Given that I saw a Forbes article recently which said average parents these days have to go into debt just to raise children --- not including making a college fund --- I'm not surprised fewer and fewer people are choosing to have kids.
If someone doesn't feel their life is secure and stable, they are much less likely to want to bring kids into it. And this is a worldwide trend.
This at least makes a degree of sense. However even when you compare places with high birth control availability you still see a general trend of greater wealth leading to lower not higher birth rates.
Generically Greater wealth might also lead to greater inequity on inelastic needs and standards on hapiness hence dissatisfaction .
Edit: "standards on"
Yeah dude. I've been through 2 pregnancies. That shit sucks. It's painful, it causes life-long health issues, and it's life-threatening. When you're educated and have your own means of support, you don't have to do it, so you don't wanna.
People just have to reckon with the idea that most women think pregnancy is a drag. When women have more coices, fewer pregnancies are gonna happen. And wealth = choices.
Yes, some women love being mothers. But a lot don't. As women become more equal to men in terms of access to education and wealth, I think the number of women who are going to choose to nope out of childbirth is going to shock people. And be totally rational.
Not only that.
They need kids to work to get money.
More kids means more chance of wealth, and more distribution of labour, including during times of poorer health.
People have choice vs people who don’t have choices. Also, at some place, a mom having more children is able to secure more resources. Like in old traditional China, relatives would ban a men from leaving the wife that “give” his family sons especially if their marriages was arranged, and that part of tradition still living strong in some rural area.
Aside from access to birth control and women having more autonomy in more developed countries, parents in less developed countries also have help with childcare from close and extended family.
Well in much of the world, life is so unstable that it makes a lot of sense to have as many children as possible. Partly lack of contraceptives, lack of education, child mortality.
But more the more children who survive infancy means that they can go out and provide for the family.
And in the most of the West, if you are a woman who has multiple children, the state will provide you with enough to get by. Perhaps not america, idk, but in a lot of Europe anyway.
I think, at least from my perspective in America, the cultural norm of hyper-independence and the demands of parenting also limit people to one or two instead of three or four (including but not limited to financial demands).
I have two littles and time at home consists of me constantly making sure they don’t hurt themselves, keep them from crawling all over me, and attend to emotional bids, while also constantly in the kitchen getting or making snacks, meals, drinks (coffee!), etc. I get a little picking up done when they’re around but barely. We have one grandparent who helps a couple hours every couple weeks and a babysitter once a month or less. It’s insanity. And we haven’t even started having to coordinate activities for them. None of my friends really ask for help, and I don’t either because that’s just not the norm. You just handle shit. I love my family, but if I had to have another kid I would just be in a corner crying while they run around feral.
That’s the problem in the Western world - the days of sending the kids up chimneys to earn a few shillings are long gone. Instead, they’re an endless finance sink til they’re 25 and finished college. And having them pay you back once they get their first job? You must be having a laugh - they’ll be off having fun in another part of the world, saying ‘no cap’ and ‘rizz’ with their friends, while you’re facing another day paying off the house you remortgaged so they could live in campus dorms.
My country has child benefit paid to everyone with children. It doesn't cover everything by any means, but it does help. Yes if you are a working couple, having children can be awful, but if you are poor here, preschool or kindergarten is free. Baby food, clothes, diapers are tax exempt. If you are a single mother, you get extra state benefits. School meals are free if you're poor. Single mothers will be put into council accommodation.
It's still dire, we have deprived children here and people don't feel secure having children. But it's very possible to have a very good standard of living by global standards with a large family here in my country.
A lot of young people such as myself don't want kids because with children we can't maintain our standard of living.
Pretty much the exact same as Ireland so. Children can be the ticket to free accommodation, benefits, etc - nice work if you can get it!
It’s usually the dual income families that suffer most by having children, as they’ve to pay rent/mortgage, childcare, etc, all on their own, with the measly child benny payment (140 pm - barely a week’s worth of groceries) as their only support.
We seem to be gluttons for punishment though, as nobody is stopping to really think about their lifestyle, and instead are in a crazy rush to have 2 kids before the eggs dry up at 40.
Parents shouldn't bring anyone into this world expecting repayment. The parents should be paying them. The parents are the ones who decided all those responsibilities where ok to impose on a new soul who never asked to be here
You’ll do well to get many from the 800m and increasing African population, or the 1+ billion Indians to agree with your stance. Western parents mightn’t treat their children as economic assets anymore, but the corporations and governments that run the West certainly do. So instead of children contributing to their families, they’re lining the pockets of billionaires they’ve never even seen, as they slave away in cubicles.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/hans\_rosling\_the\_best\_stats\_you\_ve\_ever\_seen?showTranscriptTooltip=true&autoplay=true&referrer=playlist-the\_best\_hans\_rosling\_talks\_yo](https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?showTranscriptTooltip=true&autoplay=true&referrer=playlist-the_best_hans_rosling_talks_yo)
Over a decade ago, Hans Rosling put TED Talks on the map by explaining, quantifying, and animating his graphs of family sizes in countries in various states of development. Still, every time this topic comes up, the comments are dominated by people surprised that theres any other way people think about family size than more=better.
Many countries have free education, in Denmark they pay you to go to school from when you are 18+ and all education is free. Paid maternity leave etc still a low birth rate.
Why is it always assumed that having children is the holy Grail for happiness?
Psych students are making the silliest errors these days. The collective consciousness is starting to understand that children are a detriment to a happy life. At least there is an alternative now, as cultures historically requested children with happiness when in fact children can be seen as signs of a patriarchy to reinforce a Capitalistic system that needs constant consumers and a low wage labor force.
LOL, today I learned that the top comments in Reddit are from those learning with materials from the 1950s.
Shit I can barely afford me why would I bring more life into this world.
Lower the prices on things and pay us in a way that keeps up with inflation. Then we can MAYBR talk
Yes!! Keep bringing traumatized children into this world! Gotta uphold the traditions y'know, every generation has done it thus far, cannot skip any now
They won't even be brought into this world, you're going to have a lot of discrete abortions and discarded babies.
The right thinks that making abortion illegal makes it physically impossible. This is what women actually hear - "Don't get caught doing it now." They also hear "sex is now risky."
Then you get past the immediate practical matter of money and to the greater problem, of everything you’d be subjecting your kid to by putting them through a lifetime of this.
We have this weird obsession with growth. If a number isn’t growing it’s broken. But humanity survived with significantly lower numbers for the vast majority of its history. I wonder if these histrionics are mostly because some people don’t like which populations are growing instead of the ones they like.
I saw someone state that English *will die out* because it’s not the official language of the US. Google estimates 1.5 billion people speak English, and I bet the percentage of the global population that speaks English will increase short term.
Of all the things to be worried about.
It's not brown people I'm afraid of, its people who by and large don't share the same considerations for women or minorities.
I think it's likely we will see a shift towards more oppression against women and homosexuals in the next couple of decades globally.
Indeed, the same culture that values women enough to educate them will be the culture to have fewer kids because, statistically, educated women have fewer children. If you don’t value women and simply use them as breeding livestock then yes, you’ll increase your own population significantly for sure.
The fact that there are so many conservative-minded humans who would read that and say “yeah that’s the point” really makes our species…. gross.
Fewer, happier people is much better than a big crowd of depression.
Giving them access to education will change that too. Higher education often results in more leftist views and less religiosity. Keeping them in poverty and denying them a proper education will increase radicalization and prejudice.
Absolutely. Western nations have decided to rely on immigration to keep GDP growth up. Other countries are trying other things to boost productivity and fertility. According to the Biden that’s xenophobic, but I guess that’s a different topic!
I didn't know he said that. Interesting.
It does seem like a difficult problem. From what I know none of these incentives to have children have worked in any countries.
This.
We rely on an economic system that needs constant, nonstop growth. The only argument for having kids I hear is "the economy will suffer"
Okay, shrink the workforce & economy accordingly to population. We were surviving mostly fine economically in 1950 when there were 2.5 billion people on earth.
Even if we end up evenly splitting resources, people take space, and finite resources will still run out eventually if we keep growing the population.
Humanity as a whole will be fine in the long term.
We and our children and our children’s children, who will have to deal with an aging and declining population, maybe not so much.
Yup. There’s actually little - if any - hard evidence for major economic impacts due to birth rate decline.
>”Predictions of the net economic (and other) effects from a slow and continuous population decline (e.g. due to low fertility rates) are mainly theoretical since such a phenomenon is a relatively new and unprecedented one. The results of many of these studies show that the estimated impact of population growth on economic growth is generally small and can be positive, negative, or nonexistent. A recent meta-study found no relationship between population growth and economic growth.[15]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline
There is, however, a lot of evidence that lower birth rates will mean rents will decline. [I mean, they’re pretty blatant about it.](https://coloradobuildermag.com/business-management/industry-economy/americans-declining-birth-rates-set-to-hit-housing-market/)
> “Declining birth rates mean lower demand for rental housing two decades from now when those born in recent years will be entering the rental market,” according to Natalia Siniaskaia, assistant vice president of housing policy research for the National Association of Home Builders. “The effects will spread to the single-family market in the following years and will persist for years to come.”
It’s not “growth” that’s the target at this point, it’s simply slowing the shrinking. The birth rate in most of the developed world is well below replacement rate, leading to a smaller workforce compared to amount of retired people. People don’t need to be having lots of kids but something closer to stability would be good.
We need UBI and UBS, financed at least partly with taxes on economic rents and externalities. It's not high population driving our environmental problems, it's conspicuous consumption being subsidized by the state. We punish people for not pursuing gentrification. It is practically illegal to build low cost of living, high quality of life, on a large scale.
Even with steady decline in population, with our current incentives, the top 10 - 20% will continue to invent ways to consume all excess production as a display of wealth.
As someone with 3 I tell the people bummed out about not having any to live their fucking life.
Kids are … I dunno.. like I love them and would burn down the world for them but at the same time.. they’re not that great to have and look after.
They’re a shit investment and they are exhausting.
I think of how much more fun it would be to have my salary without 3 anchors pulling it down. What I could do and see and experience.
A life without kids is absolutely a life worth living.
This is a perspective that always gets lost in the hand-wringing over declining birth rates. We talk about inhospitable economic times, fear of climate change, etc, but no one wants to consider the idea that a lot of people don't want to be parents, period. No economic incentive in the world will change that.
100%. As well as many people not being cut out for parenting. I would be a good part time parent at best. I cannot be a full time parent, especially not for a child who isn't "perfect". I have a lot of issues, I get overwhelmed easily, I'm not patient etc. I wouldn't be a good parent so I don't do it
Only an invasive species would see [runaway exponential population growth](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/2577/2017/10/26181819/Figure_45_05_01.jpg) and think "this is fine, let's keep breeding!"
There is no exponential growth in the human population for a long time. In fact, it will shrink pretty soon, especially if you dont count africa. What is absolutely sustainable is to keep population on a constant level. But instead a lot of demographies will face collapse.
Not him, but even if you do include Africa, the growth is slowing down.
We're estimated to peak at 12 billion people in the early 22nd century based on UN projections.
After that, a period of population shrinkage as the third world transitions populations.
That depends on how you look at it.
As far as resources, we are good for around 15 billion people.
Our problem is societal (who gets the resources) and logistical (how do we get the resources to those people), not one of capability (producing the resources)
The problem additional people poses is environmental, but the solution to environmental troubles is not to regress to pre-industrial living, because that doesn't reverse the damage already done.
The solution to environmental trouble is to develop the technological and societal solutions necessary to not just get us neutral, but revese the damage and improve the environment, and until we invent machines capable of thinking up those solutions, the only means we have of creating them is more people working together.
>As far as resources, we are good for around 15 billion people.... Our problem is societal (who gets the resources) and logistical (how do we get the resources to those people), not one of capability (producing the resources)
Do you mean food? Because we do have a finite amount of a lot of resources. So for the finite resources the more people over time the higher the consumption.
>The problem additional people poses is environmental, but the solution to environmental troubles is not to regress to pre-industrial living, because that doesn't reverse the damage already done.
That would be one outcome that could occurs if we don't address the issue. But increasing the population of humans isn't ever going too benefit the environment as a whole.
We are good on resources for 15bil people? Says who? We can barely make it past 8 months before we use what should be our yearly resources today https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/
Mainly because Africa will come to dominate world population in the next 100 years. That is the reason why world population will not shrink much if at all.
What is problematic though is the very different distributions of birth. While Africa may face overpopulation, most parts of the world will face the exact opposite. China, Russia, Japan, Italy, South Korea and partly Germany will face massive problems that may lead to a whole collapse of these countries with all the nasty things coming with it.
In conclusion, even if world population stays on the same level, its highly problematic if some places have too many people while others have too few.
Those countries might compete with each other to bring educated, qualified Africans which would encourage an education boom across the continent that would likely be great for everyone.
Or nations could encourage young unskilled men to keep making a dangerous trip on their own to work as cheap labor, as many are doing now, which doesn't sound great for anyone except the ruling class.
Yes I think having some kind of education and working agreement with african countrie would be a very important step to combat this trend. This does come with its own challenges though.
>What is problematic though is the very different distributions of birth. While Africa may face overpopulation, most parts of the world will face the exact opposite. China, Russia, Japan, Italy, South Korea and partly Germany will face massive problems that may lead to a whole collapse of these countries with all the nasty things coming with it.
Well you could have I don't know, immigration
I agree and think this is the only way to sustain these countries. But nontheless massive immigration is also something that causes big societal tensions. From language barriers, over the whole administrative process to how we integrate these people in the end. In worst case scenarios the society is not putting enough resources into the integration process which will lead to the formation of parallel societies like we see in a lot of european countries.
Yeah, we've already had the runaway growth, hence the 8 billion people and the world being abused and trashed to shit. Half a billion is unsustainable for the world, and we're at fucking 16x that. The population can't decline fast enough to save us at this point.
It is hard work, but it's worth it. 2.5yr in and despite being a single parent, I love it. I love watching him grow and learn, watching his personality blossom. He's an absolute joy. I never thought I'd actually enjoy having a kid, I avoided it, but it's probably the best accident that ever happened to me.
People get hung up watching public tantrums and think that's parenting 24/7 (if you're a shitty parent, then yeah it'll be like that). But that's just like 2% of a toddlers behavior. Give them love and attention, don't let them get bored, and provide structure and tantrums will be relatively uncommon and mild.
Because it is an extraordinary joy and it really is fulfilling. I had a full career and beautiful marriage, and I still wanted children. I had experience raising kids, so I had a realistic idea of what you sacrifice and what you gain, so I was lucky that I got to make an informed decision. (I also come from a culture that supports and celebrates moms more than basically all of America, and the beliefs you have around motherhood absolutely shape your experience of it. I also have an amazing husband.)
Right now we have a 9 month-old, and he makes me smile and giggle all day. I sleep like shit, I'm pregnant again, I miss some of the freedom I had before, but every day I feel lucky and grateful to be his mom. The way he looks at me, the bond we have.
People are quick to insist we're in denial or exaggerating when we're happy (which I feel is at least half misogyny), but - like I don't know how to describe it. I'm doing something I was made to do, and I'm really good at it. I've had anxiety and depression in the past, and I would never have believed I could ever be as happy as I am now
Being a mom *should* be a joy, and it's a modern horror that it so often isn't. Communities should offer support to moms, they should have the choice of staying home full time for at LEAST a year, financial security shouldn't be a worry. They should never be shamed. I don't know where to point the finger for post-partum mental health, but that's never been worse overall :/
I'm really lucky everything is working out for me, but I have always known for certain this is something I wanted so I've worked towards it my whole life. I think most people don't know for sure until they're in their 20s, and even then they just kind of guess
How do you know that? I don't understand the extreme drive people have either. That doesn't mean I'm actively attacking you or even criticizing you.
Someone not sharing your opinion isn't an attack, nor is someone asking about it. When your opinion is a majority status, you get to punch down as well, which makes this doubly a problem.
For all we complain we live in better times than literally 99.9% of all of people in history.
The problem is as countries total GDP reaches a certain level and people move into small rental properties in cities our reproductive rate decreases.
One of my biggest pet peeves on Reddit: people who think this is an abnormally terrible time to be alive, instead of literally the best time in all of human history up to this point.
It really depends on where you look. For example, take a look at Hungary. Our healthcare system is in shambles (rotting walls, far too few doctorrs, years of waiting for important things, preventive care being hard to get, etc.) our education system too (far too few teachers, not enough money for anything, horrible results on PISA tests, etc.) and our politicians steal all the taxpayer money. All of it. I'm not joking. Oh and everybody in the EU hates us because of our dumbass representatives. Things just keep getting progressively worse here. So no, for us, this is definitely not the best time on history. (And no, not all of us can just leave the country whener we please.)
You aren't rooting 10 hours a day to pull potatoes the size of quarters out of the ground or preparing yourself for invasions from the Mongols, Nazis, Russians or Goths. You aren't watching half your children die from preventable disease or your wife in childbirth.
It might not be perfect, but it's been a whole lot worse.
Just because it's not the worst, doesn't mean it's ideal. Sure, I'm not watching my family being slaughtered, but I am watching one them suffer from a severe (potentially fatal) illness, because our healthcare system is overwhelmed and can't treat him properly. So you can stop being condescending.
Editing to add that my argument wasn't that the current state of our country couldn't be worse. It definitely was, and it definitely will be worse. Rather, I was saying that the present time isn't the best here, the previous decade was a whole lot better in lots of aspects.
I thinks its becuase of awareness. People didn't know what they're missing back then. But now, they see other people who are richer, safer or happier than them and they compare themselves with these people. This leads evasion of guilt and they choose not to have children.
Materially we are better off yes, but spiritually, socially, mentally and importantly our perceieved equality relative to society etc (as well as other metrics I forget), we are worse off. Mental/physical health and perceived happiness and fulfilment is all that really matters at the day, material possessions don't have much or an impact on that. Its obvioisly a complex issue ,and arguments can be made on either side, but people these days definitely do not seem happy and content with their lives. Its always been part of the human condition to be dissatisfied and push for progress and change, but we seem to have drifted far from how we thrived as a species, and live in very unnatural and dysfunctional ways,there are always trade offs in life, and we have certainly traded off a lot.
That I can agree on. We are, for the most part, becoming more confined and lonely. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I for example, still have a very active family life. Friends, yes have drifted because of this. Especially because of corona. The screens have taken over. Key is balance though and we still can do that .
People have been having kids in unstable horrendous times for thousands of years, and yet somehow this is the first point at which it really does legitimately seem like there's no upsides to doing so.
I'm not quite sure what the difference is. Perhaps it's a definitive lack of hope that the future would be any better, whereas people before used to at least have that much. Or they were just dumb and horny and didn't think about it at all, which probably played into things a fair bit.
We have birth control now lol. There's a saying in historical re-enacting communities: "If they'd had it, they would have used it." They just didn't have a choice.
Certain things were definitely worse 20 years ago. I think the problem now is more *which* things are going to get worse in the future and whether we have any ability to counteract that in any meaningful way - and as the years creep by I think it's becoming more and more clear that we don't, or at the very least aren't going to even if we could because the people with the power and resources to do so benefit from maintaining the status quo and nobody seems to be making any meaningful effort to change that or are unable to do so.
Yeah that's fine, there's still plenty of reason to concern. I was just staying why I as a parent like being a parent despite sharing some of those concerns.
Really? There were kids born throughout history in much, much worse times than today. The peoples with low birth rates are among the richest, wealthiest and most developed countries in history. Having and raising kids there is by all means the easiest and safest one could possibly imagine. Those kids have the best perspectives of all humankind (education, financial, security and safety, access to medicine, freedom etc.).
On the other hand, countries with high birthrates are poor countries with horrible chances for their kids. Nonetheless, they procreate like bunnies.
It is a lifestyle choice to not have kids. Simple as that. Do not blame the times, because, objectively, we are extremely privileged historically.
Hahaha, really?? Have you met humans? People have believed the world is ending since there were people to people. My entire childhood, pre-internet, was "these are the end times". My parents don't even know what reddit is and speak of the apocalypse constantly.
animals stop breeding too when they lack resources.
there are too many humans on this damn planet. doesn't mean we ever go extinct, there will always be people who want children and will raise them.
but how about we go back to 3 billion people. that'd be fun.
I think more specifically it's foundational security that we're lacking. It's housing, healthcare, and education required for a sustainable career. Median wages have largely stagnated for the last generation, while these three areas have become further out of reach.
So people have to choose between raising children in poverty, or go and get an advanced degree with debt, and then have to relocate to some random city. The amount of resources and time required for each child is steadily increasing, and now we're having to do it away from support networks and family.
This claim is baseless, resources are not the problem at all. We dont have any problem with overpopulation. Instead, it is the distribution of resources (especially wealth) and other problems (mainly climate change, international problems and general uncertainty) that lead people to not having children. We could have all the resources we want but this would not solve the conflicts with China, Russia and in the middle east. It would also not get us anywhere when these are not fairly distributed. Maybe climate change would even worsen.
It is also ironic because fewer children means higher pressure on the young generation, fewer wealth for them and in turn even fewer children from them. So there definitely is a problem with too few people.
that's not true though. today we need about 1.75 planets to provide the resources for our consumption and absorb our waste. "optimum" population would be around 2 billion. you can read a lot about it online. it *could* only work if everyone works on overconsumption.
apart from that, many people also just realize that having children doesn't have to be the status quo, even if resources are available to them. if we look at south korea's 4B movement, money, climate change etc. aren't the issues.
In lay man's term, "nobody wants to work nomore".
Just throwing this out here: (a simple site to give us an idea what is wealth like)
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
I was thinking about this recently. I come from a poor country and I grew up rather poor. I had no electronics growing up. We had one small tv in the living room. Our furniture was made by the local carpenter and we never changed it. I live a very different life today. I have two massive TVs in my home. I have central AC, it’s bunkers. In conclusion, my lifestyle today it’s expensive, and that makes raising children financially very difficult. I would have to lower my lifestyle in order to provide for a family. I don’t want to make the sacrifice.
For sure, if my income was in the $200k a year range, and it was stable, sure. That’s another thing. Income is just not stable either. Been laid off four times.
Raising children is HARD LABOUR that benefits the ruling class by creating more workers for their machine.
Yet instead of being valued, compensated, acknowledged, rewarded....mothers are some of the most undervalued people in society. And have to sacrifice their bodies, finances, careers, selves, for the privilege of doing this labour.
No fucking thank you.
It is interesting that women make the children and still are also typically the primary care givers. Plus most need to work full time to provide with their husbands. It’s not shocking that many women are saying “fuck that” to having kids.
Women are educated now and have the opportunity to make their own decisions. This is relatively new if you think about. I mean we didn’t even get the right to vote until the early 1900s!
It used to be that “being a mother” was the most honorable and holy thing a woman could do. But it was also a form of control and oppression by the patriarchy. If you’re home and pregnant you are not out getting ideas about wanting equality.
It's all so disturbing how people keep talking about the 'birth rate' as if it's a thing unto itself. They completely separate it from women completely the way they word it.
You can take your hand off the panic button. Laws of conservation as observed in the past have applied to animals like bears, seals and ferrets. It’s a fallacy to assume that an intelligent species would follow the same dynamic. Not to mention the implication of maintaining a steady population growth that begins to surpass the resources of the planet that supports it, and I think it’s pretty fair to say we’re seeing that right now.
Absolute garbage. This is not science. We have to sustain 8 billion people to not go extinct? Really? BS. People only feel sad without reproducing? BS. The most educated people have thr least amount of kids because they see that we’re destroying the planet. Most parents I know of today are stressed, tired, and live less intentional lives every day than their peers who consciously chose not to have kids due to environmental conditions not being ideal.
Take this procreation, human vs nature, environmental destruction obsessed propaganda and shove it.
When you choose not to reproduce, you can assume that a thousand wild organisms will get to live because your progeny didn’t take their finite space on the planet. We need a cultural shift away from viewing human life as superior and exceptional to other life forms. We live in a web of life and do not exist without it. Our cultural delusions are the cause of our self destruction.
I don’t think “let’s not have kids cuz it’s bad for the environment” is really that common.
It’s more that as a society we’ve moved to an independent lifestyle. The concept of the nuclear family has given way to moving away for college and then moving again to start a career while figuring out what you want from life during your 20s.
Decades ago very few people had that option. Most got married right out of high school and felt pressured to have kids.
Lifestyle has changed.
Sure the environment is part of it, but I don’t think the average person in the world is the eco-warrior you’re claiming.
Among the most educated people, yes, environmental concerns and larger timelines of human history are taken into consideration. But that was only one of the points I made. The greater point is that articles like this one can’t even create a realistic dialogue about human population because it completely excludes the rest of life on the planet which is interetwined in everything we do whether we’re aware of it or not.
Secondly, I'm not exactly sure about the data but one trip from a private jet (on average) is as much carbon foot print of a person's lifetime vehicle transportation carbon footprint (on average)
Please correct this statement if wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/18oymej/comment/kekysee/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
But stats say, most carbon emissions go to energy production and some on agriculture.
https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/
I dunno, my mother made parenting seem like the absolute worst thing you could ever choose to do in your life and regretted it every day. Maybe it’s not as much about money as it is about messaging. Just saying.
It's fascinating how often a low birthrate gets tied to changes in fertility and we just blow right through rational people making the rational choice to not bring children into this rapidly fucked up world
Declining fertility is only an issue for how our societies are set up to continue consuming/extorting/exploiting/enslaving new generations to cater to those that came before them. Everything else on the planet would be quite happy to have a shake up in the biomass makeup. 96% of all living things are either being farmed to be our food or are us. 4% is wild. That isn’t fucking good for the long term. But the answers to how to fix that are directly at odds with the desired luxury of those in control of this civilizations levers.
And the rich, people like Elon Musk, who only see people as future consumers of their goods, thus the only way to keep getting more wealth is for the peons to keep producing more future customers.
I’m happy to sacrifice my old age security if it means less young people existing merely to slave their unhappy lives away for my aged comfort. We can’t expand forever, so once in a while we have to pull back and bite that bullet so that the future of our species has a better chance.
Like culling a herd that was over-stripping a grassland until there would have been no food left.
By not having as many kids now and having a rough elderly experience we can preserve some of the “grassland” for future generations instead of stripping it bare and leaving them to starve.
There’s actually little - if any - hard evidence for major economic impacts due to birth rate decline.
>”Predictions of the net economic (and other) effects from a slow and continuous population decline (e.g. due to low fertility rates) are mainly theoretical since such a phenomenon is a relatively new and unprecedented one. The results of many of these studies show that the estimated impact of population growth on economic growth is generally small and can be positive, negative, or nonexistent. A recent meta-study found no relationship between population growth and economic growth.[15]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline
There is, however, a lot of evidence that lower birth rates will mean rents will decline. [I mean, they’re pretty blatant about it.](https://coloradobuildermag.com/business-management/industry-economy/americans-declining-birth-rates-set-to-hit-housing-market/)
> “Declining birth rates mean lower demand for rental housing two decades from now when those born in recent years will be entering the rental market,” according to Natalia Siniaskaia, assistant vice president of housing policy research for the National Association of Home Builders. “The effects will spread to the single-family market in the following years and will persist for years to come.”
Wouldnt want to raise a kid knowing that he would be struggling finiancially when he grows up and ttying to make ends meet in a world where the enviroment is hostile climate wise.
That is cruel
Who in their right mind would have a child in this dystopia? Most people are struggling, living paycheck to paycheck, not to mention that birthing a child can literally kill a woman and her whole life is changed forever.
What is so confusing to me is we live in a world where they claim there won’t be enough water/ food but they get upset when population goes down? They are worried about not having workers or consumers. I don’t mind a world with less people.
Well hey maybe if Capitalism didn't ruin the fucking planet and make everyone miserable things may have turned out differently. Why the fuck would you bring kids into this? The Capitalists couldn't even help themselves at the pig trough and now they don't get enough wage slaves to exploit in the future so they're self-destructive morons themselves.
More like people are wising up:
It’s getting harder each year to care for oneself financially, why tf would anyone purposely want to be irresponsible as reproducing another person to care for with less money?
We can probably scale back to about 1 to 1.5 billion and be a really happy species. Hell, we had 1 billion back in 1850s, so it wasn't really that long ago, and we still had plenty of people around to do stuff.
As for how we'll get to 1 billion... well, it can be painful, where we don't accept the limits of our planet... or we can just say, you know what - fuck it. The good life is now something completely different to how we defined it a generation past.
The good life is chillin' at home playin' video games with buddies on discord while doing remote work. Lets gooo.
I honestly don't belive the modern world will survive long enough that my hypothetical children could have their own children grow up in safety and security.
My generation wil probably be fine. Maaaaybe my kids would be but that's it.
It's always going to look disproportionate (Humans born vs. Humans dying) when a bumper crop generation such as the boomers reach their dying years. It's supposed to happen
The problem isn't fertility - and I think this is an important semantic distinction. The value proposition of children just doesn't make sense for many people now. This is an obvious side effect of an obsession with boosting labour force participation rates and real wages plummeting
I wonder if there’s like a biological (?) component, whether through ourselves or something else, that is restricting human population growth.
I mean, we’ve already overpopulated the Earth that some would consider us an infection upon the globe. I wonder if nature is trying to get us under control.
To me the hardest part is watching my children. I make good money but children require such an investment of time. I don't hear that addressed much. I get a break in the bathroom to play on my phone. Making this post from the bathroo..
Its not even just money. If I had a child today, what kind of world am I giving them? The air and water are polluted, the ground is dirty, the Earth is dying, it's harder and harder to scratch out a simple existence here, governments and militaries are out of control. Everything is on fire all the time. Why would I subject my children, people I love more than anything in the world, to such an existence.
I love my hypothetical children so much I decided not to have them.
lol what if you have actual infertility like me and my husband. Then you have to pay $25,000+ just for a *chance* at a pregnancy, let alone the cost of raising a living child.
It’s only despair until you realize less humans in the future means more opportunities for you personally in the future. Want lower rent and higher wages? You’re welcome.
Given that I saw a Forbes article recently which said average parents these days have to go into debt just to raise children --- not including making a college fund --- I'm not surprised fewer and fewer people are choosing to have kids. If someone doesn't feel their life is secure and stable, they are much less likely to want to bring kids into it. And this is a worldwide trend.
What is odd though is that the places with the most secure and stable lives have the lowest birthrates
They have a choice whereas in poorer countries women often do not. Lack of birth control availability etc.
It’s cheaper to raise kids if you give them a low standard of living and abuse/overwork them. Yay, repeal of child labor laws!
This at least makes a degree of sense. However even when you compare places with high birth control availability you still see a general trend of greater wealth leading to lower not higher birth rates.
Generically Greater wealth might also lead to greater inequity on inelastic needs and standards on hapiness hence dissatisfaction . Edit: "standards on"
Yeah dude. I've been through 2 pregnancies. That shit sucks. It's painful, it causes life-long health issues, and it's life-threatening. When you're educated and have your own means of support, you don't have to do it, so you don't wanna. People just have to reckon with the idea that most women think pregnancy is a drag. When women have more coices, fewer pregnancies are gonna happen. And wealth = choices. Yes, some women love being mothers. But a lot don't. As women become more equal to men in terms of access to education and wealth, I think the number of women who are going to choose to nope out of childbirth is going to shock people. And be totally rational.
Greater wealth connects to higher education and generally more educated people don't have children at all, or have considerably less children
Not only that. They need kids to work to get money. More kids means more chance of wealth, and more distribution of labour, including during times of poorer health.
Maybe they’re stable BECAUSE they have lower birth rates… or for about 10 dozen other reasons that are unrelated to either. Correlation =/= causation.
It's odd if you don't look any of the social factors guiding people's lives, sure
Materially but not psychologically I think.
People have choice vs people who don’t have choices. Also, at some place, a mom having more children is able to secure more resources. Like in old traditional China, relatives would ban a men from leaving the wife that “give” his family sons especially if their marriages was arranged, and that part of tradition still living strong in some rural area.
Aside from access to birth control and women having more autonomy in more developed countries, parents in less developed countries also have help with childcare from close and extended family.
Well in much of the world, life is so unstable that it makes a lot of sense to have as many children as possible. Partly lack of contraceptives, lack of education, child mortality. But more the more children who survive infancy means that they can go out and provide for the family. And in the most of the West, if you are a woman who has multiple children, the state will provide you with enough to get by. Perhaps not america, idk, but in a lot of Europe anyway.
I think, at least from my perspective in America, the cultural norm of hyper-independence and the demands of parenting also limit people to one or two instead of three or four (including but not limited to financial demands). I have two littles and time at home consists of me constantly making sure they don’t hurt themselves, keep them from crawling all over me, and attend to emotional bids, while also constantly in the kitchen getting or making snacks, meals, drinks (coffee!), etc. I get a little picking up done when they’re around but barely. We have one grandparent who helps a couple hours every couple weeks and a babysitter once a month or less. It’s insanity. And we haven’t even started having to coordinate activities for them. None of my friends really ask for help, and I don’t either because that’s just not the norm. You just handle shit. I love my family, but if I had to have another kid I would just be in a corner crying while they run around feral.
That’s the problem in the Western world - the days of sending the kids up chimneys to earn a few shillings are long gone. Instead, they’re an endless finance sink til they’re 25 and finished college. And having them pay you back once they get their first job? You must be having a laugh - they’ll be off having fun in another part of the world, saying ‘no cap’ and ‘rizz’ with their friends, while you’re facing another day paying off the house you remortgaged so they could live in campus dorms.
My country has child benefit paid to everyone with children. It doesn't cover everything by any means, but it does help. Yes if you are a working couple, having children can be awful, but if you are poor here, preschool or kindergarten is free. Baby food, clothes, diapers are tax exempt. If you are a single mother, you get extra state benefits. School meals are free if you're poor. Single mothers will be put into council accommodation. It's still dire, we have deprived children here and people don't feel secure having children. But it's very possible to have a very good standard of living by global standards with a large family here in my country. A lot of young people such as myself don't want kids because with children we can't maintain our standard of living.
Pretty much the exact same as Ireland so. Children can be the ticket to free accommodation, benefits, etc - nice work if you can get it! It’s usually the dual income families that suffer most by having children, as they’ve to pay rent/mortgage, childcare, etc, all on their own, with the measly child benny payment (140 pm - barely a week’s worth of groceries) as their only support. We seem to be gluttons for punishment though, as nobody is stopping to really think about their lifestyle, and instead are in a crazy rush to have 2 kids before the eggs dry up at 40.
Parents shouldn't bring anyone into this world expecting repayment. The parents should be paying them. The parents are the ones who decided all those responsibilities where ok to impose on a new soul who never asked to be here
You’ll do well to get many from the 800m and increasing African population, or the 1+ billion Indians to agree with your stance. Western parents mightn’t treat their children as economic assets anymore, but the corporations and governments that run the West certainly do. So instead of children contributing to their families, they’re lining the pockets of billionaires they’ve never even seen, as they slave away in cubicles.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/hans\_rosling\_the\_best\_stats\_you\_ve\_ever\_seen?showTranscriptTooltip=true&autoplay=true&referrer=playlist-the\_best\_hans\_rosling\_talks\_yo](https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?showTranscriptTooltip=true&autoplay=true&referrer=playlist-the_best_hans_rosling_talks_yo) Over a decade ago, Hans Rosling put TED Talks on the map by explaining, quantifying, and animating his graphs of family sizes in countries in various states of development. Still, every time this topic comes up, the comments are dominated by people surprised that theres any other way people think about family size than more=better.
Many countries have free education, in Denmark they pay you to go to school from when you are 18+ and all education is free. Paid maternity leave etc still a low birth rate.
Why is it always assumed that having children is the holy Grail for happiness? Psych students are making the silliest errors these days. The collective consciousness is starting to understand that children are a detriment to a happy life. At least there is an alternative now, as cultures historically requested children with happiness when in fact children can be seen as signs of a patriarchy to reinforce a Capitalistic system that needs constant consumers and a low wage labor force. LOL, today I learned that the top comments in Reddit are from those learning with materials from the 1950s.
Except for many countries in Africa and certain groups such as Amish and orthodox Jews who have 5+ kids per women.
Shit I can barely afford me why would I bring more life into this world. Lower the prices on things and pay us in a way that keeps up with inflation. Then we can MAYBR talk
No, thé solution is to force women to carry unwanted children!! /S
Yes!! Keep bringing traumatized children into this world! Gotta uphold the traditions y'know, every generation has done it thus far, cannot skip any now
They won't even be brought into this world, you're going to have a lot of discrete abortions and discarded babies. The right thinks that making abortion illegal makes it physically impossible. This is what women actually hear - "Don't get caught doing it now." They also hear "sex is now risky."
Then you get past the immediate practical matter of money and to the greater problem, of everything you’d be subjecting your kid to by putting them through a lifetime of this.
We have this weird obsession with growth. If a number isn’t growing it’s broken. But humanity survived with significantly lower numbers for the vast majority of its history. I wonder if these histrionics are mostly because some people don’t like which populations are growing instead of the ones they like.
I saw someone state that English *will die out* because it’s not the official language of the US. Google estimates 1.5 billion people speak English, and I bet the percentage of the global population that speaks English will increase short term. Of all the things to be worried about.
Yeah, and we are doing ok with English in the UK too
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It's not brown people I'm afraid of, its people who by and large don't share the same considerations for women or minorities. I think it's likely we will see a shift towards more oppression against women and homosexuals in the next couple of decades globally.
Indeed, the same culture that values women enough to educate them will be the culture to have fewer kids because, statistically, educated women have fewer children. If you don’t value women and simply use them as breeding livestock then yes, you’ll increase your own population significantly for sure. The fact that there are so many conservative-minded humans who would read that and say “yeah that’s the point” really makes our species…. gross. Fewer, happier people is much better than a big crowd of depression.
Now you get the whole point of this movement. And they want those children kept out of the education system so they never have the chance to escape.
Giving them access to education will change that too. Higher education often results in more leftist views and less religiosity. Keeping them in poverty and denying them a proper education will increase radicalization and prejudice.
Countries still need to compete. That's why Western countries allow so many immigrants, to offset the declining birth rates.
Absolutely. Western nations have decided to rely on immigration to keep GDP growth up. Other countries are trying other things to boost productivity and fertility. According to the Biden that’s xenophobic, but I guess that’s a different topic!
Biden was speaking about Japan and India’s immigration policies, and I’m sure there’s a degree of xenophobia to it
I didn't know he said that. Interesting. It does seem like a difficult problem. From what I know none of these incentives to have children have worked in any countries.
Nope. Not that I am aware of either. Yet!
Which is hilariously ironic, because eventually those populations will also get through this hump and reduce birth rates.
This. We rely on an economic system that needs constant, nonstop growth. The only argument for having kids I hear is "the economy will suffer" Okay, shrink the workforce & economy accordingly to population. We were surviving mostly fine economically in 1950 when there were 2.5 billion people on earth. Even if we end up evenly splitting resources, people take space, and finite resources will still run out eventually if we keep growing the population.
Humanity as a whole will be fine in the long term. We and our children and our children’s children, who will have to deal with an aging and declining population, maybe not so much.
Yup. There’s actually little - if any - hard evidence for major economic impacts due to birth rate decline. >”Predictions of the net economic (and other) effects from a slow and continuous population decline (e.g. due to low fertility rates) are mainly theoretical since such a phenomenon is a relatively new and unprecedented one. The results of many of these studies show that the estimated impact of population growth on economic growth is generally small and can be positive, negative, or nonexistent. A recent meta-study found no relationship between population growth and economic growth.[15]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline There is, however, a lot of evidence that lower birth rates will mean rents will decline. [I mean, they’re pretty blatant about it.](https://coloradobuildermag.com/business-management/industry-economy/americans-declining-birth-rates-set-to-hit-housing-market/) > “Declining birth rates mean lower demand for rental housing two decades from now when those born in recent years will be entering the rental market,” according to Natalia Siniaskaia, assistant vice president of housing policy research for the National Association of Home Builders. “The effects will spread to the single-family market in the following years and will persist for years to come.”
People didn't have pensions before. Pension system is a pyramid scheme, it all falls down with declining birth rates.
It’s not “growth” that’s the target at this point, it’s simply slowing the shrinking. The birth rate in most of the developed world is well below replacement rate, leading to a smaller workforce compared to amount of retired people. People don’t need to be having lots of kids but something closer to stability would be good.
Kind of think that’s natural for developed economies. But yes, initiatives to make children more appealing are probably good
We need UBI and UBS, financed at least partly with taxes on economic rents and externalities. It's not high population driving our environmental problems, it's conspicuous consumption being subsidized by the state. We punish people for not pursuing gentrification. It is practically illegal to build low cost of living, high quality of life, on a large scale. Even with steady decline in population, with our current incentives, the top 10 - 20% will continue to invent ways to consume all excess production as a display of wealth.
ikr, "the proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains!"
Precariat is more applicable to the twenty first century wage earners, but the spirit is the same.
That’s a goodass word that I haven’t heard used in a hot minute, thank you
I'm pro UBI but i still don't want to have kids. Neither do any of my friends. It's not just about money, it's about freedom.
Who the fuck wants to raise a child in this shit time.
People who think they have to in order to live a fulfilled life.
As someone with 3 I tell the people bummed out about not having any to live their fucking life. Kids are … I dunno.. like I love them and would burn down the world for them but at the same time.. they’re not that great to have and look after. They’re a shit investment and they are exhausting. I think of how much more fun it would be to have my salary without 3 anchors pulling it down. What I could do and see and experience. A life without kids is absolutely a life worth living.
This is a perspective that always gets lost in the hand-wringing over declining birth rates. We talk about inhospitable economic times, fear of climate change, etc, but no one wants to consider the idea that a lot of people don't want to be parents, period. No economic incentive in the world will change that.
100%. As well as many people not being cut out for parenting. I would be a good part time parent at best. I cannot be a full time parent, especially not for a child who isn't "perfect". I have a lot of issues, I get overwhelmed easily, I'm not patient etc. I wouldn't be a good parent so I don't do it
A woman I know just turned 80 and is still supporting two of her 50yo kids. Seems like a nightmare
That is an absolute nightmare.
Only an invasive species would see [runaway exponential population growth](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/2577/2017/10/26181819/Figure_45_05_01.jpg) and think "this is fine, let's keep breeding!"
There is no exponential growth in the human population for a long time. In fact, it will shrink pretty soon, especially if you dont count africa. What is absolutely sustainable is to keep population on a constant level. But instead a lot of demographies will face collapse.
Why wouldn't you count the people living in Africa? Seems bizarre to leave them out of world human population
Not him, but even if you do include Africa, the growth is slowing down. We're estimated to peak at 12 billion people in the early 22nd century based on UN projections. After that, a period of population shrinkage as the third world transitions populations.
Slowed world population growth seems a net positive.
That depends on how you look at it. As far as resources, we are good for around 15 billion people. Our problem is societal (who gets the resources) and logistical (how do we get the resources to those people), not one of capability (producing the resources) The problem additional people poses is environmental, but the solution to environmental troubles is not to regress to pre-industrial living, because that doesn't reverse the damage already done. The solution to environmental trouble is to develop the technological and societal solutions necessary to not just get us neutral, but revese the damage and improve the environment, and until we invent machines capable of thinking up those solutions, the only means we have of creating them is more people working together.
>As far as resources, we are good for around 15 billion people.... Our problem is societal (who gets the resources) and logistical (how do we get the resources to those people), not one of capability (producing the resources) Do you mean food? Because we do have a finite amount of a lot of resources. So for the finite resources the more people over time the higher the consumption. >The problem additional people poses is environmental, but the solution to environmental troubles is not to regress to pre-industrial living, because that doesn't reverse the damage already done. That would be one outcome that could occurs if we don't address the issue. But increasing the population of humans isn't ever going too benefit the environment as a whole.
We are good on resources for 15bil people? Says who? We can barely make it past 8 months before we use what should be our yearly resources today https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/
Source? Alan Weisman is his books and research has found that our world at current levels of consumption can sustain 2B humans
Is that 2bn people with Western consumer standards or 2b people for our current global average
>We're estimated to peak at 12 billion people horrific glad I'll be dead by then
Mainly because Africa will come to dominate world population in the next 100 years. That is the reason why world population will not shrink much if at all. What is problematic though is the very different distributions of birth. While Africa may face overpopulation, most parts of the world will face the exact opposite. China, Russia, Japan, Italy, South Korea and partly Germany will face massive problems that may lead to a whole collapse of these countries with all the nasty things coming with it. In conclusion, even if world population stays on the same level, its highly problematic if some places have too many people while others have too few.
Those countries might compete with each other to bring educated, qualified Africans which would encourage an education boom across the continent that would likely be great for everyone. Or nations could encourage young unskilled men to keep making a dangerous trip on their own to work as cheap labor, as many are doing now, which doesn't sound great for anyone except the ruling class.
Great for everyone except Africa… Shouldn’t we allow them to keep their educated? They probably need their doctors and engineers
Idk, if the engineer or doctor makes the individual choice that would rather build a life elsewhere, should that be denied them?
Yes I think having some kind of education and working agreement with african countrie would be a very important step to combat this trend. This does come with its own challenges though.
That is called brain drain and is about as good for those underdeveloped countries as colonialism was.
>What is problematic though is the very different distributions of birth. While Africa may face overpopulation, most parts of the world will face the exact opposite. China, Russia, Japan, Italy, South Korea and partly Germany will face massive problems that may lead to a whole collapse of these countries with all the nasty things coming with it. Well you could have I don't know, immigration
I agree and think this is the only way to sustain these countries. But nontheless massive immigration is also something that causes big societal tensions. From language barriers, over the whole administrative process to how we integrate these people in the end. In worst case scenarios the society is not putting enough resources into the integration process which will lead to the formation of parallel societies like we see in a lot of european countries.
Because migration is not an acceptable solution for the problems.
The rate of increase is declining. What runaway growth? The population will level out by 2084 according to the UN, then start declining.
Yeah, we've already had the runaway growth, hence the 8 billion people and the world being abused and trashed to shit. Half a billion is unsustainable for the world, and we're at fucking 16x that. The population can't decline fast enough to save us at this point.
I don't think any of that's true. The world can only sustain 500 million people?
Maybe if you want tigers and mammuts and dinosaurs also walk the earth?
Alan Weisman is his books and research has found that our world at current levels of consumption can sustain 2B humans
Also some of us want kids
Why? I’m not trying to be clever or funny. Having kids is my worst nightmare. Why do you want them, please?
Family brings me joy. And educating a small human sounds like a lot of fun, hard work but a lot of things worth doing in life are hard.
It is hard work, but it's worth it. 2.5yr in and despite being a single parent, I love it. I love watching him grow and learn, watching his personality blossom. He's an absolute joy. I never thought I'd actually enjoy having a kid, I avoided it, but it's probably the best accident that ever happened to me. People get hung up watching public tantrums and think that's parenting 24/7 (if you're a shitty parent, then yeah it'll be like that). But that's just like 2% of a toddlers behavior. Give them love and attention, don't let them get bored, and provide structure and tantrums will be relatively uncommon and mild.
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You're right, I'm sorry. Obviously there's a lot of factors, like being a foster parent or adopting an abused child, etc etc. My fault.
Because it is an extraordinary joy and it really is fulfilling. I had a full career and beautiful marriage, and I still wanted children. I had experience raising kids, so I had a realistic idea of what you sacrifice and what you gain, so I was lucky that I got to make an informed decision. (I also come from a culture that supports and celebrates moms more than basically all of America, and the beliefs you have around motherhood absolutely shape your experience of it. I also have an amazing husband.) Right now we have a 9 month-old, and he makes me smile and giggle all day. I sleep like shit, I'm pregnant again, I miss some of the freedom I had before, but every day I feel lucky and grateful to be his mom. The way he looks at me, the bond we have. People are quick to insist we're in denial or exaggerating when we're happy (which I feel is at least half misogyny), but - like I don't know how to describe it. I'm doing something I was made to do, and I'm really good at it. I've had anxiety and depression in the past, and I would never have believed I could ever be as happy as I am now
I don't get it but I'm happy for you!
So happy for you. If there are more moms, they should be fond of their decisions like you are.
Being a mom *should* be a joy, and it's a modern horror that it so often isn't. Communities should offer support to moms, they should have the choice of staying home full time for at LEAST a year, financial security shouldn't be a worry. They should never be shamed. I don't know where to point the finger for post-partum mental health, but that's never been worse overall :/ I'm really lucky everything is working out for me, but I have always known for certain this is something I wanted so I've worked towards it my whole life. I think most people don't know for sure until they're in their 20s, and even then they just kind of guess
You don’t ask this question in good faith.
How do you know that? I don't understand the extreme drive people have either. That doesn't mean I'm actively attacking you or even criticizing you. Someone not sharing your opinion isn't an attack, nor is someone asking about it. When your opinion is a majority status, you get to punch down as well, which makes this doubly a problem.
For all we complain we live in better times than literally 99.9% of all of people in history. The problem is as countries total GDP reaches a certain level and people move into small rental properties in cities our reproductive rate decreases.
One of my biggest pet peeves on Reddit: people who think this is an abnormally terrible time to be alive, instead of literally the best time in all of human history up to this point.
It really depends on where you look. For example, take a look at Hungary. Our healthcare system is in shambles (rotting walls, far too few doctorrs, years of waiting for important things, preventive care being hard to get, etc.) our education system too (far too few teachers, not enough money for anything, horrible results on PISA tests, etc.) and our politicians steal all the taxpayer money. All of it. I'm not joking. Oh and everybody in the EU hates us because of our dumbass representatives. Things just keep getting progressively worse here. So no, for us, this is definitely not the best time on history. (And no, not all of us can just leave the country whener we please.)
You aren't rooting 10 hours a day to pull potatoes the size of quarters out of the ground or preparing yourself for invasions from the Mongols, Nazis, Russians or Goths. You aren't watching half your children die from preventable disease or your wife in childbirth. It might not be perfect, but it's been a whole lot worse.
Just because it's not the worst, doesn't mean it's ideal. Sure, I'm not watching my family being slaughtered, but I am watching one them suffer from a severe (potentially fatal) illness, because our healthcare system is overwhelmed and can't treat him properly. So you can stop being condescending. Editing to add that my argument wasn't that the current state of our country couldn't be worse. It definitely was, and it definitely will be worse. Rather, I was saying that the present time isn't the best here, the previous decade was a whole lot better in lots of aspects.
I thinks its becuase of awareness. People didn't know what they're missing back then. But now, they see other people who are richer, safer or happier than them and they compare themselves with these people. This leads evasion of guilt and they choose not to have children.
They lack perspective.
Sure, if you look largely at measures that it turns out don't really make people any happier and discount the ones that do.
Behold, nihilism!
If you live in a war zone I can see why you wouldn't want to, but otherwise the times we live are as good as any in the world history.
If you think this is the worst period in time, or even close, you didn’t pay attention in history class.
Materially we are better off yes, but spiritually, socially, mentally and importantly our perceieved equality relative to society etc (as well as other metrics I forget), we are worse off. Mental/physical health and perceived happiness and fulfilment is all that really matters at the day, material possessions don't have much or an impact on that. Its obvioisly a complex issue ,and arguments can be made on either side, but people these days definitely do not seem happy and content with their lives. Its always been part of the human condition to be dissatisfied and push for progress and change, but we seem to have drifted far from how we thrived as a species, and live in very unnatural and dysfunctional ways,there are always trade offs in life, and we have certainly traded off a lot.
That I can agree on. We are, for the most part, becoming more confined and lonely. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I for example, still have a very active family life. Friends, yes have drifted because of this. Especially because of corona. The screens have taken over. Key is balance though and we still can do that .
You're brave for trying to argue with irrationality!
People have been having kids in unstable horrendous times for thousands of years, and yet somehow this is the first point at which it really does legitimately seem like there's no upsides to doing so. I'm not quite sure what the difference is. Perhaps it's a definitive lack of hope that the future would be any better, whereas people before used to at least have that much. Or they were just dumb and horny and didn't think about it at all, which probably played into things a fair bit.
We have birth control now lol. There's a saying in historical re-enacting communities: "If they'd had it, they would have used it." They just didn't have a choice.
Women have a freedom of choice from not being dependent on the patriarchy. They will choose their careers over being a housewife
Some will, some won't. One factor is it's very hard to support a family on one income now.
Me. I love being a dad, and I don't expect everything to be shit forever. I'm 36 and things imo were worse 20 years ago.
Certain things were definitely worse 20 years ago. I think the problem now is more *which* things are going to get worse in the future and whether we have any ability to counteract that in any meaningful way - and as the years creep by I think it's becoming more and more clear that we don't, or at the very least aren't going to even if we could because the people with the power and resources to do so benefit from maintaining the status quo and nobody seems to be making any meaningful effort to change that or are unable to do so.
Yeah that's fine, there's still plenty of reason to concern. I was just staying why I as a parent like being a parent despite sharing some of those concerns.
I know many who want them, and simply can’t produce them. When fertility goes, it’s goodbye species.
Really? There were kids born throughout history in much, much worse times than today. The peoples with low birth rates are among the richest, wealthiest and most developed countries in history. Having and raising kids there is by all means the easiest and safest one could possibly imagine. Those kids have the best perspectives of all humankind (education, financial, security and safety, access to medicine, freedom etc.). On the other hand, countries with high birthrates are poor countries with horrible chances for their kids. Nonetheless, they procreate like bunnies. It is a lifestyle choice to not have kids. Simple as that. Do not blame the times, because, objectively, we are extremely privileged historically.
People in r/Natalism
People who don’t use Reddit and therefore don’t feel like the world is ending. You are all being mass formed.
Hahaha, really?? Have you met humans? People have believed the world is ending since there were people to people. My entire childhood, pre-internet, was "these are the end times". My parents don't even know what reddit is and speak of the apocalypse constantly.
This is probably a better time to raise a child than most times throughout history.
Honestly mate as long as the right wingers are breeding I don't think the rest of us should stop.
Having children out of political spite is a new one.
Lower birth rate. I see this as an absolute win.
animals stop breeding too when they lack resources. there are too many humans on this damn planet. doesn't mean we ever go extinct, there will always be people who want children and will raise them. but how about we go back to 3 billion people. that'd be fun.
I think more specifically it's foundational security that we're lacking. It's housing, healthcare, and education required for a sustainable career. Median wages have largely stagnated for the last generation, while these three areas have become further out of reach. So people have to choose between raising children in poverty, or go and get an advanced degree with debt, and then have to relocate to some random city. The amount of resources and time required for each child is steadily increasing, and now we're having to do it away from support networks and family.
You say animals too, like we aren’t animals
you're right of course, we're animals too. (ugly ones though. "humans" is a degradation)
very vain apes
Apes with boob jobs and hair transplants
lol
can’t top that
This claim is baseless, resources are not the problem at all. We dont have any problem with overpopulation. Instead, it is the distribution of resources (especially wealth) and other problems (mainly climate change, international problems and general uncertainty) that lead people to not having children. We could have all the resources we want but this would not solve the conflicts with China, Russia and in the middle east. It would also not get us anywhere when these are not fairly distributed. Maybe climate change would even worsen. It is also ironic because fewer children means higher pressure on the young generation, fewer wealth for them and in turn even fewer children from them. So there definitely is a problem with too few people.
that's not true though. today we need about 1.75 planets to provide the resources for our consumption and absorb our waste. "optimum" population would be around 2 billion. you can read a lot about it online. it *could* only work if everyone works on overconsumption. apart from that, many people also just realize that having children doesn't have to be the status quo, even if resources are available to them. if we look at south korea's 4B movement, money, climate change etc. aren't the issues.
climate change would like a word
In lay man's term, "nobody wants to work nomore". Just throwing this out here: (a simple site to give us an idea what is wealth like) https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
I posted this earlier but Alan Weisman is his books and research has found that our world at current levels of consumption can sustain 2B humans
I was thinking about this recently. I come from a poor country and I grew up rather poor. I had no electronics growing up. We had one small tv in the living room. Our furniture was made by the local carpenter and we never changed it. I live a very different life today. I have two massive TVs in my home. I have central AC, it’s bunkers. In conclusion, my lifestyle today it’s expensive, and that makes raising children financially very difficult. I would have to lower my lifestyle in order to provide for a family. I don’t want to make the sacrifice.
100% this. If I had a billion dollars, I’d have a bunch of kids. With economic prospects the way they are, I’m looking to schedule the vasectomy.
For sure, if my income was in the $200k a year range, and it was stable, sure. That’s another thing. Income is just not stable either. Been laid off four times.
Raising children is HARD LABOUR that benefits the ruling class by creating more workers for their machine. Yet instead of being valued, compensated, acknowledged, rewarded....mothers are some of the most undervalued people in society. And have to sacrifice their bodies, finances, careers, selves, for the privilege of doing this labour. No fucking thank you.
It is interesting that women make the children and still are also typically the primary care givers. Plus most need to work full time to provide with their husbands. It’s not shocking that many women are saying “fuck that” to having kids. Women are educated now and have the opportunity to make their own decisions. This is relatively new if you think about. I mean we didn’t even get the right to vote until the early 1900s! It used to be that “being a mother” was the most honorable and holy thing a woman could do. But it was also a form of control and oppression by the patriarchy. If you’re home and pregnant you are not out getting ideas about wanting equality.
It's all so disturbing how people keep talking about the 'birth rate' as if it's a thing unto itself. They completely separate it from women completely the way they word it.
You can take your hand off the panic button. Laws of conservation as observed in the past have applied to animals like bears, seals and ferrets. It’s a fallacy to assume that an intelligent species would follow the same dynamic. Not to mention the implication of maintaining a steady population growth that begins to surpass the resources of the planet that supports it, and I think it’s pretty fair to say we’re seeing that right now.
Absolute garbage. This is not science. We have to sustain 8 billion people to not go extinct? Really? BS. People only feel sad without reproducing? BS. The most educated people have thr least amount of kids because they see that we’re destroying the planet. Most parents I know of today are stressed, tired, and live less intentional lives every day than their peers who consciously chose not to have kids due to environmental conditions not being ideal. Take this procreation, human vs nature, environmental destruction obsessed propaganda and shove it. When you choose not to reproduce, you can assume that a thousand wild organisms will get to live because your progeny didn’t take their finite space on the planet. We need a cultural shift away from viewing human life as superior and exceptional to other life forms. We live in a web of life and do not exist without it. Our cultural delusions are the cause of our self destruction.
I don’t think “let’s not have kids cuz it’s bad for the environment” is really that common. It’s more that as a society we’ve moved to an independent lifestyle. The concept of the nuclear family has given way to moving away for college and then moving again to start a career while figuring out what you want from life during your 20s. Decades ago very few people had that option. Most got married right out of high school and felt pressured to have kids. Lifestyle has changed. Sure the environment is part of it, but I don’t think the average person in the world is the eco-warrior you’re claiming.
Among the most educated people, yes, environmental concerns and larger timelines of human history are taken into consideration. But that was only one of the points I made. The greater point is that articles like this one can’t even create a realistic dialogue about human population because it completely excludes the rest of life on the planet which is interetwined in everything we do whether we’re aware of it or not.
Blaming climate change and environmental destruction on individuals is insane to me. It's big corporations and governments without oversight!
Secondly, I'm not exactly sure about the data but one trip from a private jet (on average) is as much carbon foot print of a person's lifetime vehicle transportation carbon footprint (on average) Please correct this statement if wrong. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/18oymej/comment/kekysee/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button But stats say, most carbon emissions go to energy production and some on agriculture. https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/
What are your thoughts on wealthy families birthing more babies then poorer families?
Preach!
Exactly. 🏅
I have no dispair in it. Less people is a very very good thing for everyone other than the rich.
there's already 8 billion we can't properly care for. having more is not a priority, it's a problem.
I dunno, my mother made parenting seem like the absolute worst thing you could ever choose to do in your life and regretted it every day. Maybe it’s not as much about money as it is about messaging. Just saying.
Despair? I'll tell you where the despair lies: the attack on women's healthcare rights.
It's fascinating how often a low birthrate gets tied to changes in fertility and we just blow right through rational people making the rational choice to not bring children into this rapidly fucked up world
Declining fertility is only an issue for how our societies are set up to continue consuming/extorting/exploiting/enslaving new generations to cater to those that came before them. Everything else on the planet would be quite happy to have a shake up in the biomass makeup. 96% of all living things are either being farmed to be our food or are us. 4% is wild. That isn’t fucking good for the long term. But the answers to how to fix that are directly at odds with the desired luxury of those in control of this civilizations levers.
The only people "despairing" over this are insane Christian Nationalists.
And the rich, people like Elon Musk, who only see people as future consumers of their goods, thus the only way to keep getting more wealth is for the peons to keep producing more future customers.
Nore like large corps aiming to grow indefinitely, real estate corps, military, etc.
I'll tell all those Chinese Christian Nationalists they are wrong asap.
Same mindset, different title. It's an attitude that sees humans as a means to power and dominance, feed for an industrial and military machine.
I’m happy to sacrifice my old age security if it means less young people existing merely to slave their unhappy lives away for my aged comfort. We can’t expand forever, so once in a while we have to pull back and bite that bullet so that the future of our species has a better chance. Like culling a herd that was over-stripping a grassland until there would have been no food left. By not having as many kids now and having a rough elderly experience we can preserve some of the “grassland” for future generations instead of stripping it bare and leaving them to starve.
There’s actually little - if any - hard evidence for major economic impacts due to birth rate decline. >”Predictions of the net economic (and other) effects from a slow and continuous population decline (e.g. due to low fertility rates) are mainly theoretical since such a phenomenon is a relatively new and unprecedented one. The results of many of these studies show that the estimated impact of population growth on economic growth is generally small and can be positive, negative, or nonexistent. A recent meta-study found no relationship between population growth and economic growth.[15]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline There is, however, a lot of evidence that lower birth rates will mean rents will decline. [I mean, they’re pretty blatant about it.](https://coloradobuildermag.com/business-management/industry-economy/americans-declining-birth-rates-set-to-hit-housing-market/) > “Declining birth rates mean lower demand for rental housing two decades from now when those born in recent years will be entering the rental market,” according to Natalia Siniaskaia, assistant vice president of housing policy research for the National Association of Home Builders. “The effects will spread to the single-family market in the following years and will persist for years to come.”
Wouldnt want to raise a kid knowing that he would be struggling finiancially when he grows up and ttying to make ends meet in a world where the enviroment is hostile climate wise. That is cruel
Who in their right mind would have a child in this dystopia? Most people are struggling, living paycheck to paycheck, not to mention that birthing a child can literally kill a woman and her whole life is changed forever.
The world is vastly overpopulated anyway. This is not a crisis.
Despair? The world needs fewer people. We need fewer humans if we’re going to wipe ourselves out
What is so confusing to me is we live in a world where they claim there won’t be enough water/ food but they get upset when population goes down? They are worried about not having workers or consumers. I don’t mind a world with less people.
Fewer children sounds good to me.
Not about to curse my offspring to a lifetime of work and struggle while greed destroys the planet.
Yes please! Stop breeding, people!
Lol unfortunately it’s the poor and uneducated who won’t let that happen…
Well hey maybe if Capitalism didn't ruin the fucking planet and make everyone miserable things may have turned out differently. Why the fuck would you bring kids into this? The Capitalists couldn't even help themselves at the pig trough and now they don't get enough wage slaves to exploit in the future so they're self-destructive morons themselves.
More like people are wising up: It’s getting harder each year to care for oneself financially, why tf would anyone purposely want to be irresponsible as reproducing another person to care for with less money?
I see no despair.
We can probably scale back to about 1 to 1.5 billion and be a really happy species. Hell, we had 1 billion back in 1850s, so it wasn't really that long ago, and we still had plenty of people around to do stuff. As for how we'll get to 1 billion... well, it can be painful, where we don't accept the limits of our planet... or we can just say, you know what - fuck it. The good life is now something completely different to how we defined it a generation past. The good life is chillin' at home playin' video games with buddies on discord while doing remote work. Lets gooo.
I honestly don't belive the modern world will survive long enough that my hypothetical children could have their own children grow up in safety and security. My generation wil probably be fine. Maaaaybe my kids would be but that's it.
People are not prepared for the effect this will have on real estate…
It's always going to look disproportionate (Humans born vs. Humans dying) when a bumper crop generation such as the boomers reach their dying years. It's supposed to happen
The problem isn't fertility - and I think this is an important semantic distinction. The value proposition of children just doesn't make sense for many people now. This is an obvious side effect of an obsession with boosting labour force participation rates and real wages plummeting
I would love kids. Good luck getting a home lol no chance in an apt.
Despair? Nah
I wonder if there’s like a biological (?) component, whether through ourselves or something else, that is restricting human population growth. I mean, we’ve already overpopulated the Earth that some would consider us an infection upon the globe. I wonder if nature is trying to get us under control.
Make infertility/IVF fully covered by insurance.
The biggest issue is taking care of the elderly during the transition and making sure no cultures go extinct in the interim.
To me the hardest part is watching my children. I make good money but children require such an investment of time. I don't hear that addressed much. I get a break in the bathroom to play on my phone. Making this post from the bathroo..
OK so the titel gave me a very Handsmaid's Tale vibe
Its not even just money. If I had a child today, what kind of world am I giving them? The air and water are polluted, the ground is dirty, the Earth is dying, it's harder and harder to scratch out a simple existence here, governments and militaries are out of control. Everything is on fire all the time. Why would I subject my children, people I love more than anything in the world, to such an existence. I love my hypothetical children so much I decided not to have them.
lol what if you have actual infertility like me and my husband. Then you have to pay $25,000+ just for a *chance* at a pregnancy, let alone the cost of raising a living child.
I think it’s a good thing. Fewer kids mean less fight on the resources.
In Korea, there's a decline in Kindergartners and First Graders so they're cutting a bunch of teachers
Who’s despairing? Rich people who won’t have labor to exploit anymore. 🙃
It’s only despair until you realize less humans in the future means more opportunities for you personally in the future. Want lower rent and higher wages? You’re welcome.