American men are losing interest in fatherhood | Hacker News Reader

American men are losing interest in fatherhood

fastcompany.com

38 pointsppjim58 comments

I suspect the economy plays a large role. If you can't afford a house or don't have much financial security in general, that makes the idea of adding another large expense less interesting.

What's changed are expectations. 50 years ago, as long as you could get a job at a warehouse or restaurant, people would have 1 or 2 children without severe economic anxiety, even if they couldn't afford a house. Today, anxiety is through the roof even among professionals and other high earners whose finances look downright unfathomable to half the population from 50 years ago. If your only prospects are working at a warehouse or restaurant, this makes you all but destitute, and according to the calculus of modern popular culture it would be irresponsible to bear and raise children.

Objectively speaking, it's easier today for even the poorest of households to raise well-educated and healthy children. Traditionally, shelter, food, clothing, and then in the 20th century, education, were all that mattered. In 21st century America, access to all of those things is basically guaranteed, especially for people with children. (Yes, there are people who are unable to navigate the system and fall through the cracks. But those things are available. The people who fall through the cracks today would have had a much worse time of things 50+ years ago, notwithstanding that public programs cannot fully replace the more extensive family relationships that were once more common.)

But because the scope of peer group identification has expanded both geographically (basically, the entire country) and across socio-economic strata, now all of a sudden people are comparing their situation within a much more diverse context that includes many people far wealthier than themselves. And the emphasis has shifted. It's no longer about shelter, food, clothing, and formal education; it's about one's ability to spend quality time with the kids, to afford private schools or exclusive public school districts, tutoring, extracurriculars, etc. The goal posts have shifted.

Even if this were true, we still need to understand what caused such a shift.

Our politics have also nationalized. Remember the old aphorism, "all politics is local"? For the last decade or two, not only is that not true, but its erstwhile validity might be beyond conception for younger generations.

That doesn't get to the root of things, but the fact that our day-to-day cultural contexts have shifted dramatically is a much broader dynamic. I suppose a cheap answer would be TV, then the Internet, and most especially and recently social media. But that also only begs more questions--what underlying dynamics did those things effect.

Look at popular culture in America, not to blame it for the current state of things, but as a mirror into the values of society. In a show as benign a Modern Family every home is easily a multi-million dollar home anywhere in the country. This is the 1% reflected as a normal, average, "modern family."

Even if you are doing really well in America it often doesn't feel like it. It often feels like you need to stretch to live a "normal" life. It often feels like you are barely making it and not only are you barely making it but you are one lost job from losing it all.

This isn't exactly new, and it isn't even exclusive to the United States, but I can't help but feel it is only getting worse.

The answer is in the post: "now all of a sudden people are comparing their situation within a much more diverse context that includes many people far wealthier than themselves."

Social media.

So what could we do about it then? If that’s truly the whole explanation it is an unsolvable problem

Authoritarian regimes can "solve" it, democracies cannot. By definition, the rights enable the antagonist. Individually, one can actively cultivate mental models to compare oneself only to oneself instead of others and similar mechanisms to operate with emotional health and fortitude. At scale though? Hooboy are we screwed. Spend 60 minutes on TikTok, I rest my case.

Never spend any amount of time on TikTok, except to perhaps laugh at people who don’t understand how narrowly they’ve filtered their reality.

Comparing yourself to other people is useful, not bad. Unless you want to live in fantasy land and never find out what the real world is like

Social media is not the real world though, it's heavily curated (which by itself is a problem) and then algorithmically designed to induce strong feelings like hate, fear, resentment etc. because that is what increases engagement.

That's not healthy, and it's a huge reason so many young people are so miserable all the time. They have no other frame of reference in the actual real world.

I agree that having no real world experience is bad, and social media can be dangerous

> Unless you want to live in fantasy land and never find out what the real world is like

I enjoy picturing the fantasy land where a functioning adult genuinely holds the perspective you’re advocating for here. Dystopian Sci Fi is sort of my thing

I am a functional adult who believes this genuinely. Probably more functional than you, since we’re comparing :)

That’s your microcosm sweetheart, compare away. For somebody named “Philosopher” you still seem like you could do well reading The Fountainhead or Meditations. But then again your profile says “stirring the pot” so it’s hard to take anything you say in earnest (:

https://www.google.com/search?q=comparing+yourself+to+others...

Disagree

The actual root causes are economic but there's a psychological feedback loop at play as well. I lived in Germany for a few years and got culture shocked when I attended a 40th birthday and realised that I was the only parent in attendance. When society gets itself into a situation where not having kids is that normalised, it gets fairly easy to validate the choice not to have one.

Even if they did want a family it might be difficult or impossible to find a partner for lower income men. Western women with degrees and careers aren't exactly fawning over your average forklift driver, and i think a lot of low income men understand this and are just opting to focus on themselves.

Not everyone with low income is blue collar. Some of us make startups.

THIS.

"It's the economy, stupid!" - James Carville (political strategist for Bill Clinton)

But with one party quietly intent on making the economic situation worse for 99% of America, and the other party too deep in their ideological narcissism & just plain stupidity to actually care...I doubt that anything is gonna improve.

>But with one party quietly intent on making the economic situation worse for 99% of America, and the other party too deep in their ideological narcissism & just plain stupidity to actually care...I doubt that anything is gonna improve.

lol that none of us can know for sure which party you think is which, since one could reasonably launch both criticisms at either

> none of us can know [...] which party you think is which [...]

That was kinda the point.

Making shit worse for the 99% is the only point of bipartisan agreement... where would we be without the oligarchy?

I definitely would not take it that far or call it an "oligarchy", but there is no doubt that neither option seems particularly great or inspiring at the moment.

On the contrary, I don't think it's the economy... it's your last paragraph. People just don't feel very encouraged to have children in such a toxic culture

Two of the studies cited were on high school seniors and men aged 18-28. I speculate that part of this is that "40 is the new 30" and interest in fatherhood is happening later. Not saying I dont agree with the finding, just that there is definitely an element of delaying family until later vs previous generations

This seems very late. I mean antinatalism isn't an uncommon view point for people to have. This trend has been happening for a long time. I suspect it's cultural and economic. Some people that want to be parents simply can't afford to do what it takes to become parents. But at the same time, having kids doesn't tend to be a high priority for people in a society primarily focused on personal independence. And it shows;

>Nearly two-thirds of nonparents (65%) agree that the freedom that comes with not having kids brings them happiness, according to a survey of 1,950 U.S. adults conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of Fortune in October.

I think people have different interests as well, I don't have enough fingers to count the amount of people I grew up with that started families when they were in their early twenties. But there are also a group of us who haven't heading into our thirties.

Having said that, it doesn't mean that statistically it hasn't changed.

For me personally, I don't feel like I have enough stability to bring a child into the world just yet. I'd prefer to do that and settle down once I own a house, whereas other people are happily doing it renting. I find it challenging enough to look after myself let alone another tiny human, but I suppose it depends on where your dial is at in what you're comfortable with doing.

Being a parent in modern America sucks. Literally everything is working against you and super unreliable.

Agreed. We've become so much of a nanny state that the kids are learning how to exploit these same "protections" to terrorize parents into submission.

...and that much before you have to contend with social media grooming and reinforcing misbehavior.

If you end up with a bad apple, anything you say or do in the name of parenting will be construed as Abuse by an army of "helpful" therapists.

It’s more of a issue with childcare being unreliable and unavailable. Like there are no available spots in some areas for after school care. It’s very expensive if you find a spot and the care is pretty meh. The tax breaks for kids are tiny so you end up paying for their expenses in post tax money that adds another 24% to the cost.

Then you have schools that only provide 180 days of service, plus only 6.5 hrs plus random half days plus random days of plus they your kid is bored because we have to teach to the lowest student.

All these things wear you down, and don’t get me wrong you can deal with them when your household earns 200k/year but you probably need a solid 350/400k as a family to truly buy your way out of these problems. If both parents are making less then 6 figures dual income living sucks

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-kids-no-problem-millennial...

> A significant portion (44%) of nonparents ages 18 to 49 say it’s unlikely they’ll have children, according to a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center. That’s up by about 7 percentage points from the 37% who reported the same in 2018.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/19/growing-sha...

> And the majority of these adults feel good about their decision: Nearly two-thirds of nonparents (65%) agree that the freedom that comes with not having kids brings them happiness, according to a survey of 1,950 U.S. adults conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of Fortune in October. Among millennials without kids, 73% agree with that sentiment, according to the survey.

> Across the board, Americans are having fewer kids—and that’s been a trend for over a decade now. During the early days of the pandemic in 2020, that was exacerbated with a short-lived “baby bust.” And while birth rates recovered and then some in a 2021 “baby bump,” there was still a net loss of 11,000 “missing conceptions” in 2020 and 2021, according to research from Melissa Kearney, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland.

I don't need a good reason not to do it, I need a reason to do it.

In the old days, Grandma took care of the kids. Later, the kids took care of Grandma. And everyone worked the family property together.

After the (skimmed) pensions promised by governments go insolvent (due to lack of young people who had no apparent reason to breed), we'll get back to the old ways.

Being a human?

Being a human is not a good reason to become a parent.

Sure, reproducing is a human instinct, but another part of being a human is learning to control your instincts so you can have the life you want. If the life you want does not involve children, then the instinct to reproduce ceases to be a good reason.

> If the life you want does not involve children, then the instinct to reproduce ceases to be a good reason.

How do you know if the life you want is good?

I don't think I can answer what the formula for a good life is. There is a whole section of philosophy dedicated only to this area.

I think it is up to each of us to figure out how to make the best out of our lives, but if you like how your life is now, and you are looking forward to your future, then I think it is fair to say that you are doing a decent job.

I mean, you could also use condoms, you don't need to kill the instinct to reproduce.

> Bozick found that, over the past two decades, the number of childless men who do not want children has doubled. Meanwhile, the number of men who said that it was important to have parental leave decreased between 2005 to 2015. The study cites data from the U.S. Census Bureau estimating that 39.4% of men over the age of 15 have no children, “constituting a sizable share of the population that at present is poorly understood.”

Given current technology, the only known way to roll back the amount of carbon entering the atmosphere to the levels required to put an end to anthropogenic climate change is population reduction. The most humane way to do that is to limit the number of children being born.

I expect part of the explanation to be economic and the other part due to the realization that having families as was done in the past is paradoxically incompatible with future survival of the species.

Ofc it's impractical at a political level, but from a logical perspective it's a lot safer for the existing population and more reliable a solution than a megaproject (ie "giant sun shade") which won't limit carbon at all leaving humanity on a longer tail ride to the same situation alongside the dangers of a megaproject failure.

I never had children because if I got divorced, I would go from seeing them every day, to only 2 weekends (4 days) per month. I've always known that it would kill me if that happened, and the solitary only way to prevent that is to not have children. I'm not upset at not having children, but I would be unconsolable if I had them but only then got to see them 4 days a month. And, what if the ex-wife took all the other 26 days to turn the kids against me and they didn't want to see me ever? Or if they had to, hated every minute of it. Just no. No. Not going to play that game.

So I opted never to get married and not to have kids and wow, you should see my bank account.

It would be interesting to see trends of planned vs unplanned families. How many would be births get stopped with Plan B, etc?

In the Philippines, I'm not even sure you can get plan B pills, though there are other options I believe. The Catholic Church has generally frowned on any sort of birth control. Abortions are not legal.

Seems like dwindling birth rate would be a cultural shift rather than economic. I'm skeptical of a survey which asks if you're planning to have kids though. I'm single right now and I would say I'm unlikely to have kids. A relationship next month could change that.

Plan B is probably not really the thing to think about here. Sure it plays a role, but, condoms came into mainstream use in the early 1900s and the contraceptive pill only in 1960. Thats only 2-3 generations really. For many your grandparents or maybe great-grandparents were early days for easily and freely accessible contraception along with sex education to make using it more likely.

I suspect that if you did a more nuanced study, with questions that differentiated between "not wanting kids" and "feeling that you'd be unable to have/raise children in a decent way that doesn't severely compromise your ability to live comfortably" you would have a much more interesting result.

My experience as a 21 year old is that many of my peers (both male and female) absolutely want to have kids. In fact, I've found it very common for people in my generational cohort ("Zoomers") to openly want large families with 5 or more children. Sure, there's the occasional hardcore childfree hedonist, but they seem to be a minority amongst people 20ish years old. I'm not entirely certain what caused it, some combination of internet-fueled braggadocio or a general sentiment of revolt against the modern world, but it is real.

What I suspect is driving the results of these studies is that the same people I'm talking about are generally smart/informed enough to recognize on some level that the prerequisites for having children in a fundamentally decent manner are extraordinarily difficult to obtain. This is on top of a generally pessimistic outlook on geopolitics and a complete lack of faith in our ruling class to secure a habitable (to say nothing of comfortable) future. It is generally accepted that having kids will implode your financial life, social life, and career. It is widely believed that having children is fundamentally an act of cruelty with the reins of history in the hands of our current tepid gerontocracy.

For people with the ability to consider it deeply, having children is a profound act of philosophy, a vote of confidence in the future and a claim to a kind sovereignty so indelible that you can reasonably safeguard something of unlimited value. Whether you believe it to be because of tradition or some inherent dimorphism, this is particularly true for men: the expectation of fatherhood is fundamentally libertarian in some very real sense. So on top of all of the macroeconomic factors, you have to consider the particular factors of 2022 that conspire to strip people of agency and subordinate their sense of self beneath a million behemoth systems in an act of distributed partial sacrifice.

... ok, it got a little weird at the end there, but you get the idea.

>My experience as a 21 year old is that many of my peers (both male and female) absolutely want to have kids. In fact, I've found it very common for people in my generational cohort ("Zoomers") to openly want large families with 5 or more children. Sure, there's the occasional hardcore childfree hedonist, but they seem to be a minority amongst people 20ish years old. I'm not entirely certain what caused it, some combination of internet-fueled braggadocio or a general sentiment of revolt against the modern world, but it is real.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is just the pendulum swinging in the other direction. In my generation, saying you don't want kids is practically the norm. But society also pushes whatever is in vogue so hard and so blindly that everyone eventually gets sick of it(just look at reddit). Eventually kids being told that having a family is lame are gonna rebel against the status quo and want the traditional upbringing that they keep being told they should stay away from. That's just my theory, but I think it's not hard to find it happening already.

Personally I don’t want to marry and lose half my worth, so a child is unlikely.

The courts are heavily biased towards women, and even the general public looks down upon a man alone with children.

I’ve spent time with a girlfriends kids and taken them out, got some nasty looks. Extremely unnerving.

"39.4% of men over the age of 15 have no children" - wait, what kind of a clickbait news is this? (who gets kids in the western world right after the age 15!!!???)

Those where the age of consent is 15? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_...

John Vervaeke has a whole YouTube playlist about the meaning crisis that describes this lost interest in detail.

Someone I know, not an American, but gave me food for thought. "I don't want kids. Why should I bring someone to go through this existence? Why?"

He is a recovered depression patient, but I think some things never recovered in him.

Being a parent in America is awesome. Being a parent is awesome. Kids are awesome. I have 3 and would love to have 3 more. I can't afford them. They complicate my life. I watch a lot more cartoons these days than I would on my own. But I love them.

I say these things in case others are fearing the impact of kids on their lives. The love kids have to give is something special.

It is extremely expensive. Not only is it extremely expensive but who has the time? Most middle class families now have both parents working full-time. Time and money. Kids take both.

Maybe they lost interest in a devastating divorce that leaves them without their house, with half their money and without their children.

But how does that explain why married men don't want children?

If they have children, then in a divorce, in 95% of the cases, they do not get custody. They see their children 2 weekends (4 days) per month instead of every day. This is the single reason that I never had kids. This would kill me.

Courts almost never award custody to the man, no matter what.

Plus, the man has to pay alimony for life, and child support for only 4 days per month for the money. The kicker is that the women does NOT have to spend child support on the child. She can spend most or all of it on herself if she wishes, as long as she feeds the kid peanut butter and jelly every day, gets them to school, and doesn't physically abuse them, then she gets to spend all the child support on shoes, trips, whatever she wishes. IF SHE WANTS TO DO THAT. Not saying all women do that.

So, that's why married men don't want children.

Further, these inequalities manifest as perverse incentives: women initiate non-marital breakups at the same rate as men, but initiate divorce over twice as often as men.

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