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Comment by stego-tech | Hacker News Reader

Wildfires burning, oceans rising, glaciers melting, dual incomes can’t buy a home, can’t have a good quality of life without a college degree that’s ever-increasing in cost and decreasing in returns, food prices are rising, global conflict is on the rise, populism is boosting authoritarian regimes worldwide, widespread belief in younger generations that we’ll never be able to retire, cost of healthcare can bankrupt all but the richest of the rich…

“Why aren’t people having children?”

These articles were awful when it was “Millennials are killing X”, and they’re even worse now. The answers are obvious, and I’m tired of entertaining these clickbait narratives that refuse to acknowledge any of the very large elephants in the room.

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You may wish to reconsider your hypothesis after viewing this chart:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?t...

What about the data would necessitate reconsideration?

I'd be interested in per country data for this information. Last I checked, nearly every country was at 0.75-2 tops, save for the world average being skewed heavily by some usual suspects.

Use the side bars to select individual countries instead of "World".

Thanks. And yep, usual suspects. Rotw is at <1-2.

Interesting to see the fall in the GCC countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. The charts show them at ~2, even though those governments actively provide subsidies for citizens to bear more children. iirc they used to be MUCH higher.

Have an Emirati friend who has 5 kids on a government job (he lives with his parents, as is expected culturally, so that obviously makes a difference).

The data in fact shows the reality - when affordability was great, people had kids, when it's bad, people don't.

Everything is expensive as hell these days.

All your comment demonstrates is that media is broadcasting a lot of anti natalist messaging, and that many people are taking it to heart. I guess media is filling the void of centuries of religion telling people to be fruitful and multiply.

That's a whole lot of rationalization for a few decades of a species that discovered condoms and the means to spread them cheaply to everyone.

How magnanimous to blame our own selfishness onto the problems of the world. People were having kids with mass killings and rapes and torture and no hospitals or social security or higher degrees or anything for millenia. All that is new is the choice, due to cheap contraceptives.

"We spent all our lives living the lives of others that we quite forgot to have our own."

This is explicitly the opinion of some of my friends. One is the married couples broke up because only one of them felt really strongly about it. Many discuss this openly. It's weird to see this downvoted like some weird idea.

I mean, your statement says it all plain as day. What used to be the norm - having kids freely and often - is now a discussion. While some people may try to blame that on civil rights, listening to stories from the extended older family as a kid paints a picture that we (as humans) will have as many kids as we feel we’re able to support, and as often as we feel safe doing so, when left to our own devices.

And if that’s the case, then the question answers itself.

Seriously... seeing how people discuss this is so strange. My wife and I literally just did the deed and made a baby. Didn't think a whole lot about it. But as I've said elsewhere in this thread. Part of this problem is that that 'let's-just-have-fun' attitude tends to dissipate by the time people are having kids these days. My wife and I married young for the 'well-educated' crowd (at 22), and I think my family size benefited from our collective on-going brain development. We did not even discuss this before getting pregnant the first time. It was just fun. I think as people age, hormones go down, etc, people start making this a bigger decision.

Its partially this but also starting older kills off the 3+ kid families skewing the birthrate. My particular sitution my wife and i figured out late that all the fear mongering is bullshit amd not having kids makes you miss such an important and fulfilling part of being human. We had our first kid at 37, second kid at 39 and now have been trying for a year for our third kid but not having lick leaving expensive ivf as our fertility which means in practicality we are done. Also there was a massive upswing in inmarried people in my cohort vs older genertions that also kills fertility and is missed in this discussion

Yup. We are sold the story from a young age that when you're 'ready' to have kids, you can just have them. This is false. While humans on average will breed enough to grow a population slowly over time (as demonstrated by history/pre-history), the truth is that for any individual couple, humans are actually not that good at breeding. The chance of pregnancy each cycle is 20-25% ... not that high, and then there's the miscarriage rate, as well as the breastfeeding which can hold off fertility for months. All things considered, there's not that many opportunities for pregnancy.

Indeed, a study found that if you want a 90% chance of having three, you need to start trying at 23! This is so off from the story we feed teenagers. Imagine getting pregnant the year after you graduate college? Most kids would think that's nuts, but if you want a good chance at a normal family size, then you really have to.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/want-three-kids-then-best-s...

Which wasnt a problem when we didnt have birth control and incorrectly believed religion so we got married way before 23, stayed together and had squat for entertainment options mak*ng sex highly likely. I love my birth control, entertainment, and atheism so i really hope we stumble onto a sustainable path that keeps those and avoids the old ways soon.

“Millennials are killing X” is more like “A, B, C, ..., Y, Z killed Millennials' will to live”

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