Comment by benterix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by benterix | Hacker News Reader

There are basically two reasons. The first one:

> A combination of rapid economic development, very high levels of education among young adults, very competitive labor market, long work hours, unaffordable housing, traditional gender norms and persistent gender inequalities in work and family life have created a perfect storm — conditions that make it very difficult for young people to marry and pursue their fertility plans

and the second one:

> The research I have been conducting with my colleagues shows that the appeal of marriage and having children has been vanishing among the young adults and many of them are likely to stay unmarried, childfree and without a partner.

And this is very real. Men increasingly don't want to marry because they perceive the current system as unfair. Women increasingly don't want to marry because they don't want to settle for anything less than a certain threshold that is increasingly difficult to find. This trend is clear everywhere in the West.

As a father of 2, my fate is sealed. But I can totally understand the above points as being true.

Being a parent is the most difficult, most expensive and longest job I've ever taken on. And I've moved around the world by myself, which is a joke in comparison.

On paper, children do not make sense what-so-ever. Thankfully, in reality, I cannot imagine living one day without my kids. They give me life, strength and purpose like nothing ever has.

Having kids is playing life in hard mode.

Having kids is actually playing rather than being a bystander for the vast majority of people. How many people actually have an impact that actually means anything to the future otherwise? Vanishingly few.

That's interesting. Yet encyclopedias record billions of achievements, but almost never "having children"

Every single human being alive today owes his/her very existence to an uninterrupted chain of such achievements going back to the beginning of life on this planet.

Do we need to record these in encyclopedias? That would be silly. Are they extremely important for us? No kidding. Is failing to "continue the habit" exiting the long game and electing not to play any more? I would say so.

I think it's because having children, as necessary and rewarding it is, is trivial.

> trivial

Quite the opposite of that, IMHO. I would regard my having children as both the most challenging and most fulfilling thing I ever did in my life - way above what I thought would take that spot for me (things like business ventures, career, adventures, extreme endeavors and achievements).

ain't nothin trivial about having a kid unless you're a deadbeat dad and can just walkaway.

Sure it does. All biographies mention spouse and children.

All biographies ??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

Not even a picture.

Only wikipedia did that. In general encyclopedias did not use to have a 'personal life' segment at all

The GP mentions encyclopedias. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If other online encyclopedias omit this information that's pretty weird imo.

Print encyclopedias have a spacing budget.

Having children is easy. Being a good parent is the hard part. Unfortunately, those two don't necessarily overlap.

Exactly. I refuse to take part in what currently is trending towards a global concentration camp, nobody excluded, and I refuse to throw more bodies into it. If anything, I'd adopt a child that already exists. I pride myself more in the things I don't do than the things I do. You may say that doesn't have an impact, but it makes a universe of difference for myself.

You as an individual would have the same impact as your individual children would?

But yes, keeping a population going that will continue to work and support society is important, but don't forget that you are having a positive impact there as well.

The thing is it's a hard mode that's gotten harder. All my family in the generations above me had way more kids than me. Maybe it's an anomaly due to survival rates jumping, but even my aunt has six kids. It didn't seem to be such a burden until very recently. Even cousins who are older than me and make less money seem to be able to have more kids.

You're right about purpose though. I don't know what I'd do without them.

I have a number of friends who are just straight up single, never had a girlfriend (or boyfriend, friends are both genders), never even tried, live alone despite having plenty of means. It's like a sort of secular monk. So in a way I get it, but also in a way I could never do it.

> They give me life, strength and purpose like nothing ever has.

Congratulations! You've discovered the meaning of life, ie reproduction.

It's so fulfilling because it's what you're programmed to do, as an organism.

Living things (as a group) exist only to reproduce, nothing else matters, and everything they do is geared to toward it. If an individual doesn't follow that goal, it is removed from the gene pool, and those that reproduce fill the vacuum.

Of course human vanity and ego will insist there is something higher (thus things like religion), but there isn't.

I only partly agree with your comment, because the dilemma is false. All living organisms reproduce and humans as mammals are no exception. At the same time, you can almost feel it's not all.

If you stop to think about the original cause, things get very complicated (if you adopt Penrose's thesis regarding Big Bangs, there is no original cause). If you start to analyse the macro- (dark energy and maybe dark matter) and especially microcosm (all things quantum), suddenly ordinary perception collapses. Even plain old relativity with time-space curvature seems at odds with what we are used to perceive. So maybe, just maybe, it's not so far-stretched to think the so-called objective reality is a kind of hologram or whatever we call it. I'd say it's far more probable than just believing everything is accidental and has little purpose (e.g. just reproducing and that's all).

It is survival of the species that counts, and the 'geological' timescales over which it does. Some individuals from that species reproducing is obviously a requirement - but only as a means to an end.

Whether individuals reproduce or not, usually doesn't matter much unless you have really small # of individuals left and it's "have babies or go extinct".

At this point, one could well argue that our species has a better shot at (longterm) survival when fewer individuals reproduce, vs. when our numbers keep increasing. If so, depopulation would enhance chance of our species' survival.

Wholeheartedly agree. It’s not a question of how many people can live, but a question of what kind of existence is possible for those that do.

Having children is crazy expensive.

Also in a world of climate chaos and ecological collapse, a lot of younger people don't want to bring kids into the world.

How is the current system unfair towards men?

As a married man, I feel that anything that is unfair between me and my wife is totally up to us - I don’t feel that the system itself puts me at a disadvantage.

> How is the current system unfair towards men?

The marriage institution in most countries puts men at serious disadvantage in case of divorce - which is where a pretty large chunk of marriages end up.

A (free) book on the subject: http://www.realworlddivorce.com/

Hmm, okay. Can you give an example or two how the US divorce law puts men at a disadvantage?

There are two aspects here. One is child care, although here I think the USA does much better than many other countries where the judge simply gives the children to the mother by default, and often even very strong arguments don't help.

The other issue, probably more relevant, is that you split all you have in half (roughly). In theory, it is to make up for the fact that the woman has to deal with childbirth and all the consequences, including missed opportunities. In practice it means that even if you don't have any children, you need to give her half of everything if she decides so. Some people consider it very unfair, but of course every situation is different.

The fact is, women file for divorce more often than men, and not everybody is comfortable with a prenuptial agreement arguing that marriage is based on trust, and if you don't have that trust at the beginning, why to marry at all?

EDIT: Theory aside, when you read about particular cases like this one, they are depressingly sobering: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-most-women-have-the-advantage-d...

I can't comment on the courts being biased.

At least in Germany, AFAIK you only split in half what you earned during the marriage - and that seems fair. Like two founders getting 50% of a startup.

I don't know, none of this strikes me as a big reason not to start a family with a partner that you see eye-to-eye with.

The share split is the same in the US, so long as pre-marital funds are not comingled.

In Washington state at the very least this isn't true. The default parenting division is 50:50, and there would need to be strong extenuating circumstances for a parent that wants 50% parental time to not get it. In my experience men are less likely to seek 50%.

Equal co-parenting is hard, it pretty much requires that you live in or near the same school district as your ex. Being a weekend or summer co-parent doesn't have the same constraints.

It won't be the right solution for every case, but it is always available.

I know several single dads raising kids with little or no co-parent from the mother, but it is the exception, I know far more who went with "every other weekend plus one midweek night"

Usually people are talking about divorce court.

See the sentence after that. You’re already married, but in today’s market, increasingly few people want to be married and have kids, women of reproductive age even less so than the average person. As a man, if that’s the goal of a relationship, unless you get very lucky, you’ll have to partner with someone who either earns less than 60% of your income, is relatively less fit than you, spends money at an unsustainable rate, hasn’t developed the social/psychological skills to be ready for kids, or some combination of these (perhaps all of them). Seemingly the only consistent way around this is to come from a wealthy family. (I’ve finally found an exceptional partner who I think I’m on a good track with, but there are still lots of compromises and issues, and I would not have found her without paying a matchmaker $5k+.) It does all seem a bit unfair, because it is, but I’ve accepted with time is that life just isn’t fair. Things were a lot more unfair for women just a few decades ago, when they routinely settled for alcoholics who beat them (and worse) just to have families.

You seem to have a pretty negative opinion of women.

I thought my comment clearly described the problem as a result of our socioeconomic environment, so I’m curious: what led you to that conclusion? I love women, and most of my closest friends are women (who either don’t want kids, are too old for them, already had them, or can’t afford them). And, having talked extensively with them about this, as well as my various partners over the years, basically all of us have agreed that if you’re a man and want kids, you’re going to have to make a lot of unfair compromises to do so. And again… this is because of capitalism, not because of whatever it is you’re thinking. I am curious to know what that is, though, and how I could have better communicated my point to you!

Perhaps it is the increased pressure on men to be more involved in household routines traditionally performed by women like washing dishes, cooking meals, cleaning house, caring for children, etc, yet there is no equal pressure on women to be more involved in household routines traditionally performed by men like being the primary breadwinner, household repairs, auto repairs, financial management, lawn maintenance, etc.?

Those are things that you can talk about with your partner, no?

Oh, of course. Communication is arguably the key factor in maintaining a strong relationship.

However, there is an imbalance in societal pressure for men to change which can affect how others view the relationship. Have you ever heard someone say “she should help her spouse repair the cars more” or “can you believe she hasn’t cleaned those gutters yet”?

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