It's Not Just You. No One Wants Kids Anymore [video]
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What I describe above was basically the way people lived with respect to “family planning” since all biological history unto the last few hundred years - namely they didn’t do any
The world has changed in the last 100 years - likely for the better - in that we’re now intentional and forceful about consentful sex, accessible birth control, accessible abortion etc…such that fertility isn’t just taken for granted and is fully in the hands (ideally) of the birth mother.
The result is that most of my peers on the other hand either have one or zero kids. Why? Cause they actively tried not to have kids. Now the ones who want them are struggling with IVF or HRT etc… and having even one is a blessing.
It’s a new world and all the old assumptions about human life don’t hold because we’ve been so successful in building systems and controls for what we’re previously magical, mystical processes.
None of my friends in 2 countries had children (I'm an immigrant). That's shocking, all families with children I had to meet after I had them.
Anyway lucky services for families are strong and we can enjoy the time together, but my prospective growing up was to share this also with my friends, so the realization it wouldn't be the case was sad. All of them are losing so much.
Until the 1970s there was no reliable way to decide to not have children while still being sexually active.
That’s a well researched and documented change in biology that continues to be ignored for how massively impactful it has been on society.
We take it for granted that you can have regular sex and not have a kid as a result. That’s extraordinarily new and powerful in human history.
Said another way: The base rate of likelihood of having a child as a result of having sex has dropped to ~1% given the prevalence of oral contraception (99% with perfect use + Plan-B) and abortion (for gaps in perfect contraceptive use) from ~20% which was the failure rate of the most successful method of interruption + synchronization with menstrual cycle, prior to oc.
A 20x drop in desired children is non-trivial and reflects a 20x base rate change.
I guess this is Progressive in the 1920s sense (as much as the faux-sophisticates think they've outgrown the past, they've really just doubled-down), since the black population would have been much larger now otherwise
Nothing you said makes sense. Celebrating black abortion as a victory ignores that an entire generation of black babies were annihilated in the name of "progress".
But no amount of hugs from your 4yo would replace the 3-week 3000/4000-mile 38-state(USA) road trip my close friends and I took traveling the state and national parks. We hiked, cave dove (dived??), camped, and lived out a rented mini-van. Not to mention all the little road trip memories and folks we met along the way.
Things are not always comparable, pretending they are really misses the mark. Someone might meet the love of their life at a bar. Someone might see a documentary about their homeland that inspires them to find their roots. We have no idea what the lasting effects of a single event might be.
We were 34 when we had our firstborn, 38 for 2nd, waiting to be financially stable enough, be on the housing ladder etc, but now one of my wife's parents is elderly, the other is dead, one of mine is still working due to delayed state pension age, and the other is raising step grand-kids. Siblings emmigrated and live thousands of miles away so we're on our own in a country that does very little to help parents with astronomical childcare costs, some of the most expensive in Europe.
It's a system set up to prevent the next generation from existing, while at the same time the country that is literally rioting against the immigration needed to plug the gap. Sure, call it the "far right" but the sentiments are muttered by many more moderate voices.
I knew then what I know now, I'm not sure I'd make the same choice.
Does immigration cause the lower fertility, or does lower fertility cause the immigration? Why can't it be both, death spiral style?
I think the, more obvious IMO, answer is that as a species we no longer have an optimistic vision of the future.
Income inequality is rising around the world and in certain elitist circles there are serious discussions about creating a neo-aristocracy/neo-feudalism. Where are the stories about bettering ourselves? Why does it feel like we have to fight the fights of our ancestors to demand the same rights that they bled for?
It's depressing and collectively I think the vast majority of us recognize this and feel powerless.
People want to fight climate change, but a handful of individuals are able to stop all progress? People want to usher in new civil rights, but now we have to continue to fight for the same rights previous peoples had? People want better welfare programs, but we have to fight to return to previous tax structures that enabled this decades ago?
How can you tell an optimistic vision of the future when people are actively fighting, and winning, against it?
As far as climate change, I can't help but feel that the fight is already lost and we are headed towards disaster as tipping points fall and feedback loops bite. I can't imagine being a child today and staring down that future; I'm not young, but young enough that I'm pretty depressed about it myself.
To me climate change, overpopulation causing insane resource consumption make it look kind of selfish when people want their own kids.
I understand that in terms of social systems we "need" more kids to support the old. But at the same time these kids will grow old at some point as well, and if you always need more kids than old people that means you need growth forever, which just means you're kicking the can down the road and creating more environmental issues in the meantime.
Have kids, don't have kids, whatever. But don't pretend like you did something selfless.
If people were having more kids we'd just have a bigger demographic collapse in the future.
As you said:
> I'll get to my deathbed and regret not having a family of my own to enjoy time with.
Is that not selfish? Making humans to fill your time? Humans who are in no way guaranteed to want to spend time with you between adulthood and your death [1] [2]? I'm not going to argue against it in this thread, but let's call a spade a spade. I can respect "I am selfish and am making this choice, consequences be damned," but lets not dress up having kids as a noble cause when there are 8 billion people on the planet.
Not directed at you, but a phrase I use often with people considering kids is "Do you need kids? Or therapy?" Enumerate why you are making this decision, and provide evidence supporting this decision. The worst I hear, far too often, is "I'm having a kid so someone will love me forever." Big oof, let me tell you how that goes. I'm arguing for more thought and intention into the default choice, because the outcome is mostly permanent and a one way door. Is it worse to regret not having kids? Or regret having had them?
~40% of annual pregnancies, in both the US and internationally, are unintentional (per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN, respectively), so I think folks who really want to have kids aren't going to be material as long as those folks who don't want them have their reproductive freedoms affirmed.
[1] https://www.vogue.com/article/why-so-many-people-are-experie...
[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brothers-sisters-str...
Correct, they have no obligation to be around me. If you raise your kids poorly, they likely won't want to be around you. Your chances are good if you don't give them a reason to avoid you. On top of that, the fulfillment of raising the next generation to be moral and upstanding people to carry the torch, is also more than enough.
Edit: Based on your version before the edit, but I see you and understand. "Be the person you needed when you were younger."
How is that not selfish reasoning?
People throw around a lot of theories on the low birthrate but for me it's simply that having kids is a choice. I have low societal and family pressure, my SO and I have effective birth control, and we decided kids wouldn't make us happier.
Ive also read nothing but anecdotes that indicates people regret either decision. I think we all tend to confirm our own decisions.
It's probably much less cool to say you regret having kids, but I know a recent divorcee who sure acts like her kids are in the way of her dating. I'm also sure there are plenty of people who get older and alone and wish they had their own children. But ultimately it seems like having kids is about deciding you want kids in your life and it's no longer considered the inevitable outcome of a long relationship.
Perhaps my mind will change when my dad dies.
[1] https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/research-data-technology/statisti...
[2] https://www.adoptuskids.org/meet-the-children/children-in-fo...
with family, it is the children who will drive you nuts.
“it’s just what you do”
“I want a mini-me” (yikes)
“I don’t wanna adopt. I want my OWN kid”
“I want a best friend”
“I want someone to take care of me when I’m old”
To me these all read as selfish which is why I never reached a compelling conclusion to have my own kids.
Quite literally so. If you want to benefit from our society/civilization, without making the next generation that will become that society/civilization, you're saying you deserve to get all the things you get from it without contributing back. The government took out debt in your name, to be paid back by future generations that you aren't helping to create... it's borderline fraud.
> To me climate change, overpopulation
A crazy doomsday hippy wrote a book with an unsupportable, unsubstantiated crackpot theory in 1968, and now you believe this concept that never existed and is pretty meaningless. What is the cutoff population number after which is overpopulation? Did you know that in the 1980s the UK's population crashed and only a few roving cannibals still lived there?
> I understand that in terms of social systems we "need" more kids to support the old. But at the same time these kids will grow old at some point as well, and if you always need more kids than old people that means you need growth forever,
This is bad math. You need to hug pretty close to replacement fertility (2.1 kids), but you don't need growth.
I already paid back more in taxes than I've ever gotten from the state in education. And since I don't have children I pay more taxes, making up for it more quickly.
Children would create future resource consumers that cause damage not only to my country, but to all human and animal life on this planet.
>A crazy doomsday hippy wrote a book with an unsupportable, unsubstantiated crackpot theory in 1968, and now you believe this concept that never existed and is pretty meaningless.
If you're post fact there's no purpose discussing anything with you, because you won't accept reason.
>What is the cutoff population number after which is overpopulation?
Overpopulation is any population that utilizes more resource in a year than what is regenerated by mother earth in a year. I.e. earth overshoot day moving past December.
>Did you know that in the 1980s the UK's population crashed and only a few roving cannibals still lived there?
Ok now you've really stopped making sense.
>This is bad math. You need to hug pretty close to replacement fertility (2.1 kids), but you don't need growth.
Not according to our politicians, who need an ever growing tax base to keep up social systems that are not sustainably set up. Mostly because the first generation didn't pay in, but took out massive amounts.
Paul Erlich. The asshole that reinvented Malthus for the hippy age. The Population Bomb, 1968. It's on archive.org.
> in 2022 the population peak was estimated to peak in 2080 but later corrections point more towards 2060.
It will be revised earlier and earlier. This problem is accelerating.
Um, why would you say that? Only if you stay at sub replacement for hundreds of years will you reach extinction.
If we get back to 1 billion people in 200 years we can go back to having replacement level kids again.
Why would you think this? Is it because it's a comfortable thought? "Oh gee, but we'll be able to fix it later!" Sub-replacement fertility causes demographic collapse, which causes extreme economic collapse. If you're bitching and moaning that you can't afford kids now, how will that be any different for the few grandchildren you had 50 years from now when they have to each support three or four social security retirees and pay back the $35 trillion credit card bill you ran up? Sub-replacement fertility doesn't just cause a dip in population, it actively causes more sub-replacement fertility. It accelerates. And, I'll have you note that however many centuries you think this takes, the better part of that last century consists of childless people (the last generation) living out lonely, desolate lives as they wait for humanity to become extinct.
> If we get back to 1 billion people in 200 years we can go back to having replacement level kids again.
All people aren't equal when it comes to this problem. Only the (next to) most recent generation can even make kids. Roughly from age 15 to age 35. Do you think those 1 billion people would all consist of people age 15 to age 35? Most of them would be geriatric. That's one of the things people don't ever seem to get... they're counting the wrong fucking thing. You thought "hey, we have 1 billion people, that's more than enough". But what you really had is maybe 10 or 20 million people at that point who are still capable of having children. Virtually all of those people were only-children themselves. Do you think they're going to say "hey, I want 10 children, and I'll be a good parent too even though no one alive knows how to raise that many children in a single family!" ?
Maybe I'm being mean. Maybe this is counter-intuitive. But you're just flat out wrong, refuse to do the thinking necessary to get past your own biases and cognitive malfunctions, and you and other people will live to see at least the first stage of a rapid decline that you don't even have the mental tools to understand.
After that the kids turn into net positives that finance the rest of society.
A society that is declining in population because of a large number of people actively choosing to not have kids means that they are not “doing their part” to build our society.
It sounds weird and abstract, but on a large scale makes sense.
By the time you stop working society gives you more for your life, they maintain and uphold society and pay for your retirement. When you don’t have children you only take from then on without returning to society.
I think by that point I already paid for my retirement for the 40+ years that I've worked.
This might or might not be an issue for retirements in future. You could have currency units, but there might not be labour to buy with those units. As money in sense is just saved labour.
That's not how it works at all though, when you work you pay other people's retirement. When you retire the working class pays yours.
And yes it's as sustainable as it sounds...
Would you consider lack of marriage stability as a reason to not have kids yet?
Remember in the era of the rise of civilizations, earth was five degrees warmer than today. So we will be fine now and later
Nobody _wants_ to neglect their kid because their job requires 10-12 hours of their time per day. Nobody wants their kid to not have the things they want because they can't afford it.
There still are people who literally YOLO kids and somehow make do, others consider and wait for The Best Time and poof they're 40 and in line for IVF.
You are stronger than you think. The light you seek is within you.
The significant birthrate drop turns out to be an unexpected consequence of a societal goal that various moral actors in the US had been working towards for decades.
Also, they never correlate with actual future tax contributions vs use of services, rendering the raw birthrate comparison meaningless..
In the modern era for example, we know that American agriculture is basically backstopped by undocumented and underdocumented labor of immigrant workers. Successful 100% enforcement of immigration law and border security would result in a food crisis due to a lack of hands to pick the harvest (because farm incomes are not sustainable paying a standard American living wage).
Illegal immigration is currently the backbone of the American agricultural economy, and it's an inconvenient truth that Americans like to ignore.
I had a discussion with my kids about them having children. They do not want any because of the state of the world. I was with them and told them that if I was in their shoes, knowing how great having kids is - I would not have any either.
I simply would not want them to live in the world I will leave behind.
Humans cannot deal well with decline/degradation, it’s very painful to us. Like having a little less money every month – so much worse than having much less money suddenly and then slowly more every month again, even if the total amount of money is the same.
With the disastrous predictions for basically everything, and especially climate, I would not to be at my peak at that time.
One option is that immigrants will pick up the baton. Old childless people might complain about immigrants from XYZ yet pay them for support. Perhaps other jobs will likewise be filled by people emigrating from poorer countries.
Another is the same, but the economic growth will slow in these aging societies, and the rich aging countries will turn into poor old countries, without the means to attract immigrants. For different reasons, but the UK labour market is really struggling, as since Brexit it is harder to attract migrant workers in sought after professions. Why should you go do menial jobs in the US if India or Vietnam or Albania is booming, fuelled by healthy demographics, and the US is getting poorer? These now-old countries will sell off their economy for support, basically, a bit how the UK has been selling off bits of it to sustain cash balances. Or go without young hands to do the work, and implode in slow motion.
Maybe having children will again become net positive. But if course the lead time on productive humans from scratch is very long.
But as a corollary to delaying having kids is that biologically we are not made to have kids so late and my wife and her friends have all experienced complications dues to it.
From this video's Youtube comments:
“Governments aren’t trying to create self actualized, happy, positive individuals. They’re trying to create meat for the grinder.” Rational actors are making rational decisions based on the environment they are operating in and their options available.
The sooner we stop assuming this planet can support unlimited human beings, the better.
4 kids per family as 'average' is almost unheard of in the industrialized world
It's also a really effective way to really learn that life isn't about you. Not the only way, of course, but a very good one.
In the 1990s, I remember being bombarded with messages that "adoption was just as good as having your own child". In high school by teachers, when there was opportunity. From television and media. We've been conditioned too. I won't call it deliberate, but even if it were inadvertent would it matter? No words even have to be said, if you're a young child and they send you to school with other young children, and everyone you know is an only child, what do you grow up to think is the correct number of children for adults to have? The simple answer is "one", but there's an implicit "or zero" that should be tacked on. The children see these "zeros" too, when they notice the adults around them are childless.
Those children don't grow up and choose not to any more than the rats chose not to.
Can my wife also have pregnancy protection?
As a society, can we protect humans from capitalistic predators who will literally cut off food from your table because some KPI is temporarily not met?
Most countries with protection have patchwork laws that are easily broken.
Even the US has laws that pregnant people cannot be discriminated against but they face retaliation and discrimination by citing other means - a patchwork law with no teeth.
The reality is even countries with iron clad protections they are also having less kids. So that's not the only factor.
And even then the laws are not ironclad. Look at Scandinavian/Nordic European countries laws.
- Decreased fertility ( Obesity maybe? )
- Cost of housing.
- Children in the west are now overprotected little dictators and parents are no longer allowed to be humans with their own needs.
Side rant:
I just saw a linkedin post with a woman being flamed for choosing not not attend childs first day of school because she had an important work event to attend to.
Father attended, not mother. Mother thus declared incompetent child abuser.
Seing what my poor younger collegues go through today I would absolutely abstain from having any.
Living on the edge of financial ruin and sleep depravation to pay half my income for a child that can threaten to call the social sevices on you for forcing them to bicycle to school instead of being driven by car is an easy choice not to make.
Oddly specific story is a danish one from a collegue. They have a kids emergency phone or something in Denmark that is supposed to be used for abused children to alarm authorities of violence etc. Said collegue was reported, by their 11 year old, for failing to drive the kid to school and giving them bicycles instead. To add insult to injury, its an expensive private school they attend and denmark is a bicycle country.
The authorities of course just dismissed the complaint and nothing ever happened. Kid had to bicycle.
They have to investigate according to law though. And file a report.
Sorry long rant. I feel genuinly sorry for young people trying to start a family.
Bringing a child to the western world demands double phds in child psychiatry and Kardashian money.
My impression is that kids have always been terrible, and even my teen is self-involved and arrogant and short tempered with siblings despite all external perspectives are that they are a quite decent and competent human.
Fertility is dropping, maybe it’s a factor, but being centered in developed nations it’s just the universal problem for 20 years: housing.
Housing costs outstripped income since the 90s, and post pandemic and post inflation busting interest rates, providing the type of stable life to your kids seems unattainable.
With kids you need bigger housing, you need a bigger car or a car at all, you need that housing to be some place safe and probably short distance from good schools. Even if you can afford that, which we can barely manage, than all our cash goes into housing, and there is less for retirement and college funds.
Yes, people can accept cramped conditions or take a gamble their kids won’t be impact by a gritty neighborhood gang or what not, but people just decide to wait, hope for better fortunes, and then whoops no babies anymore.
Obesity may be a factor. But many people at least try to not have kids until they're married and stable. And people are marrying later. And female fertility declines and then stops with age.