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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

My wife and I have opted not to have children for reasons* and it's really sad how the conversation with the in-laws has moved from "you should have children because children" to "you need to have children because korea needs you to have children", and it's not just a passing comment here and there, the campaign to get us to single handedly re-populate SK is intense and sustained. I wonder if other couples are experiencing this.

*We can't afford to have children, Climate change, We can't afford to have children

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I'm not arguing your decision to not have children. I've made the same decision myself, but the 'can't afford to have children' has always confused me.

Even after the point where contraception became readily available, people were having children with far fewer resources than anyone alive today. What I hear when people say 'We can't afford to have children' is an additional '...and maintain our current standard of living'.

It seems there's a lot of expectations that we heap on parents. My kids must have their own room. Must go to a prestigous private school. Must participate in expensive sports. Must travel. Must attend a top university, on and on.

Kids don't have to have any of that (ok, own room is pretty important after a certain age). The truth is parents need to chill out of this evolutionary arms race to make sure little timmy has every possible advantage even if they run themselves ragged getting there.

I think the reason is that people feel guilty if they can't provide their kids equal or better lifestyles than they got.

Yes, but at the same time you also don't want to rob a child of their childhood and adolescence. Who cares if by age 20 they aren't a virtuoso in violin and who cares if they haven't already won 5 random bogus academic awards?

> I'm not arguing your decision to not have children. I've made the same decision myself, but the 'can't afford to have children' has always confused me.

To add to your list of reasons, for me, I feel like I am bringing a child only to feed the capitalist system - saddled with debt, and living with less freedoms than me. I feel like my dearest loved one will not be able to thrive in this world. They could, sure, but the chances of thriving are low.

And that thought pains me deeply.

It might be fair to assume that you are relatively upperclass tech worker; I think your perceptions of what people can do is colored by your social circle. For many people they aren't worried about kids going to a private school, it's whether they can afford to feed someone else.

I'm surprised none of your expectations include basic child care - food, shelter, care. If you are just scraping by on two incomes how do you expect someone to feed another human on one income? For many young adults that still live with their own parents, they aren't worried about their kids having their own room, they are worried about having their own place to stay.

It's very pompous to assume that most people aren't having kids because they won't be able to afford to send them to Phillips Exeter when a record number of single people in South Korea live with their parents because they can't afford homes.

Sure, the people in your social circle may be eschewing having kids because they can't afford to give their kids the same lifestyle they grew up with, in private schools or don't want to give up traveling, but people who can afford those luxuries in the first place aren't representative of the broader population.

It might be fair to assume op is as well. Beyond that, people have 'afforded' kids since there have been people, and this includes the worst deprivations at the beginning of the industrial age. Birth rates are actually inversely correlated with income, and this cuts across industrial and agrarian societies.

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

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. As income rises and your children are unable (or disallowed) to start working for themselves, the calculus on child rearing changes. It's different when your 8 year old can start collecting eggs. I don't buy that as income rises people would rather go to Italy than have children. OP mentions they can't afford it - the people who I've met who say that really can't afford it. The ones that are DINK, are proudly DINK.

My broader point is that globally, these issues are less about couples wanting maintain their summer vacations to Italy, and more that people who want to have children are unable to responsibly do so. Telling people, in the US at least, that they should have kids because of the government safety net would be considered irresponsible advice.

As a new-ish parent in a HCOL area, this actually makes sense to me. Before children, we needed two incomes just to afford a relatively modest but comfortable lifestyle (both STEM related jobs, but not anywhere near FAANG salaries). But childcare is expensive and there are not a lot of affordable resources to lean on when things go haywire, for example when the child is sick and needs to stay home from daycare (a week of short notice babysitting can cost as much as an entire month of daycare). It has been extremely stressful and everyone around us that seems to be making it work either makes a lot more money than us (and can pay for a lot more help) or have a lot more help from relatives (or both).

In LCOL areas, single income households are more realistic. And retired grandparents and relatives are more likely to be able to afford the area and help out with childcare. So it is not really about "affording" the kids, it is really more about how much help you can get. Certainly food and diapers cost money, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to child care.

EDIT: Also, in terms of number of kids, there are some subtle influences there as well. A couple on FAANG salaries can easily afford 4-5 kids in a HCOL area. But modern car seats are massive and to shuttle that many kids around you would need a large SUV. But driving one of those around in an urban-ish area is a nightmare. It is little things like this that push down the fertility rates in these areas. Big rural open settings are great places for popping out kids. Expensive, high cost, high density environments are not.

> For many people they aren't worried about kids going to a private school, it's whether they can afford to feed someone else.

In a developed country? Even the US (hardly a socialist paradise) has extensive programs to keep children fed. I think that issue is pretty well covered.

Speaking of the US alone, which already has an incredibly stigma on relying on handouts, those programs can be tricky to qualify for. A couple with one child can only qualify for WIC with an household income under 45k in California.

But stepping back, I think you are missing the forest for the trees here. I don't think people are actively abstaining from having children like the OP is, but I don't think you are treating people as capable of making responsible, informed decisions. How do you arrive at the calculus that, in the US, someone would desperately desire children so much that they would opt to go on government assistance? Who is that person to you?

poor people have more kids so your entire argument is nonsense

I don't understand, is your reasoning that South Korea should become a poor country?

Yes poor people have more babies, but those poor people are becoming a smaller set in South Korea. You now need to analyze why, specifically, SK's (and many other country's) middle class aren't having children.

umm no, im saying your argument that the reason people dont have kids is because they cant afford them is exactly wrong. The number of children people have is perfectly inversely correlated by how wealthy they are, and many of the countries with the best socialized child care and other government programs to help poor people (northern europe) have some of the lowest birth rates in the world.

Well, kids can technically be raised on almost nothing but that doesn’t mean they should be, because there are consequences for doing that which will stay with the adults those children become for the rest of their lives. Probably, the ideal point is somewhere in the middle, as it is with most things.

Even so, kids are a large sustained expense that can’t be opted out of once they exist and are one of the most common strains on relationships both financially and emotionally — even just one kid can take a couple from thriving to struggling depending on their circumstances. In short, kids are risky, and it’s easy to see why many couples don’t particularly care to take that risk.

Following that, if governments want more people having kids, they should be throwing all they have into de-risking raising a family.

children went from around an 8 year burden on resources and then immediate source of labor to approximately 18-24 year drain on resources. what you're describing is the result of getting 1 bet instead of 7. It's unsurprising many in the (downwardly mobile) middle class or upwardly mobile lower class have fewer children in those conditions.

Back then children were viewed as a source of cheap labor that could contribute to the household. Developed countries have changed their expectations as you have noted. You can't produce a farm hand that can contribute cheap labor directly to the household at an early age. Now we have to produce skilled workers that can contribute to the society. Skilled workers that may not even do their own laundry before 18.

As a result, the household just sees children as a large expense, where the benefits go to the society. There's a significant incentive to defect from this arrangement.

Not to say the experience of raising a child isn't intrinsically valuable. But, the value of that experience is only enough to incentivize some people to have 1-2 children, and as we are learning now, not enough of an incentive to keep birth rates above replacement in advanced economies.

We probably don't need to make children a net economic positive again, as the intrinsic rewards of the experience are enough of an incentive, it could be net neutral or slightly net negative and still get us above replacement. But, advanced economies will need to change the math if they want to fix this.

I wouldn't worry to much about climate change, humanity overcame bigger problems. And if your in-laws want children so much, just tell them your concerns, they might be willing to chip in financially.

I think you are seriously underestimating the impacts that worldwide crop failures in the next 20 years are going to have as far as global human catastrophes go.

Are you serious about this? This climate doomerism is frankly ridiculous.

Do you have any genuine studies that show such impactful effects?

There's a certain group of people that take the absolute worst predictions of climate science and just runs with it. Granted, there's a far larger group of people that think we'll be ok with business as usual. Neither is true.

I'm not sure if you're aware that 3-5C is perfectly within the business-as-usual scenarios and 5C is easily a civilization-ending trend.

I'm using BAU loosely here. I'm not referring to RCP 8.5. I have my own issues with the IPCC's estimates relying to much on direct air capture, but I don't think 5-6c is likely unless there's an unforseen feedback loop we haven't factored in.

I'd almost bet money on the eventual use of stratospheric sulfide injection to cool the planet. It's cheap enough that even a third world country could conceivably pay for it. We have no idea what the side effects will be, but it may well be worth the risk to avoid 3-4c of warming.

The IPCC reports don’t really factor in the dramatic acceleration of methane emissions from bogs and Siberian wetlands.

I work with climatologists in the development of AI models that improve over the climatology.

The amount of arable land that will be lost in the tropics is going to dramatically impact all countries around the Equator. Some areas simply will not support human life without air conditioning with a 2 degree increase in wet bulb temperature and +3C increase in extreme weather events.

Crop failures are linked to many historically extreme events. A 15%-30% in staple foods has _massive_ impacts in the poorest 20% of the population. In poor democracies it leads to people voting for demagogues and autocrats; in other places it's much worse.

The cascade of these events with ever increasing temperature is exponential.

What percentage of crops will fail in 20 years?

See https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3124/global-climate-change-imp...

Some crops like coffee, chocolate and grapes are going to see an extremely dramatic reduction in arable surface

Significant crop failures will cause prices to rise, which will enable the wider use of refrigerated storage, fertilizer, new crop varietals, desalinated water, greenhouses, etc. This will bring supply and demand back into balance at a higher price.

The higher price for food will cause millions of deaths, an impact comparable to COVID or to the Ukraine and Ethiopian wars combined. It will pale in comparison to the impact of WW2, the black plague or the Chinese cultural revolution.

it's difficult to articulate the (IMO correct) position that climate change is horrible but still totally solvable. somehow people hear "we can solve this" as " there's no reason to be concerned"

I agree with the gist of your argument, but I wouldn't phrase it as "totally solvable". Limiting it to 2 degrees is possible, limiting it to 3 is likely. Both are bad, both are locally catastrophic but neither are globally catastrophic.

I like my phrasing "millions will die". That works on numerate people, but most people can't really conceptualize the difference between a million and a billion. Any other suggestions?

There's a great deal of land in the very cold part of the N hemisphere that may become more agriculturally productive with warming.

Those area are limited by the number of hours of sunlight and the number of growing seasons. Reductions in 20-30% are expected, but this doesn't really capture the increase in extreme weather events that can lead to total crop loss.

The soil quality there is very low. Also, large parts of canada are covered by the 'canadian shield' which is basically where glaciers have scraped down to bare granite bedrock. If we had thousands of years to adjust, I'm sure we could manage but you're not planting huge fields of wheat, corn or soybean in that soil.

> humanity overcame bigger problems

Like?

I tend to agree that humanity will eventually overcome but the question is also when and at what cost?

Climate change (ice age), epidemics, war, famine…

Various problems yes, but not necessarily bigger (or even same size/complexity).

https://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc/elevator/elevator43.html

Bubonic plague, supereruptions, ice ages, malaria, smallpox, ozone deterioration - lots of these seem small now but that’s only because we’ve already overcome them

That's post facto logic. Obviously you and your ancestors have overcome those things, because the millions that didn't are dead.

Statistically someone was going to survive, you're lucky it was your ancestors, but it doesn't mean you will be lucky again.

That’s the whole point that is being made… we’re talking about humanity - Yeah lots of individuals will die due to climate change, particularly in 3rd world countries but humanity will be just fine overall, just as it was with all those disasters.

Humanity may survive, but not the modern civilization and the quality of life that we enjoy.

North America and Europe are unlikely to be particularly impacted even in the worst case ipcc projections so not sure where you get that from

For me, the question isn't "Will humanity overcome?" I don't have a doubt about that.

Instead it's "What are the chances my kid – the individual – will lead a relatively peaceful, fulfilling life for the next 70-90 years?"

I don't know the answer.

"What are the chances my kid – the individual – will lead a relatively peaceful, fulfilling life for the next 70-90 years?"

Did your parents know the answer to that? Did your grandparents? Etc

What gives you fulfillment varies based on perspective. Peace is fragile and basically non-existent across one's entire lifespan.

> Did your parents know the answer to that? Did your grandparents?

No. But it's not really relevant to me.

My grandparents' generation was largely motivated by religious faith (and lack of birth control) to have a bunch of kids.

My parents' generation mostly lost the religious motivation, but inherited the inertia without questioning it. It's not to say they didn't want their kids, but having kids was just "what you did".

None of that's the case for me.

Sorry, I'll be more specific - do you wish you were never born?

I think the closest I come to a "yes" would be a sort of underlying feeling of nihilism. The universe is big; life is short. That kind of thing.

But if I had a kid and e.g., watched that kid become a climate refugee, I think I'd regret my decision to make that kid.

It seems like now, more than any time in recorded history, the answer is "yes".

Do you think any parents have ever known that answer? Before climate change was the Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation, before that was two major world wars, before that was a string of wars and plagues going back to the beginning of humanity.

If you think climate change is a good reason to not have children you need to stop and reexamine how the media/doomscrolling have affected your thought process.

I see this reason given time and time again and I just don't understand it. We're currently living in what's probably the best time ever to be a human. We get to live in air conditioned houses, many medical issues have been all but eradicated, we have (for the first time ever) too much food, etc.

Otherwise if it's just an excuse - you don't need one to not have children. If you just want to maintain your current lifestyle that's up to you.

> reexamine how the media/doomscrolling have affected your thought process.

No need. Except for Hacker News and local news, I don't read the news. I don't use other social networks except for a few small non-news subreddits and Github.

But my local environment is changing year over year, and it's concerning.

> We get to live in air conditioned houses

It's funny that you mention that. Air conditioners were almost unheard of where I live. But now we're regularly hitting 40C+ in the summer for long stretches and people locally are installing them. It wasn't like that 15 years ago.

To flip your advice on its head, maybe turn off the air conditioning and experience the change firsthand.

I work outside.

I guarantee my 2 year old daughter will be just fine in regards to global warming. Some areas of the world might have issues, but if you're in a rich country like America you don't really need to worry about it on a personally-affecting-me-level.

You're underestimating how connected the world economies and supply chains are. You seem to be huffing some serious copium if you're sure your daughter will be fine.

I dunno about SK but in the USA the road to kids was: partner up, get a stable income, find a home, start a family. The second and third links in that chain are broken for most people. The older generation wants to work into their 70s and own a bunch of rental properties so… no grandkids.

The first link has some problems too. Even with the second two fulfilled, the fist is a real blocker for many.

At macro level, incomes are rising but marriage rates are falling (even with adding in cohabitation).

Real wages are largely flat for the past 50 years (in the US) as in equality increases. I think thats a big part of the U shaped birth to income graph.

And your kids stand a chance to be poorer than you if you can’t support their education and devote time to care for them. If you can’t afford a home that’s the path you are on. It’s pathetic how people want folks to sacrifice themselves to create more workerbees for society while they demand their housing “investment(s)” continue to blast upward and vote for less housing.

I'm not in SK but in the US. I decided long ago to not have children (I'm a man) along with my wife. Maybe we'll change our mind one day, but more than likely it won't.

I honestly just don't think its my responsibility to contribute to some "greater good" of continuing to populate the earth. Humans survived just fine when the population of the Earth was half the size of now.

This is extremely selfish and probably not seen in a good light, but since I don't have children nor do I plan to, I honestly don't really care that much what happens after I pass when it comes to the population, etc. Not to be mistaken though, while I live I won't try to actively make things worse for anybody.

Just as long as you recognize that if the worker/retiree ratio gets significantly out of whack, the demand for services needed by retirees is going to massively outstrip supply supply so inflation is going to kill any retirement savings you're planning on.

If you're directly or indirectly working on that problem somehow, you're probably doing far more good for future humans than you would just by having kids.

Rich countries will just keep importing labor. The large aged population will throw out any government that threatens their quality of life in retirement.

Middle income and poor countries with low birth rates may suffer greatly from having their working aged populations poached.

This is an article about Korea, a country which is not doing so, and is quite likely incapable of doing so in the quantities needed to offset a 0.7 TFR.

>Rich countries will just keep importing labor.

This only works so long.... We are running into the issue where almost no rich countries are producing excess population. Couple that with the countries we think of as excess population producers have massively reduced their own birth rates, then one day those rich countries will start having to pay very large amounts for imports, hence threatening the quality of life by increase costs.

I really don’t see why you should have a moral obligation to continue the unsustainable overpopulation of the planet. Every single scrap of science tells us that we have overshot the planet’s carrying capacity along every dimension we care to measure. And yeah, one more person may contribute a tiny bit to a GDP and SP500 number, but those numbers will be irrelevant when the soil no longer yields food.

What's your plan when you get old enough to need daily care?

I can tell you right now that elderly in nursing homes who don't have constant family visits are utterly miserable.

My outlook is that the world certainly isn't getting better any time soon. It'll get a lot worse first. And who knows how long that will take. And I want to be young enough to enjoy time with my kids when they're adults. The complications and difficulties are worth it, I figure.

I say this as an American glossing through this comment thread though, so I don't know your circumstances.

Is there an fertility rates published by income/wealth levels? Does the U-shaped fertility graph show up in SK? As in, poorest people have more kids, middle class have fewest kids, and richest have more kids.

In Spain there's no institutional pressure, but peer pressure. I'm expected to have children and pay +1/2 of my income in rent, have little savings, etc.

I'm pretty much an average spaniard in financial terms.

Climate change frightens me too.

I mean, If I had children I would have fear for their future and I would be completely ruined financially.

But it seems this is completely incomprehensible to older generations that wonder why youngster complain about getting hands in their pocket trough rent, pensions, debt, etc.

Older generations want you to have kids because in their mind they or their parents had kids through even worse things. Wars, famine, and crippling global economic decline are the cultural memory of our older generation. Existential things like affordability or an impending climate crisis pale in comparison to the village being bombed and seeing the affects of famine in front of you. The fact you are able to have an expensive apartment for yourself at all and be safe in it for the last several decades is a historical anomaly for most people especially on the european continent.

Excellent comment. The desire to have children being generationally transmitted has inertia that doesn't account for a landscape that has changed much more rapidly.

How exactly does that expectation work? What happens if you only pay 30% of your income to rent? Will you get passed over for a promotion if your boss sees you live slightly below what he is paying you, or something?

You write that you have "opted" and then that you can't afford having children. That sounds more like childlessness was forced upon you - unless you've explicitly decided to be poor (such as for example monks do).

Many cultures value independence, so when people are forced to things, they tend to twist it around by saying it was their decision. That's why important issues get swept under the rug.

If you really want to have children but are worried about climate change and cost - may I suggest you look moving to norhern europe. The region will survive most predicted outcomes and childcare is heavily state subsidized. That is if you would love to have a family but can’t for the stated reasons. It’s totally fine not to want children as personal choice without any rationalization as well!

It's slightly more than I explained. My wife worked her way up from a rural farming town here in Korea, basically taught herself English (and 18th century English), went to the states and got her PhD in American History (something she worked 2 jobs to do + we have debt) and became one of the few Korean born American History professors in the country. We'd both really like to stay in Korea, and we'd like to have kids, but these things seem at odds in SK these days, maybe things will change for us, maybe we'll move one day, we'll see. As it stands today, caring for aging parents on both sides, giving our kids a better life than ours, seems... challenging. (Thanks for the positive and helpful comment, btw :)

It would be better to move to the midwestern US honestly. Housing and childcare is super affordable out there and wages will probably still work out better than in europe. I expect when shit hits the fan you’d rather be in wisconson with american citizenship than on the proverbial maginot line. Civilians don’t often fare well in european continental conflicts.

Yes! And No!

Yes: US will continue being an economic powerhouse, and a very rare geopolitical entity that can source all of it’s inputs and can grow it’s own food. I would definitely think about really hard moving my family to US if our kids were 10 years younger mainly because I’ve realised how it geopolitically speaking outclasses anyplace else on earth.

No: Please do better research. Civilian population in North Europe will do quite well compared to planetary alternatives.

Yes: But safety wise US still wins if one is worried of foreign invasion.

Lets add a No: to that safety group.

No: As an immigrant you may run into safety issues from the current residents that live in the midwest. Add potential government instability and loss of democratic freedoms, and it starts swinging the balance back over to northern Europe.

I wonder why your in-laws won't provide you with means to have children if they want you to have children.

In Russia it is customary to provide children with some kind of housing ("granny's flat") either for living or for renting out, even without any expectations.

There are a lot of people who have children even though they can't afford it. Most of them muddle through somehow.

Nobody has any desire to muddle through life

Seems like the best option from a limited selection for most of us.

Mostly life is what happens to us regardless of what we desire.

My wife and I have definitely noticed a trend of “you’re not doing your civic duty” and we don’t even live in SK.

I don't think shaming young people into having children will work (for SK or any other country). Eventually they will have to adjust their culture and immigration policies to be more welcoming to outsiders.

theres only so many outsiders and much of the west is already gobbling them up

There's only one reason, and it's that you don't really want children.

Maybe you’d change your mind about affordability if you actually had to pay the externalities of your childlessness and didn’t hope to be subsidised by others

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