation is that you should spend basically all your disposable time and income on your children, which means expensive daycare, travel sports (gotta start working on the college applications in grade school), and private schools (or "good" "public" schools gated by living in a super-expensive area). And even if you can avoid all that, colleges are very good at figuring out how much money you have and declaring that to be the tuition.
As a high-earning childless person myself, I'll freely acknowledge that I should have been paying significantly higher taxes in order to benefit my counterparts who did have kids. Although it would be a challenge to do that redistribution in a way that doesn't just get captured by daycare and college.
I enjoyed the DINK life for some time but eventually we decided to start a family and my only regret in life is we didn't start it sooner and have more kids. In the end all the fancy restaurants, nights out, fancy vacations with first class airfare, etc were nice in some ways but pretty vapid and unimportant when looking back. I won't value those years very much compared to the years with children in the house. The energy kids bring into a home and the meaningfulness of their existence is just incomparable in my experience.
But I get it, and the idea of kids was scary at one time, but it turns out they're pretty easy all things considered. Lots of talk of "sacrifice" between friends back then but as it turns out you're trading something of little value for something of immense value. But to each their own!
Just to provide a counter point you don't hear. I have two kids and very much wish I didn't. I love my kids. I sacrifice for them. There are many moments of great joy. However, I don't really have a life any more. I would rather spend my time traveling, visiting friends, playing music. I would rather have more money. I would rather be healthier. I would rather have time for my hobbies. Being a good parent is a lot and nearly all consuming. I feel like a lot of people feel like I do but are too decent to say it out loud.
I used to think this is where I am heading, until reading “Hunt, Gather, Parent”, and realizing that being a good parent does not mean my existence as an individual needs to stop. Me and my kids can co-exist. I just need to let go of controlling their lives.
I don't know if you're already aware of it, but there's a subreddit called /r/regretfulparents that is basically a public support group for people who feel similarly to you. You might find some comfort there.
You are not alone, and I would encourage you to ignore anyone who says you are a bad person for regretting a one way door many default to. I had kids, but I wouldn't do it again knowing what I know now. If these ideas are not discussed, younger cohorts don't have more information to potentially make different decisions and lead potentially better lives (depending on what they're optimizing for).
You're just using your kids as an excuse for your own short comings. People do done all those things you listed while having more than two kids. Seriously, blaming your health problems on your children?
I know this is a week old post so there will likely not be any follow up but I have several friends that seem to have it all
They have 2 or 3 kids. They love their kids and love spending time with them. Yet, they still have time for hobbies and side projects. I don't know how they do it
1 friend, 2 kids (8-12), FAANG job, 2nd company on the side with a partner, plays horror games and writes about them.
1 friend, 2 kids (7-11), FANNG job, plays video games with this brother remotely, takes his kids out often and they hang out with this friends (we all love the kids). He's also the cook in the house and has people over often. Goes snowboarding in the window.
1 friend, 3 kids (6-8-10), plays videos games (hobby 1), plays guitar (hobby 2), does photograph (hobby 3), see his picts on facebook all the time of the latest thing he's doing
1 friend, 3 kids (8, 10, 12), makes video games for a job and makes his own at home for hobby. One of this kids is also into making video games which they share.
1 friend, 2 kids, tech job, loves VR, plays VR with kids, writes tech tutorials for blogs as hobby.
I'm not saying "you can do it too", I'm just saying I see example of people that somehow *seem* like they're enjoying visiting friends, playing music, having time for hobbies, and they have kids
Would love to know if they just lucked out. If there's specific things they do. Or if it's just an attitude. Or something else.
yeah, there are times when I've felt like that, but they're pretty fleeting
at what age did you start a family? I think one of the reasons people should start a family a bit later (early thirties maybe) is so that they have the opportunity to experience/enjoy those things without kids (and not have to wait until the kids are all grown up and then they're in their 50s and it's just not the same as the stuff you can do in your 20s).
I have the sentiment. would have loved to have kids earlier, but I also was not in the position at an earlier age, relationship wise. Growing up in Germany, having kids in your 20s was almost frowned upon. what a terrible societal development!
I think that any loving, financial well couple would discover the same, but all I hear from younger people is excuses as to why kids are a burden. It drives me a bit crazy.
Well because to young people kids are a burden. I think that's the easiest way to put it. You're not really established in your careers, stability isn't something you can manufacture for yourself yet, you don't have that much disposable income all things considered, a lot of folks' relationships haven't matured into something stable enough to effectively parent, and you still have a persistent drive to do stuff and build or grow your adult friendships.
My friends who are parents are very much trapped at home, it's actually great for me because if I'm bored I know they're not doing anything are are starving for social contact with another adult. It's hard for parents to not inadvertently isolate themselves.
Some disincentives to have kids, if you grew up in the 21st century:
- The cost (financial, time, stress/health) is incredibly high. When cost of living as one person increases somewhere between notably and substantially faster than wages, it’s hard to justify paying for another person while likely also taking an income cut. You end up with entire classes of people whose careers will struggle to pay for their own life, let alone that of a kid. This is playing out in real time - I personally know people who commute 30-45 minutes by car to make $23/hour (in Canada, in a moderately high CoL city - that’s $16USD). When I was in university, some of my classmates who worked at the Starbucks near campus had coworkers (there were at least two instances of this that I know of) in their 40s with kids who commuted over an hour to make however much money Starbucks managers make, and one had a second job on weekends. It’s not hard to look at that and think, “how is that something you’d want to do to yourself?”
- The feeling (perceived or real) that the world is becoming a worse place. 24 hour news and social media don’t help, with either the perception or the actual situation. Why would I want to raise a kid who could be a victim of one of the weekly school shootings? Or who’s going to be left dealing with an even harder life financially/etc? Or who’s going to resent older generations for selfishly wasting the earth’s resources?
It’s generally quite easy when you work in tech with a partner who works in tech to just assume that having kids is an easy choice (I work with people who are like that, who apparently only see the world through rose-tinted glasses, and are shocked someone could even possibly not want to pop out as many babies as possible). But when you look at the level of struggle a significant portion of the population endures, as they become generally more educated and more capable of critical thinking over time, it’s pretty clear why large swaths of people will start thinking “maybe we shouldn’t have kids just for the sake of having kids, especially if we don’t actually want to.”
That’s ignoring of course the general overpopulation and lack of sustainability of the western lifestyle (and the associated impact of having a kid on climate change - pretty much the single worst thing you could do, if you can about that at all). People who are tuned in to those sorts of issues are also more likely to not want kids, either because they don’t want to contribute to the problem, or raise kids who will have to deal with the fallout.
If you’re driven crazy by people having a different viewpoint from your own, you may want to consider reflecting on why you are so deeply entrenched in your beliefs. It is rarely productive.
The government does already give significant subsidies to parents. Direct tax credits and public schooling (aka free childcare) are two big ones. I’m not arguing that parents come out ahead economically or that the subsidies are bad (many argue they should be higher). Just pointing it out, if it helps with the guilt about your taxes.
If we want to get all utilitarian about it, these things might be the most important:
1) Identifying the kids with the highest potential to contribute the most to society, and giving whatever support it takes.
2) Identifying which kids and parents are the most needy, who will benefit the most from support that enables them to have a good life. It’s probably not the average family in a developed country.
If there’s someone who wants to raise my taxes to pay for that stuff, I’ll vote for them.
It was actually just last month that I saw one of these falling birthrate articles actually acknowledge that many people just don't want kids, it was in the NY Times too
I'm glad we are finally getting representation on that instead of all these social science studies contorting themselves to come to a child-aspiring default that couples are somehow failing to reach
Even people who do want kids frequently don't want many of them. Even back in the old days, a lot of people didn't have kids; not everyone actually got married. But people who did get married had lots more kids, so they more than made up for all the people who didn't. (Don't forget, women frequently died in childbirth.) They didn't have reliable birth control, so women didn't have much choice about how many kids they'd have.
These days, people can choose, and many women are happy to stop after 1 or 2 kids. Going through childbirth is, by many accounts, very difficult and not that much fun. All the pro-natalists (generally men) seem to completely dismiss actual women's feelings on this matter for some reason.
Anyway, when you have a society where a bunch of people aren't having kids, and the ones who are are only having 1-2, sometimes 3, the overall average is going to be well under 2, which isn't enough to maintain the population level.
As I've said many times before in these discussions online, societies need to come up with a new model, because obviously the old one isn't working, and it isn't going to come back.
I agree with this as the main factor (over cost) for the falling birth rate. The opportunity cost of having children has never been higher: you give up leisure, hobbies, rest, social life, and income. Whether or not children is worth this cost is a personal thing, but it seems kinda obvious that as the cost increases, fewer will pay it.
> The opportunity cost of having children has never been higher: you give up leisure, hobbies, rest, social life, and income.
Those things are given up because parenting-time is up 20-fold from a few generations ago.
From the 1960s back, kids needed parents a few hours a week.
But we reduced kids' roaming area from many sq mi to just their own property. At the same time, we instituted 24/7 adulting. Most of those hours are filled by parents.
Kids have permanently lost daily hours of peer-driven growth - the ones where complex social interactions occurred naturally. Parents are now left with trying to construct artificial environments (leagues, programs) where maybe some of that can occur.
Those efforts eat time and resources. And they're a poor substitute for the vital environments that kids once had for free.
I spent 20x the time parenting that my mom did. For all of that, my kids had little-to-none of my growth opportunities.
Yeah, also in Northern Europe. Here in Estonia kids as young as 5 years old even go to kindergarten on their own. They take a bus and are just fine. Seems to me the helicopter parenting is mostly a thing in the U.S.
Because in the US parents can get arrested if their children go out alone. It's a failure on their laws.
And of their infrastructure where everyone wants to have their own suburban kingdom with large back yard, swimming pool, garage for two SUVs and workshop.
Americans don't like living in small apartments like Europeans and Asians so this is what they get.
I grew up in the US with parents that had a suburban kingdom, large back yard, swimming pool, garage for three SUVs, and workshop: I walked to, waited for, and rode the bus to kindergarten.
"This is what they get" is false causation, these things have been present for decades. Helicopter parenting, liability for walking around alone, special snowflake treatment are all newly-introduced ideas.
You must be quite young if you had SUVs when you were growing up. They didn't become popular until the late 1990s. They basically didn't exist at all in the 1980s or before; people had station wagons back then.
The shift from roaming to restriction took place over generations and occurred unevenly.
A few generations ago, the trend was that US kids had a broad range of appealing places to roam and were generally free to do so.
Presently the US trend is that kids have few if any appealing places to go. And should they roam anyway, they and their parents risk legal (and increasingly permanent) consequences.
Very true. I see little kids by themselves frequently, on the subways, on their bicycles, etc. It reminds me of when I was growing up in the US decades ago, before helicopter parenting became mandated by law there.
I let my kids roam free here in the US (Columbia, MD), but the reality is that they don't want to because there are no other kids outside to play with.
> I let my kids roam free here in the US (Columbia, MD), but the reality is that they don't want to because there are no other kids outside to play with.
I suspect there are no other kids outside because there are few/no desirable places for kids to congregate - places that are safe from moving cars, enforced property laws and adults with poor judgment.
My neighborhood (Bryant Woods in Columbia, MD) is honestly perfect in this regard. It's filled with walking trails and playgrounds. Lots of green space.
The roads are also twisty & turny. They're difficult to drive fast on.
I entirely agree. And when you lather on the tidal wave of endless "entertainment" and options available to most people they end up framing everything in their minds as "having fun" vs "having kids". I also know many women who say they don't want to "do that to their bodies" so ... where is this all going.
And honestly I agree with the "if you are single you should pay more taxes" as a motivator to either get you to have your own kids or to simply ease the burden of those who are actually making humanity move forward but as a parent I am a bit biased here. It should be a significant amount.
There are already taxes subsidies for couples and children - that's plenty enough incentive for wealthy families that can support kids. Families that cannot afford to feed or house children should in no way be penalized for refusing to start a family in their present situation.
The reality is the public pensions and healthcare implode without much higher taxes or much higher birth rates. Like the Italian president told his people a few years, if we want things to stay the same, things are going to have to change.
Things aren't going to change. America just let private wealth run rampant over everything that matters and now wants to usher in an administration that (supposedly) wouldn't touch your civil liberties with a 50 foot pole. Trump says he won't even commit to banning abortion (sounds about right for a guy that's probably paid for dozens of 'em).
So... how are things going to "have to change" if you can't threaten childless couples and you can't redistribute the wealth to people that do want kids? Continually fearmonger mandatory birthing policies without actually implementing them just to get a rise out of your citizens? It's nonsense, and if America is given a choice between "fucking over wealthy people" and "having tons of kids to staff McDonalds at minimum wage" I can tell you offhand which one 99% of citizens will pick. We're already halfway there given how far China has surpassed the US in places - today's Americans hate capitalism so much they're content watching their country suffer until businesses get the message.
The reality are that half of the planet already pays more then 50 percent in taxes, and with much higher taxation the whole country will implodes.
More then this - public pensions are one of the main reasons for low birth rate. You can't have both, if children's role as social insurance passes to public pensions - children became useless.
What a profoundly ignorant statement. How much would I have to pay you to put on 30 pounds and deal with morning sickness for the next 9 months? Does $0 sound about right?
Oh, so now it's not about vanity and has everything to do with your comfort as an individual. Crazy what a tiny bit of empathy can do - and we haven't even gotten to the messy part yet.
Fucking ingrate. What's next, men don't want to pass kidney stones because it makes them feel emasculate?
Great in the short term, really crappy and lonely in the long term. Couples like this get to enjoy themselves in themselves in their 30s, 40s, and 50s while their friends and families are investing in their children and grandchildren, and then then the DINKs retire and find that they don't have anyone around to spend time with. The friend's lives and social groups revolve around their children and grandchildren, and they don't have all that much in common with the childless couple that's in their 60s. Then they still have 20-30 years of life expectancy if the loneliness doesn't kill them first.
There's a source of truth there, but it's also easy to overstate and to show only this side of the story.
My parents' lives revolved around their children too, and me and my brother are both working abroad at the moment (for work, love and adventure). My dad hasn't invested much in his social life, hobbies or skills, because he had a family. Divorced with kids out of the house and even out of the country, he's lonely.
Meanwhile his childless brothers and sisters have much more active social lives. They're an active part of the family life as well, but it's not the only thing they have going for them.
I'll gladly volunteer to be the first to say "Fuck those societal expectations, that's insane."
You don't owe your children much more than food, love and a roof over their head. Sure, you might want to give them the world, but don't listen to anyone telling you that's the expectation - that's a fast track to resentment.
On the contrary, from a moral standpoint you owe your children everything. You forced them into existence without their consent.
Though I agree that doesn't have to mean conforming to societal expectations of ivy league schools and so forth. Food, love and a roof over your head goes a long way.
I cannot put my finger on why I dislike this comment so deeply but I am a parent and I suspect you are not.
To be specific I dislike your framing and use of the word "forced". I do agree though that parents should deeply love and support their kids which is what it sounds like you are trying to say. And in turn, your kids should do the same despite "generational differences".
> I cannot put my finger on why I dislike this comment so deeply but I am a parent and I suspect you are not.
I am also a parent.
> I do agree though that parents should deeply love and support their kids which is what it sounds like you are trying to say.
Loving your kids is not a moral obligation, though most do (for the record, I love mine very much).
Supporting your kids is a moral obligation, whether you love them or not, incurred by creating them.
> And in turn, your kids should do the same despite "generational differences".
I disagree. Our kids will never be morally obligated towards us in any way. We can only hope to have loved and supported them enough for them to love and support us back of their own volition.
> I disagree. Our kids will never be morally obligated towards us in any way. We can only hope to have loved and supported them enough for them to love and support us back of their own volition.
I agree with this. Kids can't willingly bring themselves into the world (although "forced" is an exaggeration), and the burden is on their parents. A kid, until a certain point, is a person with certain needs and restrictions that call for external supervision (e.g. needing shelter, not voting). I consider a person in general to not have inherent obligations beyond not killing and whatnot. Sure, I can ditch my friend in a socially awkward moment and that would make me a huge jerk, but surely it doesn't rise to the same level as hitting someone.
> Loving your kids is not a moral obligation, though most do (for the record, I love mine very much). Supporting your kids is a moral obligation, whether you love them or not, incurred by creating them.
I don't quite know what you mean by "loving" versus "supporting". To me, supporting sounds like loving, with the caveat that I think emotional care ties into supporting a kid. Do you mean extra things like buying more presents on holidays?
Maybe. "Forced" implies "against their will", and prior to existing they of course had no will to oppose. It seems like you know what I mean though, and I'll try to think of less harsh verbiage for my point.
> I don't quite know what you mean by "loving" versus "supporting". To me, supporting sounds like loving, with the caveat that I think emotional care ties into supporting a kid. Do you mean extra things like buying more presents on holidays?
I may have been overly pedantic in separating them. By "love" I mean the actual emotion, which can never be forced or obligated. By "support" I mean everything we do for our kids. And part of supporting our kids is making sure they never doubt that we love them, which perhaps renders the difference moot.
Disagree philosophically, there was no "them" to consent prior to them existing, so no one was forced. I think this is gesturing at Benatar's antinatalist argument but as you'll recall it rests on a metaphysical asymmetry here I have just never found convincing. Appreciate you keeping the pushback civil, however.
True, no one is asked whether or not they would like to be born and then forced into it after disagreeing, but once they are brought into existence they will experience suffering in life, does anyone ever desire such suffering for themselves?
Seems to me that parents should want to minimize that suffering, even if I also disagree with “owing them everything” as parents should also help them to grow into self-sufficient beings. It’s a tough balance to strike and I won’t pretend to be an expert on it, I’m only just getting started myself.
Ceteris paribus everyone wants to minimize the suffering of another. All the more when it's your own child. That's very different from having a moral obligation towards them to minimize their suffering, which is the thrust of my original post.
The thing is the vast majority of people find living to be on the whole a source of great joy, far greater than any suffering they may experience as a byproduct of it. The handful who don't do have the option, grim as it may be to consider, of returning to nonexistence. The fact that this option isn't taken by even 1% of people suggests strongly that nonexistence just isn't that compelling an alternative.
If every generation is expected to sacrifice themselves for the next, it kind of begs the question of what is the point of it all. Having some reciprocal balance makes more sense to me.
One can also turn around your moral argument: Your children owe you everything, since they wouldn’t exist at all without you.
It's interesting to compare this perspective with religious teachings which tend to say that kids owe everything to their parents ("honor") and that parents responsibility is to train their kids with good moral character (on top of food, love & shelter).
As a parent you want to give them everything but you then have to balance that against realities & other priorities. That's part of the training of a good moral character: learning to manage life's limitations & your response to those limitations.
What's the difference? If you don't boost them with all your might, you effectively condemn them to a life of struggle and misery, in today's world. Knowing this, it's gonna be you forcing yourself to give them your all, not society's expectations.
>If you don't boost them with all your night, ... Life of struggle and misery, in today's world.
That's not my experience of the world at all. Quite the opposite, in fact: I had a pretty good time when I was coasting by on minimum effort, and I'm having an even better time now that I'm putting in some mild amount of effort.
I have no reason to suspect this will change in the next generation. If anything the falling costs of goods and services everywhere suggests they'll get an even easier ticket.
> You don't owe your children much more than food, love and a roof over their head.
except that "love" part is a huge bucket that includes pretty much everything that we do for our kids (which is a heck of a lot more than food and shelter)
> expectation
it's not social expectation that drive what we sacrifice for our children; it's our love for our children that does, at least the parents I know (including myself)
I actually think it is good for kids to have exposure to:
- entertaining themselves
- working/providing for themselves
- having to do things that they don’t want to do
- being told no, and dealing with unfulfilled desire
All with balance, I am not proposing that kids are just left to fend for themselves. Caring for your kids materially and emotionally is important, but so is living your own life and making them live theirs.
I may be having kids in the not too distant future, and when I think about how I would parent, I consider 2 families I know who I have seen raise children.
In one, the kids are often denied requests they make for objects they want to own and activities they want to do. The parents drag their kids along to things that they (the parents) want to do, rather than not doing the thing because the kids don’t want to. At family gatherings, their parents expect that they will take care of and entertain themselves, while the parents enjoy time with the other adults.
In the other family, the kids are showered with toys and attention, and their mom goes to great effort to open any door for them that they express interest in. At family gatherings, the parents are always checking on their kids, and indulge every request the kids make of them.
Which family has happier, more capable, and well-adjusted children? Which family has happier parents? The answer to both is the first family.
The high-effort parents I know aren't overly concerned with that their kids want, but they constantly sacrifice their own time and sanity for what they deem to be in the child's best interests.
Kids love screens, parents love getting to do their own thing while the child is quietly occupied, but a certain type of parent feels the need to go to war over the screen time limit rather than enjoy their dinner. Neither father nor son is having a good time at soccer practice, but a kid's got to have a sport. And so on.
We're calling for something bolder here than merely the will to override a child's wishes. Parents need a permission structure to prioritize their own desires, not just the ones they have on behalf of the children.
There was a good Ezra Klein episode about this [0].
It might be mildly good for kids on net, I actually don't really have a lot of confidence around that claim - kids are quite good at keeping themselves entertained. I have high confidence around the claim that it is moderately bad for parents, and so my sympathies lie quite strongly with reducing the workload on them.
Parent of small kids here. Tricky to estimate, because the desire to not have your kids be worse off because you didn't do enough, and the desire for them to have it better than you, are strong and not really bounded.
However, the idea of parents giving 100% of themselves to the children is also an unsustainable one, and fundamentally horrifying one - if everyone things this way, generation by generation, then this robs existence from any meaning. It's admitting that all the good and nice things in the world, all that separates us from other animals, are all accidents, all made by people who weren't good enough at giving their children their best, and instead wasted their time on stuff like arts and sciences.
So I think there must be a point somewhere. And perhaps a hint of that is the observation that kids are better off with happy parents than with unhappy ones.
> However, the idea of parents giving 100% of themselves to the children is also an unsustainable one,
No one is suggesting giving 100% because it is an impossibility. What is suggested is that parents and children have the same priority - the children's wellbeing.
I have 5 adult sons. The value of my wellbeing is that it enhances their wellbeing. This reflects the nature of our one-way debt. They owe me nothing. I owe them what I can give.
There’s also some number of couples whose ideal is “no compromises” — that is, they hope to both provide the best for their kids and keep the nice house, vacations, comfortable retirement, etc.
While this isn’t strictly impossible, it’s well beyond the reach of most, and so I suspect that this group mostly ends up never having kids.
Many young people I know see nothing being done about climate change and make their choice right there. These are also smart, educated well-off types. The level of suffering we can expect isn't something they want to introduce children into.
I find it surprising this is somehow difficult for governments to grok.
I doubt it will make a difference but climate change isn't expected to cause great suffering. Compared to great filter events, climate change doesn't even register. Estimates are of a rise of [2-4 degrees centigrade by 2100.](https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/climatechange/science#:~:text=Glob....) This will likely result in an [increase](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/1/014....) of arable land. [Global mean sea-level rise is expected to be between 0.30 and 0.65 m by 2100,](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-0121-5) which might affect some Dutch towns during storms but is negligible. [As the number of storms are estimated to decrease, the threat vector is slightly increasing storm intensity.](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3184/a-force-of-nature-hurrica....) Humans can handle storms. We can rebuild homes, change where we settle and live, build with better materials and practises, and improve storm infrastructure and protections. In fact, as the temperature rises slightly, fewer people will die due to temperature extremes. This is because at present, many more people die due to exposure to low temperatures than high temperatures.
We really have done a great disservice to a generation which believes the planet will be dead in a few decades.
What I think you're missing is that it's not about human resilience on a technical level, it's about the power structures that do nothing to really fix it, the corruption, the stupidity, the lack of empathy, the corporations that trample everything for profit. It's a major turn off for young people, they see this and think, why bring a lovely innocent child into such a shit show. We can have all the sex we want, have more money, and enjoy life and not participate in the rat race. Many people don't see it as a tragedy either. It's just a choice they make and move on.
Humans can handle storms. We can rebuild homes, change where we settle and live, build with better materials and practises, and improve storm infrastructure and protections.
Yeah, people don't want to raise children in this sort of chaotic, apocalyptic scenario where your town is wiped out by some major, never seen before flash flood event. You rebuild and some new major storms topples it.
In fact, as the temperature rises slightly, fewer people will die due to temperature extremes. This is because at present, many more people die due to exposure to low temperatures than high temperatures.
Not where I live, farmers were having trouble doing their jobs due to the extreme heat this year. In 50 years at current trajectory? More people on earth, likely less food, what will that be like?
Excellent comment. All the evidences suggests to me that removing Social Security/Medicare and other wealth transfers from young to old are actually the only thing that might incentivize sufficient people to have sufficient kids to meet replacement TFR AND raise the kids into the type of adults you want.
The reasoning behind this is even with the best quality of life, many women will have 2 children, but insufficient women will have 3 or more children such that it offsets the number of women who have 0 or 1 child.
Those with zero children really drag the average down, and if it is because partnering with a certain portion of the population is simply not worth it, then government efforts on improving quality of life via work and benefit policies are not going to bump TFR to replacement rate.
Humanity has never seen such an extreme wealth transfer from young to old as what is going on in the industrialized world right now.
Pensions: Wealth transfer from young to old.
Taxes: Wealth transfer from young to old.
Socialized health care: Wealth transfer from young to old.
Rent: Wealth transfer from young to old.
Inflation: Wealth transfer from young to old (who owns the real estate?)
Capitalism: Wealth transfer from young to old (who owns the stocks?)
National debt: Wealth transfer from young to old.
It seems like all different systems at work in industrialized nations has the single goal of extracting all productivity from young workers and giving it to the current generation of elderly. Even the ideologies who on the face are against each other (socialism vs capitalism) both work mainly to reap everything form the young to give to the old.
That's what I mean when I say they should try making life better. Make it so that with kids I can have a house and family vacations and all the other things that my parents had access to. It's logically equivalent to say "life is harder with kids" or "life is easier without kids".
If you survey couples people say it's the money. There's no need to invent a whole narrative. People just say it's money (and stuff downstream of money like not being able to afford bigger housing to have a second kid rather than just one)
I’m skeptical that most daycare spending is driven by prestige-seeking or social pressure. Some undoubtedly is but the “standard” options are crazy expensive.
Don't feel bad. It's good for the planet and society to reduce the population somewhat. It can't keep growing forever. All the major problems we have are a result of it. Climate change, housing shortage, resource conflicts etc.
The demographic problems during a decline are only temporary.
If the world had only 1 billion people it would be a lot easier. The whole idea that humanity would go extinct is ridiculous. And humanity is still growing anyway due to the many countries that don't have falling birth rates.
There's always people wanting to have kids. This is just society adjusting itself to the current overpopulation.
> It's actually that life is too good for childless people
I'm not going to idly sit by and let people who have children take my hard earned money from me. If you think increasing taxes on those without children won't cause a massive retaliation by the men who are not able to find female mates to have children with, you are in for a massive surprise.
The parents I've seen seem to spend every waking second doting on their children for at least a decade, which seems strange to me. This hovering "what can I do to satisfy your desires" literally just constantly (I've also seen people doing this with their dogs). Maybe I'm missing something or my sample size is skewed.
The people I've seen doing this are also just exhausted, as they've said directly.
It comes down to... the rent is too damn high.
Young people without children willing to spend 1/3 to 1/2 of their total income servicing mortgages or rent drives the cost of living to ridiculous levels. People can't afford child care either by having family live close to high earners to help, or to hire child care. So it's unaffordable. There's nowhere to live for families in high density places (apartment buildings optimize for the highest rent tennants, 1,2 BR single people)
Lots of people want children but can't engineer a life for themselves to have them without moving somewhere really far out and boring or being in the top 5% of earners, or living in squalor despite high incomes.
>The parents I've seen seem to spend every waking second doting on their children for at least a decade, which seems strange to me. This hovering "what can I do to satisfy your desires" literally just constantly
While some of it may be overbearing parenting due to wanting kids to compete or train for the future, there is also the fact that kids cannot be left alone, and there is no extended family supervision for them, and you are told you cannot let your kids sit in front of a screen all day.
There’s no neighborhood chain of kids ranging from high school to toddler playing with each other, there is no outside time without adult supervision, an adult who is legally liable.
And of course, cars. The environment is optimized for cars, not kids, so kids either sit inside alone or with 1 sibling or they need to be supervised.
It really cannot be understated how few homes we have built since the Great Recession and the terrible impact that has had on COL.
To give an idea of what it takes to solve a housing shortfall, Sweden successfully embarked on a million-homes program over a decade in the 70s when the population of Sweden was 7 million.
NYC recently just celebrated the passage of a zoning reform that allows at most 80,000 new homes, and the population is 8.2 million.
> The parents I've seen seem to spend every waking second doting on their children for at least a decade, which seems strange to me. This hovering "what can I do to satisfy your desires" literally just constantly (I've also seen people doing this with their dogs)
parenting doesn't have to be like this for the kids to be happy; in fact, it's probably counter-productive in many cases
I have also seen this and in many cases it's pressure for the kids to succeed. Back in the 70s and early 80s you literally just had to not fall off the wagon, and could get a job and be okay. Wanted to go to Stanford, or become a doctor? Sure it would take some work, but completely doable. Want your kid to go to Stanford now if they like? You have to put your kid through a horribly stressful regime that starts in preschool, and even then it's going to be a lottery. Granted you don't need to go to Stanford to be happy but my point being that you want your kids to have opportunities, and getting those opportunities is SO FUCKING HARDER than it was for you as the parent when you were young (and way way harder than your own parents). And so you have to optimize for it, and the earlier you start, the better your chances. It's crushing for the parents and the kids. And the more successful the parents were, the more pressure to give their kids the same opportunities they had.
It's not really a problem you can pick around at the edges. You have to take some big swings to try to resolve it. Politicians, businesses, and the entire voting public, need to take a hard look at the real things they can do that will have an actual effect. 4-day workweek is a big one.
Land (and rent seeking) need to be a bad investment. Building housing (and building anything in general, whether it be housing, businesses, families, etc) should be a good investment.
Right now, with earned income tax, we do the exact opposite. We punish the people that do things, and reward the rent seekers with tax breaks (1031 exchange/low land value tax rates/senior citizen discounts/etc). The proof is in the pudding, everyone wants to become a rent seeker, and this is what society will look like if that is the case.
Quality of life was terrible, but some things were still easier. Most importantly, that terrible quality of life was cheap enough that your kids could probably support you in your old age. Medical care wasn't so advanced, which is cheaper, but also means you had a good chance of dying younger or of a condition we could cure today. Housing was cheaper but also worse back then. Investments weren't accessible to the vast majority of people and "retirement" as a concept didn't really exist for the lower classes except as an idea that you would probably be too old to effectively do your job someday.
Nowadays, your kids probably can't afford to support you into your old age, and you probably don't have a pension, which means making more money now so that you don't have to work until you die. You have a lot more options for a higher quality of life, but they tend to require that you prioritize money over a family unless you are either in the privileged position of being able to afford both or poor enough that it doesn't matter.
Was it more terrible? You certainly had more organic social connections and family support. Physically tougher than a modern white collar job? Sure. Better than commuting and working for some shitty boss though!
We take so much for granted. Living in a world without electricity, medicine, food scarcity, lack of safety net.
Family didn't offer as much support as it appears. Average kids are working farms rich children are sent away to be raised.
The social bonds of the modern world still exist in the same places as the past. It starts with the church.. so if you crave the social connections you can still go to church to find it.
What bonds people in the past is religious dogma. We removed it and we wonder why our social bonds are so weak.
I'm not suggesting we go back but we have nothing to replace it. The one thing a church did was welcome in everyone. We don't have places like that anymore.
Welcoming people with money who buy cards as a promotion to sell goods.
It's not a place to hold a wedding or funeral. You can't go inside and sit down without someone trying to sell you something.
Some form of community can happen at a card shop. I use to hang around one when a was younger. Also got kicked out every now and then for hanging out too much.
I got married in a public park. It was free and everyone can convene there. What it doesn't do is insulate you from people you may find disagreeable or distasteful, which a church does.
Most places require a permit but aside from that, that's a personal event you invited people you know to. Everyone can't convene there. It's a one time event and because you pick the guests it does insulate you from people you find disagreeable.
Surely you are now arguing against your own point? If one holds a wedding at a church, it is typically not open to the public any more than a wedding in a park. "Wedding crashers" aside, you invite people you know and it is typically not expected nor desired for the general public to attend. It's nothing unusual; churches schedule time for weddings all the time, and then go right back to being a public gathering space once the event is over. I should add, since it's part of the core of this debate, that the idea that churches are universally welcoming or truly public is itself debatable: they hold a religious function and while churches are usually open to all attendees, you will struggle to find community there unless you share the religious beliefs of the other attendees. That is to say, the church as a structure is open to all; the church as a community is not.
For what it's worth, my wedding was intentionally kept small, which allowed us to hold a ceremony without a permit and without closing off any public areas.
The average person (non-scientist, non-technical) has replaced belief in the supernatural and the church with belief in science and the institutions of the state, and though there have been major improvements, we haven't completely refactored the old yet. Community and meaning is major functionality that we have yet to figure out anew.
I mean, this is the concept of the "third space." They have existed throughout history and while churches are certainly one example, they are not the only example. A church (or temple or mosque or whatever) fills a certain community role as a gathering space for religious worship, but it's not the only place where you can meet and talk to people.
American shopping malls of the mid-to-late 20th century were a decent bet, but I think they fail because a) they're very pedestrian hostile, b) they tend to be owned by a singular landlord that can enforce policies that discourage gathering, and c) they just kind of smack of artificiality. But bazaars, street markets, and other commercial areas have certainly been third-places since before long before it was a defined term. Heck, the ancient Greeks were quite proud of their agora.
> In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue.
not sure which "past" you're referring to, but in agricultural societies, more kids was important to survival and quality of life, as you needed hands on the farm; also, the child mortality rate was much higher so you had to have more kids to start with; that was also pre-birth control -- as soon as that was introduced the birth rate started to fall tremendously
Poor people are also more religious, and in the age of birth control,religions that don't explicitly require their adherents to procreate will have far fewer followers than those that do after just a few generations.
People didn’t have a choice back then. So the two options now are: “force people to have kids” or “make life better for people so they want kids”. I’d like to think we’ve evolved enough as a society to choose the later option.
There is no later option, actually. No matter how good life would be - people won't have more children. Prosperity in the context of fertility matters only in relative values, not in absolute values. People have a lot of children not when they are wealthy, but when they are wealthier than others, and so it always be minority, no matter how good life are.
I'm skeptical that falling birth rates have much to do with the demands of a dual working household.
Look at Europe which has significant maternity and paternity leave, subsidized daycare and free college. Lots and lots of support for young parents.
Yet birth rates haven't really budged.
I think it has more to do with the expectation of how much effort to raise a kid has drastically increased.
75 years ago, you'd pump out 5 kids and they'd be independent quite young. By 4-5 years old it was "go find something to do". As long as the kid wasn't failing school, grades didn't matter. If the kid was involved in school sports, they made their own way to events. Parents didn't attend regularly. By the time they were 7-8, they could help with the younger kids.
By the time your kids was a 8-10, it was pretty much "keep em fed and out of trouble".
Today, expectations are way, way higher. Parents worry about what elementary school their kids get into. After school academic and sports activities start super young. Parents want to attend the big events. Then high school and it time to grind. Tutors, SAT prep, college tours, etc, etc. Minimal chores because that would interfere with school and sports.
One kid today is equal to the effort of 3-4 kids 75 years ago.
> first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people
Financial incentives for giving birth have been around in some countries for decades. In France it's called "prime à la naissance". This is on top of delivery being almost free.
So many comments just focus on DINK being selfish but there are good reasons to not have children and I agree there needs to be better incentives, and barriers removed too.
Here are just a few reasons to not have children that may not have to do purely with selfishness. Many of these may not come up in casual conversation. It is easier to look selfish and say you prefer to keep the money and spend it on yourself for fun than going in the details of things like:
- "not wanting to do that to your body" can be more than concerns about appearance. Even if survival rates for mothers is much better, there are still plenty severe injuries and side effects to deal with. Plus among my relatives, I have yet to find a woman who didn't suffer from medical violence during her pregnancy or when giving birth. This wasn't talked about among women until they were pregnant not so long ago, understandably knowing what to expect can make it much less appealing.
- same thing with expectations about what parenting is like. Parents are more open about struggles, or regret. Even if they don't regret their kids a good number I know said if they could go back, though wouldn't have their kids even if they love them. Add to this social pressure to parent a certain way, non parents being quick to judge etc.
- some folks dont want kids because they don't think they can afford it despite having two incomes, or consider that their income would severely drop if one parent has to stop working to care for the kids, making it unaffordable. They want to give the best to their kids, so they delay forever or accept they won't ever be in a good enough place.
- some people wouldn't be good parents and know it. I've talked to enough childfree women, and many felt obliged to have kids but didn't because their own mothers were resentful parents, which resulted in a traumatic childhood.
- some want kids to care for them when they're old but see elders being left to fend for themselves or forgotten in abusive retirement homes - they may decide even with kids there's no guarantee so why bother?
- some maybe tried and couldn't conceive until they found it was too late, or couldn't afford medical assistance, or lost a child during pregnancy and couldn't bear to try again.
- some may not think their genes are something they should pass on, or don't feel the need to pass on their own genes.
- Some may have cared for sibling/cousins/nephews and know they wouldn't make good full time parents but would be ok helping others as part of "the village".
Being a DINK also has disadvantages, like constantly being expected to pick up colleagues workload when they have parenting demands during work hours, not getting nearly as many benefits (at least where i work), feeling like your free time is a free for all for anyone to take outside work because you don't have kids, so it's assumed that you have nothing going on in life. Like, feel free to ask and I can help but you don't have to be so callous about it.
I see it can be hard to have compassion for each other, if each thing the other should just deal with the consequences of their decisions. I read several posts pitching DINKs against parents over income distribution. If anything, it should be all of us parents and non parents against a system that favours a handful of extremely wealthy people.
ps: also let's try to make parent's lives better instead of saying DINK have it too good. Surely we can work to make everyone equally happy instead of making everyone equally miserable...
I had an interesting discussion with my nephew about this post. He angers me with the way he talks about stuff, but I consider it an exercise in mental fortitude. Allow me to share his absolutely crazy and unreasonable thoughts on this:
"Nobody really wants more people except certain religious sects, and that is only because it allows them to use sexuality to control people. Most modern capitalists would favor automation precisely because it takes unreliable people out of the capitalistic equation and makes conversion of real property to wealth and power easier. The only reason why we're hearing about fertility and birth rate in the last few years is because certain religious organizations are scared they're going to end up losing their tax-free status and leveraging current social crises to make sure they stay relevant by any means necessary. I'm betting they have armies of incels ensnared in their fundamentalist ideologies getting tax-free money to shitpost on the various social networks."
I cut him off right there. I think he was drinking, and I haven't talked to him since. I'm considering having him committed because he acts very strange. He may have a drug problem.
Anyway I disagree with his premise because COVID-19 did really expose weaknesses in the supply chain and global world order and showed that depending completely on foreign entities can make you non-resilient in the face of disaster. So we do need strong families and all that stuff that's being talked about, it's a real actual need. And I do think making life better for people is the way to go, but we need to fix whatever decided that landlords should be getting most of the non-rich people's money first.
Your over-reaction sounds far more reminiscent of mental illness or drug abuse than any of his actual opinions, which are fairly pedestrian in 2024 (for the record I don't agree with them).
No one is going to commit him over that grandpa, seriously.
The problem goes the other way - developed nations, the ones where you have people living comfortably enough to talk stuff like RiverCrochet's nephew, are all living below replacement rate. As things currently are, our countries are already extinct, they just don't know it yet.
The irony. For the past 50+ years, we were so obsessed with the threat of overpopulation that we didn't think of the opposite; didn't even realize that people who care about such things will all have bred themselves out of existence way before Earth gets too crowded.
There just may not be as much of a need for as many humans in the future as robots are built instead.
So maybe instead of 8 billion humans, we will have 1 billion humans and 99 billion robots. Then the humans can all be the 1%. Or maybe there won’t be any humans, and the robots can decide how many robots there should be.
> There just may not be as much of a need for as many humans in the future as robots are built instead.
Maybe, but we may never get there if the population that can build robots becomes too small to impact the direction of the economy.
> So maybe instead of 8 billion humans, we will have 1 billion humans and 99 billion robots
It's fun until you ask yourself, how will you allocate voting rights?
That is, again, if we can even get there, because again, differences in birth rates across countries and cultures, plus voting rights, means a shift in mindsets and priorities.
Also old people. They need younger people to support them, like grow their food, fix their houses, etc. But given that I plan on growing old, as I hope you do too, we should make sure the generations after us are capable of taking care of us.
Yes, and the basic idea that while a "modern" capitalist might want automation from a productivity point of view, they still need some consumers at the other end to buy their stuff!
Not exactly, because "governments" are expressly capitalist. While you're right in that governments and capitalists want this type of fodder, OP's nephew is wrong in his assessment of modern capitalists.
As an aside, some religions do teach a duty to be fruitful and multiply. While I don't think capital G "Government" cares who does or doesn't procreate in their country, there are large organized political groups that promote this for strictly ethno-nationalist reasons.
You might should read up on postmodern philosophy before you serve up your relative to the system, for deviating from your "one true narrative of history".
So arrogant.
Someone should have you committed for your personal opinions, which are also wrong, and see how you like it.
To be clear, I'm not saying he should be committed for his opinions, but he does do some other very strange things and I think he really does need help. Unfortunately the medical bills would bankrupt him.
>>I cut him off right there. I think he was drinking, and I haven't talked to him since. I'm considering having him committed because he acts very strange. He may have a drug problem.
You sound like a terrible person for him to have in his life & I hope he cuts you out of it.
