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Comment by dnel | Hacker News Reader

Have two kids, I always wanted a family around me and I love having them but I don't blame people for making other choices, it is very hard.

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.

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Immigration doesn't plug the gap, it causes the costs to rise that people complain is the reason for them not having or wanting children. I don't particularly believe that high costs of living are the real reason, seems more like a rationalization to me (else we'd see number of children go smoothly up with higher income, and we don't really see that). But it does seem to be the popular response.

Does immigration cause the lower fertility, or does lower fertility cause the immigration? Why can't it be both, death spiral style?

How do you square this opinion with countries like South Korea or Japan, two of which both have extremely low immigration and low fertility?

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?

There's sort of a neoliberal nihilism that treats the economy as the only real god to which humans must supplicate themselves (and as someone who has never really been able to believe in a god, I agree it can be difficult to find an alternative). That might be enough to get you up and to work in the morning, but I don't think it's a system that people really care to perpetuate. I certainly am not interested.

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.

It's an oversimplification to say it is just about the cost of living, but its an easy to understand reduction of the problem that is far more complex and what I'm saying is that the consequences of high housing prices/rents and a lack of financial stability in our boom and bust economy is delaying parenthood, and this leads towards the failure of the familial support network that is critical to raising children.

There’s an emotional cost to the high cost of living. People are too burned out to have the emotional energy for kids.

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