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Comment by jppope | Hacker News Reader

I've always been curious about why wealthy(ish) individuals in free societies don't want to have (more) children.

Theoretically one would expect the opposite. Subjectively, I see individuals that would prefer to go on vacation then have children, but that is a false dichotomy- thinking that having children would reduce your quality of life or your ability to do fun things.

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From a status perspective, the wealthier you are the more time & money it costs to have&raise children. Housing, childcare, education, etc... basically all the things that have gone up at a much higher clip than official CPI inflation calculations. Being a wealthy person in liberal western society you are likely to live in a high cost urban setting. Some real NYC numbers that I am sure SF is similar for.

* Housing

No kids? Rent a decent 1BR place for $3-4k/mo in any neighborhood you want. 1-2 Kids you can squeeze into a 2BR? Rent is now $6k (2-3 kids / need a 3BR make that 10k), and you are now limited to neighborhoods that are zoned for "good schools".

* Childcare? $2k/mo per kid

* Education? If your kid doesn't get tracked the way you want / you aren't zoned in the right catchment area / you have bought into the arms race - private school is $4k/mo per kid

So 0->1 kid is +$5-9k/mo

0->2 kids is +$7-15k/mo

0->3 kids is +$13-25k/mo

These are post-tax numbers so 1st kid requires +$100k of income and at the high end the 3 kids could mean needing +$500k income.

There are a lot of great cities you could cut these numbers in half, or in a quarter, but scale should be fairly similar.

Without immigration & some more conservative families, we'd probably see the same population aging/declines of Western Europe and Japan/Taiwan/Korea.

What you're describing is basically the top 1% of US households, which starts around $500k/yr income. Even in NY or SF, very very few people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on childcare and private schooling.

I'd agree there is a status/social signalling element to it - I suspect if these households didn't have children, many of them would just spend their wealth on expensive cars, clothes, vacations, or other similar luxuries.

Housing, childcare and education are three of the highest inflation categories outside of medical care. The more kids you have, the more of each you need, and the costs are basically linear.

Outside the 1% the numbers are lower, but it's obviously much harder when expressed as percentage of income.

2 interesting links: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/11/20/income-it-ta... https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-care-...

"The average cost of providing center-based care for an infant in the U.S. is $1,230 per month. " So on AVERAGE, having 2 kids in daycare is $30k/year nationally. For most anyone, anywhere, $30k/year is a lot of money.

Benchmarking "average 2 kids childcare cost" in state against "top 20% income after tax" in state:

Nebraska 30%

Connecticut 26%

Pennsylvania 25%

Virginia 25%

Arizona 23%

New Mexico 20%

And again this is average childcare cost vs richest 20% (who may likely spend more than average).

People lowering down the bracket closer to average income also need childcare, which is going to consume a higher percent of income.

Sometimes this means one spouse exists the workforce involuntarily to do childcare as the cost of daycare exceeds the lower paid spouses income. Other times it means less formal forms of childcare with the associated costs/risks implied.

Some happily choose to be a full-time parent, and the money does not factor in.

Look at tourist hotspots and how people behave there. A lot of people on their holidays want to drink, stay out until the wee hours of the morning, perhaps use soft drugs, etc. These are perfectly ordinary things to do on holiday, but add a child to the mix and society becomes quite disapproving. Of course children mean, for a subset of holidaymakers, no chance to do what they consider "fun things".

Not disagreeing, but the converse is that there's a large subset of people who feel that playing ball with a kid in a backyard, or helping a kid learn long division, is a lot more fun than partying and smoking pot. Those are the ones that are still having children.

Biologically, if a smaller subset of a species is reproducing, it's going to accelerate evolutionary pressures. Memetically, there may be a parallel cultural effect.

In recent years, there have been a lot of articles that aim to remove the stigma around regretting one's children. Women feel pressured to pretend that they love their children so much and think life is better with them, even when deep inside they wish they had never had them. So, even if that subset of people ends up having kids, it doesn’t necessarily mean evolutionary pressure towards people actually liking those kids and the activities done with them, and the subsequent generation may end up being anti-natalist regardless.

> but the converse is that there's a large subset of people who feel that playing ball with a kid in a backyard, or helping a kid learn long division, is a lot more fun than partying and smoking pot.

No, honestly there is not. Even including people who don't party hard and never take drugs. Kids can be rewarding in their own way, but help with homework nor backyard ball kicking with small child are not those rewarding moments if you do them regularly. They can be fun if you engage with kid once in few months, then it is pleasant change. But regularly, not so much.

>I see individuals that would rather go on vacation then have children, but that is a false dichotomy

Why is this a false dichotomy? Clearly having children will use up time and resources that could otherwise be used for vacations and other fun things.

I've also heard a theory that in poorer areas, children can become a status marker. So when people see no hope of climbing the socioeconomic latter, they resort to having lots of children to prove their "virility".

It is a false dichotomy because you can go on vacation with your children.

But the added cost per child is just soooo much more than any vacation.

I'd love to be able to handle a second child. I can comfortably handle the financial aspect, it is the lack of energy, lack of free time and my anxieties that prevent me from taking the plunge.

It depends on what a vacation is for you.

If it is visit Paris, sit at and outdoor cafe and see the Louvre. Yeah, kids don't mess with your vacation except perhaps cost.

If you want to go to raves until 5 in the morning, do drugs and drink. Yeah, kids are a no no to take.

Then there is the in-between, which depends a lot on the type of kid and activity. One week surfing big waves somewhere, maybe possible if your kid has interest and are other smaller waves around. Impossible (or at least non recommended) if kid is afraid of the water and doesn't know how to swim. etc.

You can always take them, give them an ipad and let them spend 7 days in front of it, but at that point, why take them?

I am divorced but have a kid. Vacations (travelling) are usually split in two (or three). One week with my kid at someplace that is mostly for him (beachs + waterparks + etc). A week with my gf (which can be a mix of things) and then a week for myself (usually snowboarding or surfing somewhere by myself or a group of friends). But I can do this because I am divorced, and I don't have him 100% of the time with me. If I had, I could say goodbye to 'my' week (like I did while I was married).

I fully agree on all that you've said.

Certainly some things are harder/impossible with kids.

Even just strolling around or just laying in bed is harder if you have kids, unless, as you said, you give them an ipad or let them watch TV, or get a nanny.

Being a parent is taxing either on you wallet or on your energy levels, there's no way around it.

The artificial womb will be the great invention of whatever century. It's not a false dichotomy for women who practically get ripped in half and are never quite the same again, but are expected to stay fit. Of course birth rates go down as women start to get treated like people.

I'm sure that's a minor reason why people don't have kids.

The main reasons are economical in nature.

I always worry about pregnancy if I'd have a kid. Not only could you get a kid with a disability, your SO could be injured or die too. Not to mention post-partum. I knew of a woman whose sister gave birth and something happened where the birth cause a brain hemorrhage in her and she basically became a quadriplegic. Not only is it devastating for everyone involved, but essentially as the father, you're now a caregiver for two people. How the hell would you work a full time job, take care of a newborn AND your now paralyzed SO? Pregnancy is a real scary dice roll that you just hope luck stays on your side all 9 months.

As an anxious person myself, I feel you so much.

And I know or heard of people in my immediate circle with serious health issues in children, it's heart breaking.

It almost feels like, people in the past just didn't know of all these risks and they just went with the flow, but knowing about all these issues, as an anxious person, certainly doesn't help one bit.

Part of me believes that it could've stemmed from people birthing at younger ages though. Since most women appear to be having children at older ages as well as men being older when they finally conceive, that could cause many of the issues as well.

Mainly economics, although it has some relation to what the parent post is talking about. Unfortunately the sexual revolution happened in the US about the same time when labor unions got fucked, labor power got diminished due to globalization/deindustrialization/automation, and people started be compensated less dollars per productivity. In an ideal world where Keyne's prediction was right, we (both genders) would work only 15 hours a week due to technological advancement and spend the rest on taking care of famliy and community (including special considerations for women on pregnancy), but it seems that these lower-working-hour dreams haven't come true. But then there's an even more insidious cultural part of neoliberalism: for an increasing number of people you're not just supposed to just do your job, you have to indulge in it to prove your self-worth to the boss, you need to advance and maintain your "career", and have to race to the bottom to get a clutch on getting a chance of moving up the social ladder (or else you're going to work at a call center or increasingly precarious part-time gig jobs). Kids are just a liability in this hyper-competitive world; no wonder why women aren't going to have kids, when every aspect of society is telling you (in indirect ways) not to.

Agree that the artificial womb is an undererstimated milestone technology that will radically change the world. But such a technological solution isn't a perfect solution for low birth rates if you take care of the fact that you still need to take care of the kids born out of these artificial wombs (even though it could radically improve women's lives).

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