Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
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On top of that, at my last job, on my team of 15, I was the only one with kids, and only 1 of those 15 engineers were under the age of 30. At my current job, my team is 8, and again we're all about 30, and nobody is even thinking about kids at all.
It baffles me. And it's also a bit inconvenient that nobody else at work has such pressing obligations, it makes me feel bad (though not too bad at this point) that I *have* to log off at quittin' time, sharp, to go relieve my wife of some childcare and make a family dinner.
Frankly, I never really got why people wanted children in the first place, so this turnabout is amusing. Perhaps you can ask some of these people that you are close with as to their reasoning.
(third square)
edit: I expected apathy at best from a comment this deep in a thread. Now, granted, HN does not stand for Hard Nihilism, but four downvotes with zero explanations in under an hour suggests there is an incurious hostility toward the view that people (myself included) are, like fire, essentially just echoes of thermodynamics.
Even if it is correct (which you haven’t tried to support, just claiming that you know best), how is it relevant? If there’s no bigger picture then what’s wrong with going extinct which should push us to procreate? The comparison to fire - the human population is the highest it’s ever been and still increasing so it doesn’t seem like we are “going out“, and if that was happening the collapse of civilisation would lead to the loss of the ability to mass manufacture birth control and loss of the medical systems supporting them at some point, and the population would go up again after that, wouldn’t it? Fire runs out of fuel, but human food grows on trees - less humans leads to more ecosystem regeneration which could support more humans.
> "an incurious hostility toward the view that people (myself included) are, like fire, essentially just echoes of thermodynamics."
I thought we were “just“ hydraulic systems? Just LLMs? Just clockwork? Humans are just {recent scientific discovery of the era} is an interesting view on its own but is it relevant to the thread? "We are just thermodynamic systems ... so we should reproduce"?
If fire were to gain sentience and therefore know what it was up to, this would not change its essential prerogative to keep doing it, in order to be able to keep doing it.
even if we did, kids are expected to go to school now. they changed from being a work asset to a cost center.
Correction: we still hump like rabbits, at much higher rates than before (welcome hookup culture) and broadcast it to the world for millions to watch.
We are simply not having children.
Got any source to back that up? All surveys I have seen point to younger generations having less sex, fewer relationships, and even just drinking less than their ancestors. Remember, the boomers were the "free love" hippies and then STDs became a serious concern, and we decided we should warn kids about consequences of sex.
A truer sentence haven't been said.
Natural selection doesn't work like that.
There is no guarantee that traits appear because they are needed ; only that traits that somehow appear may spread if they are useful or associated with something else that is useful.
If we don't have such a trait and the decision to have kids is based entirely on the environment, then this evolution will be cultural instead of biological. Cultures that have more kids will replace those that don't.
Holding newborn babies tend to have a quite obvious and equally instant hormonal effect on a lot of people. For some people, even a few such encounters may be enough to induce baby fever.
And there are other factors at play, too, that are also inheritable. Factors like impulse control, introversion / shyness, ambitiousness drive and tendency to magical /religious thinking may all affect the number of offspring one way or the other.
So all that is needed is a few generation of strong selection pressure for such traits, and we're back to overpopulation again being a much bigger threat than population collapse.
As for culture, it is not a static thing, or indissociable from individuals. My grandmothers had 6 and 8 kids, most of my cousins have 0-2 kids. So considering my grandmothers' behaviour and my cousins', Are they from the same culture? Will people that reproduce more today convince their children to do the same?
In either analysis, it's really hard to use natural selection as a predictive tool.
And it can be so fun. I just taught my 3 year old to ride a bike and for the first time today we went for a bike ride along the boardwalk, each on our bikes. I had a pretty amazing single life but I would be hard-pressed to think of anything that matched how much fun this was for me.
I suppose we come at life from very different perspectives, shaped by our culture and our family. It is very hard for me imagine how someone must feel about their life and the world to say "nope, it ends with me." I know people do it but... I don't envy that starting point.
Is that truly any more likely than the non-extinction of our being? It seems like a safe assumption as a default, but…
Ready? The answer is "we don't know." There may be a Gd, there may not be. There may be meaning, there may not be. You can't really know either way.
The answer is that it doesn't matter. The question is what kind of life do you want to live. One that lives as if there's meaning or one that lives as if there isn't? I know my answer. If I get to the end and turns out the meaning was just something I made for myself, and that there's nothing special about my children and my values other than my deep affinity for them... that'd still be a pretty great life.
My life matters to me as a vehicle for what truly matters: if my descendants are thriving, and my values are upheld, whether I am physically here once I've contributed to it, is completely irrelevant to me.
I will fight to live as long and as well as I can, but only because that increases my opportunity to contribute what I want. Merely "existing" is not my highest value and therefore is not the thing I worry about solely.
Hard to explain if you don't get it.
It goes back further than that. "To be or not to be" is indeed THE question, or rather THE choice, especially if you have the type of personality that tends to lead to an existential crisis at some point in your life.
In the end, as far as I can tell, there is no obvious "meaning" in life beyond what we decide to attach meaning to. And "to be" is a prerequisite for most objectives we may attach it to.
Having offspring can be seen as an extension to this. It is to decide that "beeing" will go on even after you as an individual dies.
However, I have no issues with people that don’t want them. To each their own.
If he’s been outside running around the street with his friends all day it hasn’t cost me anything and the evenings are so much easier/relaxed.
I remember that being the same for me, except that I always had people to play with around, because they were living in the same house.
My desire for not having kids is rooted in my own childhood. My parents had me at 19, we were poor and struggled for much of my early life. My mom used to say, "don't have kids until after college unless you want to work at McDonalds". And, for better or worse, my drive became for financial security above all else.
Economists have very roughly estimated the value of a human life at around $10,000,000 these days, and there are reasons to suspect this is a vast underestimate for my kids in particular. The total cost to me as a parent to rear this golden goose? Somewhere around $100,000 total, spread over the course of 18 years. What a bargain!
There are of course things one can do which are worth even more, but it's exceedingly hard to reliably become a billionaire, or even to found a billion dollar company. But any old schmuck can nut inside a woman and force push eight figures worth of bliss into the source code of reality!
An outlier in many places, but not most. Only in the Western first world is this now normal.
you might look at the birth rates in china or almost any other Asian country, and see how your vague rant holds up.
You personally are right, it has never been safer health wise to have children. It has never been more expensive either, win some, lose some.
That's not bad. It's fine that people expect more and want to be able to provide more before having children (and I do agree the commenter who argued this is somehow confined to the Western world is way out there).
But we need to understand that across most of the developed world - there will be exceptions in pockets here and there - it is not the ability to afford children that has dropped, but that we're not willing to give up what we have to have children at a living standard that was considered good before.
E.g. when I grew up we always had food, but the food we had was dictated by cost in a way I never think about, and wouldn't want to deal with. We lived in less space, and I want more space, not less. Our living standard when I was a kid was fine; far above average for most of the world, about average for where I grew up. But if what it took to have more kids was to go back to that, I wouldn't.
The commenter above can call that soft all they want - I don't feel bad for wanting to enjoy life more than I want more children (I have one son; I might well have another child, but because I'm at a stage where my girlfriend and I can afford it without sacrificing our standard of living and that does place me in a privileged position)
And that's just one among a vast array of lifestyle differences. Now a days the worst case scenario is that you end up on government assistance and have a less pleasant life. As for Asia, don't make the mistake of conflating Asia with just China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Asia's big, and those places are outliers in terms of fertility, with China's issues being entirely self inflicted. The average fertility rate across Asia is 2.3 [2], which is not great - but at least sustainable.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_sack_dress
[2] - https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/c416afed-en/index.html?i...
The point here being the rate is actively crashing pretty much globally. The outliers would be anywhere it's not.
It ain't just us, my friend. Births Per Woman:
1.64 USA
1.34 Japan
1.28 China
0.84 Korea
Now that women are part of the formal economy and everyone has options for entertainment other than unprotected sex, the mechanism by which the formal economy used to offload the entire cost of child rearing while reaping all of the benefits no longer functions.
We have two paths: dust off the shitty exploitative playbook of yesterday, or build a new playbook for tomorrow.
There are lots of factors, of course, and the trend isn't limited to only the west. Though it has certainly become a more normal trend in developed and developing countries than those with a higher level of poverty and poor.
I still contend however that it has never been easy. My grandparents had four children starting at age 20. My grandfather's first job was sweeping floors in a factory at age 13, making $0.30 an hour. When he asked for a raise, he was fired. He said he didn't have two nickels to rub between his fingers.
His father before him went into World War 1 at 15 years old. And his father (my great-great grandfather) falsely signed the documents affirming that he was 18 years old, to allow his own 15 year old son to go to war.
They struggled, but didn't complain. Some part of it is cultural expectation, and that has changed greatly over time. In spite of all odds my grandparents raised four fairly middle class children in these circumstances, but had a good few decades of strife. Whether or not they would create a family and procreate was taken for granted. It was assumed, at their own economic expense. But long-term family wise, today my grandfather has a tree of descendants who love him.
I think today we are more conscious of the economic equation. We ask whether or not we can afford to provide for children, rather than letting them exist and then asking how we can provide for them. There is an aspect of this that I appreciate, but I worry that it's mixed with some amount of narcissism. Though I am an atheist, there is some unreason to our existence in the first place, and there is hope in the continuance of ourselves that we should value beyond economics. There is a romance and some type of spiritual value in being able to put aside the cost-benefit analysis and simply bear new life that is part you, to have and to hold, to love, teach, and reciprocally learn from.
We have so much bounty today that the idea of "sacrificing" ourselves for something that only has potential value is an alien concept. As our material wealth has increased, and as our understanding of personal economy has evolved, I think we've lost a bit of our primal, but beautiful, nature that wants ourselves to persist at a biological, cosmic level.
You, here, right now reading this are the absolute last leaf, the most extended branch, the most outstretched and sun-bleached arm of a tree of life that has been proceeding for four billion years. You are the last link in a chain that has not been broken for four billion years. Can you believe that? Every time I consider that, I think of my parents. And I ask, who am I to be so conceited that all of that history, that fourth of a fraction of the universe, should end with me?
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and, I will confess that I got a little tipsy for the super bowl. Don't judge me too harshly. But life is beautiful, and beauty is always difficult to sustain. We do it because beauty contains a truth and a promise for the future. And I think that's something we need to put effort into re-evaluating, and re-valuing, in our current world.
One line of inquiry might be why there is a correlation between bounty and the general wealth of an economy, and the fertility rate. Many parts of the world that are poorer are more fertile, and reproduce more unquestionably. Korea is rich and the rate is 0.84. In the Congo the rate is 6.21. It is not about economics. And if you counter that it is about poor education or care, I don't believe that's the reason either. It's culture, and values.
Paul Revere had 15 children. 5 of them died young, and he still had 10. He had a horse and a rifle and a small wooden house you can still tour in Boston. Today we have DINKs, and people who are in what is considered to be the low-income range with multiple rooms in big cities, an education, and combustion-engine vehicles who say it's too expensive to have children. Maybe your tastes are too expensive. Maybe you've been raised softly, and don't know how to set yourself aside to rear and participate in a family that is spiritually worth more than just yourself.
One of the other comments said I ranted so I thought I'd actually provide one. Sorry HN, I hope I made some sense here.
It's 3.7 billion, not four.
More importantly it's a vast tree of life, not a chain and not a hierarchy with humans at an upper lever with only royalty, priests, and God above.
If the sapiens go the stromatolites will still remain, with a lineage far older than apes.
Humans aren't about to go extinct but it's high time their population numbers stabilised, perhaps even reduced a bit.
The case can certainly be made by those that care that should the human branch be pruned the remaining mass of the tree of life on earth might very well thrive and surge in breadth and depth after a rather large number of other prunings at the hands of humankind.
Humans will not go extinct (I hope), but HN is full of some of the smartest people and these are their trends, and I hope that of the people who do reproduce, the techno nerds are among them. The future will need them.
I worry that the Great Filter is not about technology at all, but that in every planet with a species that has evolved into a higher intelligence, that at the cusp of being able to seed their galaxy, they willingly do not pursue it, because the level of analytical thinking required to achieve it also leads them to disinterest and abstinence.
In regards to your last sentence, that is true. But I would ask, who would be around to appreciate that fact?
There's little evidence to support the theory that at some point in the future, little girls will all suddenly decide to buck the trend set by their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and all the adult women they see around them in the world, and have 2.1 children themselves.
But, if they do not all do this, if only some of them decide to buck the trend, they those girls would need to have 3 or 5 or 8 to make up for those who do not.
If neither of these things happen, population cannot stabilize. Mathematically, there has to be an average of 2.1.
Fertility rate declines are future extinction. They've run the experiments, and the results are always the same... despite having all the food and water and entertainment they might want, the mice either do not fuck or they just murder whatever offspring they do (rarely) have. And it happens more quickly than one might expect, because the rate of decline increases with each generation.
> the human branch be pruned the remaining mass of the tree of life on earth might very well thrive and surge in breadth and depth after a rather large number of other prunings at the hands of humankind.
And why should any human ever give a shit about whether these non-human organisms thrive, especially when hypothesizing a future where humans no longer exist? Sounds like some death cult nonsense. Will you be one of those lamenting how you think the most beautiful planets of all are those with no life whatsoever to "mar their beauty"?
What nonsense.
The very evidence you seek is right here, right now, all about us - a world in which men and women have a reproduction rate lower than than their grandparents and great grandparents. They have clearly bucked the trend of those in times past. Q.E.D.
BTW, this focus you have on breeding "little girls" is distasteful to say the least.
> those girls would need to have 3 or 5 or 8 to make up for those who do not.
Only if the world is to return to the present 8+ billion after a fall below.
Should numbers slowly decline down to, say, 1950s world population levels and mean reproduction rates go to 2.1 then things will stabilise.
> If neither of these things happen, population cannot stabilize.
Faulty logic, as already explained.
> And why should any human ever give a shit about whether these non-human organisms thrive
My response was to a human who was waxing lyrical about 3.7 billion years of life, an infintesimal number and tonnage of which was actual humn life ... you should ask them why they care about other lifeforms.
You might perhaps ask yourself why you do not.
From the graph I saw the total fertility rate in the US has been falling since 1800 (start of the graph). It briefly improved after WW2 for a bit and then started falling again. There was another brief increase at the end of the 90s and it's been dropping to historical lows ever since. It's not just two generations - it's 200 years and possibly longer.
The graph: https://infogram.com/20221003_gygi_vanessa_calder_fertility-...
Unlike the other commenter who has claimed that once a rate has been set it cannot change.
Are you daft? If fertility rates were high in the past, if they were 6 or 8 or 9.7... they could fall for a long time with no decline in population.
But once they dip below the magic number of 2.1, then population declines. That's how this works. That's the number of children a woman (every woman, on average) must have for population to remain the same from one generation to the next.
I don't know any other way to explain it. You probably think you're intelligent. You followed the teacher's instructions and got an A on math, but you never really understood it. If you follow the recipe, it just poops out correct answers... but here we have a novel problem, and you just can't get it.
> Only if the world is to return to the present 8+ billion after a fall below.
No. For the population to plateau out and stay the same, they'd need that many. It's how fucking averages work.
Either all of them have 2.1, or if only half have children, then they need to have 4.2.
And this isn't for the population to grow again. It's for it to plateau out and remain the same as it is.
> Should numbers slowly decline down to, say, 1950s world population levels and mean reproduction rates go to 2.1 then things will stabilise.
That's the fucking point. If population declines, it's already below 2.1
And if it's below 2.1, that becomes the norm and it never goes back above 2.1. No little girl grows up in a world of childless adults, of the rare "only child", and "only child" herself and says "I think I will do what ever woman I ever knew wouldn't do, and have 2.1".
It's a simple fucking idea.
> You might perhaps ask yourself why you do not.
Because I don't belong to a death cult that hates humanity. I mean, I shouldn't have to say it out loud, but there it is.
No. I still recall studying population dynamics, predator | prey cycles, etc as part of non linear dynamics in mathematics classes back in the 1980s.
> But once they dip below the magic number of 2.1, then population declines.
That magic number can change.
It's relatively easy for anyone to find observational examples of populations with adaptive reproductive rates.
> I don't know any other way to explain it.
Perhaps you might try studying mathematics.
> Because I don't belong to a death cult that hates humanity.
The question was about life on earth, not specifically humanity, the notion that you belong to a humanity hating death cult is frankly one that would not occur to most people .. but here you are going straight there.
Which goes back to my original comment, where I talk about for it to change, the little girls of the youngest generation have to grow up and choose to have more children than their parents. They all have to choose this simultaneously, or the few that do choose it have to choose to have far, far more than 2.1 themselves.
Both of these scenarios are so outlandish, that you keep dancing around it, pretending that I'm describing it incorrectly. You don't want to think about it, or don't want others to think about it, or you just aren't capable... I can't tell which.
It'd be laughable, if I didn't think you were an enemy of humanity.
There is some speculation - and some data which may or may not support it - that fertility may follow a "J" curve where it declines sharply with increased development and then slowly rises again above a certain level.
There is also some data to suggest that within a population, if a subset sees an increase in wealth, it can predict an increase in fertility within that subset.
Combined, a suggestion that does not seem unreasonable is that we develop certain expectations based on societal expectations, and as they increase it becomes harder and harder to justify additional children, but when people find themselves able to meet those expectations, the number of children goes up.
If that holds, then that would suggest the rate can be brought back up with sufficient societal assistance, which may or may not come as fertility rates becomes enough of a political issue. Whether that will actually work remains to be seen - we've already of course seen some pretty significant attempts, such as the escalating Hungarian family support scheme (total support for 3+ children amounts to over 300k Euro, of which about 1/3 is a non-refundable grant and the rest subsidized house loans), so we should start to get an idea of what a realistic cost to drive the rates back up will be, if it is viable, over the coming couple of decades as more countries experiment.
I do fear that Idiocracy might be a little accurate though. The people reproducing currently are the ones who do not consider their future or economics, while the smart ones who do, have less children.
You weren't watching the magician's hands closely enough.
The role is fulfilled by tax dollars that come from the youngest working generation. Might be tech involved, but the revenue still pays for the tech.
It's the machines that actually pay for most things we enjoy today.
The keyboard you're typing your responses on, display you're reading this message from and virtually everything else in our silicon worlds* were not touched by human hands during production. Money is just an accounting method to allocate the production output.
Interestingly even the keyboards don't need that much of a human touch to type these days.
* other notable examples are almost 100% of the energy we use (electricity, hydrocarbons), majority of the global human caloric intake (grains, fats, sugars, potatoes, etc.), most raw materials (metals, fibers, hydrocarbons again, etc.), tools
And for the remainder, at this point it's just a matter of time before Humans Need Not Apply
The country that has the machines, wants cash. Where will you tax the revenue from? Are you hoping for some sort of technological charity? The Chinese will just ship us 10 million ass-wiping robots for the nursing homes for free, because they're a kind and benevolent people?
I understand things perfectly well.
If the country isn't self-reliant, no big deal... as long as they can pony up the cash. And your country can't do that either. Do you have any arguments that aren't pure sophistry?
Immigration is zero sum and soon everyone will be competing for the same pool of people.
We convert them to childlessness faster than they can replace the children we're not having. Less than 25 years away from universal below-replacement fertility.
Nobody will remember us in just 100 years. Nobody.
> Maybe you've been raised softly, and don't know how to set yourself aside to rear and participate in a family that is spiritually worth more than just yourself.
Is it really worth more, though? I always wondered if having kids is just so that somebody finally listens to you at an age where your peers really only listen if they're deep friends, or if you have something actually exceptional to say. And to relive childhood, and then again when you have grandchildren. You don't get these two things if you don't have children. But they're not that deep, you can e.g. teach to actually intelligent peers, research deep topics, and relive childhood curiosity in different ways. For the benefit of all of society, not just your little gang.
For liberalism, perhaps. If the capitalists can't figure out how to grow new worker-slaves in vats or perfect AGI, future society will be very different. Might be mostly Amish and Orthodox Jews, etc. after the population crash.
Many people mention housing and real estate as a problem, well, if there was a population problem, we'd see loads of available empty homes and falling prices of real estate - we're not, so this is a clear signal from the society truthfully voting with their wallets (no matter what they misleadingly signal verbally) that we have more than enough people.
It's similar to some industries saying that there aren't enough workers - if there was an actual shortage, we'd see loads of unfilled vacancies together with noticably rising salary offers for these positions, and if we aren't, that's a clear signal from that industry truthfully voting with their wallets (no matter what they misleadingly signal verbally) that they actually do have more than enough potential workers.
While "everybody knows that they're losing population", South Korea and China haven't even started shrinking (they've stopped growing, and have been at approximately 0 population change for the last few years, it's technically negative but the change is insignificantly tiny) so obviously any self-correction mechanisms wouldn't apply at all yet.
Japan's population reached its peak in 2010 and as of 2016 the shrinking was quite low - so we're talking about just like 7 years of actual shrinking and that's not that much time to cause any socioeconomic changes triggered by population reduction, it would seem reasonable to look at the generation which grows up in a shrinking-population regime to see how it affects them, when they actually have real estate that gets significantly cheaper due to lack of population and scarcity of workers pushing up the bargaining position of labor; Japan's demographics is "leading the world" in this regard, but even they aren't there yet. And they have time to see how it works out - Japan's population is still far above its e.g. 1950 population, and continuing the current population trends it would be as long as 2075 to reach the 1950 level (which isn't bad!) again.
But you’re right, more drastic measures will be taken in political and economical senses once absolute numbers start ramping up. It’s fairly obvious our current system isn’t the best for aging population with not as many children. Unfortunately, we just haven’t come up with anything better that gives some sort of stability and peace.
The alternative being horrible.
I'm a guy and I'd never want that if I were a woman.
Nowadays even if you have good jobs it really depends on a lot of circumstances if you can afford such a life (albeit mostly with more luxury and vacations) with two incomes.
Effectively the worth of income nearly halved.
> Effectively the worth of income nearly halved.
At least the worth that reaches the worker after taxes etc.
That's the whole point. Now we have two solutions:
- make the playbook less exploitative, leaving to time and resources being shared more equally among people
- get back to a caste system where half of mankind is barred from non-family-related activities.
China is seeing a population decline not caused by famine for the first time in modern history.
India's fertility rate is at or below replacement at this point, and India is a couple of decades from population contraction unless they increase immigration.
Having 3 children at a young age is an outlier in the vast majority of the world at this point.
For those who don't understand why 1.5 is so much worse than 1.9, it's because fertility is an exponential system. Every generation's (~20 years) size is (fertility_rate / 2) times as large as the one prior that gave birth to them. So after 5 generations (~1 century), a fertility rate of 1.9 would see the next generation's size go from 100 to 77 (100 * (1.9/2)^5). A fertility rate of 1.5 would go from 100 to 23. South Korea, at 0.78, would go from 100 to 0 - extinct, in a century.
And most people, across the world, do have children at what you'd call "young" ages. Female fertility rates start to decline rapidly as they age, obviously hitting zero at menopause which tends to happen in their 40s. Even when successful, an older parent results faces exponentially increased odds of seeing a variety of issues with the child, such as Down Syndrome.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
You can use metrics from different groups and slice and dice sections and find ways of getting above 2.1 (replacement), sure, but it's not affecting my main point at all, which was that it's not contained to the Western world, and that 3 kids is now an outlier in most of the world.
To your specifics:
South Asia is listed as 2.2. But India has hit 2.1 and is declining, and Bangladesh and Nepal are even further below replacement - the World Bank metric is I presume buoyed by Pakistan, which has hit 3.1 (3.47 in the 2021 numbers on Wiipedia), and is declining, and Afghanistan, which is in even steeper decline - the other countries in the region are mostly rounding errors in terms of population.
It's a difference of whether it's already hit replacement as a region already, or will within 2-3 years at most. I'm perfectly happy to accept the World Bank numbers for the sake of this argument, as it's not relevant to the argument.
With respect to MENA and the Arab World, you're double-counting. The bulk of the countries that are part of the Arab World vs Middle East /North Africa are the same.
The largest non-Arab MENA countries are Iran, which is well below replacement (1.7) and Turkey, at 1.9.
The Arab World also includes several countries considered sub-Sarahan by some or all of other groups (Somalia, Mauritania, Sudan) which pulls it up, and MENA curiously includes Sudan in some statistics, even though it's considered sub-Saharan and/or East Africa by other groupings.
Once you actually exclude the sub-Saharan countries from those groups, the rate lowers significantly. Taking Sudan alone out of MENA brings MENA close to replacement. If you choose to look at the Arab World alone, then, sure, even excluding the sub-Saharan countries they're still above replacement. I'm again, fine with choosing to slice the numbers that way - they do not affect the argument I was making in any meaningful way, because then the remaining MENA countries are below instead.
What we're left with no matter how we slice it, is that roughly half the worlds countries are below replacement, accounting for well above half the worlds current population (but that balance will shift rapidly), and leaving the world average at ~2.3 and declining even by World Bank numbers.
> And places like Latin America are in decline, but still in the realm of realm of being saved at ~1.9.
There's no "being saved" here. Short of economic collapse, we don't know of any reliable measure to drive these numbers back up again, and they've been consistently trending down since the 1960's. China appears to be poised to be the country likely go hardest in trying, now recommending 3 children per family, and given an extremely restrictive immigration policy. That's fine - they don't need to be "saved".
> The only places currently in catastrophic collapse at the EU (1.5), North America (1.6), and East Asia (1.5).
I was not, and is not, and will not be, arguing any "catastrophic collapse" - to me at least that notion is meaningless to most people other than "great replacement" type people.
The world as a whole is headed for a relatively gentle flattening of population growth, and a period of decline, but no "catastrophic collapse" in population. But we are headed for a fairly dramatic shift in politics and economic development as this happens and the countries facing the steepest drops become more dependent on actually courting immigration as a consequence. There will still be enough growth to do that for decades to come.
Seriously, it's wild visiting South Korea and having a tour guide jokingly beg people to immigrate and make babies.
#JokingNotJoking
They've liberalised a lot since, but it'll take a long time for them to develop a reputation as somewhere people will think of as a destination to migrate to.
You know something that's really weird to think about? In 1950 Africa's population was 227m! [1] The US at the time had about 160m, nearly as many people as the entire African continent! Fertility rates are hard to intuit because they're not only exponential, but systems where the effect is delayed from the cause by several decades, but then once it starts - it starts rocketing off uncontrollably, be that in loss or gain of population.
The world's population may start to level off at some point, but sub-replacement rates will cause Western nations to start losing population at an exponential rate. It will be the equal but opposite of what happened to Africa over the past century. And this doesn't level out or even slow down, except when people start having children again. So for instance many people know Japan now has > 10% of its population over 80, but I think a lot of us have this sort of concept that 'Well sure, but as they start to die off - then things will probably start to look a bit more sane.'
In reality, it's the exact opposite. As this group dies off, they're going to be replaced by an even larger group of 80+ year olds, leaving Japan in an even worse state, as one can immediately see just glancing at Japan's population pyramid. [2] Right now Japan's losing about 1 in 200 people per year, and this will never stop until either they go extinct or they start having children again. And it will actually get substantially worse until they hit their 'fertility equilibrium point' where all living generations have/had comparable fertility rates (picture the sides of the population pyramid having a constant slope). And that's what's waiting for the entirety of the Western world, if we don't turn things around.
And this is also likely a vicious cycle because as age ratios and demographics get all screwed up, economies will start to collapse, which will make it even more uncomfortable to have children.
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[1] - https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa-popula...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...
We can already see some differences quite starkly.
E.g. Italy's fertility rate hasn't been above replacement since ca. 1975, and started seeing population decline a few years ago and is already back at the population level it was at around 2007, because it struggles to attract (and want to attract) enough immigration.
Meanwhile, the UK dropped below replacement in 1972, and yet UN projections suggest the population is unlikely to decline until the 2050's at the earliest, and isn't projected to drop down to present-day levels at any point this century, largely buffeted by a far more aggressive immigration policy (including by politicians claiming to want the opposite - neither of the major party in the UK believes in reducing immigration, but some of their voters do, and that is likely to become a rising conflict).
So while I agree some nations probably will see rapid falls, it really comes down to in part to what extent they are able to open their doors and find means of becoming attractive to immigrants fast enough while finding ways of integrating them in a working way.
And this will reshape the political and cultural landscapes both within countries, and international influence.
(one minor example, since we've discussed the UK and Africa: The UK is likely to soon drop from the 2nd to 3rd largest native English-speaking population worldwide - both India and Nigeria already have far more people speaking English as their 2nd or 3rd language, but Nigeria seems to be more rapidly closing the gap to have more people who speak English as their 1st...)
> And this is also likely a vicious cycle because as age ratios and demographics get all screwed up, economies will start to collapse, which will make it even more uncomfortable to have children.
Well, we may unfortunately in that case get to test whether fertility is inexorably linked to poverty or whether once it's declined it won't rise again.
The other option is that as fertility becomes even more of an issue, we'll see a significant escalation in measures like the Hungarian (ramping up grants and subsidised house loans for families that get more children), but of course we don't yet know whether - or at what level - that will work... But I suspect many desperate attempts.
Also, expect reproductive rights to become an issue, with more countries seeming movements to push back on abortion rights etc. using fertility rates as a reason.
But I'd say here that you're not carrying forward that same reasoned skepticism when offering immigration as a solution. Because the exact same holds true. There are countless examples of mass migration throughout history, and they generally don't come with a happy ending. Rome, over the centuries, became an empire of immigrants, in some ways akin to the United States. Yet it was also ultimately destroyed by immigration. The Goths, fleeing the Huns, were take in as refugees by the Roman Empire. Those same refugees would ultimately go on to destroy the Roman Empire.
In the present day, mass migration doesn't seem to be fairing much better. Prior to the migrant crisis throughout Europe, many expected that the migrants would integrate, become part of the normal mass of people, and it'd ultimately be a win-win situation for everybody. That belief was not well supported by history, and ultimately proved to be false. And in the US today, cities that express an extremely positive attitude towards immigration tend to rapidly express a different view once faced with large numbers of immigrants.
And immigration on the scale we're talking about would be absolutely massive, and never-ending. And I'm not even getting into the countless social/cultural/political problems this would all entail. I'm merely focusing on the most extreme - would this destroy the countries engaging in such? And it seems to me that the most probable answer is simply yes. Well actually in modern times I don't think it'd destroy them. The most likely outcome is what we're seeing happen in much of Europe - parties that oppose the immigration would rapidly come to power, and end up working to mitigate the damage, and end such a population strategy.
It's like comparing the average migrant or refugee with ISIS.
> Prior to the migrant crisis throughout Europe, many expected that the migrants would integrate, become part of the normal mass of people, and it'd ultimately be a win-win situation for everybody. That belief was not well supported by history, and ultimately proved to be false.
I've seen nothing to "prove it false", but there's also a very significant difference a rushed an chaotic acceptance of refugees vs. planned migration programs, and either takes time to shake out.
> And in the US today, cities that express an extremely positive attitude towards immigration tend to rapidly express a different view once faced with large numbers of immigrants.
And yet the US managed to successfully do it before. Several of my own ancestors families lived in Brooklyn at a time where it was so full of Scandinavian migrants that it had several Norwegian language newspapers, and my great grandmother lived there a decade without ever learning English because all her neighbours and shopkeepers etc. spoke Norwegian. I've spent a lot of time looking at US censuses because for the sake of genealogy, and the US censuses of that era are astounding for the way whole streets were nothing but immigrants.
Somehow the US is still there, as much as one might joke about the state it is in.
> The most likely outcome is what we're seeing happen in much of Europe - parties that oppose the immigration would rapidly come to power, and end up working to mitigate the damage, and end such a population strategy.
Then they will crater their economies, and soon enough get thrown out of office. People are quick to support anti-immigran rhetoric until it starts hitting their wallet when eg. employers struggle to hire. These anti-immigration parties fortunes tends to be tightly linked to unemployment levels.
Compare Italy to e.g. the UK, where despite the anti refugee rhetoric and historically high immigration, people fleeing the Tory party are not going to the anti-immigrant right-wing parties but to Labour - the UK, unlike Italy, has low unemployment and regular newspaper stories about employers struggling to find workers. Once Italy's population decline bites a bit more, this will change rapidly.
But you know, I'm not sure this line of discussion is even meaningful. If I convince you the Goths were nothing even remotely like like ISIS, is that going to change your mind on anything? Obviously not. So why bother? What I am curious is what would change your mind.
So if you look at this from my perspective, you're talking about a scenario where a government of a country would be basically endeavoring to replace its own domestic population, with a foreign one, all while somehow presumably trying to maintain some of the value that makes people want to migrate to the country in the first place. I think we could both agree that there's no historic precedent for this, immigration on a far smaller scale has shown a tendency to result in problems, and so on. Yet you seem confident enough in assuming that it might work, to simply assume it. This, to me, is pretty weird!
What, if anything, could ever possibly convince you that such a scenario might not be particularly likely to succeed in anything like a desirable fashion? And, vice versa, how could you sell somebody like me, who is skeptical of such, on it? I'm more than open to the concept, but you'd need a pretty solid argument.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_War_(376%E2%80%93382)#B...
> What I am curious is what would change your mind.
A line of argumentation that isn't based in tropes usually used by far-right extremist racists. I'm not saying that is your motivation, because I can not tell, but what I can tell is that those are the circles I see these arguments used by. When they are then further based in characterisations about failure I don't recognise from what I have seen myself, then you have provided nothing to give me any reason to trust any of what you've said.
When you now start talking about replacement, you're playing further into that.
I'm an immigrant myself, and I've seen enough variety between immigrant groups that the moment someone starts treating all immigration the same, and conflating handling of refugees and immigrants, that suggests to me someone who has preconceived notions and is coming at it with an agenda.
> I think we could both agree that there's no historic precedent for this
No, we most certainly would not. I pointed out the US to you as an obvious example. I find it funny that you flat out ignored that I've already pointed it out.
> Yet you seem confident enough in assuming that it might work, to simply assume it. This, to me, is pretty weird!
Define "work". I'm confident there will be all kinds of problems. I'm also confident it will happen, because, I'm even more confident that the alternative is a level of economic and societal collapse that will lead to violently overthrown governments, so I see it as entirely moot whether it will go smoothly or not. People will make it happen and manage the results because the alternative is turning into a third-world country.
I live in one of the largest metro areas in the U.S.
Community is gone.
> Community is gone.
Let me guess: you're in the urban core of one of the more expensive cities.
In more distant history, yes most women had children and many men did not.
In recent history (in the west), I believe the ratio was much more equal due to culturally enforced monogamy. Obviously it was never 100% followed but I believe it made a very large impact on this metric.
And doesn’t reward that much investments of money and parental time into having healthy and educated kids.
Educated and well rounded kids, teenagers and adults don’t come free for society. It requires a lot of work, money, time and love. Ridiculous amounts.
To a degree this resource can be stolen from other countries, via immigration. But this only works to a degree and at a larger scale it is still a zero sum game.
I don't know if you had to learn how to do this, but for me I think a large part of it is also the same thing you mention - it took a lot of effort for me to figure out, but the same parts of my nature that was a disadvantage for me when younger drove me to experiment, even take notes, until I figured out what I got wrong and how to improve myself.
Ironically I've found one of my best assets when dating in my 40's was my past struggles. Particularly recognising them and being able to use them to give observations about how clueless men tend to be about dating based on the mistakes I used to make myself.
as a quiet introverted engineer who almost never went out on dates i have to agree with GP ;-)
actually talking to them about their interests and engaging with that did wonders
completely aside from the topic, this is very important relationship advice.
love means to care about your partner and their interests and goals.
finding a compatible partner means to look for someone whose goals and interests do not conflict with yours. (the need or should not be the same, but it should be possible for each partner to continue to pursue their goals with the strong support of the other partner.)
It can actually be a net negative for both the home country and host country of the immigrants. The home country may lose some of their more ambitious members. And there is a significant cost to a host country that is now accommodating a potentially large number of people from faraway places with vastly different cultures. (Some may ignore or deny these costs, but they're real and being felt in many ways e.g. in the US right now.)
You are being down-voted, but I'm curious what are the costs of having _legal, desirable_ immigrants in the US in your opinion? (because I would assume that OP meant specifically that group when writing "this resource can be stolen from other countries, via immigration").
It's going to increasingly become a challenge. China's population is contracting. India has hit replacement and will start to see decline barring immigration over the next 20-30 years. Only sub-Saharan Africa is left with above replacement birth rates.
We're about to hit increasingly aggressive competition both to hold on to people, and to attract immigrants as more and more countries start getting bitten by demographic shifts.
At the same time it's going to have significant economic ramifications when more and more market categories stop getting "free growth" from growing population sizes.
i think the economic differences and the population density still make immigration a viable strategy for some time to come, despite contracting population everywhere.
the future will be that the population in every larger city will consists of least a quarter chinese and indian (and eventually african as well).
The challenges that will bring, though, is policy, and which countries are attractive enough to "sit back" vs. being forced to offer increasingly attractive incentives, and where it will cause substantial political complications.
E.g. China is notorious for it being near impossible to permanently settle as an immigrant. I expect that aside from increasingly drastic measures to try to bring the fertility rate back up you'll see their first attempts be to entice the diaspora back to China, secondly an increase in rhetoric about One China towards Taiwan, and only well after those attempts to loosen up visa requirements for foreigners with no ancestral ties to China.
We'll see the return of diasporas increasingly becoming a problem for countries that has come to rely on certain immigrant flows.
A lot of countries will find political tension between forces wanting to more actively court immigrants vs. anti-immigrant groups becoming increasingly challenging and a major economic issue.
This has an implied assumption that either more population is always better or that for all of the countries the current population is below the optimum level.
What if for some countries the best population size - the one that provides the best quality of life for its citizens - is close to the current one, not larger? What if for some countries the most favorable population size is below the one they currently have?
As such, even if there is a "best" population size below the current population size, you will face massive upheaval if the decline toward that size isn't happening slowly enough that you can offset that either with technology, temporary workers, or just grit.
You also have no reason to assume the drop will stop at whatever level you want, and so you will see even countries where people do think some reduction is fine start to aggressively compete to hold on people or attract immigrants at whatever level they feel will give them a soft-enough landing and then stabilization.
E.g. you can look to Italy over the coming years. Italy is already in population decline, yet has a government many consider far-right and anti-immigrant - clearly, Italy is not ready to loosen up immigration to stem it yet, and is willing to accept even increasing the rate of its population decline while trying to address the underlying fertility rate.
Personally, I expect to see a major change in policy from Italy once this really starts to bite, but their current unemployment rate will still buffer them for a few more years (and once it drops, it might well create a slight rebound, but even if that happens, it's unlikely to do more than slow the decline slightly, and won't address the labour market for more than two decades).
If I'm right, you should start to see the tone change once the unemployment rate drops a bit further and pressure from businesses in need of labour starts affecting Italian politics more, followed first by increased attempts at appealing to European migrants first, with e.g. tax breaks and the like, before they eventually give in and start rolling back the restrictions on non-EU migration.
And yet we are seeing more and more walls (literally and figuratively) that rich countries put in the way. Even for "desirable" people immigrating and naturalizing in a western country the whole process is quite degrading, all the quotas and queues for H1B/Green cards, constant threat of deportation if person lost a job and couldn't find another one in very short time period, arbitrary delays and constrains on getting citizenship, etc.
E.g. in the UK, the last several Conservative governments have on one hand presented themselves as tough on immigration, with deals to send asylum seekers to Rwanda (a few hours worth of applicants is all the deal can accommodate), putting them on barges (another few hours worth), turning back boat refugees, etc., while at the same time presiding over the largest increase in net migration in British history.
Predictably the conflict between that image and reality is starting to cause problems for them, and while immigration numbers are still high enough despite a process that is intentionally hostile, eventually the supply of people wanting to come will dip below the numbers that still allow the UK to be selective about whom to accept.
We've already gotten a slight taste of that with the sharp dip in EU/EEA migrants, who, as it turns out don't feel the UK is worth it enough to go through the immigration process vs. just showing up the way we could before (I'm in the UK with EU/EEA Settled status), and it's caused assorted groups complaining..
It will take until you have broader labour shortages before you see the real pressure though - especially countries buffered by unemployment will be able to put it off a bit longer, but when it hits, it will hit hard and just raising fertility rates won't be sufficient, because it has a lag of 2 decades of worsening conditions before it even starts reversing the drop in the labour supply.
A lot of users in this thread assume that everyone's goal is to marry and have children. A lot of people are not interested in that, partly because they have other interests, and partly because the social pressure is not as strong as before.
that's exactly what i mean. they just were not into it. it's definitely not that they just were not lucky to meet the right lady to settle down with.
If you have your life in order, all you have to do is to look in the right places. Those places exist in any country, but if you're a man like that and look on dating sites for Thailand or the Philippines, you will find 10 women that want to marry you within an hour or two.
However, if you're broke, don't have a decent job and have serious health problems, you may indeed by out of luck.
It's not just finding a woman who is willing. It's finding a woman who is a quality person that you have an attraction to that is willing.
When you are a woman who is sane, smart, have your life together, and is decent looking, you have many choices for a partner. Many of these woman can easily find high quality men who are their own age and have the same life situation.
So while yes, it does happen that the 50 yr old guy meets the amazing 33 yr old woman. Far more often than not, the amazing 33 yr old woman meets to amazing 33 yr old guy.
Unless you are down with divorced w/kids. Then it gets much easier. But you will be second to her kids.
This is absolutely true, well at least if you include those amazing people who met even earlier than 33. Amazing people tend to have options whether they are male, female or even other.
Those less amazing (the remaining 60-80%, depending on who's counting), often have to lower their standards or expectations in some way, unless they're lucky and find a special soulmate. Indeed, if someone is 35+ and still single, chances are their expectations are not aligned with what they themselves have to offer.
I've been there myself. Only when I decided that I did NOT want to remain single for the rest of my life and became serious about finding a partner did that change. And it changed virtually overnight.
- social media (want beautiful family to post n get likes)
- online dating want the most attractive I can get so I can get likes for who I'm with and kids i made
- thus everyone is pursuing a certain types/groups who they interact with and get burned by cause they have so much choice ..then get jaded about dating.
Again those reasons are by far not on the top of list reasons why but are on the list.
Maybe Hollywood needs to start reshaping our beauty standards for the sake of the human race ;-)
Seen via Google News which could be creating a Truman Show type of life for me and others ... Google knows what i talk about online and shows me articles about possibly CNN gets this data and AI articles are created that are super targeted at me. YEAH (sarcasm) if true.
I don’t see that implication in OP’s post at all, I’m sorry. This feels like projection.
My hypothesis, which I rarely hear anyone else mention, is that we no longer look to our children for entertainment. Life used to be really boring. Kids are excited by things adults find painfully dull. Having a weird little person around who is overjoyed playing with a stick is a pretty great thing in a world where there isn't much else to do.
Today people often seem to regard interacting with children to be a form of work. I don't think that our ancestors saw it that way. The kids certainly don't seem to see it that way; they're confused and disappointed when their parents don't want to play with them.
Many of the sociopolitical explanations of falling birth rates have been refuted by the present trends. Birth rates are now below replacement in most of Latin America and Asia, even where economic development is well below the level it was when they started falling in the rich world, and in spite of the persistence of traditional gender roles. Only Africa and the poorest parts of Asia are above replacement, and even then much less than before. Some of the highest birth rates today are in Afghanistan and Palestine. Not exactly paradise.
while there is some truth to that with stories of a sudden baby boom 9 months after a significant power outage, i'd rather rephrase that as
"we no longer look to our children as the only thing we care about"
there are now so many other things (hobbies, causes) that we can put our energy into that they take away the focus from having kids. after all, once you have kids you will have to put aside some of your other activities for some years.
sociopolitical explanations of falling birth rates have been refuted by the present trends
i think birthrates don't so much correlate with wealth but with education. my guess is that education improves faster than wealth, so this could explain the development better.
Anyone bringing kids into the world for entertainment value is doing them a disservice. These are humans, not pets.
Parenting is hard.
The child didn't ask to be born.
My peers are all wealthy and they'd rather jet set than settle down. By all means they could raise families of two to four kids and still be incredibly comfortable. Vacation home comfortable.
Instagram is the anti-child. Instagram and the endless feed of social media, internet, and things to do.
Once you have children, the dopamine ends and the self-directed path takes a backseat. Nobody I know wants to give that up.
It's not just the wealthy. I know upper middle class people in their 40s who are partying on the weekends and taking trips all over the world. It's the life they want for themselves, and children put an end to that.
They really are.
You can pay for some of it by letting your and their quality of life suffer, instead of with money (cram 3 kids into the 2-bedroom you already own; don’t worry that the schools are bad and dangerous and that’s why the place was cheap; that kind of thing) but not all of it, and most people don’t find making those compromises acceptable either, if they have the means not to.
The main costs are lost income OR childcare; housing; and healthcare. The rest isn’t exactly cheap (man they eat a lot as they get older) but those are the worst bits, and they’re very expensive.
In my area, the wait is around 18 months for a slot in a different daycare center. In-home daycare offers a lower price and some better availability, but are often unlicensed. You are best off signing up for a couple waitlists before you plan to have a kid and hope the one you choose works out well.
And of course, switching childcare providers is way harder than switching grocery stores. Your kid has feelings, grows attached to the caregivers, and make friends. There's a huge risk making a switch, and you most likely can't undo it if the new provider isn't a good fit.
This is the problem. You're wanting a first class experience for your kid, and this probably causes you to overlook other viable options that are less expensive.
> In my area, the wait is around 18 months for a slot in a different daycare center.
Wait lists? There's likely service available, you're just setting a quality threshold.
> And of course, switching childcare providers is way harder than switching grocery stores. Your kid has feelings, grows attached to the caregivers, and make friends.
We have de-risked our species so much that we now care about children's daycare preferences.
Some other commenter mentioned spending $200,000 on their five year old kid. This is not typical.
As a species, we used to have multiple kids because we just accepted that some of them would die. We are so far on the other end of the spectrum now that children are being treated as princes and princesses.
Kids can be as expensive as you want them to be. People are buying their dogs and cats ridiculous things like treadmills these days, so of course it figures that some parents must be doing even crazier stuff for their human children.
This is learned consumer behavior.
Children are being over-invested in to a degree that some would-be interested people just aren't even bothering to get started (one of several reasons this is happening). I'm not saying don't love your kids, but it looks like having them has become a perfectionist goal that can't be reached.
Accept imperfection and less than perfect.
Follow and optimise for love.
It's probably just the reality of lots of really young germ factories in a confined space together but I count my blessings that my mom was out of work until I was in 3rd-4th grade because I got to avoid daycare.
Everyone used to do exactly that.
I'm 50 this year. I've been an avid reader all my life, and back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I'd read the newspapers my grandfather would bring home. I would've still been in highschool (at the latest), so call this 1990 +/- 1 year. Even then I remember the classic newspaper article, claiming how much it'd cost to raise a child to age 18. I think back then they were calling that number $250,000. Now days, I think they set it at $1 million even.
For the longest time, they'd reprint that article every 2-4 years, just changing up one or another factoid. The logic was always specious. Every single thing anyone ever believed anyone needed for a baby/toddler/kid was always priced brand new and name brand. From dressers and chest of drawers, to baby strollers (this was even past the point where most people would ever use the damned thing).
They told the lie so often and from so many direction, ever since you were a child yourself, that you can't help but believe it. You're even telling it for whoever it is that wants that lie told.
[edit] I agree with you, actually, that there are a lot of dumb ways to spend extra money on kids. Dressers? Used. Clothes? Cheap, garage sales and thrift stores. Toys? Ditto. Half the “new parent” shit is useless. Changing table? ROFLMAO you have a floor, unless you’re infirm in some way that makes it hard to get down there, just throw a little blanket down and use that—they can’t roll off the floor!
That is certainly not typical.
Most of the people having kids where I grew up don't even see that amount of money. They're having kids just fine.
More efficient may be living near non-working family and having them take care of the kids, but that can mean compromising on school quality (unless you move again) and probably salary. Plus it requires a kind of capital that not everyone has.
You can drop costs by skipping medical check-ups and care. Not uncommon.
It can be done cheaper if the circumstances are right and you’re ok with some compromises that most people can’t stomach unless they absolutely cannot afford it.
I was thinking the same, but then I re-read the original list: Lost income.
US$40 lost income per year for the first 5 years sounds extremely plausible.
About $15,000 for the pregnancy and birth (we split it over two deductible years—whoops, didn’t make that mistake again). Daycare costs for the rest of that time, tens of thousands more. Probably $3,000ish a year (maybe a bit more) in extra medical spending on average (copays on check-up visits, added insurance costs, medicine occasionally, a couple visits that involved stitches or an x-ray over that time span)
That’s before food, clothing, furniture (you do kinda need a bed at some point—we go pretty cheap on furniture and clothes, but it’s still probably $3-4k over that five years, mostly clothes). Diapers (or a lot of extra power use, though sure, cloth diapers would have been net-cheaper anyway). Adds up.
So yeah, it was certainly over $200k for us (conservative estimate). Could have gotten it down to merely over-$130k by putting a weeks-old to 2-year-old kid in daycare, but we didn’t, maybe we should have.
[edit] I should add that it does get better after the first one; there are efficiencies and shared costs (daycare may give you a discount, even!). Getting all three to age 5 wasn’t $600k, probably closer to $400k. You also can do it cheaper, yes, but our choices were ones that nearly anyone who can at-all afford it is gonna make, like having one parent stay home the first year or two, going to all the medical check-ups, moving to an area with good schools (if you don’t already live in one), et c.
Because these costs are so front-loaded, so tend to hit earlier in one’s life, you really don’t want to start doing a more-expansive opportunity cost accounting, unless you want to get depressed (I have. Trust me, don’t—sigh, so long very-comfortable-retirement-at-55!).
Bedrooms are for sleeping, there is other space to spread out :)
Hope it works out for them.
I don't follow anyone on social media, and I don't post anything about my lifestyle there. It's not a driving force in my life.
I just don't want children. Even if I was bored out of my mind and incapable of travelling, I still wouldn't want them.
People's values have changed. Having babies isn't everyone's cup of tea.
That said the amount of dopamine/happiness I get playing with my child is more than any social media feed could ever provide. But in between those moments there’s a lot of work and sleepless nights for sure.
Except for all those parents that neglect, or worse, abuse their kids.
Enormously more expensive than producing children the natural way. Given the CCP’s history of using coercion to make people have less kids (forced sterilisation, forced abortion, some even allege infanticide), I would not be surprised if they start coercing people to have more. From an ethical perspective that’s terrible, but why expect a government which hasn’t cared about ethics in the past to start caring about it now or in the future? Coerced natural reproduction is massively cheaper than artificial wombs
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/fewer-latino-births-deat...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/us-birthrate-hispanics...
https://ifstudies.org/blog/5-8-million-fewer-babies-americas...
Interestingly, in the US, you find that the birth rate of all races converge. Why? Educated, empowered women have less children or no children, and in general delay childbearing. Immigrant fertility is higher, but settles back down after a generation or two.
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#empowerment-of-wom...
> The level of education in a society – of women in particular – is one of the most important predictors for the number of children families have.
Because white (European) American individualist culture is inexorable in America. It’s in the water, you can’t avoid it. But the question is, as the white population collapses, will that continue to be true?
> Why? Educated, empowered women have less children or no children, and in general delay childbearing.
Why do you assume it has to do with education rather than other cultural traits? Muslim American women for example are more educated than white women, but have more kids.
At least in that culture, the difference isn’t education, it’s that having children is necessary for acceptance and respectability in Muslim society, and moreover children are socialized to care very much about those things. It’s not like with white Americans who are islands to themselves and don’t play by anyone’s rules.
It's not a "White trait", whatever that even means, it's a personal freedom trait.
Specifically,
> it’s that having children is necessary for acceptance and respectability in Muslim society, and moreover children are socialized to care very much about those things.
Replace Muslim with “more orthodox or cultish Muslims/Jews/Christians/Mormoms/etc”
In any case, the current and previous older generations that had fewer kids will not feel the consequences, due to the momentum of population growth, but all these social safety net and retirement benefits like pensions and healthcare don’t come from thin air.
While one way to incentivize having kids is belonging to a tribe like rayiner described, the other could be removing those old age benefits so that the cost of not having kids is (potentially) higher. Obviously, governments can promise all the benefits they want, but there is no delivering them if there are no hands to do the work (and I doubt innovation in automation will outpace declines in labor force).
> In Buddhist tradition, great importance is attached to freedom, and the traditions of earlier Indian thinking to which Buddhist thoughts relate allow much room for volition and free choice. Nobility of conduct has to be achieved in freedom, and even the ideas of liberation (such as moksha) include this feature. The presence of these elements in Buddhist thought does not obliterate the importance of the discipline emphasized by Confucianism, but it would be a mistake to take Confucianism to be the only tradition in Asia-or in China. Since so much of the contemporary authoritarian interpretation of Asian values concentrates on Confucianism, this diversity is particularly worth emphasizing.
Indeed, the reading of Confucianism that is now standard among authoritarian champions of Asian values does less than justice to Confucius's own teachings, to which Simon Leys has recently drawn attention. Confucius did not recommend blind allegiance to the state. When Zilu asks him "how to serve a prince," Confucius replies: "Tell him the truth even if it offends him." The censors in Singapore or Beijing would take a very different view. Confucius is not averse to practical caution and tact, but he does not forgo the recommendation to oppose a bad government. "When the [good] way prevails in the state, speak boldly and act boldly. When the state has lost the way, act boldly and speak softly."
Indeed, Confucius clearly points to the fact that the two pillars of the imagined edifice of Asian values, loyalty to family and obedience to the state, can be severely in conflict with each other. The Governor of She told Confucius, "Among my people, there is a man of unbending integrity: when his father stole a sheep, he denounced him." To this, Confucius replied: "Among my people, men of integrity do things differently: a father covers up for his son, a son covers up for his father-and there is integrity in what they do."
> In many ways, the most interesting articulation of the need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the writings of the emperor Ashoka in the third century B.C. Ashoka commanded a larger Indian empire than any other Indian king (including the Moghuls, and even the Raj, if we omit the native states that the British let be). He turned his attention to public ethics and enlightened politics after being horrified by the carnage that he witnessed in his own victorious battle against the king of Kalinga, in what is now Orissa.
The emperor converted to Buddhism. He helped to make it a world religion by sending emissaries abroad with the Buddhist message to East and West, and he covered the country with stone inscriptions describing forms of good life and the nature of good government. The inscriptions give a special importance to tolerance of diversity. The edict (now numbered XII) at Erragudi, for example, puts the issue thus: ... a man must not do reverence to his own sect or disparage that of another man without reason. Depreciation should be for specific reason only, because the sects of other people all deserve reverence for one reason or another.
By thus acting, a man exalts his own sect, and at the same time does service to the sects of other people. By acting contrariwise, a man hurts his own sect, and does disservice to the sects of other people. For he who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own, with intent to enhance the splendour of his own sect, in reality by such conduct inflicts the severest injury on his own sect.
The importance of tolerance is emphasized in these edicts from the third century B.C.-their importance as public policy by the government and as advice for the behavior of citizens toward each other.
About the domain and the jurisdiction of tolerance, Ashoka was a universalist. He demanded this for all, including those whom he described as "forest people," the tribal population living in pre-agricultural economic formations. Condemning his own conduct before his conversion, Ashoka notes that in the war in Kalinga "men and animals numbering one hundred and fifty thousands were carried away [captive] from that [defeated] kingdom." He goes on to state that the slaughter or the taking of prisoners "of even a hundredth or thousandth part of all those people who were slain or died or were carried away [captive] at that time in Kalinga is now considered very deplorable" by him. Indeed, he proceeds to assert that now he believes that "even if [a person] should wrong him, that [offense] would be forgiven if it is possible to forgive it." The object of his government is described as "non-injury, restraint, impartiality, and mild behavior" applied "to all creatures."
Ashoka's championing of egalitarianism and universal tolerance may appear un-Asian to some commentators, but his views are firmly rooted in lines of analysis already in vogue in intellectual Buddhist circles in India in the preceding centuries.
> As the year 1000 in the Muslim Hijra calendar was reached in 1591-92, there was excitement about it in Delhi and Agra (not unlike what is happening now, as the Christian year 2000 approaches). Akbar issued various enactments at this juncture of history, and these focused inter alia on religious tolerance, including the following:
No man should be interfered with on account of religion, and anyone [is] to be allowed to go over to a religion he pleased. If a Hindu, when a child or otherwise, had been made a Muslim against his will, he is to be allowed, if he pleased, to go back to the religion of his fathers.
https://histheory.tripod.com/Human_Rights_Amartya.html
Dag Herbjørnsrud, "The African Enlightenment", Aeon
> For two years, until the death of the king in September 1632, Yacob remained in the cave as a hermit, visiting only the nearby market to get food. In the cave, he developed his new, rationalist philosophy. He believed in the supremacy of reason, and that all humans – male and female – are created equal. He argued against slavery, critiqued all established religions and doctrines, and combined these views with a personal belief in a theistic Creator, reasoning that the world’s order makes that the most rational option.
In short: many of the highest ideals of the later European Enlightenment had been conceived and summarised by one man, working in an Ethiopian cave from 1630 to 1632. Yacob’s reason-based philosophy is presented in his main work, Hatäta (meaning ‘the enquiry’). The book was written down in 1667 on the insistence of his student, Walda Heywat, who himself wrote a more practically oriented Hatäta. Today, 350 years later, it’s hard to find a copy of Yacob’s book. The only translation into English was done in 1976, by the Canadian professor and priest Claude Sumner. He published it as part of a five-volume work on Ethiopian philosophy, with the far-from-commercial Commercial Printing Press in Addis Ababa. The book has been translated into German, and last year into Norwegian, but an English version is still basically unavailable.
> Yacob is also more enlightened than his Enlightenment peers when it comes to slavery. In chapter five, he argues against the idea that one can ‘go and buy a man as if he were an animal’. That is because all humans are created equal and with the capacity to reason. Hence, he also puts forward a universal argument against discrimination based on reason:
>> All men are equal in the presence of God; and all are intelligent, since they are his creatures; he did not assign one people for life, another for death, one for mercy, another for judgment. Our reason teaches us that this sort of discrimination cannot exist.
https://aeon.co/essays/yacob-and-amo-africas-precursors-to-l...
"Personal freedom" was not indigenous to Europe, either.
It's an acquired trait.
Education and empowerment overrides cultural pressure.
> As in the rest of the world, fertility rates in countries with Muslim-majority populations are directly related to educational attainment. Women tend to delay childbearing when they attain higher levels of education.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/01/27/future-of-th...
(no assumptions here, just good 'ol data)
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
Consider the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNCBRTINIRN
https://www.dw.com/en/iran-birth-rate-decline/a-54371973
So much for white Americans and westerners.
I moved out to Salt Lake City in the pandemic and now at 30 I'm very rare to be both single and have no kids. It's very common for people to have started having kids at age ~22 or so, even amongst the non-LDS crowd. I suspect San Francisco and Utah are polar opposite ends of the "having kids or not"-spectrum, so it does make sense in hindsight but it's still surprising to me
I'd bet that that isn't a "choice" so much as it is that millennials are prevented by their circumstances from having the children they'd want to otherwise. If more people could actually afford to have kids and were more optimistic about the future I imagine we'd have a lot more babies around
It’s not that millennials can’t afford to have kids. It’s that they’re too self-centered and unwilling to endure the lifestyle hit for doing so.
Most millennials, in fact most Americans, are not experiencing a period of abundance and prosperity. Their standard of living is in decline, their household debt is at record highs, and they still can't afford to buy the same groceries they normally would.
Taking a look at median incomes and housing costs across the US, I'd bet that millennials have become forward-thinking enough to plan for kids, but have gotten themselves worked up into thinking they must spend millions on getting into the best daycares, have separate rooms for each of their children, a guaranteed spot at university, etc.
Genuinely seems to me the decently well-off "involuntarily-childless" folks are worried to be committing a human rights violation by bringing a child into this world where they go to the public school they're zoned for. Or it's just cope and they are worried about reducing their living standards even just a little.
Is it surprising that a generation who saw college graduates struggle emphasizes going to Harvard etc. for their own children? I’d be skeptical that the path I took will be open for my daughter in 20 years.
My parents pushed me to get educated. Now I’m in my early 30s and honestly I’m not in a rush to have kids. Do I want kids? Definitely. But right now I’m trying to build family wealth so I can give my kids a great childhood. I’m on track to meet my goals in the next 5 years or so.
Most of the people my age who are situated with kids and family are well to do. They have well off parents who own at least one home. Somehow these people send their kids to private school or can afford to buy homes in great public school districts.
I’ve noticed the people in my situation more often than not are from a similar background. We grew up poor and we are trying to build our wealth. I work in tech so I can’t speak for people from other socioeconomic backgrounds. But this is what I experience.
Most of my friends are other Asians. I don’t know it seems like Americans are mostly well off.
Hold a 10lbs weight on your arm for three hours (simulates an infant trying to fall asleep in your arms). Do this for six months, three times a day.
Lift a 20lbs bag of rice off the floor to your hips once every 20 seconds for two hours (simulates a toddling-walking child wanting up). Do this for a three years, six times a day.
Get up off the floor in a hurry once every five minutes for two hours (simulates the toddler-child doing something they shouldn't). Do this, I dunno, forever.
Lift a 40lbs bag of dog food over your head every five minutes for 4 hours (simulates an older child wanting to play). Do this for 10 years, five times a day.
There is a lot of other 'cardio' like things mixed in too. But the above should give a sample of the physicality of child rearing. It's a lot of low weight, very high rep, long workout, long interval, isostatic exercise. You're mostly holding things near your center of mass for very long times, adjusting between arms. And you have to get up off the floor a lot in a big hurry.
Same here, but looking back to my hometown and how it is now, it wasn't this way even just 20 years ago. Now even well-to-do doesn't guarantee kids, and lower and middle class folks have simply stopped.
Which bothers me a lot. I think many people are catastrophizing themselves into thinking they can't afford it, and in a few decades we'll all be worse off. I'm especially tired of couples making more than $200k/year talking about how it's effectively child abuse to send their kids to public school, or if they can't somehow guarantee an Ivy League golden path then it just isn't worth it.
But saying we can't afford it sounds a lot better. In most places in the world, and through time, less money corresponds to more kids. So it's easy to see though this excuse.
There's a chance you won't make it, though. And at some point, it does become too late.
Current team of 12, 9 are young parents, other 3 in committed relationships (international team based in North America + EU).
Previous team was around 50% parents, but people went on parental leave all the time, so the number kept increasing (company based in Germany, and basically the German half of the team had all the babies, the immigrant half almost none which is interesting).
And my brother and I got our first kids the same year, so the cousin bit is also covered.
Since it doesn't look like anyone else has answered: Your cousins' kids would be your kids' second cousins; and your first cousins once removed.
The rule is that if the closest common ancestor is N generations away from one person and M generations away from the other, with N >= M, they are (M-1)th cousins (N-M) times removed.
Once you land in a job like that, and the pay is adequate, you really don't want to leave - jumping ship would be gambling with life of several people, and you're already above average with combined pay + work environment, and regression to the mean is a thing.
(And I say "random-walked" because how supportive the job is of parents is not something apparent on the outside - you'd have to know someone on the inside who's also a parent to get an accurate indication beforehand.)
Interesting observation. At 3 kids I’m probably around median for the over 30 set at my work. My wife’s old firm had several people with 5+ kids. (Catholic+Jewish firm.) This is in DC where the median number of children for a college educated woman is around 1.
In my first job, my boss was a psychopath fresh out of grad school, no kids. Had no problem getting himself promoted but held us back, saying top performers would have to work “nights and weekends” to rise above junior levels. (Which was supposed to be a routine promotion)
It’s remarkable how different my next employers were.
One joke that me and my wife say is that we cannot find other parents that like videogames and board games. Apparently we are a rare category and it's incredibly annoying
In order to make something of what was an incredibly volatile childhood and an interest in computers, I eventually moved to a much more appealing and more expensive but larger pond that I could pay for at the time; my hometown just didn't really have a market. I'm also 31 now, nearly 32, and have only managed to bring in an income for a maximum of a year and a half since 18, have ended up without a stable housing situation for quite some time, and that's really difficult to pivot from if you consider that the bet you made on the thing you were capable of, just hasn't really panned out (frontend development apparently). What's next now that that the hypothetical prospects I'd have had in previous years have functionally evaporated? I'm not sure, but I'll pay for this basement apartment and drain my savings as I figure it out, going into my second year with no job of any kind.
Ironically, the people who got into trades that they had no prior knowledge of, and that didn't pursue the ambition to explore beyond the confines of their hometown, have the most stability. Me the idiot picked the computer thing and nobody taught me how to be sufficiently obedient or whatever.
So although I've been in positions where my salary was relatively higher than I could have ever imagined as a kid, I've always known it was going to disappear the next year in a layoff or a firing or a pandemic, and prospects for the future would always be just tenuous enough to barely be able to get by on my own or even with a partner. I don't take out debt, and all my money which stays liquid eventually goes to rent. I'm always in risk mitigation mode, because there's always been risk, and although I've never been compelled to have kids, some amount of that is predicated on the knowledge that it doesn't seem right to bring a kid up if I can't even figure out how to hold a job for 2 damn years.
It shouldn't make you feel bad. I have no children and I have strict policy of logging off at the end of my work day (unless in truly exceptional circumstances). No one shuold feel shame (children or not) about finishing the work when they are no longer paid for it.
Cousins once removed. Second cousins are your parent's cousins. And your cousin situation sounds a lot like mine and my children - not a lot of cousins happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin
If two people have the same grandparents, then they are cousins. If they have the same great grandparents, then they are second cousins. atomicnumber3 was referring to what atomicnumber3's kids would call atomicnumber3's cousin's kids.
Me and my SO made it happen by moving to a much smaller (albeit still 500k+ inhabitants) city, where real estate isn't as stupidly expensive as where we grew up in.
My co-worker has six children and all the people I've met who have four or more follow the same pattern: living in the middle of nowhere on a single income working remotely.
It appears that real estate is the biggest concern, because I've also settled on having two instead of three, since my daughters will be sharing a room anyway.
Your cousins are theirs once-removed, i.e. 'cousin but one generation up'.
Second cousins are their children, i.e. same generation but up and across first.
The others gave up or don't care or haven't met anyone (which they also kind of gave up a long time ago).
Nah, this part shouldn't be related to having kids or not. Even as a single person I have to log off to live my life, and overworking is not cool or hip.
I'm actually really curious about the childless older people. Like I have a couple friends without kids but it's not like that because they are too busy doing fun awesome things. They are more of the ill adjusted habitually complaining types where they themselves can't form bonds because of a tumultuous childhood.
Me and my siblings, none of us seem to have any inclination; combination of just not wanting them, having neurodiverse conditions that seem more debilitating than my parents' generation, and finances like only becoming homeowners in our mid 30's (and my younger sibling cannot afford a home)
Maybe I'm a lucky one, but we took the plunge right at the end of biological possibility since we're old, and I only wish I had done this 20 years ago. It's such a wonderful experience and believe me I never would have guessed that.
There's nothing I was doing back then that mattered at all. And now I'll be lucky to see my kids graduate college because I waited so long.
You spend all those years being told that having children is the worst mistake of your life, until you're in your 30s, and then all of sudden the same people are "What's your problem? Why haven't you had children already?" It's bizarre.
My own experiences of being in my early 30s, born and raised on Long Island and now living in Boston, my circle of friends, relatives, and coworkers from both areas are having kids all over the place.
When my wife first became pregnant last year, it was actually a bit difficult finding openings with OBGYN offices in the general Boston area.
EDIT: Looks like the average age a woman in the US has a first child is at 27. That's actually lower than I'd have expected; here in Ireland it's 33.
The "removed" refers to differences in generational cohort. So if you are connected to the person by your grandparent but that same person is a great-grandparent to the relative, that relative is once removed from you. So your first cousins' children are first cousins once removed. Their grandchildren would be your first cousins twice-removed.
Kids are an expense. Money is tight.The future is bleak.
That's why I only have one kid (and it was unplanned). Every now and then my wife and I discuss having another one but the cons overcome the pros.
There is no non-selfish reason to bring a kid to this god-forsaken world.
It shouldn't. Life is pretty miserable for most people. Everyone is too busy to hang out and be relaxed. Having kids makes it even more so. Why do we want our kis to grow up like that too?
this is objectively untrue with respect to almost every single piece of data we have on this subject. Just because youre a misanthrope doesnt mean everyone else is.
check out this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0uJ9IcQ-0
where are you getting this information from?
Your previous comment.
>> Life is pretty miserable for most people.
>this is objectively untrue with respect to almost every single piece of data we have on this subject. Just because youre a misanthrope doesnt mean everyone else is.
A lot of 27 year old women I know today are planning trips to Europe next year. Are they more unhappy than previous generations? I don't see it. There's a lot of interesting things competing today with being a parent.
Look up the distribution of happiness in the US and other developed nations. Happiness is often lowest during childbearing years. Happiness in the US has been declining for about a decade.
people one average rate their list satisfaction from 5-7. thats a far cry from "most people are miserable."
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/news/a33900/...
I'm baffled people want kids, especially THREE. You have NO reason to have 3 kids.
And yeah, us child-free people absolutely know when you kid-poppers are constantly leaving work and can't be assed to take on priority projects because you've got to take Tommy and Madelyn to soccer and gymnastics at 3pm.
I agree that childcare and college is mad expensive. It's why people complain about these things as much as they do!
What I've always thought, as a parent: those without kids don't know what they're missing, and those with them know what they have.
I'm not saying this to try to brag about how I have some special thing in my life that you'll never understand. I'm saying it because it feels like a perfect system in a way - you simply don't miss what you don't have.
And lastly, those some sort of information bias at play. Non-parents hear all the time about how parents don't have time for this or that, or they hear them talk about how annoying their child is being. But most people have the self-awareness to not just sit and gush over how great their kid is to their non-parents friends, and even when they do, it's just obnoxious.
I was just bothered by the "I'm baffled by.." part of this specific post.
And you're 100% on the "don't know what we're missing," part. I haven't been married either, so no wedding, no births, no kids, it's an entire other lifestyle I basically won't have any interaction with if it doesn't happen, and it's a weird/scary thing because who knows which is better? Or what we're happier with in the end if we couldn't try both?
I'm straight but I kind of tell myself nowadays that all my gay friends are living that lifestyle and they're very happy from what I can tell so .. maybe it's not bad. But there are gay couples with kids, I don't know any. I haven't had the nerve to ask my good friend if he wanted/wants kids. Never know if thats a tough subject or not.
My only major parent pet peeve... is the word kiddos. And doggos. You can bring your screaming kids over to my pool to destroy my backyard and let all the bugs in cause they dont close doors while you get high and drunk but don't call them kiddos to me. I cannot deal with the mom forum abbreviations like DH (dear husband) and all that.. stuff. When it bleeds over to reddit etc, thankfully rarely, it hurts me to read.
I don't even care that parent coworkers leave to deal with parent stuff, at all. It actually makes ME feel less bad about leaving to do my personal stuff. I'm REALLY bad about being too anxious to leave. A lot better later in my career but early on I would never leave.
Yes, because of you. Go have kids. Ethiopians continued to have children during a decade-long famine and their population still increased. Stop making excuses for your own selfishness.
IMO the world might be messed up compared to the 80's or 90's, but take a broader look and we have never had it better than today. The average person living in the western world today has a standard of living high above what even nobility or kings would have in the middle ages and I would venture to say even a higher standard of living than the Vanderbilts or Rockerfellers did during the gilded age.
Presumably that extinction would take place several generations from now? One great way to avoid or slow extinction would be to procreate.
> this messed up world
As bad as things might be, aren't they way way way way better than they were in previous generations? Before Russia invaded Ukraine we were on a really great streak of very little warfare on Earth (relative to decades and centuries before). Fewer people are facing malnutrition and disease from centuries before. Many countries are much more egalitarian and less corrupt than they were centuries before.
I think maybe you are taking too many things for granted that are really quite good in modern times.
The facts that (a) the world is better than it has ever been and (b) the world is currently awful and (c) we can make the world much better, are all true statements. This good article was recently discussed on HN: https://ourworldindata.org/much-better-awful-can-be-better
... is that necessarily true? If our current population is well above the long-term carrying capacity, in terms of maximizing 'time there are humans on the planet', could the best course involve letting the population decrease for an extended period, and then aiming for a steady population only after we're near that carrying capacity.
A yeast cell in a wine bottle can reproduce while sugar is plentiful, but the increased population leads to more rapid sugar consumption and eventually fermentation stops.
It's almost as if when life is too expensive people don't feel optimistic or financially secure enough about the future enough to want to have kids.
I don't think that my specific situation applies to everyone, but I also don't expect I'm alone on this one.
No wonder the middle class people don't want to have kids. The poorest think differently - they treat kids as an investment because that's the only investment they can have at all. The richest also treat kids as investment, for different reasons. The middle class is childless - can't afford to have the best standard of raising children, so they think they shouldn't have any - and they don't.
I hope your peers ambivalence (educated guess here) towards your other responsibilities make your priorities obvious. Having been in a similar situation, I "lost" the corporate battle (was laid off) but as soon as I had kids I knew my priorities needed to change. I literally worked 8:30 - 5. That was it. I wasn't going to lose missing even the most mundane of times with my kids for some after hours "retro" or some early morning "pointing" session. Thats me tho, thats my deal.
Plenty of us would, if we could.
My own personal situation on why I don't have kids - to have kids, I'd have to find someone to have kids with. Dating is completed screwed, and that's not for lack of trying on my end. It's an absolute shshow out there. It's like no one could be bothered to get themselves out of bed to follow through on plans to meet up. I'm not sure if it's suburbanization, or if it's everyone is feeling overworked, or... what...
Nearly all of my male friends are noticing the same things. Locale, age, career... no change of circumstances seem to change the really poor outcomes. It's like the options on today's menu are: be solo and happy with it, or go do the passport bro thing.
You're just being silly or really unimaginative if someone making different choices than you on as life-altering a subject as children "baffles" you.
Got a job with a company in the midwest, complete opposite. Almost everyone on my team has kids. That might suggest a lower cost of living is correlated with kids, but I think it is more of a cultural thing.
Don't feel bad! I don't have kids and I always appreciate the example set by my coworkers and manager who mostly all have kids. They're very good about having an "end" to their day which makes me feel like it's ok to also call it an end to my day.
I used to work on a team where we were all young & partner-less, including my manager, and everyone just worked "constantly"-ish (like breaks for sleep or errands so it wasn't super intense), but it just felt like a 24/7 slow marathon instead of M-F 9-5-type work. It was absolutely awful. They were all so intelligent too so I felt like I had to do that just to try to keep up and never wanted to be the first one to log off early. We were at a giant company and not scrapping to survive or anything, that was just the micro-culture within the ~10 of us.
My children routinely play with and enjoy being with their cousins. My daughter has a hard time making friends but she says it's okay because at least she has her cousins.
I have had a very rich experience with many of my cousins and I think these cousins are growing up even closer together both physically and emotionally. Would highly recommend the lifestyle.
Large families are such a blessing when you get older. Kids are an awful lot of work for the first about 10 years but boy are they awesome every year after that. When my grandmother is interacting with her children and grandchildren at reunions it's like she's holding court, the queen of an empire.
This is the dream for us. We reverted to Catholicism after it became apparent that the secular world was incompatible with us, then eventually found our way to a high fertility parish. It’s incredible. Kids everywhere. Average family size is 5-6 kids. Really hoping our kids choose to remain in this lifestyle and we get to enjoy dozens of grandkids.
I do wonder what I’d say if/when people question the fervor of my belief though, if I truly converted just for a community with larger families. I imagine “I believe in big families” wouldn’t cut it.
There's nothing wrong with that. Nobody should have a problem with you wanting to be a part of a church community, even if you aren't a "real" believer.
There are perhaps exceptions, e.g. if you are intentionally trying to harm the church or members of it, but otherwise the church should accept you as you are -- "true" believer or not.
In practice you will probably find a lot of "bad" churches, so you'll probably have to shop around a little bit.
I really appreciate this view, but certainly some people do have a problem with it. I think it would be especially awkward if you spend a significant amount of your life there, raise kids, etc, but never claim the religion is true. It almost sounds like a cringe-comedy movie
If your values and actions don't align with the religious community, then you should still be accepted, but if you don't have belief, then it's unlikely you'll stay for long.
^ note: by "should" I mean that, at least in my view, a "real" Christian should be accepting and not judge others. In practice nobody lives up to this, but it can at least inform how you should feel, e.g. if you feel judged it's saying more about others than it says about you.
^ double note: "real" Christian is incredibly hard to define. The Bible can be interpreted any way you want. Ultimately what guides me is trying to do what I think is right, using the Bible as one source of information.
Church Crashers
Kinda. We were open to believing in God. But the start of our journey was just realizing the secular world had nothing to offer us. Then we met a religious homeschooling family w/ 5 kids and they gave us a glimpse of what was possible. So we started swimming in that direction and it just kept getting better the farther out we swam.
> I do wonder what I’d say if/when people question the fervor of my belief though, if I truly converted just for a community with larger families. I imagine “I believe in big families” wouldn’t cut it.
Here’s the thing: if you’re not a militant atheist and you start spending a lot of time around sincerely religious people who you like, you’ll end up believing sincerely yourself. Since you’re secular, I’ll explain it like this: we’re evolved to cohere around a shared system of belief and the appropriate mental machinery will kick in as part of becoming embedded in a religious community. And that’s what I used to believe. But now I know those were just the breadcrumbs I needed to find my way.
But it just didn't work. I wasn't a militant atheist; I just questioned things, and was frustrated when my elders would shut me down and hand-wave my questions away.
I gave up in my early 20s. That was 20+ years ago. I'm still an atheist. I don't have a problem with religious people, unless they try to force their beliefs on others (especially when they try to use the political and legal process to do so). But most folks seem to just want to live and let live. But I no longer think there's something wrong with me, or long to be "normal" like my peers and believe in a god. I can't imagine ever believing, regardless of what communities I find myself a member of.
Questioning things is how one truly reaches God. Your elders failed you.
Some people just hold beliefs because they were born with them, not because they necessarily believe in them. I know these types because I've lived my whole life around many of them. Thanks to them, I've come to despise the modern concept of organizated religions, though I still value religion itself.
This is why I tend to view modern religious leaders as parasites. They convince other people that they [the other people] can't understand religion on their own,that religion is mysterious and only those well versed may speak on the art.
By convincing people of such things, said people then outsource the job of thinking to those select few, and you're left with mindless brains who can't figure out the answers to a child's questions about God.
I ask myself questions, I always do, and I try to look for answers, for each question answered brings me one step closer to God, and by extension, brings me some measure of peace in life.
I know a person who fell in love with a woman that didn't exist. Person A (my friend) was straight. Person B was gay and fell in love with Person A, and then created Person C (fictitious person) with the hopes that Person A would grow to love Person C, and eventually Person B would tell the truth but that Person A's love was pure enough that he didn't care about the deception and wanted to be with Person B.
Hell of a story, but the reason I mention it is because Person A falling in love with Person C didn't make Person C real. How does that work with God?
The acid test of true love for God is that Reality confirms it.
Oh they do- ask anyone in recovery from opioids.
How would you know without experiencing it? The experience of joy someone else gets from anything- physical activity, their own religion, love, drugs (however fleeting) is as valid as yours.
I wager we avoid that kind of love because it boils down to "sacrifice yourself for the good that's outside you". In human terms it's something like parents sacrificing themselves for their children, or friends sacrificing themselves for their friends[1]. Losing something painfully that cannot be replaced in the world. A world where we have all the time, money, internet to distract us from hardship & suffering that brings us closer to goodness.
I personally didn't believe in God until I received a tiny part of his love for myself.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2015%3A13&...
don’t you believe that for a second. God does not deal with tiny graces. it’s just a process and then it becomes overwhelming and all resistance is gone. all of it.
Interestingly, this is what turned me into an atheist at a rather young age. A friend invited me to a childrens' religious/social group wherein they explained that most science is actually incorrect; the earth is only 6000 years old, evolution is a lie created by the evil Darwin... that sort of thing. In my head, their version of Christianity fell apart and the rest quickly followed.
You do remind me of one of my favorite Douglas Adams quotes though:
> “Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
That’s such an obvious fallacy, you should do yourself a favor and introspect how such an absurd idea came into your head. Who put it there?
To see it’s absurd, consider, have you ever changed your mind about something? If yes, then it’s obviously possible and maybe even likely that you can and will one day change your views on divinity? If course it’s possible, and actually quite common. And yes, it comes as a surprise.
So brainwashing-lite? Man I'm glad whatever "appropriate mental machinery" that was in my head kicked in and got me the fuck away from communities like this.
I'm curious how you interprete "secular"? Cause it seems you're setting it up to mean anti-religion which is certainly not what the usual definition is.
> Here’s the thing: if you’re not a militant atheist and you start spending a lot of time around sincerely religious people who you like, you’ll end up believing sincerely yourself.
I won't question your own experience, but you're being way too broad here. I know many people who are not "militant atheists" but still don't believe in organized religion. I also have a lot of friends whose families are extremely religious - meaning they're around them all the time - none of them has been pushed or convinced to join. They just don't observe prayer etc compared to their friends.
> Since you’re secular, I’ll explain it like this: we’re evolved to cohere around a shared system of belief and the appropriate mental machinery will kick in as part of becoming embedded in a religious community. And that’s what I used to believe. But now I know those were just the breadcrumbs I needed to find my way.
This sounds more like a self-justification than something actually supported by science. Please note I'm not trying to "religion shame you". Just curious. :)
I’ve been having similar thoughts. Sedevacantism seemed like a natural place to look but it isn’t well represented in my area.
I grew up catholic but it was mostly people going through the motions. Yours sounds like a more hippy esque flavor which appeals to me.
I may have a couple of dozen first cousins, I don't really know, but they are geographically distant. I haven't met one since childhood, and I can't remember getting along with them very well.
Wow, that is not my experience at all. I think in some ways that's perhaps a very US-centric view, even though I'd still consider that a flawed way at looking at secularism in the US. Most of the developed world is fairly secular (even among those with religious beliefs), and extreme individualism is not as common as you seem to think.
I do wonder how common your attitude is among religious people, though. If it's common, that would explain a few things...
They don't make many babies though, because they've subdued their desires to reproduce and devoted themselves to the good of the planet ;)
- Me and my siblings all feel like our parents loved the "identity" of being parents and having lots of children, but when it came down to the brass tax of actually caring for our emotional needs, they were entirely absent. This was such a large rift that almost all of us intentionally don't have close relationships with our parents.
- On top of emotional neglect, there was inevitable physical neglect. One brother clearly had autism but our parents never had the time or finances to get him treated appropriately. Two siblings weren't able to get the braces they needed for their teeth as kids and had to get jaw surgery as adults. Two of my siblings were injured in severe accidents growing up that would've been avoided if a parent had been watching out.
- The parents of these families go around narcissistically glowing with all the social credit for being "superhero parents" when realistically the majority of the labor falls upon the oldest siblings. Me and my two sisters effectively raised all of our younger siblings with our mother being pregnant so often, and father working full-time. Our parents never recognized how much work we put in, and as we transitioned to adulthood it took a lot of work to establish healthy relationships with our younger siblings where we didn't feel taken advantage of (the younger siblings had parental expectations of us for years afterward).
- The lack of socialization from being homeschooled really came back to bite us in the ass. Some of my siblings got (cyber) bullied after transitioning to the real world. Some simply never were able to make the adjustment to talking to normal people, and some are still really struggling. I was able to get "socialized" and now appear like a normal SWE at a large tech company but I'm very lucky.
So....be very careful around these families and their values. A lot of times having lots of kids are a narcisstic vision from the parents, rather than a true desire to take care of a lot of people.
Kids in smaller families don't have to raise their younger siblings.
It probably functions much better if everyone works together in a family business.
It's kinda sad but it's also obvious that people are majorly missing out. On having kids, on living close to family, on all of it.
Ironically, this is evolution in action. The folks that "remember" how to have a family and raise kids have an uncontested claim to the future. The "it's too hard to have kids" crew is selecting against themselves, evolutionary speaking. That won't last.
I met plenty of ppl who talk about the climate or cost of housing as the reason for other ppl but I never knew of anyone making a decision this way. You know someone?
The point is that "I don't want to have children because I'm worried about the impact of climate change" (social) or "I don't want to have children because I think it'll be too expensive" (economic) is not caused by biology and thus there is no selecting such concerns out of the gene pool.
Not even mentioning that evolution doesn't even meaningfully work at these short timescales. Modern humans are essentially identical to ~40,000 years ago, simply not enough time and pressure for evolution to do its thing.
Parents who fail to instill love and desire of family into their kids won’t get to be grandparents. A few decades ago maybe you could take it for granted “everyone ends up having kids” now it obviously is a dead end unless you really help your kids through it. It feels to me like the next generation will have parents who will be intentional about this value. Others won’t bother having kids to begin with.
It'd take regression back to a society where women are considered to have no value outside of being child factories, for parents to be able to indoctrinate their kids into reproducing with no concern for how good of a life they can actually give those kids.
It could also simply be lead poisoning
How do you know that? Are those really the reasons, or is the underlying reason "I don't really feel an urge to want kids, so I'm using this reason to justify it"?
Evolution works slowly, but that's because most traits have fairly minimal benefits. Marginally better eyesight might mean a 2% better chance of procreating. Assuming there's some genetic factor for "emotional desire to have children regardless of the circumstances", the chance of procreation rate for that is rapidly approaching 100%.
It's obviously far more complicated than that - it will be an interesting question for future biologists - if there are any!
I think we should also recognize the the generation in question might have difficulty with relationships. Having kids means finding a partner bought into the idea too and taking the leap. It seems people aren't figuring that out until much later.
Not to mention there is evidence of infanticide in early human societies. Indeed, it's been postulated that post-partum depression evolved to make getting rid of a potentially problematic baby (e.g. during times of famine) easier emotionally.
So 'birth control',in the sense of "ways to have sex but not make more humans" has more or less always existed - even in times of relatively high fertility. Don't agree that current low birth rates can be entirely explained by the pill.
In the ancestral environment, kids "just happened". There were people who specifically tried to have more children, but they would only have a small advantage over the vast majority of accidentally made children.
Fast forward to modernity. Now, children are only being born to people who specifically choose to do so. A small change in socioeconomics accidentally privileges people with a biological quirk.
A better way to frame it is: which group is more likely to propagate their genes and have more ancestors 100/1,000/10,000 years in the future? Is it the group that can afford to have more children and successfully raise them, or the group that can't afford large families?
It doesn't matter if the cause is biological or socioeconomic. Just because humans have science, medicine, economics, etc. doesn't mean evolution has "stopped".
The number of infants globally peaked around 2014-2017 and most of the future population growth will be due to larger generations replacing smaller ones.
The decline in population already started, but we're not seeing it thanks to how long we live.
Put another way, someone choosing to have kids isn't necessarily changing the balance between the child-bearing and child-free population in the world. If we could freeze the conditions that cause people to not want kids and keep them constant, we won't see the child-free "die out" and be replaced by people who only or predominantly want to have children. We'll just continue to see roughly the same proportion of people wanting and not wanting to have kids.
You're just looking at those who don't have children at all vs those who do, but that's not the whole story.
People don't decide these things in a vacuum - all over the western world statistics show that people have on average one child less than desired - mostly due to external pressures like availability of real estate and/or stable employment.
The environment simply doesn't support having more children, so those who do have them don't allow themselves to have more - much like animals which don't breed in captivity.
Countries like France largely staved off population decline because they decided to create an environment where people can have children as they naturally would.
This is an outdated view...
You're only thinking about the "nature" part of "nature & nurture" though. Playing genetic pot-luck with your partner isn't the only way to have a legacy.
For example, think about all the spare time and energy that a non-child-rearing adult has to shape the cultural & technological future, and the impact that might have on the critical "nurture" element of your own child's life.
That's not how it work. Evolution only selects for hereditary, biological factors, and even then, it's not a guarantee. "Stupid people" won't "die out" for the same reason.
I think in vast majority of such situations hereditary factors are involved. It is really hard for me to imagine such situation that is completely independent from such factors.
> Evolution only selects for hereditary, biological factors,
That's true. And we really don't know what the full list of such factors are hidden in our genes. Maybe many, maybe just a few. What's for sure, though, IF there are enough genes somewhere in the gene pool that lead people (women in particular) to want to have kids at an elevated rate, those are massively selected for right now.
Yes, people who don't have kids are ending their genetic line when they die. But that doesn't mean that people who have kids are necessarily increasing the pool of people who want kids, percentage-wise.
Yeah I imagine that large families tend to result in adults who are themselves likely to have more kids than average, but things can certainly shift. Among my extended family, for example: my grandmother was one of 11 kids, my mom was one of 7, my aunts and uncles largely had 3-4, and my cousins mostly have 2-3. This is a tight-knit crowd, with a strongly pro-family culture (Catholicism), living in proximity with regular get-togethers, neighboring lake cottages etc, but clearly not immune to broader trends.
Housing has certainly become more expensive and lower quality in larger cities where most jobs are, and working life has become more unstable. Still, in my opinion cultural factors are a more significant reason for falling birth rates.
I’m in Belgium where we’ve historically built larger than necessary apartments (and houses) so there’s a decent amount of housing stock to raise a family in, but the tides have turned and new apartments are also mostly smaller 1 and 2 bedrooms targeting singles. The latter sucks because if you’re a young family looking for an affordable but modern place (read: energy efficient) your options are slim.
https://www.etuovi.com/kohde/38837797?haku=M2075336606
Another typical example with 4 rooms + bathroom packed into 65.5 squares:
On birth male/female ratio is pretty much 50/50. So at any stage (except older >70 because woman usually lives longer) ratio should be similar. LGBT are just 10% of population and distribution between gays/lesbians seems also 50/50.
Based on that if there is a single male there is another single female somewhere. The only reason that comes to my mind that more female migrated from Finland somewhere else or there is a big immigration of males into Finland.
Nevertheless, it's also notable that the majority of long-term unemployed are men by a significant margin. Average educational outcomes of women are better than for men these days. There's a much higher incidence of young men than young women dropping out of education and work. These men are statistically much less likely to have children than others.
A man will generally only become a father if he finds a woman that WANTS to have children with him. If he's unattractive, chances are she will select someone else. Many women will prefer even married men over an unattractive, low status one.
I see people now-a-days complaining that they don't have money, or space, or time and I just scoff at them. We aren't having children because society stopped seeing laziness as a negative trait. Everyone around us keeps telling us "you need to take time to focus on yourself": which usually translates to spending the day browsing through Netflix and ordering food because you can't even be bothered to cook.
This is making for very unhappy, empty lives.
I guess because having/not having kids is such a monumental decision, people feel the need to justify that their choice is the right one.
My grandmother never remarried, so she never had any more children.
I had the interesting experience of moving straight to rural Pohjois-Pohjanmaa first, before moving to one of the big cities for work. It's for that reason that I'm mostly convinced it's cultural as well - most of our friends up there have 2 to 6 kids, despite making quite a bit less than us city slickers.
Even in the crowded Poland, I can't really believe in three bedroom + living room 55 square meter apartament.
Lots of people here write about the number of cousins, but those are often of a different age, it was the same with my two cousins. Also missing from the article: Kids being pushed into extra-curricula after school, be it soccer or music, those might not necessarily lead to friendships? Lastly, our environment has changed a lot. It's just not safe to let kids run wild outside with all those cars. The number of kids killed by cars didn't sink over the past 40 years because cars got safe, it sunk because kids get basically locked in. In my city (in Austria) we have quite a lot of older and newer building complexes where cars are kept outside, those are much better for kids.
I don't know if I'm worse off in any quantifiable way and I don't know if it's worse this way. I just wonder if there's something I might be missing out on by not having that familial social network on top of my current social network, which is admittedly quite small and limited compared to when I was young. Maybe I'd feel less lonely and a bit less adrift if I had a larger family that I had close ties to and could fall back on.
A "family reunion" now is just me and my siblings. Down from 10-20 people to 3. That does make me sad to think about now.
We moved back to be closer to family last summer. And, for us, the difference was stark. The relationships between family and friends are different. Both important.
But friends are replaceable…as terrible as that may sound. And one difference I think we (and others) didn’t realize is that family is much much much more permanent. You may not enjoy their company as much - but they will be there for many decades. And it turns out that’s very important for us.
People vastly overestimate how dangerous letting their kids out to play is and underestimate how beneficial it is. There’s real health benefits to running around outside which means limiting them to specific after school activities also has negative consequences.
A common bias when many things change is to only consider the changes which support your views rather than all changes combined. I could counter by bringing up nearly 100% of new SUVs in 2024 include automatic breaking systems, but what matters here is relative safety not individual changes in isolation.
Pedestrian deaths were 2 percent lower in 2021 than in 1975, which seems like zero progress but the US had 211 million people in 1975 vs 337 million in 2021. Thus the individual risk has dropped by almost 40% even though people seem to think it increased. Not that overall pedestrian deaths is directly comparable to risk to kids from playing outside, but it is suggestive.
Edit: The reduction in children being killed is much larger, but that’s probably less to do with cars than wider social trends. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...
“estimates that more than 7,500 pedestrians were killed by drivers last year — the highest number since 1981.”
And yes they are intentionally trying to be misleading.
For adults the number of pedestrian isn’t explanatory on its own. You need to look at several trends including smartphones and changing city streets to really understand the risk factors.
Cars are simpler because you can compare different models through time to build a clear picture of their relative safety.
I disagree with this for 2 reasons:
1. Cousins are likely to be a mix of ages, probably your age +- 10 years. I think there's some benefit to that, especially having elder cousins that can teach you cool stuff / protect you at school / buy you beer etc.
2. You lose contact with the vast majority of friends you make at school, eventually. Cousins aren't the same, you're more likely to see them at holidays and events than your best friend when you were 5 years old.
People didn’t really “choose” to have that many kids in the past. It turns out that even if you don’t really want to have kids, not having sex is a very, very hard thing to do.
Nature’s solution to making humans have kids despite being able to reason themselves out of it is to make them incredibly horny compared to most other animals. Or, put another way, the less horny humans were filtered out along the way since they didn’t produce enough offspring and were outcompeted by the more horny.
I didn't have a sense that my grandmother's generation (and all children prior to that) were perceived by their parents as unwelcome consequences of their unrestrained hornyness.
Old literature starting with the bible is full of examples of people lamenting infertility, they clearly wanted kids.
Also, today the only people who have children are the religious, which are also people that have objectively got the greatest control and ability to restrain their sexuality, which kind of goes against what you're saying.
And finally, people forever back had ways to not get pregnant if they didn't want to.
I cannot properly put into words how different the reality you live in must be different from the one I do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_birth_control#:....
Traditionnal methods such as marrying late (see: European Marriage Pattern), pulling out, timing are very effective at _reducing_ the number of children you will have (note: not effective at reducing it to zero - don't do this at home kids!).
[0] https://www.guillaumeblanc.com/files/theme/Blanc_secularizat...
I think what makes the vibe hostile it that this is the sound of social cohesion tearing apart and there is the implied worry that "it might get hostile" unless things are fixed.
But that is not the same thing as hostile. It is discussing a problem.
Accusation of being inhuman:
> The - natural - way - of - being - a - human!!! (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39343369)
> Biological organisms not procreating despite living in material and caloric abundance is cosmically weird. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341358) (less hostile, still a swipe)
Attack on one's validity as a member of society:
> Whenever I encounter this attitude I like to remind that person that they should have no voice, whatsoever, in what happens in government and politics anymore (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39342079)
> but don’t expect the rest of us to give much credence to his opinions since he very well doesn’t care about our society. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39342977)
Implication of social malignancy:
> that makes you a sort of parasite (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39342021)
> It's fucking weird. [...] I'm guessing they are just hitting up sex workers. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341263)
Implication that one's chosen lifestyle is inferior:
> People are just too selfish and think of kids as costing lattes and ruining their free time (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39342822)
> Kids aren't expensive. They're a distraction from dopamine and career advancement. [...] they'd rather jet set than settle down. [...] Instagram and the endless feed of social media, internet, and things to do. [...] Nobody I know wants to give that up. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341734) (this one is not hostile, but it's still in put-down territory)
Whether one views these as hostile can perhaps be a matter of perspective, but these posts do not invite cordial, level-headed debate.
Given the amount of comments I would still not say the topic is particularly hostile? Or am I desensitised maybe?
I mean, if the question is React frameworks, there is way less risk for philosophical fistfights and outbreaks, rather than a discussion about how people live their lifes.
This site is full of liars and sophists, among other scum. It frankly doesn’t matter whether you bring evidence or not.
It doesn't matter if I'm gay, infertile, poor, depressed, or just don't want them. Please keep your judgements to yourself or even just stop judging others.
Do you have any friends or relatives who refuse to try ramen or pho, no matter how many times you tell them that it's the best food ever, and that you also thought it seemed weird to put steak in a broth with noodles until you finally gave it a try and then you couldn't believe how delicious it was and you wish you'd tried it years earlier... but they still think it sounds gross?
It's exactly like that. :-)
Equating encouragement to try a new food and encouragement to bring another life into the world is... a bit silly.
[edit] benefits of having kids: you stop taking yourself so seriously like being oversensitive about other people's opinions
Assuming that you're not trolling: 1. Plenty of gay people have stable monogamous relationships/marriages. 2. Marriage isn't only for children. Marriage has legal and tax implications. 3. I like having a stable relationship, I don't like dating and switching partners. I like deeper connections with my partners.
Because the first point is challenged: https://www.thegaytherapycenter.com/gay-men-in-open-relation...
> Several research studies show that about 50% of gay male couples are monogamous and about 50% allow for sex outside of the relationship. The research finds no difference in the level of happiness or stability among these groups.
I think it's a bit rich to use an opinion plucked out of thin air to call someone else's words misleading.
Conversely, if someone enjoys life and things are going well, a child can often enrich it even further.
You don’t live in a bubble. It does matter.
It worked out, and almost every day, certainly every week, she says she's so thankful she changed her mind just enough that she could be a mom. It is nothing like she envisioned it.
We also have friends who didn't want kids and then regretted it, and my wife sees her self in those people. If circumstances were different, she feels like she would have missed out on one of the best things that ever happened to her.
So I think that's why some people are so enthusiastic.
Me and my partner are in a similar situation as you and your wife before your first kid, with some complications added on top.
Those complications will make it near a certainty that we will only ever have a single child. And I worry sometimes if deciding to have a single kid is just me being selfish and wanting a family, rather than thinking about what would be best for the child (for instance having siblings).
Our situation would also mean no cousins from her side, and my siblings all have children in the late teens by now.
>And I worry sometimes if deciding to have a single kid is just me being selfish and wanting a family, rather than thinking about what would be best for the child (for instance having siblings).
I think this is an addressable issue. If you care about your child not being lonely, you could prioritize moving to an area that is family friendly, and/or prioritize making friends with some other families. We moved to an area with lots of parks in walking distance and there's almost always other kids playing there.
My son is 4 and an only child right now, but we regularly invite playmates and their parents over for dinner and a playdate for the kids. Almost every weekend my son and some another kid or two will be running around the house in the early evening while I cook some burgers and chat with the parents.
How many people have cousins, or other relatives, that they want to interact with?
My extended family is a complete disaster. On my mother's side there's two brothers who are borderline abusive to their wives and children. On father's side I had a total of 10 cousins, the oldest of whom would be in their 40s, the youngest in their late 20s. Only 6 of them are still alive. One of them is in prison. These are all people that I want nothing to do with.
My siblings are not bad per say, but not people I consider myself close to. We're all too different in age from each other, and never had much more in common that living in the same house. Now we are scattered across North America. If I had had children, they likely would have never met any of their cousins more than a dozen times before adulthood.
There's probably statistics out there but I've not looked into it - but anecdotally I also know a large contingent of people who've had issues conceiving. Many late 20s, too - people always seem to think it's more common in your 30s but so many of them were confused by the experience.
Fortunately my ex-wife has a lot of cousins she is close to and her sister has a daughter right in the middle of my 2 kids so they have 1 first cousin they are very close with but they have no interactions with second cousins outside of seeing them every few years at holidays.
Regardless, having no real interaction with my cousins growing up, I can't say if my life would have been better if I had.
I grew up with 20+ cousins ranging from 10 years older than me to almost 30 years younger than me. It was simultaneously like having lots of older brothers and sisters but also having multiple siblings only a couple months older or younger than me. It also meant I got a LOT of experience being around small children which carried over well to being a parent.
On the flip side, my father-in-law has 7 grandkids and they were all born in a 5 year window.
I also worked with woman from China and due to the "1 child" policy, the first baby she ever held was her own baby b/c she had no cousins, nieces/nephews etc.
Few people have friends with brothers and sisters to compare them to, to understand heritability.
We are becoming more and more tolerant of obviously unrelated people playing relatives on tv. I say that because when you see a real family resemblance in person, it's intense.
The only experience of having g a much older or younger sibling must be nearly nothing, now, too. It's sad that all these effects seem to make people even more likely to perpetuate the trend when their own time comes.
I think the real reason is that both my parents were from two-child families, and they were also very much older than their younger siblings; my mom is 7 years older than her brother, and my father was a full decade older than his sister.
Both my Aunt and my Uncle had families, but necessarily later. My aunt went first, and had a daughter about the age of my little sister -- 5 years after me -- and then another daughter a couple years later. However, they lived a couple towns over, and my father and his sister weren't especially close, so we didn't spend much time with them.
My uncle and his wife didn't start their family until I was 17, so obviously there was zero childhood overlap there. I see and talk to those cousins more often than the two from my father's side, mostly because we have more in common, but it's still not very often.
For example the internet is much unfriendlier to children nowadays, social media is far more predatory than it used to be. The housing crisis is worse (the exact same place is nearly twice as expensive as it was when we first moved in about 10 years ago). Also, the AI dystopia and surveillance state bullshit seems to be worsening at an exponentially increasing rate.
(I say that without judgement, having been in that exact headspace myself not too long ago.)
In the lead up to the 2008 financial disaster all the bulls were saying "the housing market only goes up" without any understanding of the underlying shifts that would come to bear. It's easy to predict the status quo, they didn't need any thought, they could be replaced with a rock with "housing goes up" written on it.
For the first time in decades, risk of global conflict is rapidly rising. Two revanchist empires in the east are eager to reclaim lost territories and see their chance as the American hegemony that presided over the long peace faces stagnation & decline. This is the stuff that makes world wars. Who wants their child to live through that?
But fine, anyone can write "human well-being only goes up" on a rock.
* Appreciating what I have today
* Not fearing the future in regards to global warming, war, and other instability
* Accepting that my life could turn completely upside down in an instant, e.g. due to economic instability, war, etc.
What period of time would you rather live in, as an average person? What period of time did the average family have a better time?
But it sounds like the GP is looking to the future, and is pessimistic about their ability to do that. History doesn't matter too much here, even if I agree with you that much of history was a cesspool of pain and misery compared to these days. If people don't see a viable, prosperous future for their kids, as good as or better than their own lives, that's what matters.
Now, I say this without passing judgment on whether or not this future pessimism is warranted. Even if it isn't, what matters is how people feel about it.
Today is very clearly the best time to be born, so much so that I'd argue if you could choose to have kids in an older time period or today, it's borderline abusive to choose the past.
Medicine/immunization, child mortality rates, human rights, ...
https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2018/6/7/the-best-tim...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38719249 (169 points | 52 days ago | 332 comments)
I do feel very strongly that my kids are not going to have much of a relationship with their cousins - if at all.
Most of them had 2 children so that's over 30. We have 2 huge WhatsApp group chats and every week it is someone's birthday or anniversary.
It's cool having so many relatives and places to stay for free when you travel but it can be a little exhausting too!
On the other hand, all of my actual cousins are now having children, so it seems the next generation won't be having this problem (in my family).
Anecdotally: as someone who was the youngest by 5+ years in a family of dozens of cousins, I feel like I got a little bit of both worlds. It was fantastic as a kid to be running around with the posse, but as I entered late-childhood that pretty much dissolved. Now, as an adult, I no longer see my cousins on a regular basis. We don't have much history beyond my 7th/8th year and they're not the type of people I would want to be friends with by choice. This estrangement was a big source of mental struggle for me throughout my early 20s, especially since I lost my actual sibling and didn't feel like I had anyone to relate to in my "supposed" family.
I almost think it's better to start off life with not much extended family, because it's not easy to make friends that you consider family when you're already a fully-fledged adult.
It's a lot of work to keep in touch and visit cousins, but my wife and I feel it's totally worth it. At times, we've decided where to live based on proximity to cousins, and we decided early on to regularly visit cousins who lived within a couple of hours. When we were married, we decided we'd try to go to reunions, funerals, and weddings, and we've largely done that for the last 19 years. There is a big family reunion for a few days every other year, with about half the family coming (so hundreds of people of all ages). We also have monthly dinners with typically 20-30 local cousins joining. We regularly tell family history stories, and we have a screensaver rotating through our pictures, including many from cousin visits and reunions, so cousins are regularly coming up in daily conversations.
One thing I've noticed is that the more often we go to reunions and visit other families, the more excited the children are to go to see cousins again (as opposed to another family branch, where reunions are every 5-10 years, the children just don't have the same connection with that much growing up in between reunions). Another thing I've noticed is that our children seem to feel very grounded in their experiences - they often are relating their experiences to a story from an ancestor and pulling lessons from that.
To address a comment elsewhere on this topic, yes, we are religious, the family is predominantly active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a significant portion live in the intermountain west area of the U.S.
Everybody in America would know to fill in all that information if you simply said "We are Mormon".
I'm glad you're enjoying your rich family!
Nelson (current head of the church) just doesn't like the word and wants to change it. Confusion, inconvenience, and Pragmatism be damned. It's his right as prophet to say that Jesus told him to use the full name of the church and drop Mormon, but let's not pretend it's suddenly offensive because it's been used by enemies of the church. They've also used the full name as well, so that should be offensive if we're staying consistent.
More reasonably, I think they are not offended. Rather they are simply trying to use the full name of the church rather than any sort of shortenings. Sure, if somebody was being a jerk and using the word Mormon to be a jerk, then that could be offensive. However, that's a much different thing than being offended by the word itself used in a friendly context.
I do have 7 cousins, though. And 2 of them (the ones raised by my grandmother that lived next to my house and that I saw almost everyday during my childhood) are the family closer to siblings that I've got.
I'm not married or in a relations ship and I don't have any children. My sister is married but no children. I see much of my generation (GenX) are in a similar state.
So on the one hand I have a huge family, but on the other hand, the practical hand, most of those cousins I never met. I've heard their names, I've sometimes seen pictures of them, and family gossip means I generally know what is going on with them but that's all.
I think there were 3-5 cousins who were similarly aged to myself, and who I saw every week or two, or daily during summer holidays. But the rest? I'm not sure what people would be missing out on there ..
One theory aside from the obvious is that the brain makes sense of whatever might happen to it, over time. Like how you miss out on some big opportunity, but years later you say, “ah, that’s ok because it led me to where I am today.”
No idea if that was coherent as I’m a bit tired, but wanted to share
Only 1 of the 3 of us has kids, so my niblings don't have any cousins on my side of the family, and they only have a few on the other side. I haven't thought about how different that is compared to what I grew up with until seeing this post
My kids and their cousins are all great friends and it's well worth the sacrifice
The thing about having kids is that once you make the leap, you don't get to step back. A single decision to drop the birth control for a bit, and bam -- you're a parent with daily responsibilities for at least 18 years. That'll certainly get you out of your comfort zone, permanently.
But other things you can do are more or less entirely voluntary, and you can stop doing them at any time. So it takes more willpower to maintain, even if doing those things is strictly less work than raising a child.
A person can do a lot with their life. There's an entire world to explore out there. Culture and history and math and science and art and philosophy. So many meaningful, fulfilling ways to spend a life that don't involve kids.
Not saying that kids cannot offer their own experience, they absolutely can. But it's not the only one that has value.
That’s 12 cousins just in our little circle.
Thanks to birth control and modern values, Western people can bring themselves to extinction.
Sounds like pearl clutching with bated breath.
It's a long way to extinction with many chances to stabilise before zero.
The only options are not continuous growth or death.
I read a statistic somewhere that it costs $2M to raise a child. Considering that it's considered a horrible imposition to ask your kids for money, or even to ask them to take care of you, it's easy to explain why urbanization, industrial development, and education, work against population growth.
i'd say that this is a clear sign that animals do have strong biological drive to care about continuing their bloodline
I sometimes ponder what would happen if we did discover the secret to substantial life extension or even immortality; if this phenomenon of trying to stretch that delightful halcyon glow of childhood wonder - what I've heard the Finns call lapsuus - would extend into decades or centuries or perpetuity as a result. It would if nothing else provide a plausible explanation for the behavior of characters like Q from Star Trek.
1. Decline in religious belief
2. Widespread, easy to use birth control
3. More options for entertainment are widely available. Having kids is less attractive when you could be traveling, binging endless series, or playing computer games
4. Strong anti-natalist sentiment that was pushed very hard post-war and persists
5. Higher rates of college attendance, which means people are studying and furthering their careers in their 20s rather than having kids
I think our culture of expecting/demanding that parents invest ever greater amounts of time and effort (with all the evidence suggesting that these increased investments do not improve long term outcomes) is a far bigger driver than costs.
Perhaps not as big a deal in the US, but in the EU where some form of car seat is required for the first 8-10 years of a child's life it's a big thing.
We are wealthier than ever. It’s not the money.
A lot of "college is expensive" is a US-specific problem, not one universal to the Western world. In many European countries, public universities are tuition-free. Even in those Western countries with non-nominal tuition, it is almost always significantly less than the sky-high US levels.
The fact that many countries have cheaper higher education yet lower fertility than the US suggests that, even in the US case, this is unlikely to be a big factor. It likely makes a difference at the margins, but only at the margins.
Suppose the top rate is 37%. Have one child, now for the rest of your life, your top rate is capped at 27%. Have a second child, now your lifetime top rate is capped at 17%. Third child, capped at 7%. Fourth child, never pay income tax ever again.
But, a lot of people will object to such a policy. Childless people will end up having to pay higher taxes as people with kids pay lower or no taxes–some may accept that as their personal sacrifice for the greater good, many likely won't. Others will object to the fact that the biggest benefit is going to be for the middle and upper classes – who are most likely to pay the higher tax rates – while having far less benefit for those on low incomes, who pay little or no tax already. There is the (difficult to quantify) risk that unsuitable parents may end up having kids just for the tax benefits, and then mistreat/abuse those kids. Given all these objections, I'd be surprised if it ever actually gets adopted. But, in terms of increasing TFR in wealthy countries, it might actually work.
This is such a mystery, why would people buy homes, I just can’t figure it out.
If it weren’t for housing costs, I would have 4 kids right now
China outright banned having more than 1 kid and people aborted girls en masse. This one I grant an exemption.
The dynamic is that when markets are expanding, it makes sense to invest in the future, because you can capture a portion of the expansion and the reap indefinite profits off of it. When markets are contracting, your incentive becomes to grab as much of the pie now before it shrinks. This tends to make firms...well, militant. The incentive to cooperate only appears when people weight the future more than the present, giving value to future interactions; otherwise, the incentive is to kill off your rivals, take their stuff, and hide the bodies. Thus, during a contraction and in times of scarcity people tend to become raiders, scavengers, and conquerors.
To protect themselves against raiders, scavengers, and conquerors, people tend to band together into larger groups. Thus a hierarchy emerges - weaker groups pledge fealty to stronger ones, which in turn protect them from other strong groups that have not pledged fealty, and so on. Usually you get war in the meantime, but feudalism is the peace treaty that arises out of that.
Interestingly this dynamic tends to play out within the capitalist system. When an industry reaches maturity, usually there's a shakeout with a price war where many of the weaker companies go bankrupt, and then the savvier-but-weaker get bought up by the bigger ones, and so on until you have a few megacorps with hierarchical organization. The purpose of managerial capitalism is as much to defend firms against competition as it is to increase efficiency. In many cases, they are significantly less efficient than they were as startups, but at least they have hoovered up all the competition.
Haredi/Hasidic/ultra-Orthodox Jews are an interesting exception to that – a predominantly urban/suburban subculture sustaining a high TFR (over 6 in Israel).
A stringent religious doctrine which promotes large families may be the only thing which can overcome urbanization's encouragement of lower TFRs. In the long-long-long term, it is possible (not certain) that subcultures with that characteristic will end up numerically dominating the population.
> It's in this decade that they start running out of working age adults and shit starts getting really screwy
The obvious answer is a significant increase in immigration rates. Of course, for political/cultural reasons, some of the countries you mentioned don't want to do that. But, if the economic hardships of population decline grow big enough, they may become bigger than the political/cultural resistance to it.
In the long-long term, that strategy is going to fail, because the immigration source countries are on the same demographic trajectory, just further back on the curve. Still, the point at which it fails may well be long after we are all dead.
In a developed society, people are more likely to have many things they want to pursue and achieve, and due to various factors (financial and otherwise), having kids usually entails giving up on most or all of that. That probably seems like a pretty raw deal to a lot of folks, considering we all only get one life to live.
If it weren't so necessary to put off all of these things until the kids have left the nest and youth has been spent away, I'd bet a lot more people would choose to become parents.
There's only so much you can do. You can introduce as much subsidised childcare, parental leave, flexible working conditions, free higher education, etc, policies as you like – those things can alleviate the disadvantage to other life goals of having kids, but are unlikely to ever be able to reduce it to a level at which it ceases to be significant.
Then, there is what some rich people do, outsourcing the rearing of their children to nannies, tutors and boarding schools, such that they rarely see them – but, that's not a recipe for raising well-adjusted kids, and economically is unlikely to be scalable beyond a very small rich minority
I think it is inevitable that cultures in which reproducing is just one option on the menu are always going to have significantly lower TFR than those in which reproducing is viewed as a religious duty, with those who reject it risking ostracism in this life, and the threat of punishment in the next
Reducing disadvantage to insignificance is indeed unlikely, but if things were structured such (for example) that working a part-time job paid a wage capable of supporting a family, that’d go a long way. It’d enable parents to work full-time for the extra cash for some period of time prior to starting a family to build substantial financial padding and then drop back to part-time once kids are in the picture, opening up time for parents to be both parents and be people.
We’ve seen incredible improvements in productivity in the past several decades, so there’s not really much reason why that shouldn’t be possible.
I can think of several people I know, who (I think) would have made perfectly fine parents, but probably (or even definitely) never will. Waiting for "Mr/Ms Right", who they never manage to find - he or she always seems to be already taken or chasing somebody else or being chased by more appealing options. In other cultures/societies (and even previous versions of their own), at some point they would have settled for "Mr/Ms Good Enough"–but, they've absorbed a culture which discourages (even criticises) doing that. Plus, many children of divorced parents are hesitant to have kids with someone less than ideal, because they worry it will lead to their own kids going through what they did. I doubt changes to working conditions can do anything to address those kinds of issues.
Replacement TFR is 2.1 for low mortality countries; in 2021, the OECD average was 1.58. If we talk about that shortfall, 0.52, how much of that shortfall is due to expense/workplace/career/education-related reasons, and how much due to other reasons? (I don't know.) If it is mostly due to expense/workplace/career/education-related reasons, targeting those factors may make a big difference; if it is mostly due to other reasons, targeting those factors might not make much difference at all.
About a month ago, when we came to visit our neighbor, she had a guest, whom she introduced as her cousin. Couple days ago, she had another guest, and what do you know: it's another cousin! I asked how many cousins does she have. Her and her cousin started to reminiscent and came up with an estimate of around fifty. My jaw dropped. Then they went down the memory lane, recalling their childhood and how they'd spend summers in the family house: legion of kids with few adults in sight.
My father had two brothers. One had (at least one that I know of) son. The other one had a son and a daughter. No two brothers live in the same country. I've only ever met one of my cousins, once. My mother was the only child.
But this was also the very common situation in my childhood years. Everyone I went to school with barely had any extended family. And once I started to think about what might have caused the difference: well, these things come to mind: my maternal grandmother had 11 siblings. One or two died in the war. A better half escaped the Communist regime. Those who didn't were sentenced to exile in Siberia. She and her sister were what's left of the family. That sister never married and had no children.
Similar, on my father's side, a bunch of relatives died in Holocaust. And even later on, through the Soviet times, the situation wasn't conducive to having many children. My parents, already, grew up in the world where cousins were rare.
It looks though like in some places in Europe, the war didn't affect the siblings situation so much, and even my generation had a chance to meet a bunch of cousins. The US seems to be similar in this respect, at least according to my wife's testimony, who would every now and then mention he cousin who is an architect / drug addict / screwed up by 'Nam / fashion model etc. There seems to be no shortage of cousins to draw on.
Our kid, in total, has three cousins. And there's unlikely to be more. Which is a new thing for the Western world, I guess, especially the parts not so much affected by the war. But this is how things have been for at least a generation in the East.
Even your friends, if you get to have any, will be a more shallow, and mostly online presence (what with the "loneliness epidemic" and everything), and will increasingly be people who have not learned the art of being with others, unless it's fully on their own terms (think spoiled single children vs children growing up with siblings).
You get to cling and bow to careers, employers, state, trends, peer groups, and so on, as a survival mechanism.
[1] We can spin it as a good thing, by cherry-picking families which did terrible things to their kids as representative of family life at large.
Having kids is basically never going to cause someone to go from rich (excess wealth and luxury) to actually poor (struggling to survive).
However, it definitely can be enough to take someone who is just barely getting by, making their car payments, enough food on their plate, etc. to start to struggle. Kids are very expensive.
No-one is not having kids because they want a second yacht. But there are a lot of people who genuinely cannot afford to survive with a child.
I guess if said cousins lived in the same town as we did or really close by this would ring more true. Seems like this is more an issue with losing community than cousins.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headline...
FWIW, it’s true of my kids too. But growing up, my cousins were in a different country and I wasn’t close. So my kids didn’t have an experience much different than mine.
Yes, headlines are meant to grab your attention, but equating this one with the garbage that usually gets a quick Betteridge Law link is a bit drastic.
People pondering the societal implications of rapid population decline is very relevant. I'm not going to get too upset over the title.
If you have ever seen the early Seven Up movies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series) ) - the sheer mass of Baby Boom children all growing up together is incredible. No doubt peer influence was crucial for many of them.
But humans grow up in many situations, including remote farms, small villages full of old people, etc. Lack of cousins or same-age peers might be more common now, but it's been happening forever.
Edit: the replies - y'all are out of touch. Visit an average family in the Midwest with a household income of < $100k/yr that doesn't own a home yet.
And I mean poorer in terms of actual living conditions on the ground.
Unfortunately I have shorted the children market by not breeding when younger. What's the appropriate way to invest in 2.5 children? I presume they are a very illiquid investment.
The other problem with cousins is that brothers and sisters move to distant locations so cousins are often inaccessible even if you have them.
Foster parent relationships are somewhere between zero and one of your own kids. They can be close or distant, depends on the relationship.
or just old enough to harvest whatever it is you're farming
more like 5-10 years
In those places, the older kids help raise the younger ones, and can also help the parents with their labor/begging/crime/prostitution.
Certainly that does sometimes translate into not having babies at all.
There are many towns and cities in the US with extremely low housing costs. Most of West Virginia is a good example as well.
The reason Shreveport always comes to mind when I think of cheap housing is because I always remember that John Carmack and John Romero owned a little lakehouse there and that's where they lived while making Doom.
When Bobby Jindal was running for governor the first time against Kathleen Blanco in 2004, she put out an ad that featured the nappiest, hair sticking up picture of Jindal you could possibly imagine and coupled it with the tagline “Wake up Louisiana, before it’s too late” (implied subtext: and you elect a black man)
I do hear she regretted this on her deathbed stricken with cancer. But more to the point, a friend of mine was at a polling place in Shreveport during that election and witnessed a fistfight between two voters in the parking lot over whether Bobby Jindal was in fact, black or not.
To your point, if more progressive people were willing to live outside of coastal cities, they could affect social change in places like Louisiana.
What it sounds like you are saying is that racism makes towns/cities outside of the coastal areas unlivable. That is simply not true.
And yet somehow places I visit (which lately has been between NY, Ohio, and Florida) has young families living in houses. I am not saying there's no challenge but your comment would imply that these houses are standing empty because nobody can afford them when in reality each one coming to the market is immediately snapped up mainly by families looking to expland.
If you're referring to people of child bearing age though the rate is lower.
Raising kids is hard work. Ideally you have them young and live close to your family so that you have grandparents to help with childcare.
But our society tells people to wait as long as possible to have kids, and to prioritize career over other things - so once people do have kids, if they ever do so, then often grandparents are too old or far away to fill that traditional role. So lots of people are stuck paying thousands a month for daycare.
Just one of many ways that our system finds innovative ways to extract money out of people for things that used to be free or part of being in a community.
I would bet this plays a large part - people today respect the difficulty in a way past parents previously did not. Birth rates are certainly declining but I would bet the rates of accidental infant/toddler death are down as well.
That said, I personally know parents that are just taunting SIDS with the way they ignore infant sleeping best practices even though they’ve read the books to know better.
Nowadays there's a widespread expectation that parents should organize activities, drive their kids' education, just be way more involved in their lives.
Issue with this now is how concentrated certain industries are. Here in the UK, if I want to work in software, you need to move to a handful of expensive cities. London, Oxford, Cambridge, maybe Bristol or Manchester. Maybe some others if you're happy in a non-software job. Certainly not the rural farming town I grew up in, or anywhere within hours of driving.
So people move away. And now I'm faced with either delaying kids so I can get reasonably set-up in a city where a 500sqft flat costs £300,000 or moving away from all my friends and maybe even further from my family to afford a house.
many families hire a live-in helper, who is typically a low-income migrant worker from a neighbouring country. due to space constraints only the most privileged can hire two or more. as it is with asian tradition, parents primarily involve themselves in the area of discipline and education, and everything else is left to the nannies. the low-income families who cannot afford a helper or the living space for a helper suffer from a lack of enforcing discipline or providing for a growing child and low-income children often grow up maladjusted to the modern working society.
singapore unfortunately, still suffers from a low replacement rate, so the foreign domestic worker (FDW, as it is known) policy while enough to move the dial away from the danger zone that is south korea, is still not enough to ensure singapore is growing comfortably. however, at this point i don't believe allowing
(the FDW policy is generous and broad-based enough to extend to working adults with elderly, which means that subsidies for domestic help pretty much extend to working adults through a significant part of their working life. families often qualify for significant subsidies taking care of multiple generations through several decades.)
However, some of the spaces created for the legal live-in helpers [I've seen in Hong Kong and Singapore] would be considered substandard in the US. I'm talking closet size rooms with no windows big enough for a single bed and a few shelves.
If the US would allow this domestic help and possibly the same rooms, child care would be much easier.
It's really not that hard. You just have to change expectations and lifestyle. I never thought of it as "work" per-se but rather an obligation and responsibility to people brought into the world. It's amazing really. It's probably not for everyone and if someone sees it the same way as doing actual work then maybe it isn't for them.
It’s work.
It isn't hard as in you don't have to be very qualified to do it.
It is hard in that it's physically (sometimes) and mentally (always) exhausting.
And yet you're expected to pay for it yourself and spent your free time for it. Parents should be paid to be parents.
A parent is wealthy beyond money. Besides, we get tax breaks and if you're not a decent earner you get free things for being a parent.
And I guess when I say it's not that hard - what I mean is that yeah there's effort involved, often time a lot. But it is made out to be this impossible thing. It's not. You figure it out and before you know it the really hard days are over.
So yeah it's work but that shouldn't dissuade anyone from having kids. Anything good takes effort.
What we did is mom pumped and put milk in bottles. She's go to be at like 7PM after a feeding off the tap and I'd take over and stay up until 2 or 3 to feed baby and change diapers every 2 or so hours. Then she'd be back at it in the early morning hours.
It only lasts a bit.
Obviously someone making that much could afford to have kids, but assuming tech hub (e.g. SF) cost of living, it’ll take a few years of salary like that to accrue enough financial padding to be certain that a chain of unfortunate events won’t put them out on the street once the cost of raising a family is added in.
This is why you see a lot of high earners waiting until the last second to have kids, if they do. Financial security like you have while making good money without kids is hard to let go of.
And these are all pretty weak reasons — people with kids do all of the things you’ve mentioned.
The true cost of end of life care
1. Is already socialized in many western countries
2. Impacts human capital allocation in countries
3. Requires other people’s children to take care of you. If there are no kids, society stops functioning.
4. Will continue to rise in price as there are fewer young people
When you consider that most old people do not fully fund their retirement even with existing subsidies, you can see that this is an odd proposition.
Some people’s work will be valuable enough to offset their end of life care. It will be an increasingly smaller number over time given trends.
We are way too many, and the #1 source of global warming is human activity. At one point we'll have to stop growing, so the system of how we pay for elderly care has to change.
The problem of elder care isn't purely financial. It's not the model of paying that's the problem. At the end of the day, (kinda oversimplified) money represents a fractional value of the work output of a population. The output of the population depends on the number of people working in productive roles. The value of the currency is related to the consistent output of services and confidence in the existence of your country.
Shifting over an increasing fraction of your population to elder-care is non productive. It has a tension with both stability of currency and value of currency.
It’s a normal and perfectly healthy reason to have children if you also love and cherish them. I would bet the number of parents having children for the sole and totally disinterested benefit of the children is approximately zero. The OP not caring about humanity tells me they’re profoundly selfish and therefore probably not capable of the love and cherish part though.
Certainly people have children for a variety of reasons, but if a big one is "who else will take care of me when I get old?", that's incredibly selfish, and not healthy at all. Loving and cherishing your children regardless doesn't change that.
I love how you've somehow twisted the person upthread's words into the idea that they don't care about humanity. This entire subthread is bizarre.
I respect my father more for telling me he actively doesn't place care expectations on me in his old age. "I made you, you are not responsible for me but I am responsible for you".
Does that mean I won't care for him? Of course not, but it's good to know I haven't come into existence just for that.
Why are we acting like everyone's lifestyle preferences are of paramount importance to everyone else's existence? OP is not taking from any other parents here, and there are still plenty more humans to make more humans.
Is there a hidden fear here that having an enjoyable childless life will somehow spread everywhere and we all die in a generation?
Presumably OP is in US and is not planning to have any kind of state pension or socialized healthcare when they are old?
Sure .. although some of those children will be older than the people they look after.
This morning my father delivered "Meals on Wheels" to 20 other elderly locals.
He was born in 1935 and will be 90 next year.
There are many older people, not all of whom immediately become bed and wheel chair bound at 60.
I remember my grandmother moving in with us for a while when I was a kid. It was miserable. Our house wasn't set up for another bedroom. My parents were both stressed out about it and it put a strain on their relationship. My grandmother certainly wasn't thrilled with the situation.
Certainly not all elder care situations are like that, but I bet grandma would have been way more comfortable in an assisted living situation, where people who are trained could have seen to her needs. And my immediate family would have been way more comfortable too.
The thing is that an elderly person in care can never compensate those who take care of them, because they do not work and do not produce anything. They can only scam their caretakers by paying with fake fiat money that was allocated to the elderly before their care takers were even born.
I interpreted this as not "I will have children so my children can look after me", but rather "I will have children so there will be younger people around, who can (amongst other things) look after older people and do other important things".
Based on that way of looking at it, I think that not having children but still benefiting from younger people is more selfish than not having children and benefitting from younger people (if either of these is indeed selfish).
Basically, I was questioning why it is more selfish to use a resource while contributing to that resource, rather than not contributing but still using.
Put another way, who is more selfish - a farmer who buys some vegetables, or a software developer who buys some vegetables? Yes, they are both paying for them, so they are not directly exploiting anyone. But if no-one wanted to be a farmer, then there would be no vegetables.
Yes, I know this analogy is a stretch, but hopefully you get what I mean. Anyway, I don't think that either having or not having children is inherently "selfish", but there are almost certainly selfish motivations for each.
If we are paying the fair market cost of hiring someone to be a carer, the cost of having them not do something else has to be realized. This will mean that cost of carers will skyrocket, meaning that people's care becomes more expensive. If we start to pay the true cost -- and have it paid directly -- then when population collapse happens, a ton of the elderly will die on the street.
Except for a few relics, nothing remains today of what the elderly made. The exception being real estate, and that's why the elderly demand to each become a millionaire to let go of any of their real estate.
It's not like today's elderly worked to build something for future generations. They worked to benefit themselves at the moment.
In general when somebody comes to you selling guilt and murky reasons to why you are indebted to them, that's an enemy and a scammer, seeking to leech from honest people. Whether that's an employer, a generation of elderly, the government, a guild or whoever.
You need to either give it to someone all in cash, or transfer all the money in whatever bank accounts you have into someone else's account. Until then, you are a hypocrite.
Your hackernews comment just happens to be some text in a database that has a value which is NOT agreed upon by the majority of the population.
So my point was, since you don't seem to also agree that your money is valuable, please give all your cash to someone who does. And please transfer all the money in your bank accounts to someone else's bank account that does value those numbers.
Until then you are a hypocrite.
> Cash is just paper, that happens to have an agreed upon value by the majority of the population.
There really is no such agreement, it is a belief system. And you know that "the majority of the population" has had no say in monetary policy, nor do they understand it. There is no democracy involved and has never been. Billions of dollars, euros and etc are conjured out of thin air and into the hands of the chosen ones as we speak.
Before cash started to rule everything around us, people would carry letters from kings, princes or other nobles, that would instruct subjects to provide the bearer with horses, lodging and hospitality. For example if they were travelling. Or if they were to lead a project. People had to work by decree, people received their benefits and etc by decree.
Just as the rulers today create an endless amount of money out of thin air, monarchs of the past would create noble titles out of thin air. With rights to estates and the servitude of the people who were born there and etc. People defending that oppressive and invented aristocracy system would say "it is the will and decree of God", just like you're now saying that today's oppressive and invented monetary system "is the will of the majority". Because most will always defend the status quo, no matter what.
If the money value is the will of the people, then when did the majority decide they wanted to have high inflation and even hyper inflation? I don't remember any such vote in any country, do you?
If everyone believes it, do they not agree on the same thing?
> And you know that "the majority of the population" has had no say in monetary policy, nor do they understand it.....
I never said they did. It doesn't change the fact that most people still value $1 the same amount.
> If the money value is the will of the people
I never said it was their will, I said they mutually agree to it's value.
> then when did the majority decide they wanted to have high inflation and even hyper inflation?
They didn't. The value of money (or anything) may go up and down over time, for any reason. But in a single moment most people will agree to the value of $1.
But anyway, back to my only point, since you think money is worthless, why don't you give all your money away? Why are you keeping it?
So until you give all your cash away, and transfer all the money in your bank accounts to someone else's bank account, you will remain a hypocrite.
If that's what you're stuck on, I'll gladly let you stay mentally stuck there.
> So until you give all your cash away, and transfer all the money in your bank accounts to someone else's bank account, you will remain a hypocrite.
Except for short-term liquidity you can be damn sure that I don't keep any fiat money in my possession, and neither should anybody else. That's why the stock market keeps going up, everybody wants to get rid off inflation currency as quick as they can.
I guess my incredible hypocrisy is much worse than the geriatric rulers completely destroying the wealth of their nations in less than a generation by enslaving young workers with their fake monetary system.
I don't talk to my parents and have no interest in taking care of them, because, like you said, they are horrendous people. I think you're right that the entitlement to your kids time is something that comes with poor parenting.
That doesn't mean that on-net people's kids won't take care of them. Like everything with your kids, it's a two way street.
I’d settle for a much higher tax rate for the voluntarily childless to very inadequately offset the lack of contributing to the next generation. Probably the best way to implement this is that the child tax credit should be much bigger.
Maybe that is what to do, give tax credits on the order of an income. That way you are basically tax free while having young children, but you'll still want a job when they are a little bit older.
Think if it this way: in the childlessness-tax scenario, the parents would be paying society in-kind by raising kid(s), and you'd paying society with money instead. You're both paying, just in different ways.
Taxes also aren't some kind of payment-in-exchange for services thing. It's foolish to complain about programs because you don't personally benefit from them.
Can’t they care for others that aren’t their children? What about people without children who work for the betterment of entire communities?
There are many people with kids who have revealed the value they place on the sustainability of the environment, democratic society, or the economy through the lifetime of their children, let alone their children's children, to be zero. Why would you assume that the childless are any more selfish, as a group? Why can one not care about the continuance and betterment of humanity without one's own direct descendents being involved?
Likewise it would be easy to exclude rapist fathers from any scheme of this sort.
GP didn't write a moral judgement, but a practical one. People who don't have/care for kids don't have long-term skin in the game, therefore their influence on the shape of future society should be downweighed. There is a logic to that.
> some guy who's condom broke
Yes, this is how a lot of families are made. Unplanned != unwanted != unloved.
> or a rapist are more moral than someone who is infertile
Again, not about morality. GP's logic isn't about whether one's good or bad, but whether one has skin in the game of continued improvement of society and civilization.
But I guess a better way of scoping it is whether or not the person is a parent (EDIT: or in legal terms, caregiver?). Infertile people can become parents too (and that could be an indication of extra special caring about the future generation). And then people can be biological parents, but not actual parents, e.g. if they give their child away.
FWIW, I don't exactly agree with the poster on this. I feel that parents are biased towards near-term almost by definition: caring and nurturing children is an immediate job. Whether or not a typical non-parent is likely to be a "fuck you, got mine" kind of person, I find that parents tend to become more of a "fuck you, my kids got theirs" kind of people. Not out of ill intent - just more of "concrete needs of my kids today trump abstract speculative needs of their generation a few decades from now".
Maybe that person doesn't really believe that, but if so, should probably be clearer about their position and not resort to veiled personal attacks.
Particularly with people who are old with no kids, I don't think they are totally cynical, but they do seem to have an incentive to vote society into schemes where they are taken care of by younger people, at no cost to themselves or their descendants. For instance they could decide the government needs to take out a massive 30 year loan to pay for care homes to be built.
But I also think that just because you have kids, that doesn't mean you're completely aligned with a longer term future. There's going to be a lot of desperate older people needing help from the few young people who are left, and that goes regardless of whether they made any of those young people. I mean sure, if you have kids you are less likely to be as short-termist as a childless old person.
I think it's a major issue that doesn't get talked about enough. People are happy to say "oh but plenty of old people care about society" which is true, but there's also plenty of foreigners who care about society, who can't vote. And it ignores the actual problem that we will be facing, which is that there will be fewer working people supporting older, non-working people. We need a system for equitable power sharing between generations.
Like a sibling poster, it reminds me of all the religious people who claim that atheists can't be moral because we don't have a god to guide us.
I do have skin in the game, even without kids. On a basic level, I care about the rest of my life, which hopefully will last another 50 years. I care about the planet and about future generations because that's the right thing to do, because short-termism and excessive consumption is a cancer.
And even if I won't have kids, I have nieces and nephews, and I have dear friends who have children. I want them to be able to grow up and live in a good, safe, comfortable world.
Frankly I find your point of view profoundly condescending and insulting. You don't need to have children to care about the future.
Hell, I would bet that childfree people are more likely to support "future-preserving" plans than parents, on average. I'm thinking climate change, Fridays For Future.
Anecdotally, of the 4 sets of parents I know well enough to know their political opinions, none of them are really concerned about preserving the world for their children. I'm vegan, car-free, childfree and vote for the "green" options.
This exact same sentence could be used to describe parents who bring children into a world rapidly becoming less hospitable due to climate change, the full extent of which they won't be alive to suffer.
Also, instincts are nothing to be proud of, they're just dumped on us by nature.
But instincts are something to be proud of. They're a product of extremely complex processes that occur over incredible timescales. At a minimum that's remarkable and interesting.
You're misunderstanding him. I think it's more on the line of "freeloaders shouldn't have a say on what work gets done."
The GGP literally said "I don't really care about the preservation of the human species. I'm going to be dead in the next 40 years or so, why should I care?" If someone has that attitude, and explicitly rejects responsibility to go all-in on selfishness, they've pretty clearly given up the moral right to be part of decision-making for the future.
I think there's two aspects where you misunderstand:
1. The original comment is ambiguous about whether they think their "voice...in what happens in government and politics" should be formally removed, voluntarily given up, or just passively ignored.
2. I think simplistically framing this as mere "disagreement" fails to capture what's actually being discussed, and ignores important aspects of governance. It's sort of (but not exactly) like the question if insurrectionists should keep their places in the government they're subverting (e.g. should the Confederate States have kept their seats in Congress, ability to vote for the presidency, have it's members hold important positions in the US government, etc. while they were rebelling)?
Glory to our future!
Come on, that's just idiotic sarcasm that doesn't even understand the GP's point, let alone actually skewer it. It's as stupid as trying to mock childfree people by sarcastically advocating a total ban on having children, like in ZPG (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069530/).
>I don't really care about the preservation of the human species. I'm going to be dead in the next 40 years or so, why should I care?
and I took it to it's logical conclusion. That's not "fascist", it's just a reaction to a trite but increasingly common belief amongst techies.
And you said we should deny political rights to people without children, a pretty mundane life choice all things considered. You're a straight up fascist plain and simple. Good job.
I weep for your offspring as they're probably poisoned by your brand of cruel morality.
You already admitted that you don't.
Equating not wanting to have children with not caring about society is absurd. While we're throwing around ridiculous ideas: if anyone should have no say in politics of society, it's people who make these kinds of blanket judgments.
This argument cuts both ways.
After reading your post, I’ve reached the same conclusion regarding your opinions.
That said, while they do require some sacrifice, at least for myself -- it has been by far the most enjoyable part of my life so far.
If most Homo sapiens had the same attitude, the species would have gone extinct since forever lol.
You can have any personal goal you'd like, but from the evolution perspective, the purpose of any living organism is to survive and to reproduce, hence preserving its own species. That's why.
And maybe Earth would be a better place.
That's an underappreciated point. Kids in daycares and kindergartens get sick a lot. Those places are pathogen swapping grounds. Especially early on, you may have your kid 2 weeks in, 2 weeks out on average. And the "on average" is a killer, too - you can't schedule when your kid will get sick, so you're effectively on-call all the time anyway, and have to have a job compatible with you just taking off in the middle of the day and getting a day or two of leave, on the spot, at random.
If I had a kid, I'm sure I'd love them, and derive joy from them, but I don't believe the trade off is worth it. Maybe I'll end up being wrong about that, but I'd rather grow old and regret not having kids than regret having them. I think people shouldn't have kids unless they are really sure they want to be a parent. Anything less sounds like a big mistake.
Anyhow, have you actually talked to your childless peers about this? Hopefully there are at least some with whom you feel comfortable bringing up this kind of topic, with people who will give you a thoughtful, non-judgmental answer. I think you might find that they all have a variety of reasons for not having kids, and money may not be a big factor.
The - natural - way - of - being - a - human!!!
Natural, like sleeping. Eating. Sure, sometimes kids stress you. But then, nature has made sure that you'll mostly remember the good moments. You don't have to be overly perfect to have kids. Just don't be an overly bad person and talk to them often. Whatever environment they get born in: they will be ok with it. You don't need to be grandiose. Do what you naturally can, what you enjoy. And they'll enjoy it.
Humans are made to adapt to having kids. Kids are made to adapt to non-perfect parents. Just avoid the obviously bad stuff and all is good. Your life is good. You looking back on your life will be good.
What if they prefer Instagram, Cycling and Reading Books rather than raising children? Why are you so concerned about other people's lifestyles? Are you going to pay their rent or help them with their chores?
I decided to have a child, and it was a conscious decision I made with my partner, fully aware that our previous lifestyle would be no more. Deciding not to have a child would have been equally as valid.
I find it funny that this discussion elicits so much passion from people that decided to have children. Do you need validation from other people to justify your own decisions?
Whenever I am asked about it, I say that you should not have children unless you are absolutely certain that you want a child in your life, and that your life is stable enough to accommodate one. The world sucks even in the best of times. To condemn someone to existence when their lives will be made more difficult is selfish and cruel.
What happened that after a few hundred thousand years of having families we suddendly need to be "absolutely certain" to have kids? Human nature is the EXACT other way round. What we currently see is an outgrow of pure hedonism. It kills societies (literally, at least in the sense of "no new life").
Concerning "being fully aware that our previous lifestyle would be no more": this in itself partly shows the problem. So our casual life choices are in such a way that it is completely uncompatible with having a family? Sure - when you're 20, you might not be ready. But do we, as a society, promote lifestyles that even when you're 30 are impossible to combine with having kids? Then maybe our lifestyle as a society is wrong, what we tell ourselves to be "good life" is wrong.
And then again... maybe we take having kids too seriously? I really can't say having missed out on much since having kids (and no, we have no nanny). We simply did the stuff people "fear". We went out for dinner together two weeks after our first one was born (together with the baby). And we repeated, until today. We went on those 10 hour flights. We explored foreign countries. We visit museums with modern art. We spent months abroad. Is it always easy? Nope. But it was, overall, not too different from the life before. Kids get used to stuff, parents get used to stuff. Most of us can do it if we let go of the instagrammy thought of having to be perfect. And this is how society always was and always will be.
EDIT: In the current medical climate where child mortality is very, very low, of course, as a society we CAN afford to have less kids overall. And as long there are a few people who LIKE to have 3 or more kids, we can afford to have some more people having no kids as all. I don't promote growing society ad infinitum. But having sub-replacement birth rates will NOT make our countries better for sure (and the economy is my very LAST concern). France 10-15 years ago can lead as an example with a healthy rate of births, wealth and personal freedom.
As someone without children, I find it strange that I'm perceived as living some hedonistic lifestyle. There are indeed material concerns when it comes to the idea of children, but they tend more towards maintaining housing and especially for me who has some medical needs, health insurance. I'm certainly not traveling all the time or living it up with a fancy brunch every weekend; I'm actually quite happy with a modest living arrangement and diet, but even that seems to get more expensive as time goes on, and my job tenures get shorter as the layoffs come quicker.
You don't feel like you've missed out on much since having children and I think that's a great attitude; I don't feel like I've missed out on much since not having children. We can both be correct in this because we are each our own people with our own wants.
Much of what you write are modernity made problems. When we are really getting deep into what is going on, then YOU/ME/WE should not be living on our own alone anyway. YOU/ME/WE, in a healthy society, should be living in a multigenerational home where close to NOTHING changes if there is one more kid running around. OF COURSE having kids is a much more difficult choice when we all have to live on our own, only together with our partner (with which we also have to maintain a PERFECT relationship because there is no other person around or to go to to cool down a bit anyway), we all have to pay for our housing ALONE, plus taxes, plus (in many countries) health insurance, childcare etc. . A more humanly organized society would have much more of us simply live together, share more stuff. But most of us have to start at zero. Which some say is "fair". But in reality, it is making us poorer. Financially, emotionally.
I'd commend you for that. Not helicopter parenting is the way to go.
Also not my problem. I'll be dead.
> What happened that after a few hundred thousand years of having families we suddendly need to be "absolutely certain" to have kids? Human nature is the EXACT other way round.
Human nature was to live out as a hunter-gatherer in some African savannah. Why would this hold any power over how people choose to live their lives in the Year of our Lord 2024?
> Concerning "being fully aware that our previous lifestyle would be no more": this in itself partly shows the problem.
You sound oddly interested in how I make life changing decisions that don't affect you in any way.
This is another example of a thought pattern often encountered. The thought of "being free to do what ever I feel like" and not caring.... is a meme.
> Human nature was to live out as a hunter-gatherer in some African savannah. Why would this hold any power over how people choose to live their lives in the Year of our Lord 2024?
You are taking a thing where Humans have proven to be quite flexible (the style of living) and bring it to a discussion that is, at its base, biological (no babies: no society). Sure, we can now say that it all doesn't matter if our more and more babyless societies go to die.... but is this really the way to go on?
So why do you want to live now?
There's nothing to be sad or happy about it. It is just a fact of life. Like gravity.
If there was no economic problem due to the decline in population, there was no problem, period.
The same is with countries and their societies.
I will not be that defeatist to say "my country/my region/my continent can go down because there are others". And to say that is not racist.
In the current order, I sort of do, but that whole Westphalian order of "countries" is artificial (and also relatively new in its specifics, though of course kingdoms and empires go back far longer): we're all related and share one biosphere, and more recently we share one globalized economy. The truth is that we will sink or swim together -- if we have abandoned houses in Peoria because American-born people aren't having their own children, that is an opportunity to house people who come from somewhere without enough housing or infrastructure. The only barrier to this happening is our suicidal apartheid regime of borders and passports that's even newer than the Westphalian system!
Borders are not erected to help you, an ordinary citizen. They are there to divide you against the ordinary citizens on the other side of them.
Do not over-think it. Just be careful to pick a partner who shares the same values and then get on with it.
The natural way of being a human for thousands of years was to hunt and gather, and then die before 40. But that didn't stop us from progressing past that point.
If kids stay one year olds forever no one would have kids, you'd go insane. But that's not the case.
Personally, I think it is that expectations rise, both for your own life and for that of children once your purchasing power increases. It's harder to give it up than to not have it in the first place. Having children increasingly has to compete with a lot of other rewarding things that require far less commitment and far lower costs.
The same great-great grandfathers second wife likewise "lost" a brother that was almost certainly taken into care while she and her older brother were left to fend for themselves as teenagers after being orphaned when their father died after having cared for them alone for a few years after their mother died.
My grandmother's mother - married to one of the children of the same great-great grandparents - lost contact with her siblings in her early teens when they were all taken into care when her dad proved unable to deal following her mother's death. While she found a couple of her sisters again later, her dads failure to cope means even now we've not been able to figure out what happened to the rest of her siblings.
While divorce is more common, abandonment, be it intentional due to the difficulty of obtaining a divorce, or unintentional (poverty, disease, death), or absence for noble reasons (e.g. going off to earn money to support the family) still left a lot of people raising children on their own in often awful conditions.
There's a marked increase in the number of situations like that for each generation further back in my family tree among the people I can track.
Folks often start out heavily in debt, then they must work competitive jobs which grow more competitive over time to tread water. The combination of sleep debt, social isolation, and general anxiety of going bust is a subjective difficulty which belies the relative comfort of modern life.
This is born out at least partially in the data where "occupational burnout" affects some 65% of employees in the last year.
https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/employee-burnout-2023-p....
E.g. my grandmothers half brother worked in New York Harbour from he was 9. Most of her uncles and aunts worked from early teens, and often moved from home at that age because their parents couldn't afford to keep providing for them and needed them to get employment. Often in backbreaking work that ruined their bodies, and in some cases killed them young.
People might well have a subjective experience that they have it tough, but if so we're failing in teaching people history.
There are certainly regional differences in housing affordability, but the average American lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35.
[0] https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html
[1] edit since there's some confusion—here's the direct link to the table I'm citing from, entitled "Quarterly Homeownership Rates for the U.S. and Regions: 1964 to Present"—https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx
[2] "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: Fourth Quarter 2022 and 2023"—https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx
The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting.
The algorithm has turned (some) people into whiners and doomers. It really sucks to watch them take defeatist attitudes on everything in life.
I see lots of these young 20-somethings on Reddit thinking their lives are over. It's absurd. They have their entire lives ahead of them, and all it takes is one break into a career.
They even think climate change is going to "kill all of us" before they're elderly. That's not even what the science says.
On the topic of having children, though - people aren't having kids because they're choosing to focus on themselves.
There are ten times as many forms of entertainment today as there were in the 1980s, and people can endlessly consume content in their hands. You can go glamping at a music festival, post it on Instagram, and hook up with new friends and romantic partners you meet. All incredibly easily. Our culture has become built around experience and consumption.
I know people in their 40s that are partying, going to clubs and concerts, doing bar crawls, cruises, visiting abroad, jet setting, and climbing the corporate ladder while living incredibly active lives. They don't want to give up their lifestyle to suddenly have to raise children.
The gist of it is: There are worlds and circumstances into which people want to bring kids. We mostly failed to create that world and those circumstances. If tou want to know what a solution looks like look at western democracies with high birth rates. E.g. France, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark.
The rest is probably due to individualism. Kids cost time and energy and capitalism tells us we should live our best lives. And the best live does not involve herding 6 kids, even if they are your own.
We created this world willingly, and the low birth rate is a consequence — and so is the need for migration if we wanna stay wealthy. The thing is: now that the genie is out of the bottle we are not gonna be able to force people to have kids. We can just create circumstances in which they are willing to.
I am in my 30s and I am unsure if I will ever be able to retire. I am sure however that I will have to change my job and career multiple times throughout my life. Despite me being financially well off, I am not sure if I would be able to support kids in the future. This is not about being whiny. I just think if I had kids it is my responsibility to throw them into a world that can sustain them. This one can't.
Thought experiment for all the unrestrained free-market folk: how can the free hand of the market can solve for low birthrates? Bonus points if the solution doesn't involve government-issued visas.
tax cuts for families, subisidies for child birth and care - none of these are contrary to the idea of a free competitive market
Moreover, a free market can benefit from regulation and certain socialist policies (eg. transportation and education).
This inner desire wasn't selected for strongly in the past because there were other mechanisms to nudge people to procreate (social norms, lack of birth control), but I expect it will play a much bigger role in the following generations.
What does free market have to with it?
Those countries all have a fertility rate [0] almost identical to the US - three of them are lower if you look at 2020 figures. All of them have been relying on immigration [1] to maintain their demographics, with various levels of backlash in recent years. The US is still ahead of all but Ireland on that immigration list.
In Ireland at least, the narrative around the "housing crisis" and people being priced out of starting families is far stronger than what I get from US media. So I think you need to look elsewhere.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_f...
[1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/net-migration-r...
Apparently (I can't find the source for this, but it stuck in my mind), faced with a glut of production after WW2, the US could either consume more, or work less. The choice was made to consume more, not least because the industrialists could cream off a larger slice of the pie that way.
Similarly regarding manufacturing and production glute, if the hard capital is fixed then so too typically is the hard production (not the case for many kinds of capital but it is for manufacturing) or at least capped. Just like with consumption, it’s a problem of what portion of capital is being expended on increasing production of things for children (housing, schools, kid stuff) or not. In both cases this is ultimately driven by the supply and demand stemming from parents themselves. But I don’t think there is a feedback loop because capitalism does not itself care whether capital goes to kids or not, only whether there is enough demand for capital expenditure to be profitable.
I know a lot of people who spend their money on experiences because they genuinely believe they won't get a retirement, so they might as well enjoy their life while they can. I'm part of this group. I don't think the world will literally be over by then, but the future looks bleak. We've also been drilled from birth that you should never have a child if you can't afford it, and people are taking that advice to heart. And because you can't afford your home on a single income anymore, more and more parents are having to rely on childcare, which is itself expensive.
The issues are just compounding. If you just want to believe that everyone is too enamored by their phones to procreate... that's your prerogative, but yikes.
Is a bad counterexample, as that's still a good, high-paying (union!!!) job. But aside from that tiny gripe you're not wrong about the rest.
In 1990 it was about 25k with prices about 150k
House prices are about 100k too high, they should be 300k not 400k
One reason for this is more people rely on two incomes to pay for housing, so more money is available for housing, so money transfers from future debt of millenials to existing assets of boomers and gen x.
But on top of that it means two incomes means harder to have kids due to child care.
Maybe we're also stuck in something of a vicious cycle.
More people not having kids leads to more double incomes. More double incomes means more money to pay higher prices. The market seems to be bearing the higher prices just fine, so they continue to climb...
It’s not something an individual can change though. It’s a societal level problem.
to be fair it was unthinkable the day before yesterday too. in the history of human civilisation, that kind of setup has only been possible in a handful of countries, for a few skin colours, for a couple of decades. fueled by burning cheap fossil fuels taken from poorer countries
Expectations for quality of life were lower, sure, but the problem of not being able to find a place to live anywhere near your family or job, that is relatively new and getting worse.
> in a handful of countries, for a few skin colours, for a couple of decades. fueled by burning cheap fossil fuels taken from poorer countries
Also: I know it's trendy to make everything about skin colours these days, but that's a distinct USA-ian bias. The rest of the world doesn't work that way.
I won't argue against exploitation of poorer countries as that, indeed, was a big theme in the last century or two. However, note that whatever many hard problems people in those poorer countries have, affordable housing isn't one of them.
Europe's industrialized genocidal tribalism of 20th century, the modern islamic experience as an immigrant in Europe, 21st century genocide in Africa and the Middle East, Japan's war crimes in east asia during WW2. Where is this rest of the world you speak of?
The rest of the world is where we can distinguish these different reasons, motivations and patterns, instead of lumping them together with racial discrimination and calling everything "racism".
If we want to say "The US has been bad", I'm on board and wholeheartedly agree. But using "The Rest of the World" as the counterexample, I'm not sure that will hold up.
I imagine we broadly agree and would love to have a cup of coffee with you some day!
You can do that today in some parts of the US.
Was there a time when you could do that in NYC? Or San Francisco? Maybe. When the city was down in the dumps and housing prices dropped. Or if you were willing to buy in crappy neighborhoods or on the edge of the city.
It makes me think of my great grandparents. They have a beautiful house in a central location in a major Canadian city worth North of $2.0M. And they did it on the single income of a teacher! I weep for those times.
But oh yeah, when they actually bought the house, it was on the edge of the city where nobody wanted to live. Oh and my grandfather picked up extra jobs to make sure his family of 5 had everything they needed.
There was never a time when it came easy. When people say they can't afford a home what they mean is "I can't afford a house in this specific city that checks all my boxes".
Note that despite the above, in 1950 women did often have jobs. It wasn't the "ideal" and it was less common (and even less common if you had kids), but plenty of women had jobs.
"Typical" is doing some really heavy lifting there given the kind of housing stock available in, say, East Coast urban areas. Most of those remotely-affordable houses are a hundred years old in the Boston area, for example.
My son (in college) probably won’t be able to afford much of a house in the Bay Area, austin, etc. but originally he was going to become an electrician in Watertown, NY. You can get a house for $120k there, which seems doable on a 50k income.
I can't remember the last time I saw a dining room in a new house, anecdotally.
My grandparents raised 5 kids in a 900 sq foot home. They weren't poor. That was the typical home being built in the working class suburbs of Detroit in the early 1950s. Average new home being built today is twice that size for a smaller household.
According to a internet search it seems about half of women had driver's licenses. So this is not accurate. Anecdotal, but I just skimmed The Donna Reed show episode descriptions and a 1961 episode has her fighting a parking ticket, another 1961 episode has her daughter learning to drive.
https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/pcharm/article/vie...
the US, and certain parts of Europe, were mostly spared this, and as a result could make crazy money because they were the only source of advanced labor around.
it wasn't like that in the Guilded Age or Roaring 20s or Great Depression -- there was a reason all of those labor movements and riots happened then; wouldn't have happened if a one-income mailman could buy a house.
that was a one-off, a time when half the world blew up a few years before.
That kind of thing, at least to me, seemed to get old pretty quickly. Probably more importantly though, is that we all get old at some point. When fewer and fewer people have children of their own, what happens when the bulk of people get past retirement age? I think it's a huge problem from both an economic standpoint (if there's no productive workers to keep things going, is the state really going to be able to support you in better than awful conditions as you age?) and from an individual and cultural standpoint.
Our house prices, North of Dallas and deep in the suburbs - far from the bay areas and Seattles, have doubled. That includes my home. People in our profession usually have to live by big cities, like Dallas. But the homes are ridiculously priced and it's insane. My juniors have no hope of owning a home that is big enough to raise a family without years of saving. And they're college educated engineers, some of them married with dual incomes.
$18k/yr is a lot to spend on anything when you're making $20/hr for sure, but if you've got two professional people making $75-100k/yr each it becomes a very manageable expense and nobody considers staying home to save that.
Once you get to that point, it gets harder to justify having someone work just to take home an extra $20k a year. It starts making more sense for one person to stay home (or work a part-time gig that lets them still raise their children) and the other person to try to make a bit more money on their end instead.
My parents got around the daycare cost problem by my mother running a daycare out of the home, so she was making money while still able to raise us. But I imagine that's become so much more risky nowadays (like legal issues, parental trust, etc) that it probably wouldn't be worth doing that anymore.
And as soon as we both graduated high school she stopped doing it and went back into the workforce elsewhere.
even then, I'm not crazy with the idea of random strangers raising my kids. being "qualified" to run a daycare is mostly paperwork. plus I work remotely, and that means I can see my kid 3 times a day, even if I can't really stick around to do serious parenting in between meetings.
my wife's people are also around, retired teachers no less, so having them pop in on the regular helps a immensely. they had 3 kids, several grandkids, and have educational backgrounds in early childhood development, and I trust them to do everything they can to take care of my kid, even if it means occasionally giving them extra ice cream (but, usually, it's grandpa reading books or working on basic math with them, etc.).
An extra $20k/yr is huge for most people. Median household income is around $80k. I've heard it's more like $100k for married couples with kids, but can't find that Stat. With either number(or even 75% of those after tax), that's a large bump (or subtraction).
And once you get to that level, the person keeping the job getting a new job for a $10k-$20k bump starts becoming feasible (I got a >$60k bump when I last switched jobs), and that can make up the difference right there.
Then you have one person who can take care of the children and have time and energy to help with cooking and cleaning (keeping those costs down, especially if you were getting a lot of takeout before), and can save even more money.
There's plenty of families making this decision nowadays, it's not a hypothetical. It doesn't always make sense for every couple, but the marginal increase of income doesn't always make sense for all the added stress of trying to raise children while having two full-time jobs and the house not completely falling apart.
We don't even have children, and we aren't able to fully keep up with cooking and cleaning on two full-time jobs, we just don't have the leftover energy afterwards.
And $10-20k isn't a huge bump between jobs. I've gotten that much of a bump, or more, at least six times throughout my career. And I wasn't always a software engineer, so it's not just because I'm in a lucrative career.
I haven't gotten it every time, but often enough that this shouldn't be impossible at least once in someone's career if they're extra motivated by switching to a single income household (unless it's a field known for low salaries, like maybe teachers can't expect that much of a bump, unfortunately).
I'd like to get less takeout. I'd be fine with just lunchmeat on bread or something microwaved for most of my meals, but my wife won't. She insists on a 'proper meal' every day, so on weeks we don't cook those (which almost always take me about 1.5-2 hours to cook) we tend to get a lot of takeout. I hate how much money we spend on it, but we can afford it.
House upkeep has been a challenge. Both of us have been pretty low energy after work, so during the week not much more tends to get done besides dishes, sometimes cooking, and laundry.
And then on the weekend we might be out pretty much all day both days (I work from home, so I feel more of a need to socialize on the weekends to make up for it, but even just extended family social obligations can suck up a weekend) or trying to relax from a long week, so not much tends to get done there either.
And so slowly things that need doing start accumulating, until it becomes this big thing that takes a lot of work (and some proper time off) to tackle.
I know it's not just me either. I know several friends and coworkers that hire maids to keep up with housework. People I know aren't making a ton of money comparatively so I wonder how they afford it. We can afford it but we kind of need to get the house up to a certain level before it's even worth hiring a maid (have to do enough decluttering, for example).
Also doesn't help that I keep saying "Well next week let's do better." and it keeps not happening for one reason or another.
In my area, secondary ed teacher with similar education and and yoe make as much as I do.
But can we talk about how every single unit of time seems to be distorted like it was written in some relativistic hellscape? Any 30 minute recipe takes just over an hour, any "from scratch" recipe takes me half the day.
Some choose to stay home for other reasons.
I find it interesting how income tends to segregate with marriage, and how that exasperates some inequalities.
Having kids for those highly compensated dual income homes seems narcissistic when you get to the root of it. Like why have kids if we're outsourcing their raising to daycare and schools. The we only care about their accomplishments and leaving them with a large inheritance or paying for a fancy school. Then they go off to live mostly separate lives. Look at how well my kid is doing because I set them up in life, even though I barely raised them and rarely see them now. I don't know?
Ad hominem means "against a specific person". He made a general argument. Might be good or bad, but in no way it was an ad hominem. Arguing how a group of people conflate or tend to misrepresent this or that, is not an ad hominem.
I just drove by a new development [in TX], with brand new homes that start at 1800/mo for a 3 Bedroom. Financing by the developer.
So if you get out of Dallas or Austin you will find affordable housing.
If Dallas or Houston or Austin had decent mass transit out to those areas that'd be one thing, but they wouldn't be very "mass", and therein lies one of the problems. Car culture increases isolation and generally shits up the world ever further; somewhere like a YOLO development in the suburbs to exurbs is deleterious to human flourishing and saying "well just buy something where you need a car for everything", as opposed to like the one-off Home Depot run or something, is just trading problems.
The same narrative plays out over and over again. "I can't afford a house with an easy drive to a supermarket and library, and I want to be carless."
Well yeah, so does everybody else, which is why that type of housing is expensive.
The problem, fundamentally, is that we, collectively and as a country, need to create more good places, rather than to exile people to the bad but affordable ones. We need a concerted effort to have strong towns and to put cars at the edge and not the center of those towns in order to have a healthy community future, and just sneering that you can buy a house in the hinterlands is both non-responsive and cruel to boot.
That's the system - resource scarcity and preference. If you live in a densely populated area, prices tend to be higher because real estate is constrained. Zoning won't fix all of that because many people have a preference for SFH, larger sizes, etc. You end up with options and amenities, but it will cost more due to the consolidation. Or you end up with space, needing to drive to amenities, and cheaper prices largely due to less competition.
Worse than some places with public transportation, but better than a lot.
Point remains, that there is plenty of affordable housing in the US. It's just not where people want to live, thus supply/demand.
No amount of "fuckcars" ideology will matter here, some people actually prefer driving. I know I do, I don't want to be stuck in a subway or bus.
That is not affordable housing.
TX, too conservative for anything like Prop13 and tollways owned by very smart Spaniards.
the number of people working remotely, even now, is still comparatively small.
doesn't matter if the housing rates are 50% lower if your only options are minimum wage at some chain (dollar general, chik fil a, etc.), or scraping for one of the few non-wagie gigs.
that doesn't fix the problem, that just means you're getting paid less, while house prices may have roughly the same ratio of income-to-cost that you'd find in DFW or ATX.
and in exchange now you need a car, need to drive constantly, and have fewer amenities and choices (maybe save for access to churches or walmarts).
shit, even far flung burbs of Austin like Taylor and Hutto are getting pricy compared to when I was last out there. Hutto Hippo oughta make a reappearance and start eating the carpetbaggers who keep moving in around there.
Unrelated; what do you think "ad hominem" means?
While it may be too doomer, it’s worthwhile to listen and understand the struggles of people who aren’t you to understand what’s coming. Certainly home ownership is rarer even for millennials and Genz is likely going to have even lower rates (its a little too early to compare since they’re too young for it)
Looking at the data, certainly not: https://x.com/noahpinion/status/1649492485968891904?s=46&t=C...
These aren't automatic, though. Who's to say they aren't produced by policy that's often done first in SF first?
A lot of people in the rest of the country tend to think "Oh, that's just dysfunctional California politics, we'll vote in different policies and things will go differently for us." Yes, you will vote in different policies. No, things will not go differently for you. California voted in different policies too - remember that it's the source of the Reagan Revolution, the hippie generation, the Chinese Exclusion Act, all sorts of policies that took hold nationally but are now the antithesis of what California stands for.
At the root of this is a misperception of the power of politics. Most ordinary people think that laws are laws and the people who make the laws have ultimate power. California (and U.S. history in general) proves that laws are reactions to specific social and demographic forces, and the laws reflect the shape of those forces. Economics drives politics and technology drives economics.
This problem isn't particular to the Democratic Party. Other states now have single party Republican governments with similar levels of dysfunction and corruption.
The top two system by the way was a popular ballot initiative championed by Schwarzenegger to remove the gridlock from the state and remove the power of individual parties.
Ironically Schwarzenegger came to power because of shenanigans the Bush administration and Enron were playing with California’s power grid to remove Gray Davis, a popular up and comer who could be a threat.
So in essence, your complaint that only democrats win in California and somehow that’s because of the Democratic Party is ironic because single party rule in California is due to direct efforts by Republicans to make it thus. It just turned out that the federal politics of the GOP shifted the state very solidly blue and turns out single party rule by Democrats seems to be quite popular given how the state flourished in the years following.
There was no complaint. I don't see the point in such a partisan way of thinking.
> single party rule by Democrats seems to be quite popular given how the state flourished in the years following
This doesn't seem to be the case now. Lots of people are leaving California, as far as I can tell[0].
[0] https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-m...
The migration data you cite says that the people leaving California are generally lower-income households without higher education. The people entering California tend to be highly educated and have very well-paying jobs [1]. California's housing stock is more or less fixed; actual housing construction is round-off error to the current population. What's happening is that high-earning immigrants are outbidding lower-income residents for the fixed supply of housing, and then faced with soaring housing costs, those lower-income residents are moving to states where their income places them higher on the social pecking order.
[1] https://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-highly-educated-immigr...
Basically the trend of pushing out lower income people is continuing because California still struggles to keep CoL under control.
Maybe shifts in housing dynamics happen first in cities then spreads to the suburbs, then the exurbs, then rural areas. Or maybe it's just due to how cities are governed, how many people live there, and how much new housing you get in any one year?
Bay Area in 2000 was complaining about illegal immigration, bilingual education, and the lights not staying on, all of which are contemporary issues facing the rest of America from 2015 onward. Bay Area in 2010 was in relative boom times from the tech industry, which again is spreading nationwide as tech jobs start getting more dispersed (though it may reverse thanks to RTO). Starting in 2012, housing prices became utterly unaffordable, which again started spreading nationwide around 2022.
Give it another 5-10 years and yes, people will probably be walking through a Walgreens in western Minnesota shoving everything they can into their bags.
hint: it doesn't
Texas is hardly the rest of America.
It was allowed because it was politically convenient - they were tied into Bush’s inner circle and the energy problems were convenient in making Gray Davis unpopular and causing his recall to then install a Republican governor by the name of Arnold instead. Ironically Arnold created reforms within the political structure of California to solidify Democratic control of the state.
If you’re not familiar with that, look up how Enron fucked with the California power grid and the Bush administration prevented California from discovering it nor making changes to stabilize the grid (or something along those lines - I may have gotten some of the details wrong).
There's a peculiar form of blindness that strikes the Urbanite, as if there are no other places to live.
The people who live in flyover country are barely even recognizable as human, so you might as well ask me to move to Mars! How the hell am I going to be seen in public drinking my $12 microbrews or pretending to appreciate the Moma so that other people know I'm the correct class of person? God, what would my parents think? I'd rather die than live there, so that place doesn't even exist for me.
High population density also (generally) means more social activities, which can be important for some people (like myself). Living in a rural area kinda scares me because I'm afraid I'd be quite lonely.
On top of that, for those of us who don't have the privilege to remote work, living in a city is often necessary to have a job.
And famously illustrated!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave...
“It’s those damn young people”. “It’s those damn urbanites”. “It’s those damn techies”. Replace that kind of thinking with religious or racial terms and consider how you’re looking at a very large and diverse group of people.
The trouble is:
1) no local jobs to speak of (unless you want to clerk at the farm & feed or assistant-manage the McDonald’s out by the highway)
2) nearest hospital that can do more than stabilize you before shipping you somewhere better, is over an hour away.
3) the schools are really, really bad
4) no local services or amenities. Hope the nearest state park (if any) is really good. But if it’s a midwestern one it’s probably not.
Remote work, being young and healthy and willing to take a little extra risk, having no kids and planning to have none, and being kinda a home-body (or being really into readily available rural midwestern outdoor activities like hunting and fishing), can make it a viable way to go, but that’s a lot of qualifiers.
In our medium-ish sized midwestern city there are smaller slightly-run-down houses in the low $200Ks, but universally in bottom-half school districts for the city. Solid choice if no kids, though. But also local tech jobs pay at most 50% of big-city equivalents.
Depends on the state and locality. Some rural schools have good opportunities.
But pretty much agree on the other parts.
I think that's a part that gets ignored in most school comparisons - the largest differences are due to the level of home support, which is highly correlated with better incomes. So we have a cycle of implicit financial segregation. Many schools (in my area) have similar scores and outcomes if we exclude the disadvanged group from the metrics (because unless your child fits that category, that metric doesn't apply to them). So most people end up counting the wrong metrics for their kids.
majority of those 66% are older generation who benefited dramatically on homes prices increase. New gen is priced out.
35yo still could catch low rate mortgages, and lower prices homes 10 years ago. Today's 20yo (new generation) is in very larger scrunity.
Also, you didn't support your numbers about age distribution with any kind of references.
Gen Z doesn't have a monopoly on spending their 20s in a scary financial situation. Let's see what the numbers look like in 10 years—if prior trends (the data I linked to above) are anything to go by, I expect them to be roughly the same as they always have been at about 66%+/-3%.
No, graphs like wealth inequality, income to housing cost ratio, national debt will tell you that numbers will be very different.
In 1994, ~37% of <35yos owned a home.
In 2004, ~42% of <35yos owned a home.
In 2014, ~36% of <35yos owned a home.
In Q4 2023, ~39% of <35yos owned a home.
You better check what the average mortgage payment for new house buyer today and 5 years ago. Diff can be 2-3 times.
Also, actual homeownership is not a perfect proxy for wealth measurement, since it could be that today's gen z are buying 1br condos instead of single family houses like boomers.
These numbers are all adults under 35, so your argument about generation gaps doesn't apply here. 20-something year olds are included in each decade's numbers, and the rate hasn't substantially changed in the measured decades.
> You better check what the average mortgage payment for new house buyer today and 5 years ago. Diff can be 2-3 times.
That's a separate question from whether people are priced out. If the average mortgage payment is much higher but 39% of people under 35 can still afford a mortgage, then no more people are priced out than were in previous generations.
> Also, actual homeownership is not a perfect proxy for wealth measurement, since it could be that today's gen z are buying 1br condos instead of single family houses like boomers.
True, but I'm not talking about wealth, I'm specifically addressing the question of whether the average American cannot afford to buy a home.
they afford rate they secured when it was much lower and in many cases houses were cheaper. Today's 35 first house buyer salary man coming on housing market is also in very miserable situation.
Sure, it may not be effortless coming of working age now, but it would take a staggering level of ignorance and/or entitlement to argue that it’s harder than it was in the 70s when boomers were coming up.
but much lower prices.
The point you seem to be missing is that it has never been the norm in the US for a 25 year old to own their own home. The closest we ever got to that would be the Silent Generation returning home from WWII and the veterans benefits we were handing out.
My parents (Boomers) rented a dumpy townhouse in their 20s and early 30s while raising two kids. They finally bought their first home at ages 33 and 29 with a 19% interest rate. Money was really tight for the next 5 years or so until my dad's career progressed. This was with a college degree and a management position. Life has always been a challenge for the youngest generation just starting out. Today's 25 year olds look at their parents and forget that their parents have had decades of wealth accumulation and career progression. They didn't start out taking trips to Hawaii every year.
you can check income to house cost ratio for example: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FSK7NKuWQAEt9VQ?format=jpg&name=...
If you look into the "definitions" section it defines "Housing Unit. A housing unit is a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters."
and "Householder. The householder refers to the person (or one of the persons) in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented [...]"
49% of people aged 30-34 aren't homeowners, 49% of us are homeowners or renters.
> The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now.
You haven't disproven this statement in any way, you've just linked to some statistics that show we can still afford rent.
> Homeownership Rates. The proportion of households that are owners is termed the homeownership rate. It is computed by dividing the number of households that are owners by the total number of occupied households (table 5 and 6)
Here's the table: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx
And for the benefit of others, here are the definitions: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf
* EDIT: I was also citing "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: Fourth Quarter 2022 and 2023", which is likewise about homeownership
Just own it dude. You pulled the "49% of people aged 30-34" thing from this chart https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx or some variation of it and you misunderstood it.
Note the title of the chart you linked to (tab7.xlsx): "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder" (emphasis added). This is percentage of householders who own the home that they are the householder of.
EDIT: Also, while I'm at it, here's "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: 1994 to Present" (again, homeownership), which shows a 39% homeownership rate under 35 years old, which is about the same rate as it was throughout the 90s. It broke 40% in the 2000s for a while before coming back down, but was never higher than about 43%.
It is not. It's a ratio of homeowners in an age group to the number of renter households in that age group, which is kinda a useless statistic.
To explain why it's a bad metric take this real (but simplified) example. My roommate and I share a "household". Lets pretend that besides my roommate and I there is only one other person aged 30-34 in the US and they own a home.
The Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder chart would say 50%. 1 owner household / 2 total occupied households.
Now if you read that chart and take it to mean that there is only 1 homeowner and 1 renter, you would be misunderstanding what the statistics mean. There are more renters than homeowners in our example but the metric doesn't reflect that because it isn't meant to.
However, I want to note that this represents a sudden change of pace from your original "49% of us are homeowners or renters" and "you've just linked to some statistics that show we can still afford rent".
When you misunderstood the situation, you insisted that I "own it" that I was wrong (when I wasn't). It would behoove you to do so yourself instead of pretending you understood the numbers all along.
* Edit: as an initial thought, I'd argue that the same argument often applies to the homeowner number—my wife and I jointly owning one house balances out you and your roommate.
So regardless of the definition, it's remained constant, thus the idea that living arrangements have suddenly and dramatically shifted is not true.
Living arrangements have suddenly and dramatically shifted.
For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/05/24/for-fir...
Another way to look at it, for the last century until about the year 2000 around 12% of men 24-35 lived with their parents. Now the number is 20%. That's a massive difference. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...
And flip that statistic, the percentage not living at home went from 80% to 68%.
Significant? Sure. Massive? Doesn’t seem like it.
And looking at home ownership rates for those under 35 years old, historically - its not that much lower, maybe a 10% relative drop.
So sure, fewer young people owning homes, but it’s <10% relative change. That doesn’t scream crisis to me. The vast majority of young people own homes similar to the past.
But it's a consistent measurement. You're the one that said that further up.
A college student deciding to live at home is very different than a mid-career 30-something deciding to live at home.
So it remains a valid comparison.
And it seems like you didn't even notice my last comment was your own words.
Wait, this is saying less than 50% of people aged 30-34 live in a home that is owned or rented by them (or their spouse)? I can't imagine a region where this is close to true, since probably near 100% where I live either own or rent. Is there a regional breakdown for this? And where do these people live? With their parents or in a shelter?
The title of the tables I'm looking at are "Homeownership rates by Age of Householder", which makes it pretty clear what they mean.
1 homeowner and 1 renter = 50%
1 homeowner and 2 renters in the same apartment = 50%
1 homeowner and 200,000 renters in the same apartment = 50%
1 homeowner and 2 renters in 2 different apartments = 33%
It's a ratio of homeowners to the number of buildings the rest of us rent out.
There is subtlety of the "renters are probably systematically undercounted due to the vagaries of householding" variety, but that is neither a straightforward effect (a homeowning married couple with 2 of their parents and 3 adult children under the same roof and 1 single renter in an apartment = 50%!) nor is it remotely what you were saying to begin with.
As per the definition: "The householder refers to the person (or one of the persons) in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented"
Homeownership by age of householder restricts the reference set of housing units to those which are occupied by a householder in the specified age group.
I live with roommates and I'm not on the lease here, so IIUC I would be considered neither a homeowner or a renter for these purposes.
or else a bunch of roommates, some of whom may not be on the lease.
After reading all of the back-and-forths here, I just wanted to thank you for continually being the clarifying force in this discussion, even amidst the downvotes and fallacies.
As a 41-year-old urban homeowner, I knew I was in a lucky category, but I didn't realize how difficult it actually is to know how lucky based on the available data.
Also if true, that is insane that the average american lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35. That is so far and wide not the case here in Australia.
Here in Australia, we don't have fixed rate mortgages for the life of the mortgage we have variable and fixed upto around 1-5 years. Our interest rates have gone from around 2-3% to over 5.8% and the value of homes since COVID have gone up enormously, some 30-40% across our cities and nationally combined 27%.
I know we're just talking about the US here I assume, but I earn a chunk above the average salary and I be considered "at risk" in affording the average cost of a home. I know plenty of people who bought their house 3 years ago right when COVID kicked off, of which they would not have been able to afford it today given the increase in just house prices.
Australia has made a bunch of home-ownership-unfriendly decisions which the US hasn't – e.g. in the US you get a mortgage interest deduction on your primary residence, in Australia you only get it on investment properties (joint filing for married couples, which the US has but Australia doesn't, also helps here); in the US owner-occupier mortgages are normally no-recourse, in Australia they are almost always full recourse; US government policy encourages long-term fixed interest mortgages, the Australian government has no comparable policy
Some of it is also geography – Australia is very centralised, with most people living on the coast. Each state has its population dominated by a single metro area which also serves as the state capital – quite unlike the US where majority of the time the state capital is outside the state's largest metro area.
Australia's comparative lack of rainfall inland is a factor, but political culture, and hence decisions by politicians, also plays a big part – suppose NSW moved its capital to (say) Dubbo or Bathurst? Many government jobs would leave Sydney, followed by many consulting/etc jobs which provide services to the government - right now, central and western NSW has plenty of affordable housing, but a big shortage of jobs providing incomes to pay for that housing. Never going to happen: it would require a degree of originality and thinking outside the box of which Australian politicians are constitutionally incapable.
Australia kept its record low interest rates in place during COVID, then we had runaway inflation to record high’s like many countries did and our reserve bank failed to increase interest rates even slightly to help with the increases to inflation. We increased overseas migration significantly to help drive growth in the economy which has created an enormous shortage of housing supply. As a result, interest rates have soar’d coupled with record high inflation our cost of living has skyrocketed including housing prices. As I said since 2019-2020 house prices have increased 30%+
Our country has always been centralised to the coast and isn’t necessarily the reason for these costs
That said - we bought our house (NSW Central Coast) in late 2015 for AU$550K. At the peak of the COVID price surge, those property value websites were saying it was over AU$1 million. Now they are saying it is only AU$850K. Still gone up a fair bit compared to when we bought it, but also fallen a fair bit off the peak. Of course, those websites are not completely accurate, but what they say is consistent with sale prices of comparable properties in our neighbourhood
I lived in a rental which was sold in 2019 for $580k and I remember people thinking that was high, now that house is worth $760k.
Looking at suburb medium prices skyrocking in only 3 years does put a dampener on things
I do think we should decentralise, but it will likely look more like Newcastle and Wollongong growing, which will probably feed commuters into Sydney more than they already do.
Also note, Canberra kind of fits your description - a regional "town", servicing the government. And it's also very expensive. As in, recently reported to be the second most expensive place in the country to buy a house, after Sydney. I think our issues are far more political as you point out, so other fixes are just bandaids, but anything that impacts home prices will be unpopular with the dominant voter bloc.
The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme pumps water over 560 km from Perth to Kalgoorlie; Dubbo is only 380 km from Newcastle. If you were serious about turning Dubbo into the state capital, you would have to give serious thought to building a pipeline to pump water from the Hunter, and then Dubbo would only run out of water if Newcastle was running out of water. (You could also build a pipeline from Sydney to Dubbo, which is only about 20km further, but much more mountainous terrain in the way.)
> I do think we should decentralise, but it will likely look more like Newcastle and Wollongong growing
Newcastle and Wollongong aren't really that much cheaper than Sydney. They are coastal, and everyone wants to live on the coast; also, Wollongong has physical growth limitations due to the Illawarra Escarpment. There's a lot more land on the other side of the Great Dividing Range, and water supply issues could be addressed with sufficient investment in water supply infrastructure.
> Also note, Canberra kind of fits your description - a regional "town", servicing the government. And it's also very expensive. As in, recently reported to be the second most expensive place in the country to buy a house, after Sydney.
Canberra is in some ways Australia's version of Washington DC. Although, DC has a very different social history – e.g. DC has historically (but as of last census no longer) had an African-American majority; and, DC is physically a lot smaller than the ACT is. But, what I am really talking about is an Australian analogue of Sacramento, Albany, Springfield (Illinois), Salem (Oregon), Carson City (Nevada), etc – which is something Australia doesn't have.
All that said, Queanbeyan's median house price is >$50K cheaper than Canberra's, by some measures beneath the average of Australian capital cities. And it is only 20 minutes drive from Canberra. In Sydney or Melbourne, that's what many would call an inner/middle suburb.
In a sense they already have, most NSW government departments moved their offices from the Sydney CBD to the Parramatta CBD, which is about 25km west. This helped a tiny bit.
Meanwhile, my multi-millionare ex-boss is struggling to buy a house, because he's being outbid by chinese "students" (lol) to the tune of +$500K over the expected price.
It would help a lot more if they added a zero to that number
> because he's being outbid by chinese "students" (lol) to the tune of +$500K over the expected price
I believe that’s a real problem but only in certain suburbs. If you are a well-off Chinese businessperson or government official, and you want to get your money out of China - in case Xi Jinping suddenly decides he doesn’t like you any more - splurging on a residence for your kid at uni in Australia is a good way to do so while complying with the laws of both countries. Still, while it is a real issue in some areas, at a national level I don’t think it makes a huge difference - there’s lots of housing in Australia which isn’t that close to a university campus
Well that wouldn't be so bad to get rid of but ...
> in Australia you only get it on investment properties
WHAT? That's blatant landlord-pandering!
Giving an interest deduction to owner-occupiers is a common policy to promote home ownership. But it's not a "level playing field" with landlords unless you also assess income tax on the imputed amount of rent they are saving by owning.
The stats seem pretty similar here – 50% of 30-34 year olds owned their own home in 2021: https://www.housingdata.gov.au/visualisation/home-ownership/...
https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...
Here is a statistic that is a better measurement of affordability: "Home Price to Median Household Income Ratio."' It shows homes are less affordable. If we could see the 25th percentile it would likely even paint a bleaker picture, at least if you believe those stats.
According to [1] relative monthly fertility rates for women drop from 1.0 at age 30 to 0.65 at age 35 to 0.1 at age 40.
If your society wants to raise birth rates, you can't rely on 35-40 year olds to do it.
[1] https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-d...
Plenty of other commenters had already pointed out that fallacy of OP's argument, so I decided to take on the idea that homeownership rates have significantly changed instead.
To be clear I agree that affordable home ownership is a big problem, but not being able to afford home ownership is a very different thing from not being able to afford housing, and substituting one concept with the other is just an intentionally dishonest way of muddying the waters of any discussion on the topic.
Exactly....it'd be hilarious if figuring out this abstract phenomenon is the key to figuring out the object level phenomenon.
I can count how many times I walk into an ACTUAL house, like a free standing house not a condo, apartment, or townhouse - on one hand over ONE year. I think I have 2 friends with houses out of 20+ here in Denver, and I'm of course including condos/ths, anything purchasable. Almost everyone I know over 30 lives in a 1-2 bd apartment. And this is hackernews where I can pretty much assume someone like you is so far from the average American reality you have no idea what's going on.
There's already a post right above this from some compsci engineer talking about how, oh no, there really are a lot more americans making over $100k than you'd imagine!!
You don't have any real humans in your life to use THAT anecdata from? You sound like you're vastly out of that age range, your "you're too confrontational uwu" style of writing and you're obvious lack of knowledge related to the topic at hand.
I moved into programming from bartending after dropping out of school. I am absolutely not ignorant to the lifestyles of all of my friends who aren't engineers.
In fact it's the polar opposite. I am vastly aware of how ignorant my engineer friends are to real people. Like all of my $300k+ friends who have massive houses and 4 kids and 2 suburbans and wonder why a huge portion of their friends, like me, aren't giving them playdates or "cousins" to their kids so they have to go find dad-friends at the kids soccer games who their only real commonality is .. kids.
What's your cities population? Is it even 100k? How much of your anecdata is actually related to this convo, in the sense of what percentage of your midwest people are even relevant to it? I've lived in at least 8 MAJOR (Houston, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Portland, San Josa) since 2008, those population centers absolutely dwarf whatever you can come up with in the mw to affect this stat.
This is like when someone on here chimes in with their amazing $120k house in Oklahoma. Owning a house at 25, whether you're in BFE Alabama or not is also not common.
Nor is being married at 25, anymore.
Since I can't reply to your later comment yet, I might just do it here. I live in the city proper. It's Columbus OH just to make it easier for you. I'm sure you'll find a way to reason that's not a major city but it is (multiple Fortune 500 companies HQ'd, major league sport team etc). I live ~10 minutes from downtown and the house was 290k.
People who live in BFE an hour or two north of Dallas, that isn't Dallas, love to say they live in Dallas, then you go further, "dallas metro." Nah. Then they find out you actually live downtown because you're asking for neighborhoods IN the city and call you a downtown pretty boy who probably has to fight off muggers daily. Christ, Fort WORTH is in the "Dallas metro" and it's literally it's own city that NOBODY in Dallas ever visits and has NOTHING in common with Dallas. "The Dallas metro has 10 billion people!" Yeah who never interact with one another and live an hour away.
So they love it till it's actually, you know, big scary city stuff. And that's a huge reason why WE don't claim them back. Hearing someone from Plano (rich af suburb) say they live in Dallas to someone from Texas themselves is so cringe. Because I absolutely know they actually hate Dallas, the city. It's different if the person has no idea where and you're just giving a general area.
In our midwestern city, we do live in the city limits proper. But if you drive straight from here to the city center, you’ll pass through at least two other towns before reaching it! There are probably seven or eight tiny to large towns in the same general direction as us, but which are closer to downtown than we are (some are just 5 minutes to downtown by car). And our school district is separate from the rest of the city (and shared by parts of some of those other towns)
Like 30% of the population of our metro area and probably 40% of the money is in another state! And many of them closer to downtown than us.
But I know nothing about Townships and all the MW/Michigan style of .. cities? I guess. Tend to forget those even exist.
Ha ha—that’s fair.
> That's a good point, I never saw the point of "metros" how they used them in Texas.
One role of that way of categorizing, even in less-atomized cities, is to capture the area that’s basically economically dependent on the city. Nobody (more or less) would live in those suburbs and exurbs if not for the presence of the city. It’s like looking at a lake’s drainage basin.
Starting salaries post 2019 have skyrocketed though. It took me about 10 years experience to get over 120k, my ex, her second job at 25 was 150k. My first engineering job was $40k in 2006 or so. 2008 wrecked salaries for a decade. Hopping job to job to make an extra $10k because nobody was giving raises and everyone was treated like trash.
Cool good work man, maybe I'll check it out. My rent in Denver is $3100 for a 2br. Denver is SUPER dense for a mid sized city though, it feels way bigger than Austin/Dallas people+shop+bar+etc wise to me because of that. I never drive.
Columbus is nice because it still feels kinda small and driving is still super comfortable because you can get anywhere in about 15 minutes. I still prefer to bike to work because it feels nice but I'm definitely in the minority here doing that.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
This is incoherent; children are not expensive.
If you can figure out a way to afford the liability and it's important to you, great, otherwise it's sort of illogical.
It almost isn’t worth arguing about, though, because the reality is that society is ultimately made up of people that have kids. All the rationalizations in the world won’t change the basic facts of biology.
It's a liability if it's a liability. A consumerist liability is buying a brand new car with a loan if it seems like my income might disappear before the payments do. Not knowing how long you'll be able to keep paying rent in the place you've spent your entire adult life is just a logical consideration. Though people are obviously choosing to be consumers too, often it's just the basics that seem out of reach.
However, if you've always wanted kids and it's always been your biggest priority, and there's never been any contravening forces that would make you question that, and you've lucked out and found someone who's completely on board with that, and your income has been stable, and your expenses are manageable, and your parents are nearby and still together, then sure you're choosing to consoom over having kids.
At the end of the day, it is a cultural “problem” that potential parents are unwilling to have children. If anything, the material costs of entertainment, food, education, etc. are magnitudes lower today than a century ago, and yet a century ago it was normal to have 3-4 children.
Curiously, the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child was from 1924.
Yeah, it's easier to have kids if you care less about their wellbeing, and if one of the ways of dealing with the expense is sending them to work in a factory.
Potential parents today aren't choosing between "having kids and sending them to slave away in a factory" and "perfect childhood with every toy imaginable and no financial need."
The contemporary Western world is immensely wealthy on a material and informational basis, orders of magnitude beyond even a half century ago. I don't think people understand this at any level, mostly because they don't know much history.
And I'd say it's fair to say that at this point the standards increased more than the wealth for a fair amount of people.
People used to value the labor of their children. At the dystopian tail-end of it, they valued selling it on the market, which is what's being referenced.
But, generally, my impression from light reading is people throughout history thought of children as progressing pretty quickly into helpfulness. Now, though, people have jobs children can't help with, ever, which keep them too busy to project-manage children into helpfulness around the house. So people have them exclusively for their company (which, again my impression from light reading, has not been at all the historical norm).
Kids born today will have the best material, educational, medical wellbeing in the whole human history.
I don't know how common it is today, but it's certainly much less common than it was a century ago.
I've decided not to have kids, but quite a few people I know have been having them, and there's a stark difference in costs between the friends who have family nearby and those who don't. Several new parents I know even decided to move to be near at least one set of parents, at least for the first few years of their kids' lives.
I don't really know anyone who has decided to not have kids primarily because of cost, though. But I don't know if the child-free people I know are typical.
> Over all, the median distance Americans live from their mother is 18 miles, and only 20 percent live more than a couple of hours’ drive from their parents.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f...
Although "a couple hours drive" is probably too far to help with daily childcare activities. And in the past the grandparents were likely in the same building or across the street.
Obviously the 20% of the population more than 2 hours from their parents isn't abstaining from children absolutely, but it's the right order of magnitude to be a significant factor.
Growing up, I didn't have a console until late teens. My children are 5-11yo and we would have 5+ consoles in the house. Last week, my mother (born in the 50s) was saying that she can't recall having an actual toy of her own while growing up. Now many of us plan to have a bedroom per child, study nooks, a second living room and/or parents' retreat, a dressing room, en suites, pool, and so on.
I think, in America at least, this is being amplified by a general gut perception that the middle class is shrinking (which does indeed seem to be happening). Even people who aren’t reading about or following the phenomenon can feel it to some degree: as middle incomes have become less common, there are a lot more high earners and more low earners.
Maintaining a high income is not a given, so the perceived risk of failure to remain in the upper-middle class now includes not just falling back to a comfortable middle class existence, but falling further down the ladder, to a place in a growing underclass with a starkly lower quality of life and future prospects.
This creates a feedback cycle: people have this gut feeling that if they don’t compete for high end jobs to live in expensive areas with good schools their kids won’t get into a good college, which is a requirement to maintain membership in this new, enlarged, hypercompetitive upper-middle class. Competition for these houses, colleges, and jobs goes through the roof. Life decisions become more stressful because the perceived stakes are higher. This in turn contributes to choices around kids: will you be able to navigate this such that your kids live a comparably comfortable life to the one you have had? How many kids can you do that for? What will life be like for a kid who for whatever reason can’t be a programmer/doctor/lawyer/etc?
There's nothing perfect, it's just a roof in the place you've established yourself, and eating, perhaps along with staying mentally and physically fit. It's just a basic question of whether someone's circumstances can be stretched further; in many cases they can, but in many more they can't, and if whatever reason they didn't spend the entire first part of their life aligning all the variables necessary to handle the basics, and getting lucky, then it seems more probable to be a disaster than not.
It's not about perfection, it's really high level stuff. First, get a long-term partner who fits certain criteria. Lets say attraction is last on that list because we've decided not to be perfect, we've decided to be like the previous generation who didn't care about their health or mental well-being at all and get the first person we have sex with pregnant, and take it to completion. Halfway through the pregnancy we realize we're totally incompatible, can't even equitably share space with the other person, and actually they're not even remotely invested in improving as a human. That's fine, it'll work out in the end, ignore your burgeoning depression.
Next step, get a place together. It's not looking good, but ignore that, it's for the sacrifice you've decided to make right now for some reason. You remember that your parents had you in a small 1 bedroom apartment that was probably crap, but they only paid $300 a month for. You currently live in a modest studio that's $1500 a month, and an upgrade to a 1 bedroom would go up to $2500. Maybe we get lucky and get a rustic basement for $1750. There are co-ops, but they have thousands of people ahead of you in line. Of course, there are always small towns in rural areas, so maybe we can move there, maybe get a job in the sawmill.
It's all just silly. If you're in a position to, and want to have kids, then you do, but otherwise there's no intrinsic reason to and getting there could be a tenuous personal decision to introduce a whole lot more strain in probably an already strained position.
If you're in the former camp, great. You still live close to parents probably, have had a stable job for a while that's not going away, there's not a ton of competition for rentals or whatever, and have a great supportive relationship that isn't volatile. You might be surprised, but that can be tough to come by. If you can pull it off you can pull it off.
Inflation has made baby products really expensive (did I mention stagnant wages?), and this is before daycare, which can be cost as much as rent in some locales, unless you're willing to subject your child to informal daycares. None of that is consumerism.
No one should be surprised that a country with a threadbare social safety-net and inflation outpacing childcare costs experiences a fall in birthrate - this can be explained in market-dymamics terms
I didn't argue a stronger social safety net would fix everything, just that having a weak one exacerbates the financial concerns, and is the major factor that would tip-over those who are not having children for mostly economic-reasons.
That being said, I think the critique you're getting may be more fair to your post than you think. You bring up things like college debt and high medical costs, which are not US-like in most of the places with the lowest birth rate, and the day care situation, which often isn't either, in previous paragraphs.
I do think that even if we don't note that the post was likely US-centric, we'd struggle with the fact that it's the poorer people in the US are having more babies than the richer ones when trying to apply your explanation.
We still have falling birth rates.
I actually think daycare is part of the problem - what is the point of having kids if you do not spend lots of time with them? The biggest advance would be more family friendly working hours.
i have earned a lot less to spend time with my kids, and i am so happy I did. The best thing that happened to me was to lose my job the day my oldest was born. Otherwise I would have been very well paid (I worked for an investment bank) but have hardly known my kids.
I write this with the utmost sincerity: You as the would be father/mother brought your child into this world, the absolute least you could do is be the dad/mom they need in their life.
Don't come at me with how you must sacrifice your career and future for your kids: Of fucking course you have to! The moment you decide to have kids and bring them forth, "your" life is completely at the behest of your kids. That is what having kids means.
If you do not want or cannot handle the duty of sacrificing your life for your kids, do not have kids. There is no existence more tragic than a child born to parents who can not or will not spend their childhood with them.
I do not think parents can be entirely blamed. We have made having children too difficult for multiple reasons. Yes, you are primarily responsible, but good communities, family friendly work, access to extended family and other things all help.
Don't be obtuse.
I am not in favour of never letting them out of my sight because it is important they develop autonomy and be able to look after themselves. Seeing them growing and learning is one of the joys of being a parent.
The point is being involved, which is good for children and rewarding for parents.
Autonomy is arguably better fostered by them learning to navigate school (and to/from school) by themselves. Different strokes for different folks.
So 5/7 days, she'd only get her parents telling her to hurry up and eat followed by putting her to bed. That's almost exclusively being raised by a stranger.
I might not put it as aggressively as the other commenter, but I do wonder why it seems common for my peers to use daycare (if they have kids at all). I know they have the means not to. We'll see what happens when the time comes, but I quite like the idea of home schooling or hybrid schooling depending on what everyone wants. The time you get is so limited; to me at least I don't see what could take priority over spending time with them while we can (again, this applies more to people in my social class who have the means). And when people talk about "sacrificing their career"... my work is the means, not the end. To speak of "sacrificing" career for family is just... baffling. Unless you are a trauma surgeon saving lives every day or an amazing scientist inventing cancer cures, I can't believe anyone would say it. Something like principal engineer or director at a fortune 500? It's just a way to make money.
We lost my dad very suddenly when I was a teenager, so I've always had to consider that no matter how much money I make, I'll never be able to buy more time with him, but I can focus my resources on my family having more time together, and hopefully I can pass my kids that lesson without them having to learn it so directly (or at least so young. At some point we all need to learn that lesson directly). Having a stay-at-home-parent means we're buying 10,400 hours of her and her mom together before age 5. Good deal at almost any price, and it only becomes a better deal when you have more kids. Likewise with remote work, if I get an extra 1.5 hours per workday (commute + seeing them when I take a break), that's almost 400 extra hours together per year. Sometimes my daughter comes and sits on my lap while I'm working on the computer, and I'll put Curious George on for her on another monitor. How lucky I am!
When people in my social strata talk about daycare, I just want to shout at them. Not angry like the other commenter, but in a more pleading tone: don't you realize! Life is fleeting! Didn't anyone tell you! Oh well.
I wouldn't want to supervise other people's kids all day, but my own? They do all sorts of cute stuff, and sometimes they just want to come sit on you and hug you. It's not even comparable to corporate office work. My biggest worry for them is that they won't get to have that too one day.
> "Don't have children if you can't raise them yourself."
What do you think of "it takes a village to raise a child"?
Then it should be no surprise that fewer people are having children. Many potential parents are seeing a mismatch between their ideal conditions to having a child and their circumstances and/or the state of the world and choosing not to having children (or delaying)
Addendum: some parents think they can raise kids, but discover they cannot in the worst possible way. I don't judge anyone chooses to place a child in daycare, its much better for society than Shaken Baby Syndrome, for instance.
Sub-replacement fertility is still very much a thing even up here in Northern Europe, though, with our famously generous safety nets.
Here in Finland, however, there's one group of note reproducing well above replacement: The Laestadian fundamentalists up north.
A child would also be a liability for a monk.
I don't want to have kids because I lived through the "just suffer through poverty" experience and it's a great way to raise kids that have to support the psychiatry industry the rest of their lives. Poverty literally breaks a kid's brain, and you CANNOT hide money problems from your children.
That life is one "hey we didn't do good this quarter so you're being let go" away from happening for most of us. So yeah, a lot of us don't want kids.
Lower-income people within a country seem to have more kids in general: this is very much the case for the US. People with higher incomes and on average, then, more robust financial situations, are the ones more avoiding kids.
The US is, like most places, far richer than it has been historically, and this is even more dramatic globally: a generation and a half ago, most people lived in extreme poverty (<$2.47/day), today less than 10% do. But we see that as countries get richer, they have fewer kids. I don't think it's a good explanation that risk of poverty is what is usually preventing parents from having kids, even if they subjectively feel it is.
He has presented hours of thoughts on data spanning multiple decades from countries across the globe and comments identified correlations.
Education being highly correlated with reduced population growth is a data confirmed observation, and not a declaration of prime causation.
But then wonders what the drivers are.
Perhaps just reminding would-be parents that if the educated and resilient stop reproducing, they are depriving the world of a thriving and resilient new generation. A clear directive that under-population is a growing concern and a few additional incentives for parents would go a long way too.
Taking a philosophical angle, why is it the "right" choice to serve our genes, the economy, or to create a younger generation to care for the elderly? It is not unethical to unburden oneself of those obligations today, but you can imagine a future where it is.
And Finland's fertility rate has completely collapsed, to 1.32 children per woman in 2022.
As societies urbanize and become more educated, children become (economically speaking) a huge burden, not an asset, and that fundamental shift affects birthrates worldwide.
The primary reason for low birth rate is availability of cheap and effective contraception (and cultural changes that led to most people being ok with using it). Change my mind.
The real questions here is why people given opportunity to not have children jumps at it.
My personal opinion is that children are not that great - too much responsibility, too little support from society, too many of them behaves like little psychopaths most of the time (this can be probably cured with strict discipline but stress free upbringing seems to be in vogue). And the things that children "give" in return are rather questionable (especially for people with low emotional needs like me)
Most people probably like the "idea" of children but the practical side of having them is mostly boring ungrateful work that takes greater part of you life away and there is inherent risk that it can never end (I do not understand how anyone would not take into considetation the consequnce of having special needs child)
Point taken, but that opportunity was not there until about 60 years ago. I don't think people unwillingness to have kids changed, they didn't have much real choice back then. Well, their willingness to have sex was stronger than willingness to not have kids ;)
BTW: 2.1 is still quite good. Here in Poland (a formerly pretty much catholic country), we are at birthrate = 1.3 now and still going down.
Ok, but the poster is baffled not about why people aren't having kids, but about why his coworkers aren't having kids. Now since HN is out of touch they poster is probably just as out of touch and you would assume that they worked with people as financially out of touch as they are - therefore:
Among people making enough money presumably to afford having kids why no kids?
You know what they have in common? They're all religious.
The lack of children is a cultural thing based on how much you value kids over things. That's basically it. Those who value children have them. Those who don't don't. I don't understand why this is controversial. Look at Israel.
Also, living without children or even a partner at all has become significantly more viable in the past 40+ years or so. It wasn't until 1974 when women in the United States could unconditionally open bank accounts out of their free will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act. To not marry and have children would've practically been a form of ostracization. So many people, especially women, "settled" into marriage and family life simply because there was no other option. I think the decline in birth rates is a fair tradeoff to forcing fewer people into a lifestyle they did not want which would inevitably result in broken families and broken kids. What society needs to figure out is how to decouple productivity from raw human headcount, as well as how to avert potential humanitarian disasters that may occur when the decoupling happens.
A lot of them are, actually. I'm Irish, we're having a housing (and general cost of living) crisis. I know Portugal and Germany are too.
I don't know about other countries in the EU regarding housing specifically but there's a block wide cost of living crisis going on right now. Life is hard for people in all kinds of ways because of covid, war, climate change.
Note: I'm not trying to claim any of this is the cause of declining birth rates, that's beyond my sphere of knowledge. The purpose of my comment is to note that cost of living issues are not unique to the US right now.
If you're in the minority, maybe you're the one who's out of touch?
It's not that they can't afford having children—many of those who are less fortunate than them still have children. It's just that they think the cost of raising children, which likely affects their current lifestyle, is not worth it.
Most coworkers with kids I've spoken with complain about costs of daycare, babysitting, and Montessori schools. We pay for none of those as they aren't necessary. If even one parent works from home, it's a solved problem. If both do not, evaluate the costs. Many times, you actually lose money by both parents working.
I have a child and we do fine on one salary. Would love more, but either my aging body or god one has determined that would be decidedly more expensive.
ETA: Anyone on the fence who wants a kid - go for it. Don't try to keep up with the Jones' or try to budget them out. Kids are awesome. They're little blank slates who don't need much more than love, attention, education, and sustainance. If you keep waiting for when it's right, it'll never happen.
Yet the message sent to potential parents is so far from that, I won't blame people foregoing having kids.
There's a strong movement pushing for smaller governments and less public and social expenses in general, that directly makes it worse (kids are sick all the time, they need schools, public transportation, libraries, public services in general). You're arguing for giving up on daycare when so many companies are pushing back to office rules.
To your point, if a couple is at the point they couldn't afford lattes if they had kids, I don't see them properly raising that kid without a ton of aid, and looking at the comments we usually have here, most will point the finger at them for not being responsible enough instead.
Would you have another kid if you knew it would make your current kid significantly worse off? It's the same argument as that, except that you count the spouse as part of the equation.
If you make conscious choices to keep having kids even though
1. You don't need them to help on your farm or to support you in your old age, 2. Each additional kid further immiserates your spouse and the older kids
aren't you the selfish one?
For many, having free time replaced by family time with their kids is great and all they need/want.
"Selfishly" from the outside perspective, it makes all my friends with kids flakey, late, and one-track.
It takes a huge effort not only to avoid the consumerism side of children, but also to try and maintain your individuality.
The most successful parents I know in this regard are also conveniently the wealthiest.
I do think 'selfish' was too broad and strong of a claim. I was focusing solely on the thought of people who make way more than enough money claiming a child would ruin their lifestyle/break them. In reality, there are tons of other reasons a person may not want a child that aren't selfish at all.
Who will buy your products and services 20-30 years from today?
If the question sounds ridiculous, trust me it isn't. You can look at demographics of China, or if you don't particularly care about that but care about finance, long duration government debt.
Won't someone think of the poor capitalists!
That's a sad excuse to bring a life into this world. A world that suffers from the side effects of capitalism, ironically.
The poor capitalist is only one sad person. The poor dictator or emperor or tsar is another. The childless by choice middle class city dwellers who suddenly realize there’s no one young enough to provide the products and services they require to continue their hedonistic lifestyles are another still.
There’s a conspiracy theory I don’t subscribe to which says Covid and vaccines are a depopulation program. But we don’t need one…
If you would have told me people choose not to have kids because they already feel they are contributing to bettering the world through some other mission, it would make sense. If you're a doctor or scientist or even a nurse or something where you feel your career is a calling, I can understand feeling stretched thin enough to not want to have kids.
But that's not what many of my anti-kid friends say. They basically say it would interfere with their netlfix watching, video game playing, luxury travel lifestyle.
It's not that kids would take away from other meaningful ways of connecting to humanity, its' that they'd get in the way of their consumption.
I agree. Having kids in incredibly rewarding and fulfilling.
Many (most?) people definitely don't have the luxury of having a parent stay at home.
There is more to life than being a parent.
But this is always the case... ~20 years ago when I bought my first home, interest rates were close to 8%, it took a big chunk of my income, and we had to move way out to the sticks in order to afford anything. People are always having to make compromises if they want to buy a home, save for retirement, start a business, have kids, and all the other high-risk things that people want to do in order to seek a better life. Yes house prices are higher today than they were 20 years ago -- and incomes aren't necessarily better -- but if someone absolutely wants to buy a home, there will be options and tradeoffs.
That's nonsense. Poor people always had kids, still do. What changed is that people aren't able anymore to make sacrifices, huge in time and money for kids.
It’s 100% a cultural norm issue. I was raised in Canada but have lived in Israel for the past 20 years. The vast majority of my Canadian friends have no kids, and the ones that do have at most 2. In Israel, all of my friends (secular/non-religious) have kids, usually 3 or more. The idea of whether you can or can’t afford a kid does not cross people’s minds. You get married, and you have a kid. If you don’t get married, and you can, you still have a kid. It’s just what’s expected. I have numerous friends who are single and made the choice to have multiple kids via donors. When it is the norm in society, it’s just something you do. I am sure social pressure has an effect. You see your friends having kids, then you want to have kids too, and then your kids become friends with your friends’ kids, and it expands from there.
Financially, life in Canada is much easier as a parent when compared to here, but socially, life in Canada as a parent is much harder when I compare it to here.
I have 3 kids - for me personally it was the best choice I have ever made, but I accept that I no longer have my own life. I live for my kids and I wouldn’t change it for the world. It probably helps that most of my friends are in the same situation.
* Life is a hellhole. My children must witness my (and my hypothetical spouse's) deaths; witnessing death is a fucking hellish experience, I motherfucking do not desire to force that experience on anyone let alone my children.
* The world will continue. The Earth has spun and travelled around the Sun for time immemorial and will continue to do so regardless of any decisions I make. My existence and any existences I might create are utterly and absolutely pointless in the grand scale of the universe.
* The human world (in contrast with the world at large) is a fucking hellhole. I have absolutely no desire to bring new life into this human world and tell them, with a straight face: "Welcome! This is hell I brought you into. You will suffer many tragedies, you will be wronged so many times you won't bother keeping count. No, I can't help you. Have fun." What the hell am I, a sadist?
* I have many other activities, dreams, and goals I wish to accomplish that do not and perhaps even run completely counter to having children. Life is short: I only have so many hours left and none I can or will spare for offspring.
* I find the idea of compromising my life with a spouse to be a violation of fundamental human rights. Who am I to demand my spouse to bow to my wishes? Who is my spouse for them to demand I bow to their wishes? The answer is noone: I and any hypothetical spouse are noone. All men are born equal, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thusly, I swore to never marry and (also consequently) never have children. I am far too busy with my own life, kindly and sincerely please fuck off.
So yes, I can afford children. Many children. No, I won't have children. I can't wait until I am automagically ejected from the marriage market I never even wanted to be a part of.
Consider this: despite life being "a hellhole full of tragedies", hopefully you don't resent your parents for giving birth to you?
My view is that life is both: full of tragedies and hardship, yes. But also full of wonders and joy. It's a full package, you seem to be only seeing one half of it. And to be clear: children are the same. A package, with joy and love and laugther but also hard work and tiredness and effort.
Hopefully this comment does not sound condescending to you, I am really trying to help. Have a very nice day.
Some of the tragedies are also guaranteed and unavoidable from the moment you are born.
My conclusion is the result of a long internal deliberation fraught with weighing the countless factors which compose life. This conclusion is mine and mine alone and everyone else should draw forth their own rather than take mine as gospel or inspiration.
I simply do not value life highly enough to be worth forcing another life into experiencing it. I am perfectly happy to have my bloodline and heritage end with my death; it is not worth continuing whatever the arguments put forth.
> Some of the tragedies are also guaranteed and unavoidable from the moment you are born.
That's a grim perspective of life. For your personal life, do you think that the happiness you've experienced worth the tragedies that have happened to you? If so, don't you want another human (your child) to experience the same?
If it's not worth it, what makes you keep on living, then? (Assuming that you do.) Or do you wish that you had never been born in the first place?
To be brutally honest: No.
I'm sorry if that answer makes anyone uncomfortable.
>If it's not worth it, what makes you keep on living, then? (Assuming that you do.)
I don't want to force the sadness of my death upon my parents and friends; I'll die sooner or later, but there's a difference between the Grim Reaper calling up my number and me just kicking down his door.
>If so, don't you want another human (your child) to experience the same?
I answered the prior question in the negative already, but I will answer this question anyway: No, I don't want to force any experience, good or bad, upon my hypothetical child. I think setting down rails as a parent and pushing my children down them is a gross violation of human rights, specifically the human right to liberty.
If anything, it's the child who gets to set down the rails and demand I, as their parent, help them travel it regardless of my own wishes. Not the other way around.
>Or do you wish that you had never been born in the first place?
If I had the opportunity to answer that question before coming into existence, with the life experience I have today? No, I would have wished to not be born and continued to enjoy solace in the vast void of nothingness.
You might also wish that the Big Bang had produced matter and antimatter the exact same amount, so they would have perfectly canceled out, and there wouldn't be any matter at all in the universe. Nothing is better than something.
>My conclusion is the result of a long internal deliberation fraught with weighing the countless factors which compose life. This conclusion is mine and mine alone and everyone else should draw forth their own rather than take mine as gospel or inspiration.
I couldn't care less what others do with their lives, so long as they don't harm or trouble others. It's none of my business.
From your previous comments, you care about your parents and friends and future children. So now change "all humans" in my previous reply to "people you care"—what's your response?
> This conclusion is mine and mine alone and everyone else should draw forth their own rather than take mine as gospel or inspiration.
If you honestly thought that, you wouldn't have shared your long opinion in this thread. People share comments on HN for others to discuss and debate. You can't just share something and defend it by saying it's your personal thought. Just keep it to yourself, then.
I don't even think you are in a bad place from a mental health standpoint. Hell, I bet you would be a fun person to have a couple of beers with.
I have a child by the way. Not a sadist, but in my hubris I imagine I am able to raise a child and protect him or her from a some of life's misery, and provide an interesting living experience.
In a sense, in my hubris, I am tempting fate, in hope fate doesn't turn its ugly head in my direction and decides to bite me in the ass.
Have a nice day, kind sir.
Also, what is it with accusations of my mental state? It takes a sound mind to derive a logical conclusion to the question of having children or not. If you're automatically assuming "people should have children" as a "universal fact", I would question your mental state because you are relinquishing your ability to think.
I've said elsewhere before that humans aren't special, but if there is anything that could set humans apart from other lifeforms it is our seemingly special ability to question and in some cases defy instincts and so-called "universal facts".
I'm pretty sure engineers can still afford kids, it's just very time consuming and you'll have to settle for less in term of vacations/neighbourhood/purchasing power/carrier/&c.
But yes, most people can't afford having kids that's a given
I grew up poor and people never "thought" about affording kids, just had them and figured things out along the way.
It seems it's a self-filtering mechanism in the upper classes, that put all kinds stops before having kids (e.g not ready/mature enough yet, not financially stable, etc) and usually end up having one at most.
So while yes, affordability has rarely been a concern, perhaps people are more educated now and realize what having kids would mean for their life, and how much worse it would make their life? And instead of living life for the purpose of being some child making vessels, they want to actually ... I don't know, LIVE?
Rich world problems, though. In poorer countries and our poorer past, you'd have been working alongside her as she wouldn't be able to do it all on her own. Poor people have little choice but to bring children into this world. They would not survive without them. Opting to not have children is a luxury.
> perhaps people are more educated now
Or less educated. We seem to have come to believe that children are porcelain dolls that will break if they have to lift the lightest of fingers before they turn 18, even though there is no basis to that. It's just a cultural display.
Very much so.
Sadly, hand-in-hand with some strange Peter Pan syndrome of many adults remaining eternal children or what's worse, outright demonizing having children, arguably one of the most beautiful things you could ever achieve in life.
I'm deeply grateful to have been given the chance to be alive and for all those experiences as a child.
> And instead of living life for the purpose of being some child making vessels
someone needs therapy...
Also, the logical consequence of your position is all poor people should be banned from procreating, trickling off to enormous chunks of third world countries.
Bizarre position.
Completely idiotic approach of cargo-culting previous generations without a pinch of logic. There are highly developed countries (as in overall higher than US, say here in Switzerland) where this mindset is absent long term. Thus most population lives in rent for whole life, nobody is bothered by it, and generally Swiss are among the happiest nations in the world, consistently.
That isn't saying child births here are booming, in contrary, but that has absolutely nothing to do with home ownership and being priced out from owning homes. People simply grok how difficult raising even 2 children well is (as in by far the most difficult project you will ever do, spread over 20-25 years of consistent draining efforts with no guarantee of success even with best effort, while you also need to put some good effort into marriage too), society not really helping that much these days, and decide against it.
Don't blame them, as Bill Burr says there are simply too many people. Rather lets lift whole mankind from poverty and the topic of population explosion will vanish on its own.
I am not saying there that it is wrong to give women such freedom, nor that it is right. Maybe there is an alternative cultural setting where women emancipation doesn't bear such consequences. Maybe not. Maybe it is an unavoidable result of our societal progress. Or maybe a flourishing of the society cannot, and shouldn't, be measured in births-to-deaths ratio.
These things I consider unknown. But the cause of the current state of affairs is as stated.
Sure, one could move away from Stockholm into smaller towns up north, but then your career will suffer. Also not something most are willing to consider just as they've gotten a foothold in their respective careers.
The next couple of decades are going to be real interesting, and I don't mean that in a good way...
When you come from nothing its easier to give your kids a better future than you had.
Some animals don't breed in captivity. Some human populations also didn't breed because they were in captivity. Even though people have it better number wise, it's still possible to feel trapped.
I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s possible. It’s a matter of priorities. I’m glad my parents made the hard choices they did.
There is more to do in a life than work and raise children.
I similarly grew up at the poverty line as my parents got crushed by double-digit inflation. Based on personal experience, I didnt want the same for my kids -- so we have 2 though we'd love to have 4.
Why risk one medical bill ruining everyone’s life?
They aren’t that cute.
2011 to 2020 ownership rate has fell from 82,6 to 73,9% in the general population, and from 69,3 to 36,1% in under 35yo. Also people is expending more than 40% of their salary to rent [0]
And those are numbers from 2020 (ownership) and 2022 (rental), but I guess that today, specially on big cities, that's way, way worse. I just checked my neighborhood prices (in Madrid) and, since late 2021 when I rented my current apartment, prices have raised +30%, and lots of posting are now for "temporary rentals" of less than one year. That's a model thought for touristic apartments that offer way less protection to the tenant (they can raise prices at will), less stability (they can kick you out no notice) and allows landlords to avoid housing rental laws (for repair, maintenance, etc.).
So it used to be "AirBnBs around me raise housing prices", and now it's "You can only rent AirBnBs".
0: https://www.bankinter.com/blog/finanzas-personales/porcentaje-espanoles-vivienda-propiedadEveryone online complains about wealth being the reason they won't have kids, but it's not the case. Once people make one step up in their career, they want to make another and kids become an impediment. No matter the country, you'll find higher numbers of kids when people (and especially women) are deprived of education and work opportunities. Then you also have eccentric billionaires that have a dozen kids, but they're statistically irrelevant.
If you want families to have kids, cut wages, don't let women work, cram them into undesirable homes, and most importantly, ignore people who say they'd have kids if only they made a little more money. They won't stop once they get a taste of better living. They'll be very stressed out people, but they'll have kids.
I haven’t helped to provide any cousins, so they don’t have any. Money is not the constraint for me. I’d probably have a better chance of having kids if I had less money, as it would imply I focused on building relationships instead of a career.
Lots of people without a lot of money have kids. They value having a family over other things and make it work.
> Although the average number of lateral relatives varies across race and class groups in the U.S., the cousin decline is either imminent or already happening across all of them.
My suspicion is that once the standard of living reaches a certain baseline level (which e.g. even many "poor" people in the US hit) reproduction takes a back seat. This is clearly in part due to an increased availability of birth control and the ability for women to enter the workforce and make these choices for themselves, which wasn't even an option under more patriarchal societies.
I think there's something more subtle there, too. There's so much more to do now for young people in developed countries, even those of relatively modest economic means. This might manifest as furthering one's career, or in pursuit of hobbies, or in travel, or in consumption of entertainment products, or in higher education... or any number of ways. Child rearing takes many of these options off the table, or it curtails and constrains them severely.
It seems like having fewer children is a pretty reasonable response in a world that is more enjoyable and potentially personally rewarding than any has ever been before.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/12/cousin-re...
Owning a house isn't a pre-req to have a kid
https://apnews.com/article/affordable-housing-rent-eviction-...
Let’s also assume a hypothetical 30 year old buying a house in 2023. 30 year fixed rate is 7.00%. The median US home price is $417,700. Assume 20% down.
Looking up inflation, a 1981 dollar is 3.37 2023 dollars.
The 1981 homebuyer pays 57% of the 2023 homebuyer’s down payment, and only pays 19% more each month. And that’s cherry-picking the absolute worst time to buy for that generation.
Down payment 1981 (inflation adj.): $47,440.60
Monthly payment 1981 (inflation adj.): $2,650.50
Down payment 2023: $83,540.00
Monthly payment 2023: $2,223.17
People complaining about money and kids and meanwhile their Great Depression era ancestors are looking at them with unending shame.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
My friend with the most kids (5) lives in the Midwest had a household income of well under $100k/yr when kid #5 was born (he's a cop, she worked irregular hours because 5 kids). Now that they are older, she might work more and he has been promoted, so it's possible they are above $100k/yr, but if so, it's not much above that.
Prior to kids, they bought a fixer-upper and made it livable over the course of several months of days-off. Granted he had several advantages here: he worked construction jobs to pay his way through college (in-state tuition was laughably low in the early aughts), and his father was a finish carpenter, so the know-how was available, and he graduated with less than $10k in debt.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341055.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I mean you could have a canned answer for such threads, but I liked and learned from how you handled this.
Thank you, again :)
https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/beware-depopulation-bom...
Yes, the cost of living affects this but even when the economy was great, Canada was already below the 2.1 birthrate in 1972. One explanation is declining male fertility (and yes, they accounted for socioeconomic factors.)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/health/sperm-counts-decline-d...
I think realpolitik has so permeated our way of thinking that an impending moral crisis or holocaust can only be brought into discourse as a nonexistent threat to stability. If there's any explanation for why people think an inverted population pyramid is an economic crisis, it is that their hearts are in the right place.
I’m not saying these things will come to pass, only that it isn’t obvious to me that there is a coming crash. The economy will morph to reflect the forces that exist within it.
Because it’s taxed working adults who pay for entitlements like social security and socialized healthcare programs. When retirees outnumber them, these entitlement programs will collapse. As you’ve alluded to Asian culture, these entitlement programs are even more important in Western societies because multiple generations do not live in the same home. Also high trust societies tend to have much weaker family links.
> How exactly will all of the unsupported old people overthrow society?
They are reliable voters. You can already see this in play in places like Japan. As for places like China, they just won’t have enough workers and soldiers in the long run. Yes, their economy is terrible at the moment, but nearly everything is cyclical. Also the younger generation will just see how the elderly are treated and will lose more faith in their government.