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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

Those are excuses that people make up to soothe their egos. The real reason people do not have children is selfishness. They think that the financial and time cost will deprive them of other material joys. It’s as sad as it is misguided.

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Nonsense.

Anecdotally: I've had multiple discussions with employed, unburdened men and women (particularly women) in their mid 20s who have decided not to have children for one reason: Climate change.

The planet is collapsing. Our children are likely to die of hunger, disease, or warfare as things become more destabilized over the next 50 years.

We don't believe their lives will be better than ours, and we don't want to further deplete humanity's scant resources.

From this perspective, having children is selfish.

Climate change will either destroy the planet, or some team of scientists and engineers will avert disaster by inventing carbon capture or whatever. It is highly likely those scientists will have been born and raised in a well educated middle class family somewhere in the developed world.

I too have heard this from people. But when I do, I can't tell if it is the root cause or a rationalization. There is still intense social pressure to have children, although I certainly remember it dropping over the last 25 years. Having children is still the assumption for a heterosexual couple, and you are often expected to provide a rationale for why not, and you feel you will be perceived negatively if the rationale is seen as selfish, and people who do choose to have children still sometimes take your choices as a criticism about their life choices. So you come up with some banal reason to deflect the conversation you have had too many times already. Or a reason to justify the decision to yourself, because social pressures are telling you it is a selfish decision and that selfish decisions about your own life are somehow bad.

People with different views are on an exponential growth trajectory, so good luck with that.

That’s a bizarre and mean-spirited line of thinking. There’s nothing inherently selfish about not having kids. Every life decision involves trade-offs between time, money, effort, and various kinds of joys and sorrows. People have lots of different circumstances that lead them to evaluate these trade-offs differently. Children are a huge, irreversible decision. It’s natural for people to be cautious. Besides, one could easily argue that having kids is selfish - you’re deliberately consuming more resources and tax dollars so you can create clones of yourself and expand your family line. That’s not a nice or realistic way to look at having children though.

I am sorry you find my wife and I's decision selfish, sad, and misguided. You needn't think about it, really, as our decision doesn't concern you in the slightest.

It may help you to travel. Some time in other continents made us realize -- we have plenty of people already. The planet will do just fine without one or three more from us.

I personally don't and don't judge you either. As I said earlier, I and my wife didn't want children until one came along; that eventually has changed us. But we will stop at one and I agree that there are plenty of people already.

You could also have another perspective: The people who bring children into this world, without the future child's consent are being selfish because _they_ want that child. You can never know if that person will grow up to have a miserable life.

I know many would consider it a ridiculous argument but I find your label of selfishness similar.

You shouldn't assume the worst of your fellows. Life is complicated and there are valid reasons beyond selfishness for people to not want children.

There are no valid or invalid reasons, it's nobody else's business really.

Perhaps there's some truth to what you say if we consider couples who choose not to have kids at all. However, I think the cases that choose to have just one or two children are more common than those who choose not to have kids at all. I think financial situation better explains why people would stop at one kid rather than 3.

Right: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FT_15.... The vast majority of women (90% in 1976, 86% in 2013) have at least one child. But the lifetime number of births has fallen from 3.1 in 1976 to 2.1 in 2013. This reflects changes in the perceived optimal family size: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FT_15...

I would’t say that is the main reason but that is one of them, sure. Also the society has become a lot more isolated. I sometimes look at a modern societies like Japan or South Korea and am wondering whether the western world will follow suit.

You're getting downvoted but I think there is some truth to this statement.

It's two statements. 1) childlessness is a selfish choice. 2) this is sad and misguided. That second statement, without evidence or argument, is arrogant and patronizing. Non-inclusive even.

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