Of all the people I know who list this as a reason, it barely ranks. The bigger one is the growing gap between income and cost of living right above time and energy. Most of the reasons have intersecting causes.
* Money - It's hard enough to retire with a late start on planning, kids totally throw another monkey wrench in it
* Time - I don't have the time, or the patience, for kids. I'm sure it's rewarding for those that do it, but every time I look at my friends with kids and the sacrifices they make for their own lives, during their prime years of living, for the sake of their kids... yea, it's like birth control on steroids for me. I was going to put freedom as a separate line item, but I think time and money both take the point for freedom.
* An extension of money, I would have to move at some point, and it seems to me doing it earlier would be better. My house is small, and it'd be fine for two people, maybe three. But it'll start to feel cramped with three. This isn't as big a deal, hence it's lower on the list, but with house prices and availability the way they are right now... plus, the time necessary to move.
* Climate change, the world ending, whatever the case may be. I find it utterly difficult to willingly bring another child into this world when it feels like no one actually gives a damn about the future.
That all said, I feel like I'd be more interested in adopting if I were to ever jump on this "got to have kids" thing. Skip the potty training and terrible (twos, threes and fours), jump right into the "I hate you" teens I guess. Yea, you can tell I'm not a kid person huh? lol
Edit: because holy hell, even in 2021 Hacker News can't do Markdown for shit.
I am striving towards trying to make my life my own. I feel like I've failed at that pretty badly so far as well.
It's very much a roll with the punches type of thing over here. Seems to me nothing goes right or according to plan.
I will happily admit that life cannot be mastered.
I respect your right to make this decision for yourself, of course, but don't you think this is a little ironic? Climate change itself is less of a threat to the future than the self-selection toward extinction of the culture of people who care about fixing climate change.
This is perhaps a bit more US centric as well. But with this country as divided as it is, with an emphasis on climate change because that's the original topic of discussion, I don't think I really want to bring children into this world where people just generally can't get along, and have no real desire to care about their future as well.
> self-selection toward extinction of the culture of people who care about fixing climate change.
Maybe it's a defeatist attitude, but I feel like the people that care about climate change have lost this war already.
I've never bought this one. If this were true, you'd expect richer people and richer geographies to have higher birthrates, when in fact the opposite is true, and always has been for that matter.
When people give reasons for having or not having children, it is always an after the fact rationalization. Having children is inherently an irrational act, in a good way. It's something you do because you feeling compelled or called to do it, not because you spreadsheeted it and it makes sense. From an individual standpoint, having children almost never makes sense, but we all do it anyways and wouldn't give it up for anything.
If you want to know why people choose to have kids or choose not to have kids, you need to look at culture, not economics. In some ways the answer is simple. Cultures that don't value having children (or having many children) tend to get replaced by ones that do.
Or was having children an inevitable consequence of sex? Only after achieving women’s financial independence and reliable, accessible birth control with no downsides would the true measure of how many children people (really, women) want. This has only been achieved relatively recently, but all statistics indicate the birth rate after women achieve the ability to fully control how many kids they have is far less than what it was when they did not have control.
> In some ways the answer is simple. Cultures that don't value having children (or having many children) tend to get replaced by ones that do.
I can agree with this, and posit that it is possible cultures that restrict women’s rights may replace ones that value women’s rights.
A few generations of wild economic growth and thus less of a need for kids to look after their parents, shifting norms, and lag time in norms shifting back, perhaps. Though I don't really know if this fits.
But my conditions for having kids were only if they had significant security in quality of life and I would be able to spend time with them. I only had kids because my household income was at a level I deemed so, which is significantly above the median. I actually would have been fine with no children, but my wife wanted to experience being a mother.
The big difference in recent decades compared to all of human history is that today, people can have sex without risking having children due to very effective and convenient forms of birth control.
Edit: And women have financial independence so they can decide whether or not to have children on their own.
I learned that they had 5 miscarriages with their partner. So the rationalization was for a decision that was made for them.
Cost of living is a comically facile argument as there’s huge swaths of rural America that are extremely cheap to live in. Especially as a digital worker.
It’s hard to live in NY or SFO, but it’s comically easy to live in South Carolina in an exurb 90 miles out of a major metro area. Like $100k house at 3% and fast internet easy.
I do not see why it is comically facile to not want to leave in a cheaper place. Everyone has their preferences, and some may choose to prioritize raising children in a certain location over having children at all.
We don’t even have a Best Buy.
It’s having an effect on the surrounding towns as well, a city over 30 miles away in a bar-postoffice-church size town is up over $300k for an average home.
And yes, there is a lot of land, but it’s all owned by somebody, and most of it is not up for sale. Ranches, farms, and government owned land makes up, well, all of it.
What is for sale could (and likely will) go up in price as demand increases. Also, you may be overestimating how many people are willing to live in the sticks. The lack of essentials (and non-essentials) without driving for miles is a bit of an acquired taste.