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Comment by jopsen | Hacker News Reader

Falling birth rates is a problem in most wealthy industrialized societies.

Being up a 4am to greet my wife who's been up since 1am with a screaming child. I'm not sure exactly what kind of benefits could convince us that he needs siblings :)

Just saying, that while I certainly applaud the effort. I don't see any easy ways to fix the issue: kids are hard work, there are many other things you could do with your life.

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Idk, I love children and being able to comfort kids back to sleep makes me more happy and not annoyed, I’d choose children over a better vacation or a car, I’m not sure why our generation in most countries stopped caring about children.

Until this, people would dedicate their lives to their kids, children were the most important thing in people’s lives, everything from friends, to outings, to day to day life, would revolve around the child’s best interests and wants.

I’m not sure why this link broke, across every major country. Was it the internet ? What was it, even people from less fortunate backgrounds are having fewer kids, like a LOT LESS, what changed, its not about religion, even the religious are having fewer kids (more than non-religious) but still fewer,

It’s truly a big question, my guess is it has something to do with, increasing the avg age of marriage by 10 yrs from 20 to 30, and making pre-marital sex available in-cheap for everyone, before you’d need to get married to be able to sleep with the opposite gender.

> I’d choose children over a better vacation or a car

I don’t think the burden of children is experienced only financially. I suspect at least some people are choosing sleep, peace, and freedom over children. Not [primarily] luxury goods.

> Until this, people would dedicate their lives to their kids, children were the most important thing in people’s lives, everything from friends, to outings, to day to day life, would revolve around the child’s best interests and wants.

Is this actually true? I don’t really believe it. Sending your kids to work in the sweatshops doesn’t seem like “best interests and wants.” I think people were just surviving in their time/environment. Like we are now.

its a complete lie. In the 70s we were treated like luggage. shoved in the back of the station wagon, inhaling cigarette smoke from dad, and playing at construction sites. Im not kidding, that was the affluent kid.

> Is this actually true?

It is true in Asian countries and most pre-industrialised nations

This has been parenting for the last several thousand years.

I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?

(To be fair, I have 3 kids and totally get why your scenario might lower the odds. I'll say that even with the 1am wakeups, the "I love you!" from a toddler is one of the best feelings ever.)

> ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?

Maybe they weren’t fine with it. They just didn’t have any other choice. Now we do, and turns out a lot of people choose not to have kids when given the choice.

Honestly, I think we will have a rough couple generations, then nature will take its course and humans will reach a new equilibrium that factors in birth control.

It’s only a choice if you live purely for yourself. It’s the job of the state to make short sighted, self absorbed thinking like this unpalatable since people can only think in self absorbed, short term ways.

What a misanthropic world view.

How about we make it easier for people who want kids to have them, and we stop vilifying people who don’t want kids?

There are many ways to contribute to society. Some of the kindest most selfless people I know don’t want kids. It’s fine, humanity will manage.

If he is misanthropic , then amigo, Nature is the most misanthropic existence in the whole universe, by your logic, lol.

~40% of US and international pregnancies, annually, are unintended. When unintended pregnancies are prevented, there are less children. Educated, empowered women have less children or no children. Desired fertility is less than replacement rate, broadly speaking.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40982392 (citations)

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/the-exp...

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-...

> Stunning stat: 64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men. (US specific survey data)

I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?

Life as a non-parent has gotten much better, especially for high earners.

I believe the answer is that there is far more interesting things to do with your life. It's quite easy to imagine a life where you're occupied up to your mid thirties with things like university, starting a career in a field you're actually interested in, maybe moving locations once or twice, travelling, working overseas. This plays out even at the relationship level: people in their 20's are far less committal, and prefer the freedom to explore what life has to offer.

Compare this to even just 50 years ago. These options were limited to the highest classes of society. People tended to settle down and have children because that was the sensible next thing to do in life.

I mean yea did that till I got bored at 37/38 and had kids

Over half of US households (58.4%) contain no kids, 17.9% are married parents raising kids, 7.4% are single parents.

Some have them, many are not.

https://www.voronoiapp.com/demographics/Over-Half-of-Househo...

I did all of this by 30 and started a family shortly after this. Kids are hard (I have two), but I wouldn't change anything.

I know multiple single people in their 50s and 60s with no kids and they are all miserable human beings.

Another issue is that most of your peers at that age are raising a family and have less time to get together, making it very lonely. If you wait long enough, your friends will retire/kids will move out and they will have time for you again.

This doesn't even include the elderly people with no kids that end up alone in a nursing home one day.

What about the elderly people with kids that end up alone in nursing homes?

I know a few people in the 50s and 60s with no kids and they are perfectly nice and happy. I also know parents who are real shit bags. Let’s stop this false narrative that people without kids are miserable or selfish or evil in some way. We are all just people, kids or no.

for the last several thousand years it's been a matter of survival, a help in the fields and your social security, and with a crazy high mortality, had to have many

it's objectively hard work that nowadays may not even pay off at all, aside from this feelings part, which to me always has been balanced out with acute paranoia about being responsible for a fragile live human.

Multi-generational families with tighter communities spreading the work.

My parents grew up spending a lot of time with their aunts and uncles. I grew up with my parents because they didn't have extended family or friends that could help. Now my generation, I see at least more "family circles" sharing in child care (eg Friday sleepovers at one rotating family, so the other parents can go out). I can't imagine how easy it would be if more grandparents were nearby.

Plus it was just cheaper to live back then. Now the norm is both parents work full time to stay barely above water economically, maximizing shareholder value.

I think multi generation housing helped where older generations took care of the child when parents were working, that both parents were not necessarily working, and that kids did not need constant supervision in the sense that they could be left to run around as long as you lived outside major urban centers.

> I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?

Because by and large our female ancestors raised the children, were offered no choice in whether to raise the children, and their opinions of the situation were not recorded.

It is kind of humorous that the majority of people advocating for lots and lots of kids seem to be men.

I find when the people with the least accountability want the most power; many people suffer

Single person centuries ago was a weird wizard who was probably secretly communicating with a devil and should be exiled from the village just in case. Or he would just die from the lack of help during the illness or trauma. And most certainly he would starve, from not being able to grow food he requires. Those people didn't have an alternative for kids.

> This has been parenting for the last several thousand years

Maybe, we are treated better than our ancestors. Most certainly this was the case for women.

(To be clear, I'm not saying that kids isn't worth it, just that it's hard for a government service to move the needle)

Industrialized countries generally have high cost of living. It is much more common for both parents to work than 50 years ago. Also, for many, a career involves moving away from parents, grandparents, and siblings. This all leads to a vastly reduced safety net compared to what was common for most of human history. It is probably unlikely that government could ever fill that void. Eventually, high prices will cure high prices. But, the methods, timescale, and pleasantness in the intervening time is anybody’s guess.

With siblings of similar age, it's much harder in the first 2-3 years (external help is essential), but then the kids considerably shortcircuit to each other, so it becomes easier than having just one, constantly bored child.

Source: I am a father of two daughters with less than 2 years difference; and my brother is also less than 2 years apart from me. So, I lived my advice in both aspects: as a parent and as a child.

Not sure if you have access to affordable child care and parental PTO (after birth but also “my kid is sick I need to stay home” type of PTO). It makes everything a lot more manageable.

With the expectation of both parents working full time jobs and living in small spaces (at least in big cities like in Japan) - the current state of modern urban life is just not right to have kids. Where are they even going to run around and play.

>Falling birth rates is a problem in most wealthy industrialized societies.

The most fascinating part of this is that, against income, fertility is a bathtub-shaped curve. The poorest and richest have the most kids, which the middle class drags the whole nation down.

I get the feeling many have this idea that the more educated /career-oriented you are, the more you delay kids or have less of them. But that is not the case, past a certain point. Look up any of your favorite elite celebrities for example and how many kids they have. They might never talk about them, but I’d bet most of who you look up have 3+

I think it's the point at which you can hire a nanny - being able to offload a lot of parenting responsibilities to someone else helps.

A lot of people can afford nannies. I think it’s more that parents want to raise their kids really well. As opposed to, “what happens, happens.” So naturally you want to do that yourself.

This is pure speculation, but I imagine after you attain a certain degree of wealth, you just hand the kids over to someone and give them a paycheck. Certain megabillionaires in the US have loads of kids and they're treated like goldfish. They're nice decorations for your photo ops, but otherwise, you just pay someone to visit your house and feed them a couple times a day. And it doesn't matter whether you have 1 or 12 because they're all fed at once anyways.

Not just wealthy industrialised societies any more.

Nowadays it’s basically just sub-Saharan Africa keeping the global birth rate up. Even India may now have just dropped below 2.1 along with nearly all of South East Asia.

having kids connects you to humanity like nothing else… I don’t think you must have kids to have a great life or anything like that but with all the hard work (the 1am will pass soon and you’ll talk to your wife how unfair would be to your son/daughter to deprive her/him of experiencing sibling love :) ) it is worth it for the full connection to human existence.

What if they provided your child nightcare too

You have to listen to crying and lose some sleep for a couple of weeks? You’re an adult, this is possibly the most self absorbed and shortsighted thinking I seen in a while.

Weeks? Try years. As a parent of a newborn, I can confidently say that my wife hasn't had a full night's sleep for even one night since the kid was born in early July - she watches the kid at night (we live in a one bedroom apartment with the crib in our room - it affects me, too, but I try to tune it out and focus on sleep, as breadwinner). She also watches the kid all day while I work (9-11 hours). She's drained. I don't see this getting any easier for at least 12 months. It's a long road.

We don't have family to support us and we can't afford childcare. So, that's our situation. Not complaining, just saying - it's not weeks of a little bit less sleep. It's chronically interrupted sleep for months, maybe years (according to Dr. Ferber), with severe affects to hormonal regulation and mood and weight.

I have two kids. After the first 3 months they were sleeping 7-8 hours through the night.

Not all kids are the same. Shocking I know…

I hope not, three-month-olds are supposed to sleep 14-17 hours a day. Also, what happened when they dropped naps? Night sleep typically worsens right beforehand, as the residual nap pushes their lengthening wake window into night sleep. How did you manage their congestion when they were sick? Many kids, especially those using a pacifier, lose the ability to link their short, 45-minute sleep cycles and need to be comforted throughout the night even into toddlerhood.

7-8 hours at a stretch, there are more hours of sleep that happen on either side of that stretch.

Congestion with those little pipe things that you can used to suck the snot out of the baby’s nose.

We never used a pacifier. The baby slept in the same room and my wife nursed her for three years.

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