Ask HN: Are computers to blame for people not wanting to have children? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are computers to blame for people not wanting to have children?

4 pointsamichail8 comments

Computers will do what you tell them to do but children will eventually rebel and do the opposite.

Do you think this is a factor in people not wanting to have and raise children?

I suspect the biggest issue is the cost of having children today. Most big cities lack enough space so they are turning to apartments to house people. So that means most families will have one or two kids at most. Then there's the costs of raising them. It's just too expensive for even a 2 parent families. Say nothing of single parents. Also, birth control makes it less likely to have unwanted children.

If anything computer are a distraction to fill time not the cause of the reduction in births.

I think people who have always wanted to have a family don’t really take cost into consideration. I actually asked some friends with kids and no one cited cost as a factor.

Cats have been getting more popular than dogs over recent decades, have they not?

But dogs are considerably easier to train than cats.

I don’t think there is anything in your thesis.

Back in the Good Old Days, when the average family size was far larger, and most Americans also had plenty of young cousins, nephews, and such around, that exposure was (evidently) no great deterrent to having children of their own.

Those must also have been the good old days of limited knowledge about and access to birth control - people who can regulate their fertility practically always do!

I think it is, entertainment options were limited. Now there is constant pervasive entertainment.

I may be wrong; but let me ask my five brothers and sisters and see what they think.

I find computers frequently do not do what I tell them to do:

“Hey Siri, set a timer for twenty minutes.”

“You can’t set a timer for a time of day. I’ve set an alarm for twenty hundred hours.”

people do want to have children...but seeing how expensive and time-consuming it is they decide not to have them...blaming computers makes no sense.

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