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Comment by rngfnby | Hacker News Reader

But why are we under the replacement rate? Seems relevant

It all comes back to women being treated as full people. Having a child is dangerous, expensive, and a major time commitment which mean that women who have other options are going to have fewer children later in life when they have the resources to support them. We also have much less demand for unskilled workers so even women who really want children are getting educated and establishing careers first rather than getting married at 18.

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/is-the-us-birth-rate-decli...

That leaves really only two choices: pull a Ceaușescu and try to remove the choice, or improve all of the things which make people feel now is not the right time to have kids. Since the former choice is both immoral and self-defeating, that really flips the discussion to why the people who claim to want more children oppose universal healthcare, childcare, making housing more affordable, banning negative career impacts for mothers, addressing climate change, etc. There are many things which factor into an expensive multi-decade bet and you have to improve all of them to substantially shift the outcome.

They can't be good little wives like republicans want if they have a career.

> It all comes back to women being treated as full people.

What does this actually mean? Do you mean "get a job instead of having kids?" Working to afford life instead of having kids seem much less humanising, if anything. Being a wife and mum is being a full person, and the main thing that's bad about it is if you are a full-time mum your spouse has to work incredibly hard to compete on the housing ladder against all the two-income families bidding against them.

I meant that they get to choose whether and when they have children, and can have full careers. Think about it in terms of opportunity cost: much over a century ago, women were expected to marry and be wives with a handful of exceptions like religious service. They did not have many opportunities for education and there were limited opportunities for independent employment with entire professions off-limits. When those were your choices, even women who didn’t really want kids that much went down that path because only a few people had the drive and social clout not to, and without modern birth control that almost inevitably lead to more kids (necessary, because mortality was shockingly high in pre-vaccine times).

Now, however, there are tons of other opportunities available. Instead of kids just happening, couples can plan them and are making decisions about their finances and other life impacts such as the case you mentioned where people might realize that they can’t afford a larger home. Prospective mothers, even if they really want kids, are also being told advanced education is key or that mothers tend to have lower lifetime earnings even adjusted for field, so the questions aren’t just “can we feed them?” but “would I avoid future layoffs if I finish a masters degree before becoming a parent?”

I think that’s great, everyone should control their life trajectory, but it means that to the extent we want to reverse the trend we need to be lowering the costs so people aren’t looking at trade offs like permanently lowering their career trajectory or locking themselves into a limited, highly-competitive corner of the housing market.

> much over a century ago, women were expected to marry and be wives with a handful of exceptions like religious service. They did not have many opportunities for education and there were limited opportunities for independent employment with entire professions off-limits

This was the case for most men as well, except they sometimes had to go and die weeping and in pain in a foreign field rather than stay at home and do what for most people is the most rewarding thing in life.

... and we should improve those conditions for both men and women so that they can live fulfilling lives. Your whole argument is predicated on the "redpilled" idea that gender rights are zero-sum, and that's just not the case.

It's not at all. My point was that it wasn't women specifically not being allowed to be "whole people" - that is a false premise, as it implies that men were.

Consider that many women… want to work? And some even want to work and have kids?

Because of eroding worker rights and raise cost of living.

You need free time for kids and if the salaries are too low for a single income household a lot of people will end up opting out of having kids.

This isn't unique the the US. Basically every country with a whack work life balance is looking at population replacement problems.

I think this is an oversimplification. History has shown that as soon as a country is developed enough that children start increasing the family expenses rather than decrease them (I.e. helping out with the farm, or whatever the sustaining family business is, but in developing countries this is overwhelmingly agriculture) the pressure to have children slacks off to a large degree and becomes more of a luxury. So it’s just a byproduct of industrialization.

The US is actually better off with replacement rate than a lot of countries that have industrialized since them because of the way it happened and the wars that were fought. More rapidly-industrializing countries (China, Japan, a few other Asian and SA countries) have way shorter runways despite industrializing much later than the US. And those with one child policies really just made things worse for themselves.

A very large part of what the future is going to look like in my opinion is how different countries are able to grapple with this issue and come up with solutions to the problem of a large aging population and a service, hospitality and medical industry with not enough bodies.

That's what happens when you make your population poor by outsourcing large chunks of your economic base and stomping on worker rights.

Considering at least a third of potential replacement partners are Trump voters, can you imagine women feeling sexy about them? LOL

I'd be surprised if the elections of '16 and '24 even register as a blip in demographic data.

Considering the many liberal women who want men who have conservative values (although still agree with them on politics, somehow), yes. Probably yes.

What does this even mean?

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