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Comment by bone_frequency | Hacker News Reader

I do believe they don't need to be replaced, they need to fix their birth rates instead.

In a world with affordable and effective birth control having children is a choice so it's really a question of why young people are choosing not to have children. Why do you think that is?

Birth rates in the US are plummeting. They peaked in 2008 at 2.1/woman(the replacement rate) and are now down to 1.7.

I can only offer anecdotes but I know several people of prime child rearing age who don't have families. From my discussions with them, they don't feel secure financially. Maybe people raised in a middle class environment aren't willing to risk poverty to have kids?

Or maybe it's the endless distraction we have available to us. Or maybe it's the increasing isolation of modern life. If you weren't raised in a coherent household maybe you feel less of a need to create one yourself.

Again, anecdotally, but I have a lot of female coworkers who are in their 30s. Their biological clocks are ticking hard (they talk about babies and children all the time). As far as I can tell, the problem is none of them can find a guy that is willing to settle down and start a family. Not because the guys they date can't afford it, but they don't want to give up their single lifestyle (and let's face it, they don't need to get married to have sex, which is what used to convince guys to settle down decades ago).

One of my coworkers was so desperate when she hit her late 30s that she stopped taking birth control and had unprotected sex with any guy that was willing until she got pregnant. Whoever the guy was, he has no idea he fathered a child. She just wanted him for his sperm. The kid is basically being raised by child care centers while she continues on her career path. The other female coworkers think she is smart and are planning on doing the same thing if they find themselves in a similar situation when they reach their late 30s.

Relatively equal opportunities for the sexes, child benefits for all, generous parental leave (of which a portion has to be taken by the man, otherwise forfeit) inexpensive child care, free schooling including university, seem to have solved this in Sweden. The birth rate is a bit higher than replacement rate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

> Whoever the guy was, he has no idea he fathered a child.

That's just unethical. I feel sorry for the child already...

I wonder why she wouldn't just go to a sperm bank...?

Free is cheaper and more fun than artificial insemination.

I guess you get to know the genes you're going to use this way. It doesn't make it any more ethical though.

I would imagine sperm banks do something similar. They have standards for who they accept, they won't take donations from just anyone. And I really doubt they just roll dice and give you a random man's sperm.

Sleeping with some person doesn't tell you anything about, say, their family medical history. Sperm banks check that stuff.

This comment is so completely different from my experience. I'm a woman who does not want kids. It has always been extremely difficult for me to find guys who are on the same page as me on not wanting kids. This might be because of where I live (bible belt).

However, the explanation that makes the most sense to me is that it is a lot easier for a guy to seriously say, "I want kids," then it is for a woman to seriously say, "I want kids." Being a sperm donor is a heck of a lot easier than actually going through the pregnancy. Even after the kid is born, in a lot of places, including where I live, the majority of the child-rearing responsibilities fall on the woman by default.

I live in a very liberal city on the West coast. Definitely a different demographic than the bible belt.

Everything you mentioned made me think of /houses/; both in the dwelling sense and in the 'a place with family history' sense.

Have you seen the price of housing lately?

Have you seen the lack of /careers/ that used to make living in a house for along time a viable idea?

Our current education/career trajectories are completely incompatible with stable family creation. We’re going to need a serious re-arrangement of parenting responsibility if we want our population pyramid to stay upright.

One idea that might work is to give up on trying to get young people to use birth control. Everyone has a number of kids in their late teens/early 20s. Child-rearing would fall to the ((great) grand)parents, who are more financially/socially stable and potentially retired. This has a number of substantial benefits, including noticeably better medical outcomes for both mothers and children.

That seems to imply that the grandparents are both capable and willing to help raise other children. Like it or not our culture in the US is very independent and an not insignificant number of parents think that their children are on their own once they hit 18. When you couple that with other parents who are in a financially shitty situation and already need their children's help, you are still going to get a lot of young people who feel that they do not have the resources to raise a child.

I think this is a valid and related topic of discussion; however I disagree with your conclusions.

I think the earth would be much better with a target population closer to 1 billion. That way everyone could have a high and worthwhile quality of life without killing the environment.

Until we reach that goal, a global target of each adult having the birth right to produce half a child is fair.

Isn't it a bit late for that to make a difference to the current problem? You're looking at a lead time of at least 15 years before any babies born now can have a positive effect on the cared/caretaker ratio. (What is the english term for that anyway?)

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