We're also capable of meta-cognition, so even if some realize that they may want children, they might reason that it's an infeasible idea.
Further, some people simply would rather spend the time for themselves. Personally, I grew up in a below poverty line single parent home and would like to spend time and money for myself and my SO now that I'm doing OK financially.
Consider that this is a failure of cognitive empathy on your part. When other people don't feel the same way we do, it's natural to believe that ours is the only reasonable perspective, and maybe even that it's our duty to enforce it on others. But it is possible to develop empathy, and discover that maybe we don't actually have access to all the data like we thought.
The point is that your finding it hard to believe that someone feels a particular way is very poor evidence that they do not feel that way, especially when applied to a population.
We know that longtime meditators are able to distinguish micro-expressions in others that reveal emotions that they might not even realize they are having. And they are experts in identifying their own emotions as well. Do you have any such qualifications?
If not, then your disbelief in other people's claims about their experience is likely much stronger evidence of your own difficulty empathizing.
I have no doubt that some are wrong about how they feel, and that would have been an interesting discussion. If I've been misunderstanding this whole time, I'm sorry. Best wishes.
Is there something to their feeling? Yes. Is it how they say it is? I don’t think so.
An argument by popularity would be "millions of people say that they like Britney Spears, so she is the best singer." The argument I'm making is that "millions of people say that they like Britney Spears, so it's likely that at least one of them actually likes her."
I'm a person who has no desire for children. I haven't engaged your argument because I believe my existence makes it moot.
Likewise, if I were to make an argument that nobody can feel genuinely annoyed because [insert any argument here], I don't think your first step should be to engage my argument. I'd expect you'd help me see that I'm likely misunderstanding you, because you genuinely felt annoyed.
If you'd like to talk more, maybe we can find a channel better than HN.
Nonetheless, common misconception that everyone on earth is having children. Nearly half of women in the U.S. have never had children. The exponential population growth that would follow from every single adult having at least one child every generation would be insane and absolutely unsustainable.
It seems like it could be a natural response to crowding in populations that people stop having children, or it could just be a result of people feeling uncertain about their future. Not sure, but either way, I know for an absolute undeniable fact that right now, I could not want anything less than having a child. I'd rather go to prison.
Besides, not everyone should be a parent. There's plenty of criminals with mental disabilities that make them hugely unfit parents even if they wanted to be. The world really would be a better place if said people simply chose not to procreate.
It's a problem that across the world in cities with educated populations, they are not reproducing at a sustainable rate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/0...
> If too low, there's a danger that we wouldn't be able to replace the aging workforce and have enough tax revenue to keep the economy stable.
Declining birth rates may not be a problem per se. But if they are, many economies I think need to adjust some of their policies. Certain countries seem to have paradigms that are not terribly friendly towards the idea of families and raising children.
This paper (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255510/) identified some socioeconomic factors that might cause a delay of, or even outright rejection of, having children:
Lack of affordable housing
Lack of flexible and part-time career posts for women
Lack of affordable and publicly funded (free) child care
I'll add that education expenses are rapidly rising for some countries. Also, said career paths often come with a financial penalty for mothers (particularly for college women -- it is well known that motherhood in itself is a big reason for the pay gap between the sexes -- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap...).
Small wonder that the birthrate is declining. In fact, in some countries, you might postulate that the economic system in itself is actually hostile towards having children.
We'd like one of us to be able to stay home with the kid, but we just can't. Where I live a programmer isn't the best paid position, and both of our jobs are important to our financial success. It'll probably be a matter of getting back to the workforce as soon as possible, and that's really disheartening when you want to give the little one as much of a chance as you can.
That case (<2) is the case for most of the developed world.
Though I was definitely wrong to say 'exponential growth' since that isn't actually true.
The over-population problem is not of US, or even not of even Americas (North and South) they are pretty much stabilized at around 1.1 Billion. The coming population "boom" is in Africa which will likely grow from 1 Billion to 4 Billion.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956247806063978 http://data.footprintnetwork.org/
It depends on your perspective. For instance, if all your cells decided to totally stop reproducing one day, you'd die eventually.
>> It depends on your perspective.
You didn't change yours. If too many people choose to not have kids, their community dies. So, if you change your perspective to the community then childlessness starts to sound like:
>>> A critical part of life would suggest to me that you die without it.