U.S. Birthrates Fall to Record Low
wsj.com
wsj.com
This is a subject near and dear to my heart as a systems observation wonk, and have done a tremendous amount of research on the subject.
I recommend these two books to those interested:
Shrinking-population Economics: Lessons From Japan by Akihiko Matsutani
Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? by Alan Weisman
I assume you have a reference for this? How do you know the carrying capacity of the earth is close to 1 billion?
Where does this come? Is it referenced in the books you mention? I just have never heard this before.
Source: https://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/geas_jun_12_carrying_c...
800 million people out of 7.6 billion are chronically undernourished [4] and your argument is we can still support more people? At what point do people get real that we are burning the gas faster than we can fill the gas tank of the ecosystem engine? Hope is not a strategy, and we are not so ingenuous if we already have so many people struggling to survive. Less people over time (total fertility rate stepdown), less demand on world resources, less suffering. It's that simple.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/fish-stocks-are-used-...
[2] https://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/solutions/...
[3] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/5/100505-fossil...
[4] https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-a...
Anyway e is growing and will always be (unless our universe is not isolated) and we will all die even if we manage to: save our planet/move out of our planet/move out of our solar system/move out of our galaxy.
I realise that i argued against your point even though i'm quite agreeing with it. Oh well, precision do not hurt anyone.
[0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/681747/phosphate-rock-re...
Why not? We probably have a lot of time before they become seriously unavailable. The Earth is huge. Imagine if all oxygen production on Earth stopped tomorrow. We would still have enough oxygen in the atmosphere that would last 1000 years at current consumption (obviously you couldn't live for a 1000 years though). Humanity has progressed immensely in the last 200 years. I can't imagine where we will be in 500.
I do think there is value to having a balanced aged pyramid, however. We don't want a China or Japan situation, where there are far too many old people, which would crush the younger members of society under the burden of caring. The one way to counteract that would be immigration, which has been a hot-button issue and is not a given or perfect remedy for population pyramids.
But we have fascist political forces in America despite the democracy. Same thing. It's a political thing not a structural thing.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?view=map
Developed countries already have total fertility rates at or below replacement rate; it's all population momentum now, so you want to reduce the impact of everyone living a first world life for the remainder of their life span. Less combustion vehicles, less unnecessary air travel, fossil generation plants, meat heavy diets, etc. We're already headed in this direction, we just need to invest more heavily (Green New Deal, ESG funds, etc).
Regarding education and healthcare in developing countries, educated, empowered women with access to robust healthcare have fewer children [1] [2], and this data holds true across the entire world, even in countries that attempt to use generous subsidies to encourage higher fertility rates.
Moving folks from the developing world to the developed world, or vice versa, wouldn't have a meaningful impact IMHO.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#empowerment-of-wom...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attain...
If most of the savings of decarbonization go to capital, we will end up just bringing our current issues with growing wealth inequality into the decarbonized economy.
Developed economies should lead the way on this by demonstrating how a high quality of life can be preserved with decarbonization at population scale.
That means not just for the wealthy to build net zero eco-mansions and drive Teslas, but for most regular people's energy bills (for both home and transportation) to drop to near amortized capital investment cost of renewables plus the marginal cost of producing renewable energy, which should be far lower than fossil fuels.
It sounds like you mean for respect to be an acceptance of entitlement. Again, I'm unsure how to reconcile that when resources are finite.
Expecting technological advancement to bail us out every time is wishful thinking.
There is no scientific consensus on the impact of climate change on total food production (there is a significant school of thought that it will increase due to increased production in Canada and Russia), and there's no consensus at all on what the carrying capacity of earth is.
Check the IPCC report:
For the major crops (wheat, rice, and maize) in tropical and temperate regions, climate change without adaptation will negatively impact production for local temperature increases of 2°C or more above late-20th-century levels, although individual locations may benefit (medium confidence). {7.4, Figure 7-4} Projected impacts vary across crops and regions and adaptation scenarios, with about 10% of projections for the period 2030–2049 showing yield gains of more than 10% and about 10% of projections showing yield losses of more than 25%, compared to the late 20th century.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/food-security-and-food-pr...
Note how the projections are mixed between decreased and increased production?
Don't claim consensus when it's not there.
There are other reasons not to follow this path, but that isn’t one of them.
This is a bold blanket statement that I can't agree with. It all depends on how this new person will live their life. I would argue that creating 10 new persons in a third world country doesn't hurt the environment as much as 1 single person in the US or in Europe.
Cutting back on energy use is the most regressive way of solving climate change. We will almost certainly use more energy in the future, regardless of the population.
This feels like a very odd view because the reverse is near profane thought.
>Best to do that when you're SURE they will have all the resources they need to be a productive and helpful member of society...not when you're 16 and can't care for them properly.
If it is okay to accept this logic based on age, what about other factors? For example, income level?
I totally get the sentiment, but history stubbornly is full of people born into abject poverty who somehow rise to the occasion. Take a look on Wikipedia at inventor profiles. Our best, life changing inventions came from people who were born into less-than-ideal situations. In many ways the impact people have on the world is a dice roll and not a matter of proper financial preparation.
You can't ignore the social problems created by shrinking populations though. A major one is monopolization of high positions in business and politics by an increasingly elderly class that is stuck in an obsolete way of thinking. In America this has given birth to the quip "ok, boomer."
I don't like sounding age-ist, but it does seem as if most people stop updating their understanding of the world at some point in their 40s. I don't think it's that older people can't learn. My grandfather taught himself computer programming, called BBSes (at 300 baud!), learned digital/TTL electronics, and learned all kinds of other new stuff in his 60s. It's just that most people don't do this. I think it might be an ego thing. People decide they know it all at some point and stop learning or changing their opinions.
It could also have less to do with age than with age plus status. High status people rarely seem to make drastic revisions to their world view because their brain stem is telling them everything they're doing is working. (At least this is the mechanism I suspect exists. It would have survival value to some extent.) So you get entrenched older managerial and political classes that double, triple, and quadruple down on failing policies because the failure has not affected them yet.
A second problem is that virtually every society on Earth today uses growth to paper over a range of systemic failings. Instead of dealing with inequality, we use growth. Instead of getting rid of moribund industries we use growth to make new ones while keeping the old stuff around. Growth really does avoid the need to confront a lot of very messy problems. Recent political history has not inspired confidence in me that we can confront these problems any more rationally than people in the past.
The tipping point I'm looking at is when kindred.ai, covariant.ai, google, or similar player nails manipulation. Give me a set of hands that can reliably perform a task in a semi-structured environment 24/7 at 65% the speed of a human and 1B people will be out of work in a decade.
This will further increase the wealth of a few and raise the standards of living for many which will increase their rates of consumption. I'd like to see the population decline to balance this expected increase in consumption.
As for the gerontocracy problem, the easier it is for me to earn enough live the less I have to worry about who is in charge.
That being said, this focus on "population" always sounds a little wrong to me. It's not about how many people are alive, it's about the consumption of resources per person. And by this metric, yes, the US is probably the worst offender. But here is the thing, will childless household/individuals consume less than families?
We'll just need to move beyond the current xenophobia and remember what we use to know.
Writing people off as this or that is not the answer.
Should we incentivize our own population to breed or ship in foreigners wholesale? Seems like self-subversion to opt for the latter.
The other 98% of americans are immigrants or the children/grandchildren/great grandchildren/etc. of immigrants.
Some of my ancestors immigrated from Ireland and Italy to the US, but despite that, I've decided to work in software engineering instead of the mafia.
98% of the population are immigrants or the descendents of immigrants.
The people who wrote the US Constitution were immigrants or the descendents of immigrants.
All the presidents, including the current one, have been the descendents of immigrants.
The US Constitution has survived this reality for 200+ years.
I realize some people, like my aunt (whose grandfather was an italian immigrant), want to pretend there is a difference between immigrants coming to america today and those who came 50, 100, 200, 300 years ago. But the difference is primarily in her mind, and now she treats new immigrants the way her grandfather was treated by people who decided italians should not be welcome in america.
It seems to be a constant tension here that I don't expect to every really go away.
I'm sure in countries without immigration people find other things to use to classify each other into groups that are convenient to dislike and scapegoat.
But there is no telling how things will pan out with economy in the future, to what extent will automation increase productivity, etc. Also if the anti-aging research comes through the productive age of individuals could be extended along with longer lifespan.
Whatever happens the environment argument is ridiculous, environment has always been unstable, life on earth has been hit by major cataclysmic events throughout the history - the only difference is that historically we couldn't do anything about it - which is changing significantly with technological development. If we don't start decoupling our survival odds from the environmental factors we are going to suffer as a society irregardless of what we do to environment.
It isn't. The environment isn't unstable right now, it has relatively stable rate of change, and it's predictable. It's just getting worse for our survival as a population. We are using carbon based energy sources too quickly for the environment to follow the natural cycle to sequester it, and as a result we won't be able to feed the existing number of humans.
We cannot decouple survival odds from environmental factors. You show a lack of understanding of how food is made to think that is possible at current populations.
On the timescale of declining birth rates affecting this - this is probably the simplest problem to solve - we have multiple ways reduce environmental impacts on food production with different levels of innovation/change required - from engineering resilient crops and using the same approach as we do now, over vertical farming in controlled environments (still producing the same food but with low surface requirement and isolation from environmental effects), all the way to producing essential nutrients from simple organisms large scale (eg. algae) (here we need to figure out a lot more about nutrition to provide reasonable healthy substitutes over complex food) - this is a matter of economics, scaling, research - not trivial but clearly possible.
Building cities able to withstand large scale environmental disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis, temperature control, isolation from air pollutants (eg. radioactive waste in the air), imposing strict bounds on entering/leaving to prevent viruses/bacteria from spreading (through humans and animals) - these are the kinds of things we will need to be able to do in the future - otherwise the next COVID, avian flue, Fukushima or global warming is going to leave us in a shit situation without any way of responding - we will be left in the same shit situation we are now - forced to hide and hope it goes away.
I don’t see how any idea which increases consumption (such as building cities and farms and whatever can help mitigate the more immediate problem of carbon emissions and other fossil fuel related pollution. Only solution I can see is reduction in consumption per capita (mainly in developed countries), and accompanying that is reduction of ”capita”s Aka reduction in population .
Droughts can still cause famine and starvation in many parts of the world. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, vulcano eruptions, forest fires, localised disease (like lime disease) etc. all part of the natural disasters happening without human intervention. These are the small scale common occurrences that we still really don't have good ways of dealing with.
A lot of these are exacerbated by climate change - which is already in motion and there is very little proof that we can predict what will happen accurately, so even if we cut green house gas emissions to 0 - and that's not a realistic scenario - we're still going to have to deal with the consequences.
Then there are global outlier events that can be extinction level - meteor impact, deadly virus strains crossing from animals to humans and spread by animals (eg. bird flu - we're covering from COVID with IFR of sub 1% which is largely targeting old people past average age of death - bird flue IFR was close to 50% and spread by birds which aren't so easy to contain - imagine if the transmission was easier). Again 0 human intervention required, have historical precedent, just not frequent enough to worry about when you have more pressing issues.
In any realistic scenario we will be living in a world were local actions can have global impact - nuclear disaster can spread radiation between continents, virus originating in one place can spread globally and we have no containment units, climate change is going to make the weather more volatile and many natural disasters are going to become more frequent and it can destroy currently hospitable areas, etc.
Nature is not great by default, and we're already on a path that will make it less hospitable - the only realistic long term solution I see is learning to live in that environment.
Ironically this consumption-based mentality is also one cause of the declining birth rates in developed countries. On a material level, potential middle-class parents are vastly better off today than the parents of ~100 years ago. As a percentage of income, food is cheaper, entertainment and education are essentially free (thanks to the Internet), clothing doesn't need to be hand-made, etc. And yet many people don't have kids because they "can't afford it" which basically translates to "can't afford to maintain society's baseline consumption levels." I'm not blaming them, either - this is something that society pushes constantly. Going against that tide is extremely difficult.
> Every problem with modern society becomes worse with more humans.
No, not necessarily if enough people adopted a minimalist/low carbon emission lifestyle. More people would lead to it becoming a bigger social movement, thus making it more acceptable for 'regular' people to join.
People aren't choosing to not have kids just so they can eat avocado toast.
Don’t get me wrong - I prefer living alone to having roommates, and certainly prefer having my own private room to sharing it with multiple other people. But this is a very modern expectation. If it were normal for 3-4 people to share a room (as was common in the past), I imagine rent prices would actually be lower today than historically.
In any case, rent is really only overinflated in coastal megacities. And rent wasn’t really my main target: there are a whole lot of modern consumption activities considered ‘essential’ which really aren’t in any sense, but have simply become social expectations.
If everyone who retired has "adequate" savings, but their is not a large enough workforce to support them, you will see their buying power fall. Also possible is their buying power would remain, and the buying power of the young workforce would fall as a greater share of goods produced go to retired folks who hoarded financial capital when it was cheaper to do so.
> If everyone who retired has "adequate" savings, but their is not a large enough workforce to support them, you will see their buying power fall. Also possible is their buying power would remain, and the buying power of the young workforce would fall as a greater share of goods produced go to retired folks who hoarded financial capital when it was cheaper to do so.
That's another reason where you need either a larger working population or a vast excess that gets redistributed to support retirees.
I suppose you could argue that some people do stockpile housing for retirement. However, other than that, all they are doing is stockpiling a claim on future productivity. As a matter of policy, we could give every old person such a claim regardless of their savings.
You make an excellent point, and I'll raise a counterargument. I would claim, simply, that human life is intrinsically a good thing. I believe that my life is worth living, that it is better that I'm alive than if I were dead. I'll presume that everyone who reads this believes the same about their own lives. In that case, the more people alive, the better -- (if all else is equal).
That said, the philosopher Derek Parfit anticipated this and raises a counterargument to my argument above, known as the "mere addition paradox". [1] Roughly speaking, it goes as follows.
1. Suppose you have a population of 1,000,000 people, living happy, healthy, productive lives. Let's stipulate that this is a good thing.
2. Now, suppose in addition to this, suppose you have a second population of 1,000,000 people, who lead difficult lives with a lot of hardship, but whose lives are (perhaps barely) worth living. Then, if human life is intrisically good, then it is good that these people also exist. (This is the "mere addition" part.)
3. Given these two populations, equality is a good thing: lower the standard of living of the first million people ever so slightly, and raise the standard of the second group to match the first. This, too, seems to be a good thing.
4. Repeat. Eventually you arrive at a huge population, living lives of misery and squalor which are just slightly better than nothing -- but which one has argued is a better scenario than your original million people. This is the "repugnant conclusion".
That's an enormous assumption, in my opinion.
It's my my main issue with the anti-natalist movement: If theoretically everyone who believed in climate change agreed that anti-natalism was the solution, by definition within a generation the largest voting block would be the children of climate deniers. Which would actually make climate change much worse.
We don't need fewer humans, we need smarter/better institutions and more efficient technology. Every life born is one more potential option for a breakthrough.
As an anti-natalist (more precise would be anatalist, I am not opposing that other people have kids, I just wish they chose not to), let me address that. The point is not everybody to not have kids, but just enough to stabilize or slightly decrease the population.
First, you're assuming that climate denial is genetic and not cultural. Which is a big assumption, and I am in general in favor of nurture argument. (As a side note, by waiting longer to have kids, humans might actually be selecting for kids that are learning more and longer, which favors nurture even more.)
However, even if I take that assumption. If I chose not to have kids, that very much means I do not care about biology and what my genetics want. I am making the decision as a person free of the evolutionary pressure (well, somewhat, because I still care about survival of human race). Therefore, I am not sure why I should be bothered by the evolutionary pressure on other individuals. The truth is, it is going to be their battle. I can only lend them a helping hand (and perhaps an example), and do (what I believe is) a morally correct thing. If they mess up and still act wrong, it's not my moral responsibility.
It is a similar question as to whether or not vote strategically. If everybody votes strategically, you can get a result that no one wants. Therefore, somebody has to sacrifice and decidedly vote not strategically.
I'm not saying you or anyone else should have kids out of some sense of duty. If you don't want kids, fine. People having kids they didn't want has led to a lot of messed up families. However I find the argument that it's because of climate change to be a post-hoc rationalization. It's like if during the black death people said they're not having kids because it's morally correct to not produce more plague carriers.
As for your voting analogy, under our current system (in the US) if everyone votes strategically some good might occur albeit in a somewhat corrupt, half-assed manner. If fewer people vote strategically then those who vote strategically win, however small a minority they might be. That's how we ended up with a two party system. Alliances willing to compromise parts of their values will defeat smaller but pure adversaries.
I think for my argument it doesn't matter whether the inheritance of the denialist position happens through biological or cultural means. Either way, what you're assuming is that by and large people cannot change their position (from the position of their parents) based on the situation they will find themselves in, that they cannot adapt culturally (i.e. they can only adapt via natural selection).
> However I find the argument that it's because of climate change to be a post-hoc rationalization.
Maybe it is. How can anyone know? I don't think it changes anything in the debate, if it's just a rationalization of something else. Maybe your belief that it is a post-hoc rationalization is a rationalization of something as well.
> under our current system (in the US) if everyone votes strategically some good might occur albeit in a somewhat corrupt, half-assed manner
Saying "some good might occur" is equivalent of "some bad might occur", which was my point. Your (not mine) U.S. voting system is horrible, you should push for changing it into something more sane. But regardless, I think what I wrote is true for most voting systems.
IOW, if your goal is to better humanity, having a kid is a really, really blunt instrument versus using more of your brain capacity x time on that goal.
People don't live in vacuum, we destroy our environment on maybe even exponential scale as our numbers grow. Extermination of vast amounts of species and whole ecosystems might mean nothing to you, but sure as hell is something I value very highly.
I am not an extremist, I don't claim that earth and universe would be just fine without humans, we can be a worthy addition even if only for selfish purposes. But as usually some middle path is probably the best, especially in long term view, which is very hard to model for human mind.
I agree. (And, in particular, I agree that ecological diversity is very important.) I consider it to be something of a foundational model -- kind of like how in introductory physics you assume that things like air resistance don't exist.
> Given these two populations, equality is a good thing: lower the standard of living of the first million people ever so slightly, and raise the standard of the second group to match the first.
I'm trying to understand why you would repeat this step if you've lowered the standard of the first million ever so slightly but have already matched the miserable million to be that of the happy million?
Exactly, that's the paradox. Parfit's argument stipulates a series of steps each of which seems to make the world better, but where the end result seems to be worse than what you started with.
Hopefully, we can avoid the paradox, and instead grow in such a way that everyone thrives and we mitigate the negative effects on the environment.
If it were genuinely the case that human life should be maximized, we should lower everyone's standard of living as much as possible (it consumes resources), and then force everyone to have as many children as possible.
Of course, that would also maximize human suffering, but apparently human life is intrinsically good regardless of suffering, so not a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
Also, with religious stresses being almost non-existent in the groups I run in I feel like people aren't jumping into legally-binding marriages which causes the baby thing to be pushed down the road until they find someone they want to forge a lifelong relationship with. I think it's a super good thing when people take their time to find the right relationship for them!
All-in-all I've noticed a big generational gap in thinking on this one because all I hear from tons of older relatives is "sooo when you guys getting married?" ...or even pushing for children before the fact. It feels unnatural and downright weird to field those questions and it's neigh impossible to explain "we're just taking our time to enjoy this thing and not rushing into huge commitments with marriage or kids..."
We're just taking our time trying to do the right thing for us really... I just wish people would stop calling us selfish for that.
It's selfish and self-centered to not* have children?
> Our society and culture are doomed if this doesn't change.
That's one opinion I guess. Personally I believe our society and culture are doomed if we don't significantly decrease the human population. But that's just another opinion.
*Edit: I forgot the "not" which obviously entirely changes the meaning of my post.
OP seems like they run in some affluent circles, but the problem is broader than just among the affluent.
I have a weird situation with one foot in affluent California, and one foot in blue collar Iowa (Cedar Rapids). It's all over in my experience.
Also, I have definitely thought about all of those things you've listed in regards to life planning, and would say that they definitely influence me strongly on this.
I wonder how weird that is. My situation is broadly similar, excepting that I'm from Missouri. For what it's worth, I wasn't aiming to call you out as being well-off and out of touch. I was responding more to the bits I thought the intermediate poster was perceiving as selfish and what not.
> Also, I have definitely thought about all of those things you've listed in regards to life planning, and would say that they definitely influence me strongly on this.
Boy, you and me both.
Waiting a few extra years for financial security is not selfish. Having children without building up some assets to ride through a financial crisis or bout of unemployment is selfish.
People want more enjoyment out of life, and in the same time finding their place in life got harder. Have state support parentship more (ie sponsored kindergardens instead of horribly expensive ones), because modern folks often live too far from their parents. And tons of other supportive things.
Ie in Switzerland where I live, you are taxed more if you as a couple get married. Staying single brings more than 1000$ extra per month. Even with 1 kid, we are still worse off compared to not marrying. I mean, how more clear can the state be to giving you a massive fuck you as a parent? People here have kids despite state child support policies, not thanks to them.
If you don't feel that you have some support, kids are simply too hard for many. Although, subjectively, they are the best thing in my life.
The real narcissism to me, is bringing a child into this world when you're not 100% certain in your abilities to properly raise it. It is a lifetime commitment you need to know you're ready to make before you do so.
Real wage declines, often dual incomes required just to keep up, two major recessions during prime career building years, primary equity channels increasingly unaffordable, cultural mal-adaptation in many semi-rural/small metro areas to support children in dual-income situations, poor financial literacy as a part of core education, punitive judicial system engendering classism, and more. Not all these problems are new. However, they have increased and are the daily reality this generation faces.
Want to see more people have children? Encourage, vote for, and adopt policies that reduce the external costs of child rearing and birthing. Only then, if low birth rate remains extant, can doomsaying and despair over cultural selfishness be acceptable. Until then, focus on bug-fixing the social platform.
Natalism comes from a few different sources. Some of them are religious in nature ("God commands us to be fruitful and multiply."). Sometimes it comes from an econometric analysis ("We need more workers to be economically competitive."). Sometimes it comes from a humanistic desire to see people happy with kids. Usually though, it's not that last reason that people start talking about "selfishness". The most relatable and forgiving reason someone might act like this is that they want grandkids and are salty about it.
There are a variety of factors that are or should be taken into account before having a child, OP is being responsible. If they don't want or feel like they are not ready for a child, not having a child is the responsible option.
This 'generation of young people' are incredibly financially insecure and are currently experiencing the second great recession of their lives. Adding the expense of children to that is not a responsible action. Good for OP for making a rational decision that suits their needs.
Try to explain that to people, and you might as well be telling them that the weather is bad, though. It's kinda nonsensical.
The only culture that is liable to die from lack of children is a culture that could not survive in the free.
It's literally the same thing, except you don't get to propagate your genes and might get less of a personal hormone rush.
I’ve made the same observation, I think “common law” marriage is becoming a big thing. I also notice it’s not a mutually-appreciated situation for many couples long term, usually with one partner wanting to enter into a legal marriage but not the other for various reasons.
I know in my circle of friends and favily, we waited longer than we wanted do due to things out of our control, but ended up being about "average" age for having a first child in our circle. Many of our circle who waited until late 30s/early 40s are very torn up with having waited, as the reality that they are going to miss certain things sets in.
Life moves fast, and our modern world tends to make you prioritize things that don't really matter. Your relatives may be annoying, but in most cases, they are probably trying to express how they grew to feel. From my personal pov, watching or working with my 8 year old isn't some obligation that I have to do, it's incredible and more relevant to me that some stupid IT project that I'll barely remember in 10 years.
If I come off as preachy, I don't intend it and apologize. I just found that the "eyeroll factor" for how 39 year old me sees 29 year old me was much higher than how 29 year old me looked back at 19 year old me!
I'm 40 and my youngest is 3. By the time he's an adult, I'll be 55. If he has kids at 40, I'll be 77 and will never really know his kids, let alone see them grow up.
I'd never recommend having kids at 18 but looking more and more like 25-30 is the "right" age.
My dad lived to be 86, and my kids are 7 & 9. There definitely wasn't enough time to form a deep relationship. He enjoyed their company, but they weren't too interested in getting to know him, and in the final few years of his life he was slowing down considerably so it's easy to understand why. He was 77 when my daughter was born, just like the example from GP.
I’m pushing 50 and haven’t had kids. I want to and expect to, probably in a couple years. I tell myself I’ll be starting my first family at the age where many people start their second.
Any healthy child raised with love is a huge plus in the universe.
This is probably[0] an even bigger consideration for women[1] but in many societies that's not stopping them from having kids in their late 40's.
I guess I wasn't clear in my post: I think the US frowns on significant age differences (>10y maybe?) in relationships, with exceptions for the rich and famous who are expected to do what they want. Probably other societies share this prejudice. Many do not. I have no idea whether this prejudice extends to children.
[0]: based on common assumptions, and Wikipedia for lack of a better source right now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_maternal_age
[Edit: clarification re: wikipedia]
You are comparing your kids to your IT projects. Maybe you should instead compare it to things you really are passionate about in life. If you don't have those then it certainly makes sense how children could have easily filled that void.
Especially women. My cousin is a physician, so basically lost her 20s completely to work. Even being in a relationship almost felt irresponsible to her for a long time because of the pressures and the potential to move anywhere in the country.
A good friend ended up being a high-flyer at a big consulting company -- he always wanted what was over the next hill from a career point of view, and that impacted his relationships.
I've always seen it the other way around. People start families and have children prematurely because it's a trivial way to create meaning and dependency and something to fall back on.
Instead of seeing other pursuits as compensation for having children I feel the family is often the compensation or a sort of insurance in contrast to doing something completely on your own, which is a much scarier thing in many ways.
The reverse assertion is even more so, IMO. It's also an evolutionary dead end. Your extensive postage stamp collection is not going to move humanity forward.
In fact these are the things that move humanity forward, it's not reproduction that advances human culture in any meaningful way. Isaac Newton didn't have children, but of course his contribution to human society is imeasurable.
Evolution of human society isn't led by biological reproduction, it's led by cultural reproduction.
At a macro level, fertility ratio below 2 (much more than 2 at the time, actually, since a lot of children died, but 2 is more self-explanatory) in Newton's England, however, would mean that England as we know it today would not exist, and some other nation that procreates better but perhaps doesn't value math and science as much, would take its place. From there: no computers, no United States, no Internet or Moon landings, different outcomes in several large scale wars. Pretty catastrophic, if you ask me.
And the morality of attachment theory is challenging at all stages of life. Having the child is necessary but insufficient to do good. Letting the child relish in uncontrolled impulses is good now and bad later. And so on.
In light of that any assertion of having children being defacto good or not is incomplete without describing the overall society. Evolution is a strawman in this sense; our children do not immediately enter some Darwinian gladiatorial arena of genetic destiny. They are going to sample from the best examples they can find of how to live, and friends, extended families, and ideas echoed through time(as communicated orally, in books and other mediums) all play a part of that. It's not all on the parent, and if it's not all on the parent, then childless adults have a place, an "ought to do something for the child", even if they are not writing King Lear or inventing calculus.
The longer I live and look around the more I realize how annoying and life-ruining kids would be for me. And, while there may be many couples that are happier with kids, the ones that stick out for me are (also many) that either visibly have worse QoL, less happy marriages, etc., and the ones that visibly have stockholm syndrome.
Somehow I feel we've designed the way we do careers to oppose certain natural processes. I'm not even female, I can't imagine how much uphill the battle is for them.
1) the QoL/unhappy people I notice are mostly due to financial situation - if your friends are all in tech it won't apply; or the fact that one of the parents switched their focus completely onto children and neglects their spouse (and it's not always the wife)
2) you may not know some of them closely enough or see them in regular life. It's not socially acceptable to regret having children or admit it sucks, by word or action.
3) Many are obvious cases of stockholm syndrome. The most obvious example (rare, but imo symptomatic for everyone) is when people say they are blessed to experience having a child with severe disability. I always want to ask (but never will), would you have wished for such a blessing before the kid was born, if given a choice? I could believe someone who says it sucks in many ways but worth it, but when someone claims to feel "blessed" in these circumstances... sure, suit yourself :)
A less obvious one is when people tell you it's great and there are no downsides. Again I can believe people who say they are happy despite the tradeoffs, but sometimes people tell you there basically no downsides to kids; and 3 minutes before/after will tell you how they would like to pick up their abandoned hobbies, how their health is deteriorating due to lack of exercise, they cannot work from home due to distractions, haven't had time for sex in 3 months, haven't slept properly in 3 weeks, ... but there are no downsides!
Agree with your first point - all my friends are in tech with decent incomes.
Disagree about people claiming there are no downsides - people I've seen generally accept the "cost" of kids (monetary, physical, personal etc). But the benefits of kids seem to be outweighing these costs. I agree with you that it is not socially acceptable to regret having kids, so some of them might be lying. Only speaking for myself, I am pretty happy.
And lastly, there is another factor to add to your analysis - the culture. Almost all my friends are immigrants to the US, coming from countries with much higher birth rates and very different attitudes about family or having kids.
Obviously no parent would wish for a child to be born with a disability. A less cynical and self-centered take on the situation might be that the love and ability to nuture and help that child with challenges has meaningful, unexpected rewards.
> A less obvious one is when people tell you it's great and there are no downsides. Again I can believe people who say they are happy despite the tradeoffs, but sometimes people tell you there basically no downsides to kids; and 3 minutes before/after will tell you how they would like to pick up their abandoned hobbies, how their health is deteriorating due to lack of exercise, they cannot work from home due to distractions, haven't had time for sex in 3 months, haven't slept properly in 3 weeks, ... but there are no downsides!
You're attributing this to kids. People don't just drop all hobbies, stop taking care of themselves, stop having sex or sleeping because a child shows up.
If that all happens, it reflects a level of immaturity and lack of planning that would cause a problem in the face of any adversity.
> It's terrifying to me that selfishness and self-centeredness has apparently taken over that generation of young people.
It's a very common sentiment and it's usually older family/coworkers.
EDIT: now there's even more and weird "you're gonna die alone" comments in there too (which are common as a counter argument for waiting)... just look at this thread and you'll see exactly what I was trying to describe.
1. HNers (myself included) are argumentative and treat HN like a debate platform. I wouldn't assign any weight to comments here about issues such as this (or anything for that matter)
2. The people in your real world sound pretty terrible. I can't think of one person who would DARE tell me I'm being selfish for choosing to have kids or not. Maybe it's because I'm a man, or self-confident, or something else but I couldn't even imagine someone saying this to me without it turning into a very unpleasant argument, not to mention me cutting off contact.
Did I just luck out with family, peers and coworkers? Maybe.
How do you respond?
I find it's predominantly a conservative view that comes from religious underpinnings. I also think it comes down to a lot of folks who took the traditional path because "that's what you're suppose to do" who are threatened by alternative life circumstances.
I respond with, "we're taking our time to figure things out financially and emotionally to be healthy people" - or something along those lines. It's a 100% genuine answer and usually knocks them off their stance enough that they consider how things may be for someone different than them.
I could get into more details but a big reason I deal with this is because I'm the very socially liberal black-sheep that moved to California in my conservative Iowan family. It's just a way for them to dig at me passive-aggressively without outright challenging my views. I've also experienced this in workplaces/offices with uncomfortably strong Christian vibes.
Are these individuals the people that actually didn't want to have children but did so out of selfless commitment to their spouses or desire of their parents to become grandparents? I don't typically get that sense.
Relatedly: I feel very, very pessimistic about how our society is changing, and even worse about the environment. This is a large part of my reluctance to have children. Is that selfish too?
Finally, whatever reason you have for wanting or not wanting kids is always going to be selfish first. It might also contain altruistic elements. There's nothing wrong with being selfish and doing what is best for you. Or are we all supposed to be altruistic and donate our entire salary every month to charity? Absurd.
This point is not lost on me, but it does lose some power when I'm working for actual systemic change that doesn't create such a stratified, ponzi-scheme style social structure. I'm not going to be a human resources bot to keep the SS fund liquid (which is a far larger problem than just me), but I'm also not just sitting around watching the world crumble without taking action.
I'm sure we can yadda yadda yadda our way into the inevitable debate about the parallels, perils and pitfalls of a society built on unending economic growth, but let's not. A broken system creates an obligation to fix the system, not keep it on life support with my sex organs.
Question to you - if you think current system is broken, what would you replace it with if you had all the power?
Keep in mind that most women will not undergo an infinite number of treatment cycles, even if they can afford it.
"Every study you read or expert you consult will agree that 35 is a milestone for women when it comes to having children. In your early 30s, your chances of getting pregnant are only slightly lower than in your late 20s, and your risk of having a miscarriage or a baby with Down syndrome is only slightly higher. But at 35, that decline in fertility begins to accelerate."
Sure it might take more effort than say mid-twenties, fertility tracking/treatments, etc. But it can be done. And before 35 is certainly doable.
If there's one thing I'm grateful to my parents for it's my education. Life in the 21st century requires much higher complexity to achieve similar economic/social success to previous generations, and not just on the technological front. Those with the tools to solve complex problems will do fine, those who lack said tools are going to be bitterly disappointed across most aspects of life, unless we somehow bring back unskilled labor as a middle class profession.
>Nope. Most people will never care about someone else’s child the way they’ll care about their own flesh and blood.
Stepparenthood implies a myriad of confounding factors, not the least of which are, a) death of a parent or b) Divorce.
Upon further investigation, the link you posted does not contain the quote you posted, nor does searching the quoted text show return any results on either DuckDuckGo or Google. It is possible that this is a typographical error.
I do want to point that EvoPsych is a bit iffy as far as fields go. See [1] if you're curious. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology#Recept...
It was a quote from Pinker's how the mind works. The 'Daly and Wilson' referenced was what I linked to.
>Nope. Most people will never care about someone else’s child the way they’ll care about their own flesh and blood.
!=
>The overwhelming majority of people opt to have their own children rather than adopt. It is not me who bears the burden of proof.
If you want a funny analogy, a better one would be giving $1000 to charity (adoption) or giving $500 to charity, setting $250 worth of coal on fire and using $250 to buy weed so you could feel good about that all (your own kid).
Usually, when pretending that child-rearing is not selfish (and IMO it's more selfish than paragliding or eating cake), people refer to making sacrifices towards the child; but that is satisfied by adoption.
I'm not saying it's bad - it's your choice. But, don't preach about selflessness like most pro-natalists do; I climb rocks, and I don't preach about it even though it's less selfish (by harm done) than having kids.
> Doesn't that mean that having children is basically selfish?
You were not originally making the point that having your own children was selfish compared to adopting. You were stating that it was selfish, in and of itself. Basically selfish. I still maintain that it is not, and I don’t believe you have actually argued successfully that it is. The main argument you seem to be making is that, because having your own children is more selfish than adopting, that makes it selfish in a general sense, since those are the only two options. But another option when it comes to reproducing is not having any children at all. And I can’t really see how you can argue that having your own children is more selfish than not having any children at all, since having children involves giving another person the chance to be alive at great personal cost and not having children involves no personal sacrifice and no other person getting the chance to be alive.
So the only viable position that remains is to say that having your own children is more selfish than adopting. If that’s your position, then we are in agreement.
My main point though is that pro-natalists should really stop pressing the "it's selfless"/"not having children is selfish" angle, because in the 1st world it's the opposite, and if selflessness played any part in the decision adopting would be a logical step.
In your analogy, if you donate a bunch to a church led by a pastor whose brother is your boss at work, as opposed to some other church, the donation is "less selfish" than not donating, but it makes your entire motivation credibly suspect.
No. This is not my analogy. This is further stipulation that you've added to my analogy that changes the moral calculus completely. My analogy is just volunteering your time to help old people at your church. By your reasoning, this would be considered selfish because you are choosing to patronize members of your own church with your good works, rather than random people.
> My main point though is that pro-natalists should really stop pressing the "it's selfless"/"not having children is selfish"
FWIW, there are plenty of people making the argument that having children is selfish (our exchange here being a good example of such). What do you expect people to do when you call the single most important endeavor of their life, which entails massive amounts of personal sacrifice, basically selfish? And, truly, to call having children selfish shows that you have essentially no conception of what parenting entails.
If you want to argue that it's irresponsible because children have an environmental impact, then I still think you're wrong, but you're not preposterously wrong. Just subtly wrong (IMO).
You literally have thousands of generations that have gone before you, that have sacrificed to give you those very choices you’ve outlined.
Your parents comforted you when you were scared, even to the detriment of their sleep. Fed you, clothed you, shared all of their resources even when they didn’t feel like it, even when it wasn’t to their advantage.
Edit: not sure why this is downvoted?
“Selfish: lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.”
Moreover, if I'm going to start considering the impact I have on future generations and people by procreating, where does it stop? Should we have 10 children? Does my duty stop at two when we're replacing ourselves?
And given my level of commitment to local and national causes (financial and volunteer hours), does that offset ostensible selfishness of not having children? I'm passionate about helping this world despite having concerns about bringing anyone new into it.
Donating money and volunteer hours are not the same as 24 hour care and responsibility for years on end.
They aren’t offsetting. You’re skipping the very hard work of it all, and justly, missing the reward too.
They're being downvoted because:
(1) your comment is a blanket assumption on an entire group of people, and
(2) you claim a position of (likely unearned) moral superiority that (you assume) allows you to make such judgements on others.
Thus, you come off as "un-cool." Be cool, my friend. Don't judge strangers for the important life choices they make. You don't know enough about others' lives to make justifiable judgements on the important life choices they make.
(a) This is true. You would not be here if prior generations didn't sacrifice to have children.
>Fed you, clothed you, shared all of their resources even when they didn’t feel like it, even when it wasn’t to their advantage
(b) This is true. You would not exist if someone did not take care of you.
(c) The OP stated in this public forum, "We're just taking our time trying to do the right thing for us really... I just wish people would stop calling us selfish for that"
Which meets the definition of "selfish".
I am not comfortable having a child, therefore I am not having a child. I am not going to impose an unwanted child on this world as I know what it feels like to be one...
Is that selfish? Don't know, don't care. I don't need to justify my choices to internet strangers.
Oof, I’m glad you haven’t met some of the parents I’ve met.
You can also accept the responsibility of dying childless. It might be lonely and problematic in other ways. It might even make your life shorter.
I wish people would understand that kids are not only responsibility, but also joy, and help. So the grass is not really greener on the either side.
Might make your life longer and happier too. Obviously it depends on personal circumstances.
> I wish people would understand that kids are not only responsibility, but also joy, and help. So the grass is not really greener on the either side.
I think most people _do_ understand that. I would hope that you understand that depending on the circumstances, that joy and help may _not_ outweigh the responsibility and hardships.
It's not really my problem, as I am an anatalist. :-) But I do find the prospect of dying childless somewhat scary. (I have only one brother who is not going to have children either.) If it wasn't for the global warming (and general ecological destruction), I would very much want to have kids.
Don’t do it!
Make some babies. Raise them to be good people. The world will be a slightly better place for it. And your life will be made immeasurably better by the purpose and meaning that children bestow upon it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Should I increase the strain on an already overburdened system because other peoples future descendants might use those resources otherwise? I presume that I am misreading your point because that seems... ill founded.
Looking at my own example, this is false. My grandfather (who died when I was 15) was a chemical engineer, and a big fan of renewable energy. Possibly he thought the same - my generation will be the one that solves these problems. But what did I do? I work at a SW company, because it pays well. I have a rather modest lifestyle, but I can't really say I would be working on an individual solution either. So here we are - 40 years of procrastination.
I ultimately think that "they will solve the problem" is wishful thinking. There is no problem to be solved, the problem is that we (as humanity) need to stop expanding our energy needs. Whether we do it by limiting population or limiting consumption or both, doesn't really matter. But I don't think there is any problem that remains to be solved.
The problem is pure and simple, procrastination. And it won't be solved by procreation.
> The carrying capacity of the earth will be reached whether you have children or not. So the consideration is different: whose descendants will take up that carrying capacity. If you, as a person concerned about the environment, opt to have children, then, statistically speaking, you are biasing the future composition of the human population toward being more concerned about the environment (since your kids share you innate predispositions and will be raised in the familial and cultural milieu that you create for them). And if people who are concerned about the environment systematically choose to not have children because they have become infected by this meme, then you have a situation where the future composition of the human population is becoming more biased toward doing nothing about the environment. So not having kids is a losing strategy.
In any case, I think I already addressed it. Humans are not just mindless meme carriers, they have a mind on their own.
And if you're considering it statistically, then that argument seems even more like an excuse. If everybody expects that someone else will do a job (save the planet), but nobody actually makes a step towards that job (educating somebody to save it, or doing whatever else towards it), then the work simply doesn't get done.
Remember, at the end of the day, concerns do not matter, only actions. We already have enough humans who are concerned.
You've made the next generation care slightly less on average about global warming. Maybe your kids would have been more intelligent than the global average of ~90 IQ and helped work on or pay for solutions.
Who am I to impose my degrading health/inevitable death onto someone else? I say this having dealt with both of my parent's deaths already.
I come from a long family history of mental illness, addiction, abuse, and just some general heinous stuff. Passing my daily struggle along to someone to avoid dying childless seems so selfish to me... to the point that I'd feel pretentious even considering that as a reason TO have children.
What I'm trying to say is it's just not as simple as that for many people. I've also accepted that I will likely die alone and just don't care - I've volunteered at nursing homes and EOL is miserable for everyone. Doing anything so people give a f about me down the line just seems incredibly selfish.
> The NCHS data also showed that the share of babies born preterm last year hit its highest level in more than a decade, with just over 1-in-10 being born before 37 weeks of gestation.
Having experienced that, it's not something I'd wish on anyone.
Children are a result of sufficient resources being present (time, energy, supports, and money). Those things are being stripped from us by the employer class.
In terms of lack of supports, for example, the United States is one of the only advanced economies without free child care. The right wing is attempting to strip away public education. The physical process of having a child costs thousands of dollars, and sometimes they charge for letting the mother hold her baby right after it is born. Housing requires dual incomes in order to live in a place near jobs that isn't either a slum or too cramped.
You could make the argument those having kids are selfish. I'm not going to enumerate all the reasons why but it doesn't take much thought to come up with many.
I'm not saying they are selfish, only that people can make the argument either way. Ignore them.
Please consider at least 1/3 of what I am trying to say.
"Many folks in my social circles are just less willing to accept the real responsibility of raising a child. We're all late-20-somethings/early 30-somethings and I have the conversation all the time with people who want to wait until things like careers are established,"
This is the eternal search for the "perfect time", "perfect conditions" as I sometimes said myself:
"When I have more time, I will go to the Gym."
"When I get more money I will be able to save."
"All-in-all I've noticed a big generational gap in thinking on this one because all I hear from tons of older relatives is "sooo when you guys getting married?" ...or even pushing for children before the fact. It feels unnatural and downright weird to field those questions and it's neigh impossible to explain we're just taking our time to enjoy this thing and not rushing into huge commitments with marriage or kids..."
No, there is not. I am in my forties and got the same questions. But you know what the real deal is? People are not asking about the children. They are polite, trying to alert you.
Alert about:
1. Healthy babies and age of parents -> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881604/
2. What age will you be when your son wants to play/run at his 16 years?
3. We don't have control of life anytime. You may be Healthy now, but it only takes a disease to change it.
4. One thing is you did not use protection on your 20's and got pregnant another is willing to get pregnant later -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility
Life is a match competition game if you are aware or not.
Older ladies compete against younger ladies (more fertile)
Man compete with another man for physical security (muscles and tall) or financial security(money, resources).
The main problem is sometimes you are having fun with someone that you can't see yourself having a family.
Now about the other reasons to not have a baby:
1. The "earth", carbon resources, global warming -> Riiight it seems the propaganda only targets one part of the population that is not the part of the problem.
2. We just need more robots: That will be nice for you to live in a robotic nursery home. "Alexa! Give me my pills".
3. Immigration will complement: different people, different traditions, different morals. Don't get surprised later!
Now consider at least 1/3 of what I said in good faith:
1. Are you spending your time with someone you can see raising a family? If not is like sleeping with a poisonous snake in your bedroom. One day it will bite you.
2. Did your past jobs/companies called you on holidays? Invited you for a BBQ?
3. Who profits from high IQ, working hard people not having kids? Have you checked how much a burrito breakfast is charged in a retirement home? How much is "dinner"? (microwave)
Please consider it in good faith. What if 1/3 is true?
There are facts that are real. Fertility, health, and age of parents.
You can scream, get angry. But still are facts.
The ideas you had once in the '20s may not be the ideas you will get on 30's and '40s.
And that is ok.
But as I said.
What If 1/3 of what I said is true?
I am not saying every body has to have kids.
But I find myself having more females friends that "lost the train" and are bitter.
It is no fun when you know someone that has all the skills and qualities to be an excellent mother realize she can't anymore.
I don't feel happy to be "right" about it.
My sadness is what makes me expose this even with a cost so someone else may benefit.
There's a whole movement now of people coming out and saying that they don't like having kids - as a society we made that impossible to say without severe chastisement. We have no idea if the women in your life who regret it now would be happy with children. It's all a gamble, and tell people that their time is running out isn't particularly helpful, and running entirely on guilt.
All right, though your manner of writing is extremely hard to parse, lets look at the arguments:
1. Healthy babies and age of parents -> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881604/
Are non-optimal babies undesirable?
2. What age will you be when your son wants to play/run at his 16 years?
At my current age I'll be in my 50's. I'm fitter in my 30's than I ever was in my 20's. Does 40's vs 50's make that much of a difference?
3. We don't have control of life anytime. You may be Healthy now, but it only takes a disease to change it.
This isn't compelling if I get sick I won't want to have kids. Rushing to have kids only to die is actually incredibly selfish.
4. One thing is you did not use protection on your 20's and got pregnant another is willing to get pregnant later -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility
I don't know what you're saying here. Try more? For something I don't want?
Later on:
1. Are you spending your time with someone you can see raising a family? If not is like sleeping with a poisonous snake in your bedroom. One day it will bite you.
Yes, but neither she nor I want one.
2. Did your past jobs/companies called you on holidays? Invited you for a BBQ?
The company has a BBQ, yes. So... I guess that's covered?
3. Who profits from high IQ, working hard people not having kids? Have you checked how much a burrito breakfast is charged in a retirement home? How much is "dinner"? (microwave)
Is it my duty to take care of my parents? That's another selfish argument. Also, it's a bit conceited to assume high IQ.
Their time is running out. In a natural average progression, people have a peak in healthiness, and then decline starts as age progress. Whatever you hold as "fair" does not matter. Mother Nature has a different plan. We can buy sometimes not all time.
"Are non-optimal babies undesirable?" We as a society have whole care with conception, prenatal care, prenatal screening, and checks. That shows how we care about it. That is a signal that yes society as a whole wants healthy babies.
... .... ...
The path of having babies is NOT for all. Society had a place without children for positions as mentors, charity, and educators.
If you are OK and it seems you are happy with your option that is great. You remember me of my "wise uncle" that has a lot of stories and wisdom to teach us. And his role was to mentor and give a different perspective. When we got angry with parents or don't know what to do and need advice without the parent's bias he was our mentor.
But my point is:
1. Time is a factor; 2. No, you don't have all the time;
The message my friends and me got and BELIEVED was:
"you can do it all!"
"After your Ph.D. you can marry"
"Once you get your assistant professor position you can start".
"Better finish your Ph.D., buy a house and then get a raise to have kids".
"After you finish with your startup then we have kids".
Now imagine what happened:
Dotcom bust, 9/11, financial crisis, mortgage crisis, wars...
One thing is to have it clear and decide not to have a kid like you. clear as crystal.
Another is like me and believe in the lies.
I am not saying that you were wrong.
I am saying: I was wrong
Please consider I may have some valid points whoever is reading this.
I now have 3 children, and would love to have many many more.
There are definitely great moments, throwing the ball in the yard, hugs, conversations etc. But these don't detract from the overall exhaustion. I would still choose to have my kids every time if provided the option as I love them and could not imagine not having them but don't let anyone talk you into something you are not ready for.
By the same token, having children is essential to maintain the social welfare state, and those that choose to travel or maintain a career instead are currently benefiting from that state while not contributing future workers back to it.
I don't know what the solution is, but short of dismantling the welfare state, there needs to be a concern on the part of today's young people for the perpetuation of the system from which they benefited so greatly.
That's not actually true though - immigration happily supports the required population growth. When the whole world stops reproducing we may need a plan B, but that's not a problem right now.
> When the whole world stops reproducing we may need a plan B, but that's not a problem right now.
Regardless of reproduction rates this will happen sooner than you think. As India and China become more developed emigrating becomes less and less desirable as the gap between risk and reward shrinks. After that there is no pool of immigrants with a similar size, sub-saharan Africa will likely become one but the educational standard of that population will likely rise in a much more staggered fashion, it will never match the numbers we saw from India and China.
It also seems like the system that will throw me overboard and tell me to "pull myself up by the bootstraps" the moment I hit turbulent times.
I'm afraid someone will go off on me for saying this, in regards to unemployment - I do not believe many of these jobs are ever coming back... and I think we've got a recession on our hands that's about to make 2008 look like a stroll through the tulips. We're just in the quiet before the storm =(
I don't think enough people here get how lucky most HNers are to be on the right side of the class divide, especially now.
Which is why having a set of people who are close to you is so priceless. Ultimately, your family and your best friends are more likely to be there for you than any government run program.
On a family level, not having kids (ever) is both selfish (if you neither pay back your parents for their effort not pay it forward it to kids of your own) and also vandalism to your parents: genetic heritage.
Is this vandalism? I think not...
19 years ago I built a several TB data warehouse that searched and returned data in a matter of seconds. 10 years ago I built a system that linked several TB of data together and returned data in a matter of milliseconds. Today I work for a company that sifts through hundreds of TB of data, PB of indexes, and GB of associated data that returns in a matter of milliseconds.
What I’m saying is if that data warehouse is not a core business operation there is no reason to throw any more resources at it than is necessary. Dystopian nightmares can be enabled by simply adding new indexes or adding more compute nodes.
I wouldn't wish either of these on anyone - the future will just have to get along without any of my offspring.
And so you can wind up chasing more money or more travel or more time to do your thing, and never finding that it's enough to satisfy you, because what you're looking for isn't there. This trip won't be enough, and the next one won't either, because what you're hungry for isn't in a trip.
Children can help you learn that. If you have children and don't learn it, then you resent the children. "I didn't find what I was looking for, but I could have, if they didn't mess it up for me!"
But I'm not sure that I can explain this in a way that makes sense to someone who doesn't already kind of feel it...
Things just have been admittedly rocky for me through my life, and I'll fully own that too - it's what you do with your situation that matters. In some ways I'm stunted in comparison to lots of the folks here and have had to live my teens in my 20's, and a bit of my 20's into my 30's. I get that I'm a grown-ass-adult and all, but I'm still growing up, hence the "I'm not into this whole kids thing."
It’s reasonable to speak inside the inside the big walls society puts up without specifying so.
Unless you’re willing to go to the extreme of somehow going off the grid and home schooling (and god forbid you have health care issues, for example), it’s just the way it is.
Stressful only if you make it. Tiring for everyone, but that's different. Even if you go broke and end up living in a trailer in the sticks it's still ok to have had kids and they will be ok.
I don't meet these people often (I'll be 30/dead in a few months). Most of the people I meet are just not interested in kids - or they already have them. The bank of mom & dad helps with that down payment so they can start pumping out children. I've had friends who gave up on children - they were satisfied being the cool aunt and uncle. I imagine the financial pressure has some influence like it does for me.
Personally - I'm at such a financial burden that I don't know when it'll happen. I quite literally cannot imagine having kids or being excited about them because I find it so hard to even get further in my career with financial prospects. Children is a complete non-starter if I don't have the income to support them. And I don't want them to ever live anything close to what I grew up with - the generational poverty line stops with me. It's not like I have a partner who could have kids right now anyway. (My significant other is about to be gone for ~2 years to finish her degree)
I can't imagine having kids when I hate my jobs so much (agonizing) and feel like I get paid peanuts (half or less than what my peers make at bigger places). So - I'll wait. No sense in having kids when I'm miserable AF because I can't get what I want or need to support them. Maybe they'll never happen. Maybe my significant other will find a new partner who has rich parents. Maybe I'll be single forever more. Whatever.
While there is definitely bad timing when it comes to kids, there is never a perfect time. I waited because I didn't really care but now I wish I hadn't. Every year you wait is one less year you get to know them. They are selfish little jerks that could change the way you think and give you a renewed purpose. As long as you can provide food, shelter, love and imagination you don't need anything else and neither will they.
Maybe now really is a bad time for you though as it's hard to know without stepping in your shoes. But if you really want them, I genuinely hope you find that just-perfect-enough moment.
I can tell you quite confidently that having children now would ruin us financially and emotionally. In 2 years after my partner graduates college, in all likelihood, it'd do the same. My wife would never be able to get a job because she'd be a college grad that went right into childbearing without ever having a professional job. Some five to seven years later when she is forced to go back into the workforce - she'd never be able to get anything that would substantially contribute to our income.
So - really - when is a good time for me? I don't know - I don't think it ever existed for me. I'm left with not good and terrible times. All I've learned from my friends who did have kids was to have kids earlier than 37. So far, it's lookin' like 37 is what will be the age for me because I won't have my career, my wife's career, or my financial situation worked out until then. Fortunately, for one of us, my significant other (if we're still together) will only be 30.
Such is life. Full of ruined plans because I tried to break into the upper class while being born into a much much lower one.
In my opinion, the magic number is 2. When you have two children, you are keeping the number of humans alive constant (since it takes two people to have a child, you only get “credit” for half of each child). Everything beyond that is purely up to you to balance the sacred work of creating human lives vs. enjoying your own pursuits.
I am really curious how this will get resolved. Just collapse of current society with the values we have, some selection of properties like “need” to have kids imprinted even harder then it is now?
Humans 100 years from now will be quite different to us it seems.
I am also quite amazed at all the kids hate. In addition to all other awesome things they allow you to relive your childhood, chance to have an incredibly close friend, you can teach them what you know, do some incredible things together. Etc. Kids are not expensive unless you make them so. They can help you with stuff too you know..(that is if you raise them to be decent people and not just spend days staring at the iPad so they don’t bother you)
And the unfortunate thing is the data shows that this is the best move for people to make, as the peers you are surrounded are the biggest determinant of your future success (see opportunity atlas). Which is why people stretch themselves to the max with 30 year mortgages. It’s inevitable in a society with ever widening wealth/income gaps.
This varies a lot on where you live and the income. Not everyone in software is making $400k+/yr in the bay area.
Plenty of large families continue a streak of poverty for generations. Poverty and trauma are very generational. If you don't want to continue that streak then you need to get yourself out first.
> Birthrates fell or held steady for women of all ages except those in their early 40s. Teenagers saw the sharpest drop, with a 5% decline in their birthrate. Since peaking in 1991, the teen birthrate has fallen 73%.
Seems to me like people are waiting longer these days. We may be in a lull at the moment, but I'd expect this to pick back up barring any adverse economic conditions.
I expect that it won't pick back up because adverse economic conditions have already arrived.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quant...
Hopefully an expansion of remote work can improve this situation.
What’s not frequently discussed is how many people are unhappy having become parents. It worked out great for us but one thing I learnt was how many other parents regret that choice. There’s an understandable taboo on discussing it (you have the responsibility, and you don’t want the kids, who had no choice in the matter, to feel unwanted) but a result of the taboo is that people feel pressured into shifting their life in a way they regret.
One reason why I think it worked for us is because we waited.
I don't know about other people, but the idea of trying to have a child is unfathomable to me because I am very, very far away from being (economically) in a place where I feel comfortable breeding. As someone who doesn't fit the mold society wants me to be (i.e., a real contrarian but not in the hip cool SV way), there's simply no way I can participate in the one thing that being human is really about: procreation.
PS[edit]: Idiocracy is a great film and everyone should watch it.
If you sprinkle water on the top, those molecules stay mostly at the top: rich parents’ kids mostly stay rich. If you feed water in through a pump at the bottom, most of those molecules will stay at the bottom: poor parents’ kids usually stay poor.
In general, the closer you are to the top or bottom, the more likely you are to stay there. Adding from the bottom pushes the people at the top even higher, yes; but those in between the bottom and top mostly just shift around as the middle gets wider.
Because most public and private retirement accounts assumed that the growth would occur, thus it was okay to promise themselves a pension and health package that was very, very generous based on lots of younger people paying X%.
They literally are pyramid schemas which require a larger group of workers to support. In other words, they calculated something like 'When I'm 63, there will be 4 workers available for each retiree, and each worker can afford to pay $15K a year in taxes to support that $60K / year pension.'
Well, it turns out there are only 3 workers for each retiree. So either the workers need to be taxed $20K each to support this pensioner, or the pensioner has to take a 25% cut.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/dr74i0/life_i...
-As people grow old, they are economically dependent upon people younger than them.
-A growing population goes hand-in-hand with a growing economy. This tends to bring prosperity to many people.
And as a bit of a tangent: The argument that a shrinking population is good for the planet and is therefore better than a growing population feels to me like an extremely pessimistic argument, and the people that I personally know that embrace it have a much less human-centric moral intuition than I do. I put a lot lot lot more worth on human happiness than that of animals, and to me it seems that a cultural disconnect from the natural act of procreation implies an unhappiness that is rooted in how cultures are run nowadays.
Why does a growing economy require a growing population? There's not a very strong correlation between population and GDP per capita - the US has the highest GDP and there's several countries with significantly larger populations.
A growing economy requires, in the large, an increasing labor pool, but that labor can be human or machine-amplified human. If the amplification rate is growing fast enough, we can grow the economy with a shrinking headcount.
(The other side of the equation---consumption---also balances out; people with more leisure time consume more).
To have higher GPD US atleast doesn't require more population.
Here is why:
1. American companies sell outside US so we can benefit from selling to India, china and Europe.
2.Even if we aren't exporting to some countries, there is still demand for our currency as they can use it to trade for other things like petroleum
4. Even if we've no petrol or exports, rich people and companies from other countries invest in our treasury bills, bonds and stock market.
Look at how many companies of different countries even like the ones from UK, India and China invest into US market because of its safety
All those people earning money by doing nothing needs to be supported by an ever-increasing influx of people actually doing work. So we promise the latter the American Dream. Ponzi scheme.
That said, there are many things social structures and institutions with embedded growth assumptions such as social security, pension plans, government debt, etc.
As someone with 2 kids and a third on the way, I think this is a really sad and reductive way to think about life. The way I think about the meaning and purpose of my life has changed since I had kids, but I had a perfectly meaningful and purposeful life before that. Focus more on finding meaning and making connections with other people, and less on your economic situation and whether you can afford to "breed". People who live in abject poverty can still have happy families, or live happy, meaningful lives.
(Of course, the same comic also notes "They did it, therefore I'm here, therefore I can do it" is the mother of all confirmation biases ;) )
I alluded to this in a different comment, but I think for most people the uncertainty is a bigger impediment than absolute conditions. If you had poor material conditions, but could at least count on them to remain stable no matter what, you could make that work as fair as raising a family. But the defining feature of the contemporary economy is that you'll never have that certainty: at any minute you might go from material security to being kicked out onto the street, and in the US at least you'll get no help except "Guess you shouldn't have had children lol; pull yourself up by your bootstraps loser."
> This can be pulled off even in times of great economic insecurity (think about all the depression-era babies).
I'm not sure what you mean by "all the depression-era babies". The Great Depression had the lowest birthrate the US had ever seen, and it did not pick up again until after the war: [0]
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-u...
See - that's the thing. Lots of us can't commit to that because we're still securing the consistency of those resources for ourselves. All I'm saying is I don't agree with "I'm way too preoccupied" when I see the following grocery list as a very tall order for most people starting off today.
> Kids are sensitive to their social conditions but oblivious to their material situation until they've entered preadolescence.
As someone who grew up in a family with even mild struggles... yeah this just doesn't hold up. Lots of kids know as early as when they enter school. You notice the gaps between you and your peers almost immediately and often will have peers point it out to you because the poor kid is easy to pick on. You wear different clothes (second hand/etc), you probably struggle a bit with school, you don't have the cool video game system, you don't get to do the cool stuff other kids do... etc etc.
Kids notice way earlier than preadolescence.
The one way I agree with Ponzi Scheme... in the USA currently, at least, there's been a massive transfer of wealth to Boomers from everyone else via SS, Medicare, pensions, and all the cheap education and services that have since evaporated. I doubt these conditions will exist for anyone else...Boomers really got an amazing deal.
Without independent wealth, I just don’t see how people do it without making some incredible sacrifices.
Then again, parents see the trade-offs. They'll have someone to take care of them later, to pay some of that forward to society, plus parents are often the kind of people who love babies/kids and take joy and pleasure in the process.
It totally makes the best sense to let every person decide if these trade-offs are worth it...but I do think we should support parents financially, as having a balanced age pyramid is an important thing for a society.
I completely agree, but the cynic in me just doesn't see a scenario where this is politically feasible in the US.
But, I am an optimist.
Meh. This is overrated. Lots of kids hate their parents, and never see them.
This is probably the most longterm bet any human makes, but it's also very dependent on culture. Sheltering with and caring for your elders is common in countries like Japan and India, whereas in the U.S. it usually amounts to depositing them at a nice nursing home.
This scenario seems doable/likely within a few hundred years. Less if space travel becomes more than a niche thing.
Also, colonization creates more people. The current ones stay where they are, while only a few adventurers move to the new place, and then have kids there. Most people are not going to give up a lifetime’s worth of building a life somewhere, at least not in the numbers needed to impact total population.
Submarines and self-contained vessels might be a good metaphor/approach, as compared to a full-blown colony. It doesn't seem implausible that we could have millions of self-contained spaceships, each carrying hundreds of people, within ~200 years, assuming that serious percentages of GDP are put toward it.
Also, cislunar space is much easier than colonising the planets, which is in turn orders of magnitude easier than colonising other star systems — even if you can find enough people to do it, which is hard because why would Joe or Jane Average want to go to a deep space colony where ping-time is measured in years at best, or dozens of geological epochs at worst?
Unfortunately, once we do have proper cheap space access with e.g. a launch loop, the exponential nature of growth means it only takes 50 generations of 4-child families to go up each step along the Kardeshev scale.
After type II, population growth is limited by the speed of light.
A bit of history. The American Revolution was initiated by the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act was initiated because the UK government treasury was being drained by trying to sustain a distant colony. They assumed, wrongly, the colonists would help pay for the ships, army, and resources they were being subsidized. The French revolution began out of King Louis XVI draining the French treasury to support the American revolution. When famine hit and he didn't have the resources to feed his people, CHOP!
So to get a space based colony running you're going to need to convince a whole lot of people that things are going to suck for a while but the payoff is generations away. I don't see that happening in todays climate.
I think the series The Expanse gets space colonization mostly right. The Belters have it hard because space. Terrans have it hard because Earth is dying.
I see exactly zero chance that, within a few hundred years, there will be enough space travel to move enough people off of Earth to significantly change the population of Earth.
Plus we have too many people in the world as it is.
Just pointing out there is no real evidence this is the case.
Many people use vastly less resources than the average American, and even at high standards of living this remains true.
We are able to feed all the people in the world easily, with current (or less) environmental impact (just look at the waste we produce).
It's choices, not carrying capacity that leads to environmental issues.
Plenty of green buildings are carbon neutral or negative.
I live in berlin, you literally don't need heating if your building has any kind of insulation, you can just wear a sweater and be ok. But no, they even heat the damn stair cases no one uses because we have elevators.
It's literally people's choices causing this. Not some inherent carrying capacity.
But even the IPCC report doesn't have a consensus on if food production increases or decreases from it.
For the major crops (wheat, rice, and maize) in tropical and temperate regions, climate change without adaptation will negatively impact production for local temperature increases of 2°C or more above late-20th-century levels, although individual locations may benefit (medium confidence). {7.4, Figure 7-4} Projected impacts vary across crops and regions and adaptation scenarios, with about 10% of projections for the period 2030–2049 showing yield gains of more than 10% and about 10% of projections showing yield losses of more than 25%, compared to the late 20th century
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/food-security-and-food-pr...
For example the average American generates 15.7x as much CO2 as the average Pakistani, but generates 591x as much science.
https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs/generate/All/glo...
Plus intelligence is highly heritable, and many positive traits are heavily influenced by parenting and upbringing, so successful people should have as many children as possible for the good of our civiliation. It is our duty.
The core issue is the extremely high cost of housing in many cities, as well as high taxes, which can mostly be blamed on Baby Boomers for not downsizing rapidly enough and for the burden they place on the rest of society with their pension and healthcare expenses.
There also seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that people are having way less sex right now, for what that's worth.
This is how I’ve felt my entire career. There are no guarantees for future success, but family planning requires an incredible amount of stability to pull off responsibly.
My gut says you will see a mini-boom though. A lot of dogs are getting adopted right now, and adopting a dog is a gateway drug to children for a lot of couples. Would be interesting to see how many kids are "happy accidents" vs intentional though. Oh, I just looked it up and one article says 45% in the US... yeesh.
Could definitely see an increase in accidents, but I really doubt that there will be an increase in planned births at least in the short term. Lots of economic uncertainty + general fear of going to the hospital.
What are they proposing? Millenials stay in school longer than ever, take on massive debts early on, pay ever increasing rent, train themselves up to a skilled worker for a livable wage, get a massive mortgage and THEN go sacrifice more by having a kid (whose education costs will be off the roof)?
What a cruel joke!
I've found Jeff Atwood's post on being a parent the single best blog length overview of the emotional pros and cons of having children: https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/
I like to think about it as kids are +1,000,000 points and -900,000 points at the same time. The average is probably a slight positive but the highs are extremely high and the lows are also pretty low. This TED talk goes into this in more detail and is also great about giving honest views of being a parent: https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_...
To make a development analogy: think of a time when you spent a huge effort trying to solve a bug in a code base you really care about. Finding that bug was incredibly frustrating and made you question why you even got into programming. Then, you find the answer and you watch your program work again and be better than it was before. This rollercoaster of emotions with a net positive outcome parallels very closely with having children.
I would at minimum need to be certain I have enough money to
- own a nice, safe home we cannot easily be evicted / removed from (eg due to landlord preferences), within a short commute from my workplace and any school / child care locations we need.
- have a personal savings rate that will allow me to fully pay for some child care options, school, and eventually college, and give my child some lump sum for an emergency fund when they move out on their own.
- have remaining savings rate to still achieve some of my personal goals that I’m unwilling to sacrifice over child care, like traveling / vacationing, continued education, and supporting my elderly parents when needed.
I cannot see a way to do this without earning probably upwards of $500k/year, so having children is just financially untenable for me.
If home prices near major tech centers went down, or my salary went up, then I’d love to. But as labor share of wealth stagnates and urban real estate is increasingly priced out for average families, it’s just impossible.
The primary reason? It’s super expensive. And people my age entered the workforce right before the Great Recession, which hammered their wages and they lost years of salary growth, followed by not even a decade later, a pandemic, which will do worse.
While raising a child continues to get more expensive.
I find it really tough to harmonize the ideas that: 1) If you can't sell your labor to provide for yourself, you deserve to die. 2) You should have kids, and not only cost yourself $100,000 at least, and increase competition for resources.
The cynic in me thinks people want to see others fail so they can feel better about themselves, and more people competing for labor and capital decreasing the demand for labor will increase the number of people who society will deem unworthy of existence. By the odds, any random kid isn't going to change the world, they're just going to be another mouth to feed, and more than likely going to make things somewhat worse for everyone else. This is a blood-soaked all-against-all kill-and-die world, and what is a kid other than another knife pointed at you?
As far as I can tell, this seems about as rational as being proud to put out your own eyes with a red-hot grapefruit spoon.
As far as the "Kids give your life meaning" idea goes, giving one's parents meaning is a lot to put on a baby who can't even lift their own head, or anyone else for that matter. We're told all our lives that we're on our own, that anyone who needs anything from anyone else is weak and doesn't deserve existence (which is both morally wrong and incorrect). At the same time, it's supposedly okay to force a child to emotionally support you? That doesn't make any sense.
I can at least comprehend the racist argument, that it's one's responsibility to have kids to outcompete outsiders. I disagree with it for numerous reasons, but I can at least fit that idea in my head. Maybe that's a reason having kids squicks me out so much, is the only comprehensible argument to me I find repulsive and I've only heard it out of repulsive people.
Is the desire to have kids completely ruled by biological/hormonal factors, or a fear of ostracism for not "doing one's duty"? A lot of people I know and respect are good parents and don't regret having kids, but can't articulate why they did, so I'm not under the impression that parents are all cruel, broken assholes (though in my hometown there were numerous examples of this).
What is it about parenthood that isn't a curse on yourself and everyone else?
The part which is not a curse is you.
In a perfect world the ideal people to answer this question would be your parents, but I don't want to presume. We get the families we get, it's just part of the deal.
You can certainly argue that we need to have fewer kids, but to expect parents to fully bear the responsibility of raising them alone drives down the potential of the next generation.
Especially justifying not having children with the state of economy, politics or social issues does not stand up to scrutiny if you look back in history.
On the other hand simply and unemotionally stating "I don't want children (right now)" is as unbeatable as they come.
the reasons people have for or for not having kids aren't real reasons because...history? or they're "easily countered"? some examples would be nice to provide context to these statements
"Economy is bad right now" and everything like this: historically the conditions to have children have been a lot worse. History meaning more than 50 years.
Above is only one example of how you can open your choice to being countered when this decision is just a personal thing that should not be up for debate imho.
I explained poorly, the intention was just to help mostly young people have a more solid stand especially against peer/family pressure.
All this coronavirus togetherness has potential to move the needle.
> dot-com boom / bust (junior high)
> 9/11 (high school)
> War on Terror (college)
> student loans (probably for the rest of my life)
> the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the lasting economic / career effects that never goes away when you go through that (right when I graduated college)
> the divisive culture wars between old / young, rich / poor, establishment / anti-establishment, etc
> Trump as president
> Covid-19
> narcissistic boomer parents
> narcissistic boomers in all levels and areas of institutional leadership whose baseline modus operandi is incompetence, corruption, and greed
> and a lot more that stresses me out
From my perspective, the world is back-sliding - everything feels like its getting worse, not better. Economic data backs this - real wages are level while cost of living is increasing.
And you wonder why we are putting have having children?
It's because we do not know what economic optimism and financial security feel like.
But on a serious note, even though my SO and I are doing very well economically (both engineers), it's still weighs heavy the thought of having a child with how expendable engineers are these days.
It will never make "economic sense" to have a child. Luckily, most of us do not place a monetary value on human life.
I have never heard anyone say that. What kind of engineers are you? There should be demand everywhere.
If you're working in some sort of Information technology, you're one of the least expendable employees in the labor market, at least as of March 2020. Only government and finance have lower layoff rates: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t05.htm
I'd rather allocate the saved 500K-1million dollars it costs to raise a kid and use it for myself.
Some people looking for companionship or loyalty should get a dog. Because your kids aren't that.
We need <some> kids, but neither the kid, the parent nor the world will be better off by having kids whom the parents didn't want.
I imagine a vanishingly small amount of parents would say they regret having kids post-fact, but it's fairly obvious who were mentally prepared (and willing) and who weren't, when meeting other parents.
Rearing a child grounds you in a way you cannot imagine at this moment. Looking back, I realize not having a kid was just me trying to avoid making any hard choices in life.
Now, when I interact with colleagues who don't have kids, I see a certain shallowness of perspective that, in retrospect, I myself was guilty of. None of them ever really grew up.
(For what it’s worth I still think you would be happier with your kids but you don’t really know that)
I also didn't say anything about happier. The words I used were "grounded" and "perspective". I made an objective statement, not a subjective one.
I do agree with the other posters though: If kids are not of interest, it is better, on average, not to have one. The world is full of unwanted children. Just recognize that there is a consequence attached to not having this experience. As in other things, there's no free lunch.
For example: When people have kids they focus so much on them that they lose all personality, often becoming flat stereotypes of parents that are, for lack of a better word, boring or annoying to even be around. I don't care to lose who I am, so I'm not planning on kids.
Talking about condescending, that comment takes the cake.
Everyone who has kids were, at one point, folks who didn't have kids. Those with kids do have the benefit of seeing both sides, like it or not.
... And there's the condescension I hinted at. Get over yourself.