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Comment by rabboRubble | Hacker News Reader

I met super conservative friends of my parents the other day. They blamed the falling fertility rates on narcissism and social media.

I'm like uh.... what about cost of living outpacing salaries? Cost of medical care? Education debt?

All the young people I know aren't avoiding pregnancy because of their social media engagement, they are however wondering out loud in conversations with me if they can afford children.

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The thing is, children don't make economic sense. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have them: it means that you should have them despite it not making economic sense (just as we do many things which don't make economic sense but do make ethical sense).

Folks should just have children. They'll discover that they will make it work, just like their parents made it work, and so on back down the line.

Or not, I suppose, if they have some philosophical reason not to have kids. But if they want to have them, they should have them, and adjust their lives accordingly.

I liked how the article presented a diverse set of political opinons; Left, Right, and Crazytown.

"Economist Lyman Stone has blamed the United States’ less-than-generous parental leave and pay policies. Human Life International, a missionary group, blames “pro-abortion population control groups like Planned Parenthood.” Tucker Carlson claims it has to do with immigration, arguing that immigrants drive wages down, which hurts the attractiveness of men as potential spouses — “thus reducing fertility.”"

Although social media might be the wrong thing to take aim at, I would argue that rising expectations for standard of living definitely have helped to reduce the amount of (relatively, but not ridiculously, wealthy) couples who wish to have kids. Narcissism tends to drive the expected standard of living, whether exploited through advertisements or broadcast through social media itself.

Might also be the narcissism of wanting enough time to invest in a child's rearing. Like, in theory, I might have been capable of popping out 3+ kids. Would I have enough time towards invest in all their personhood development needs? Nope, I don't think so. Barely enough time for work and myself. It's kind of why I didn't get a dog. Takes a real asshole to go outside one's species then fail to take care of the doggo. Also real assholes cause a child to be born when the person does not have the stability or desire to do a proper job with a vulnerable little kid.

Socialized Medicine and Education are often discussed in this context. However, if we look at Europe where student debt is minimal, and medicine is provided by the state fertility rates are even lower.

And yet poor households have more kids than wealthy ones.

I bet the poor households are using Facebook just as much as the richer households. Whatever the root causes are, I seriously doubt social media the single most important cause.

Yep... medical care and child care are expensive. Not to mention my employer-provided insurance has ridiculous co-payment, co-insurance and deductible limits

all of that + global warming and ecological devastation

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