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Comment by codegrappler | Hacker News Reader

This is a global trend that seems to follow the general decline of parenthood in almost every country. The more hostile our culture becomes to parenting the more it will decline. While it’s a personal choice to have children, there is a societal threat to declining birth rates. We would do much better to be supporting parents and encouraging family formation.

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Why is this a threat to any rich country? There are millions upon millions of people who would do anything for an opportunity to come to the United States, and we don't let them in. If we ever need more people, we can turn the dial however we choose.

(This is not an argument against supporting parents. I just don't understand the concern around birth rates.)

Same thing happening all around the world, even poor countries threatened by population collapse.

Even if you can convince educated, relatively younger population of poorer countries to come and work for you, integration is a real issue. As an expat who lives in a rich country, I can say that; it's not easy. But if most of the native population turn into seniors, especially if they start to feel like a minority(age/ethnicity/cultural gap), I think that would be very annoying for them.

The world is overpopulated, population collapse is a good thing. Except for the economy. Which also happens to be a good thing considering how far we're into overshoot.

Not enough people to take care of seniors? That's not really a problem. The problem is it pays better to do other work that's useless or downright destructive to society, like trying to show users more ads to get them to consume more.

> The world is overpopulated,

[citation needed]

> Not enough people to take care of seniors? That's not really a problem.

Unless you're a senior or care about your parents...

Blood-and-soil types get a little antsy when you suggest letting in... people with perhaps a more tan complexion, let's say. They tend to dress it up with other language, though.

Agreed. I was happy for decline of world population but seeing the rise of anti-envirmentalism makes me think that child-free people might be more inclined to be selfish. After me, the deluge!

Edit: to be clear, I see possibility of selfishness as a side-effect of being childfree, not a corelation.

Interesting correlation, if one doesn’t have offspring to “leave a better world” to why should they care? Hadn’t thought of that before.

If you think that simply having children makes one selfless, I recommend talking to like... 80% of the people with parents for five minutes about their childhoods.

Selfish or otherwise unpleasant people can be found in any demographic: childless people, people with children, people over 1.80m, people under 1.80m, etc.

Some demographics certainly have higher ratios of unpleasant people. In some demographics it's even close to 100% (e.g. neo-Nazis).

It's entirely unclear to me if the rates are different for people without children. If they are, then you really need to do better than this kind of armchair analysis that you've posted here.

not sure if there is a decline in parenthood.

but there are a lot more pensioners and generally people without kids who prefer to vacation away from other people's screaming kids

I have kids and I plan to occasionally leave them with the grandparents, and vacation away from other people's screaming kids.

No, there's an _economic_ threat to declining births (and also a demographic threat makes certain classes of people... well, let's just say "itchy"), but that is an entirely artificial problem that we could solve, if it wouldn't hit NBC Universal on the pocketbook.

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