We’re barely surviving ourselves. We can’t afford kids if we do want them.
I never wanted kids, they just don’t interest me and the cost is exorbitant. Spoke to a refugee lady at vwork and she had kids whilst on the run from government gumen. Oh you just have them and worry about it later… it’s a totally different attitude. In the west you need 3 jobs and a paid off home plus a nutritionist to consider it, in other places it just happens and noone questions your eating habits under fire. I think i agree with the non westerners on this, have them or don’t, just stop making it a rigmarole.
The privileged are blessed/cursed with the breathing space for foresight, anticipating and trying to avoid all the pitfalls and problems that they can foresee… which are endless. People in survival mode are living day-to-day, hand-to-mouth, and have no time to consider their long game.
I wonder how many are white people with a decent income who have two dogs, want to travel and to play Elden ring.
Only one dog and only little interest in travel, but correct otherwise. More of a spa person.
I don’t care.
Why did you ask then.
I was hoping all of them would reply, so i can publish my paper in Nature Magazine. Unfortunately the sample was not representative.
If you hate your life this much maybe you also shouldn’t have kids.
Sorry to make you write that, hope you are doing well, all the best.
Then don’t ask
Me, but I have no dogs and don’t play video games.
Me. But I have 3 dogs.
its almost always the one thing that is a problem in most low-birth rate countries, that the govt ignores. HCOL, raising a child is very expensive+ political instability, causing deaths and misery.
I’d really like to see the evidence for this statement, since it really seems like this trend is just an extension of the phenomenon we see in poorer countries: when you give women education, opportunities, and birth control, fewer of them will have children. It stands to reason that the more education, the more opportunities available, and the more freely accessible birth control is, the fewer women will have children.
In poor countries, children are a long-term economic asset. They will eventually be able to work and contribute to the family’s income and can take care of their parents when they’re older.
In developed countries, children are an economic liability.
There is also that sure but biologically people want to have kids, the extreme cost of living experienced by many prevents them from having kids
If that were true, we would expect richer countries to have higher birth rates. Instead, we see roughly the opposite trend. The richer a country gets, typically, the lower the birth rate. You can’t tell me that a teacher and a data entry clerk in Virginia are less economically capable of raising children than subsistence farmers in Malawi, no matter how high the rent in Virginia is.
If you want to see high income places with high birth rates, then you end up in very traditional/religious cultures, like Mormons and the Arab petro-states, where women face extremely high cultural pressure (if not force/violence) to be child-bearers.
Idk I think it’s explained by different phenomena. In nature there are two child raising strategies, K & P types (might be different letters sue me). For fully K type parents they produce 1000s of children each reproduction cycle, release them into nature & let statics be the cruel parent to have a few reach adulthood. For fully P type parents they will have just a single child each reproductive cycle, & raise them to maturity. Obviously this is a scale & all animals lie somewhere in-between these two extremes.
Obviously all humans are closer to P type but someone in a poorer region is more likely to live in a less stable region. As such they will follow a more K type parenting style since there is a higher chance of something bad happening to their children resulting in a “waste of evolutionary resources” (no life is a waste but you get the point). In a wealthier region they are more likely to live in a more stable area. As such they will choose to follow a P type parenting style & put a lot of resources into a few children. Since there is a high likelihood of all of their children making it to maturity a few “high value” children is preferred to many “low value” children (nobody is really more valuable bla bla). So rich region parents act more like P type parent & poor region parents act more like K type parents. (Obviously there are more factors but I think this probably has the biggest effect)
Then for people who are struggling & can’t afford to produce one “high value” child they make a logical choice to do it later when they have more resources. Since humans are complicated they can create other values they see are more valuable then children or decide to do something later until having children is no longer a possibility. Either way it results in less children & we are seeing the results on a global scale. (Post note. Obviously I am skipping over the cultural factors like religion & other individuals factors, but on a macro scale people are making these choices unwittingly)
Then for people who are struggling & can’t afford to produce one “high value” child they make a logical choice to do it later when they have more resources. Since humans are complicated they can create other values they see are more valuable then children or decide to do something later until having children is no longer a possibility.
In your language, we would expect people in the first sentence to revert to K type parents. If they do not, they simply fall into the category described by your second sentence.
Richer countries tend to have really shitty work life balances though, You need both money to raise a kid and time to do it as well, if both parents are working full time and barely making rent then of course they aren’t going to have kids. Japan and South Korea are perfect examples of this.
And in rich countries, who are the people still having many children? The poor, uneducated, rural, religious/conservative segments of the population, who believe in some way or another that raising a child struggling in poverty is preferable to not having children at all.
People without financial security: “kids are too expensive and I would be exhausted trying to provide for them”
People with financial security: “I’m having a good time, adding a kid to this mix would really require a step back in my lifestyle.”
The key to making this a lesser issue when it comes to keeping birth rates high is, in my opinion, a solid foundation of community trust and communal childcare.
The phrase “it takes a village” didn’t just spawn out of nowhere, after all. When communities can share the responsibilities of raising children, not only does it lead to a better quality of life for the kids because they tend to get more social interaction time in and better access to their community’s resources, but it also takes the burden off a lot of parents since it stops being a 24/7 job, and more of a shared, common duty to their community that is only sometimes needed, and is flexible in the case of them needing a break.
Of course, to get something like this, you need to fix the fact that we live in a very low trust society, and that is extremely difficult to do.
And yet the people most concerned about birth rates fight the hardest against anything that would make people have more kids
The irony is palpable. Bernie Sanders in 2015/2016 had the most pro-child campaign since Obama first ran, and Sanders never even mentioned “birth rates”.
There’s also the moral question of “do I want to add a living person to the world I wish I didn’t exist in?”
Even if money weren’t an issue for me, I’d be worried my pessimistic outlook on life would crush my potential child’s spirit.
That’s why I think if I’m gonna have a kid some day it will be via adoption.
If you are person number 2 and thus having good time you probably would want to share the good time
If I am seen as person number 2 and not just a human being that exists and has autonomy and feelings
Then I am probably not having a good time
Bizarre comment
So is calling someone person number 2.
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See I would compare it to the permanent dread of bringing children into a world that you knew would not be a good life for them given the trajectory we are locked into now.
I don’t really understand that argument but I guess ok, like it’s not gonna be some kind of apocalypse. People gonna be fine and your kids too
No, no they won’t
don’t feed the trolls
Define they won’t
There’s a void? Man. Must suck.
I want kids, but the government is doing their damndest to make it as difficult as possible for us by crashing the economy, cutting all federal programs, staffing agencies with NPCs, etc. Give generous paternity leave stipulations, tax credits, legalize surrogacy, and give credits for AI (artificial insemination) and surrogacy. Not to mention universal healthcare and child care credits.
Make it easy for us to have kids, and we will, lol. Quit cockblocking us.
Quit cockblocking us
It’s more like semen blocking
All these people with great rational reasons… Meanwhile, my wife and I just don’t like children.
Not liking them is reason enough. That would be a miserable childhood to be raised by people that don’t want them.
I dont think my dad liked me or my 8 siblings very much. It was just the thing to do for Jesus. So honestly, I think just not wanting kids is a great excuse, cause now I dont like my dad.
This is my boat… THEN I got a lot of rational reasons I didn’t want.
Same! I turned down the idea of raising a child in a perceived world where bigotry was a thing of the past, people had medical autonomy, and legal street-kidnappings were relegated to the Nazis in textbooks. In hindsight the world was never that way. I just didn’t see it for what it is. And now that I do…
Honestly I don’t either, but I am also not above using it as a philosophical cudgel against fascism. If I’m going to get shit for not wanting kids the least I can do is redirect the conversation to politics.
I’ve never really liked “children” in the sense of the age group, but I know a bunch of people who have really great, meaningful relationships between adult children and their parents, so I wanted adult children in my late middle ages and retirement ages.
Now, with my own children, I primarily see them as future adults who I get to watch develop into cool people.
Same. I also expected to like all children more after having mine, but I don’t. Even though I adore my kid, I still dislike children.
I’m sure the evolved brain chemical soup would make me like my own selfishly, but generally yeah I just don’t like kids. I don’t like interacting with them at all. I didn’t even when I was one, and I’m certainly not a “cool uncle.”
I had to warn my sister before she had her first not to get mad at me for not conforming to some fantasy relationship that might only exist in her head. She’s like that, so it was to get ahead of any hurt feelings. I couldn’t realistically make that happen even if I wanted to.
Seriously. I can handle being with family for a while, but would absolutely lose all will to live if I had to be near children every single day. Even more if I was actually supposed to be responsible for them. There are a lot of good reasons to not get children, the best one I have is that I just don’t want to be near them.
I’m on holiday right now with my extended family. The youngest is 18. It’s been great but today is the sixth and final day and I’m ready to go home so I can chill out on my own. The thought of going home and spending more time with this group of adults I’m related to fills me with dread. I can’t imagine what it would be like if one of them was a young child, let alone one that I had to be responsible for.
I love my kid, but the time suck is real.
I get about an hour and a half a day of free time, which I should probably be using to clean.
If we had shorter work days it would be far better, though we bid up housing prices using loose monetary policy so that’s not happening. Most people aged to procreate are funding boomers poor retirement planning.
eg, thier medicaire/caid. you would have to be very poor to use medicaid. the most chronic conditions people have on medicare, is DIABETES TYPE 2, AND comorbidities.
while i was at a uni library, i overheard these 2 barely 20 something woman(assumed they were 18-19 by the way they were talking), talking about having kids at 25-30, where you going to have kids if you dont have a career yet, and you are barely an adult right now.
when i was HS, a mother waited too long to change his sons way (future direction) she would often come in during his classes and moniter his classwork for any lowering grade, and would chatised the class “your parents would care this much if they care about his son”, i was thinking, “this bitch, you waited 4years too long to change him, he was dead set on not going to college, when he told us”. shouldve done it before he was in HS, and not waited til he was about to graduate with a low or participation passing gpa(like many people in the hs at the time).(i havnt kept track of him, only saw him once when i was IN CC)
How about “Number of Americans who responsibly agree not to raise kids into poverty doubled in 20 years”
40 years of raising the burden on the middle class without applicable wages will do that to a society.
Raising what burden you say? Wages to cost of living.
This. If you don’t have kids there are basically no support systems to start a family. Wages aren’t high enough and it looks like a daunting task. But if you have kids, suddenly you can qualify for food stamps and assistance(which is good). The system is basically set up to help prevent you from failing once you’ve already done it, but not to set you up to do it successfully beforehand. To have kids, you basically have to say “fuck it, we’ll just figure it out”. A lot of people aren’t willing to take that risk.
suddenly you can qualify for food stamps and assistance(
I wouldn’t bet on that being a sure thing in a couple of months/years :)
neither is medicaid/medicare, republicans are so dependant on too.
I don’t want kids because I’m selfish with my time and don’t want to dedicate it to taking care of them. I don’t like kids because they are loud, smelly, and annoying.
That’s all there is to it. There’s nothing deep here. I like free time and quiet and don’t want to sacrifice that for 20+ years.
I don’t like kids because they are loud, smelly, and annoying.
My sentiments. Also, being on the spectrum doesn’t help. I do not have the capacity. I would be a terrible parent.
Originally I never wanted kids because it sounded like it’d get in the way of all the other stuff I want to do in life.
Now I don’t because I see it as unethical.
Governments do slim to nothing to invest in supporting their populace education, daycare, cost of living.
Why would I bring life into this country to experience the harsh, expensive, cold existence?
They cant even properly care for the sick or elderly. Only thing they care about is making money off of us.
All of these propaganda-pushers had a privileged upbringing. Even JD Vance had grandparents to care for him and give him a stable home. My two cents? I think the pro-natalist leaders are just oblivious.
Instead of socialized child care, Republicans will be like “LETS BAN CONDOMS”
most of them are just nagging, or trying to encourage more sex. no support for mothers and childcare, housing, wage crisis, political issues, climate issues. the wealthy dont want any of this to happen so thats why they have used propaganda and culture wars/
That’s why Donald loves the uneducated.
Any politician in a democracy would love the uneducated. My country is the prime example, literally all the parties just want to impress the dumb and uneducated
“I wanna be a fireman when I grow up!”
rubs kids hair
(He doesn’t have a future)
^ that’s why. I’m not raising someone on the idea that their life will be complete shit because there’s zero proof to the contrary.
Trust me. It’s crushing raising a child right now In America. I have to navigate these weird questions without scaring the shit out of him. Hes almost 10, and is too sweet for the world we exist in now. He shouldn’t have to bear the weight of our future, but people who like trump don’t deserve a future, and God forgive those who opposed my child. Fuck my life but I’ll go nuclear for my child.
It seems like child abuse to bring someone into this shithole of a world.
That’s why I don’t want to do it. Anyone born now or later are going to experience a slow painful death due to lack or resources or a quick painful death in a resource war. And if they have any smarts they would hate my guts once they figure out the fate I had knowingly consigned them to by forcing their concious into a meatsuit.
yup either getting propagandized beign sent as fodder for a war, or be miserable from the lack of career, education, job,etc.
If being birthed required consent from the eventual person, no births would go to term.
Well, did I miss something here? I would have consented… Hell, I’d do it all over again from the beginning even. Let me get to 90, healthily, and then do it all backwards like Merlin.
Edit: though, hilariously, I don’t have kids, mostly because I don’t have the money to raise one with ease. I’m also just not sure I’m interested.
Yeah once was enough for me, I don’t think I want another go at this shit, just delete me from existence
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We also know more about genetically linked diseases than ever.
I watched my grandmother on my mother’s side die of ovarian cancer, which also killed my great grandmother, and afflicted one if my cousins. I would be practically condemning a daughter to the same fate because it’s highly genetically linked.
Similarly I watched Parkinson’s, another highly genetically linked disease, take my grandfather on my mother’s side.
My father’s side of the family has a genetic history of heart disease and high blood pressure and my father lost his own father to heart failure when his father was in his forties.
Knowing your own families medical and genetic history also puts a damper on the whole enterprise.
^ this. There is so much chronic pain in my family at all ages. Not to mention rampant diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and severe mental illness. Most of the men on my moms side didn’t live much past 60 that we’re aware of. And that’s just the stuff i know of!
I have no doubt there’s plenty more that people took to the grave without disclosing, or never knew about for themselves because they never saw a doctor in their lives.
the question you could ask yourself might be “would you like to be born again, as your child, if you could?” that would give you a clear indication of whether it’s worth it.
Question unclear. Born in the same year or born today or born like myself or my child?
That’s why adoption is the best option. It’s not your fault they exist, but they need a loving home.
adoption is actually surprisingly expensive and difficult, and they vet the shit out of potential parents, heavily discourages single parents if there ever has been one. thats why some of them take advantage of going overseas to adopt. fostering might be more better.
Adopting a 7 year old or older is the best option. There are 36 couples waiting to adopt for every infant that is up for adoption in the US. The older kids get largely ignored and will likely age out of foster care without ever finding a forever family.
Definitely! Personally, I think skipping the part when the child is just a crying, pooping machine that doesn’t sleep through the night is a win.
oh yea, i heard they view it like a buying a puppy for a birthday, they dont want some “damaged goods” they want brand new they can mold.
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Yup! I just adopted two dogs from a kill shelter. Best choice I have ever made.
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If I hate the capitalism rat race I’m stuck in with all the uncertainties and the never ending grind and the deteriorating planet, why would I be motivated to bring kids into this world, knowing full well that I don’t have the fuck you money needed such that they wouldn’t have to go through the same rat race grind as me. Seems cruel.
It’s not that I don’t want kids, it’s more that they have created a world so fucked that I can barely even exist in it myself.
Exactly. You have to have a very comfortable life if the idea of having a kid doesn’t scare the shit out of you… that or you’re the type of person that doesn’t give a shit about your kids.
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What’s it to you if I don’t want the fucking effort. I’m not your fucking baby making machine. You can get all the way fucked.
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Yeah, I plan on living out the rest of this fucking nightmare with the little thats afforded to me and that does not involve burdening some poor soul with consciousness in world that only wants to exploit them.
Having a job isn’t being exploited
What is it?
what are your stakes in the game? what does it cost you if you’re wrong and having children does indeed turn out to be a mistake? are you gonna pay for the damages? if not, then you have no right to tell people what to do.
I’m just not going to work for their pension and I will not have my kid work for their pension
You are emblematic of the selfish mentality so many people have these days, which is a meaningful part of why I personally don’t want to have kids
As long as you take care of your own pension then it’s all fine. Do whatever you want.
You should be forced to live like an average Indonesian (or Indian, Pakistani, Nigerian) for a month and see how you deal with that life.
My wife has been an indonesian all her life and her family does pretty well. She and her sisters have university degrees. Her sisters both are married, have 2 or 1 kid.
It’s all pretty fine. Labour is very cheap but so is the cost of living. They barely have any old people and a high labour force. Their economy has been booming.
Maybe you should go there
I’m from India, you moron.
Their economy has been booming.
And how’s their ecology? They’re going to get hit by climate change pretty hard.
They choose a booming economy and development over ecology. Just like we did in Europe in the 1800s
Go tell them to stop developing their economy because we want everyone to be emission neutral. While we are developed enough to achieve that already.
You really like keeping people poor
Whatever dude. Stay delusional.
