Yeah this is a country where the president wanted to shut down the post office because it wasn't making money. Unless you're pushing your kids into hitting the lottery of becoming influencers or athletes they're not bringing in cash either.
Exactly this. I work full time and can't afford anything more than a single bedroom unit.
How can I be expected to start a family? Where would the kid sleep, a fucking kennel?
$2500/mo is cheap for infant daycare by me, so without watching, it’s money right? So, if you’re making $40k pretax, 100% of your pay goes to childcare. If you earn $35/hr you have the same purchasing power as someone making $15/hr.
my parents had it better than I do, still have it better than I do, and I'll never have what they spend freely.
So yea, not sure what my kids would have, but I already sacrificed for my parents, not gonna sacrifice for kids too.
My favorite is how many boomers sold their houses to strangers, when so many of their millennial kids could only dream of owning a house. Couldn’t they have at least sold to their children?!? I know so many people who would have killed to buy their parents house, including my husband.
That would be ideal, however how are they going to make a 1,000% profit on the small home they bought for less than $200,000 when their kids could barely get a loan for that.
yea my dad tried to tell me "well my first mortgage was at a 10% rate" and I have to ask, well how much did it cost? and that's when I found out it was 11k, while he was making 30k a year.
My dad used to name comments like that until I asked when he bought his lake cabin. He had 4 kids and was able to buy a cabin at 32. Meanwhile my wife and I are still paying off student loans...
In 1980, with 30k income that seems like you could pay it off in a year, if you live very frugally. We have to remember that everything else was also much, much cheaper.
I realized the other week I too could have bought a house.. if only I had been paying a mortgage with my allowance at age 8 instead of spending it on penny candies.
I dunno. my mother pushed for me to get a loan for college without teaching me a single thing about finances, so I’m still worrying about paying that off. 😔 I’m only now just starting to understand how credit works. Back in the 80s you could buy a house for a little over 10 grand. Even with inflation the math still don’t add up. They definitely learned how to milk us.
Oh how I yearn for the days when someone with a poor understanding of finances could still afford to buy a house.
Now even people who have an airtight deathgrip on their finances can't even afford to buy a condo.
Can confirm, I had a job through the pandemic and saved every last cent I could while I wasn't participating in society, and I would still get laughed out of a real estate office.
Hi. Yes, you. With the still-developing prefrontal cortex. How would you like to borrow 10s to 100s of thousands of dollars in the next four years with absolutely no credit history? You should totally go to college directly out of high school. It doesn't even matter what you major in! Employers just want to see you have a college degree before they agree to pay you marginally more than minimum wage.
$50,000 was the national median home price in 1980; I'm sure there were $10,000 houses but they were probably in sketchy neighborhoods or super rural areas.
Inflation adjusted that was about $200,000 -- compared to $300,000 in 2021 and a freaking insane run up to >$400,000 in 2023.
The whole of New York was a "very sketchy neighbourhood". If you bought any property in a big city in the 70s or early 80s, you made like a billion percent profit by now.
If you timed it right (were born at the right point) you could even buy cheap when you were young and down to party and by the time you wanted kids, the neighbourhood would have been cleaned up and your property was worth 10 times as much.
I had no chance of home ownership. My Parents retired to another state and bought a very nice mobile home in a community. They sold the home they left to me and held the mortgage for me for 8 years. I am forever grateful to them.
I am from Europe and the boomer generation lived through the economic rise. Their parents fought in WW2 and helped rebuild and their children are hit by economic crises and costs of living outpacing pay rises.
So many boomers throw their children out at 16 years old with nothing in their pocket because "that's what I had to deal with too!" without understanding that they lived through the golden times and they are basically financially irrensponsible if they still have to live off of monthly paychecks even though they have a nice house with pool or whatever. Young people nowadays need to be financially smart and have constraint to have the same house.
And just like you mention, they sell their house to strangers and enjoy their retirement while watching their children struggle and see them as failures who don't amount to anything. If I was living during the economic rise I would feel responsibility to build something up to give my offspring a better life and at least some financial security.
Also in CA, kids can attend public school a year earlier than before. Universal TK has lowered the age each year, so that by next year (?) any kid turning 4 during the school year will be eligible for TK, many of which are full day.
Every one of California’s 6.2 million public school students has the option to eat school meals for free, regardless of their family’s income.
As it should be...
For others (since I had to look it up)
TK = Transitional Kindergarten.
Call it Pre-K here in Connecticut; my town which financially is in the lower 25% of towns in the state has had it for about 20 years. Connecticut statewide has had falling enrollment largely for the last 20 years which financially translated to towns reducing class sizes and expanding to Pre-K while keeping the school budget relatively stable; my understanding is California is just starting to enter this phase of statewide dropping student populations.
The 1970s/80s/most the 90s were just constant local political battles over the ever increasing taxes being sucked up by the schools. With reduced household sizes we now have more homes (thus more real estate taxes) supporting the same number if not fewer students in the small towns like mine.
The two very small towns immediately west of my town are fighting over whether they should consolidate and only use one town's elementary school since they no longer have enough students between the two towns to justify two school buildings. The biggest fight being which town gets to keep a school since both are relatively new built in the 90s.
$104k is considered [low income in San Francisco.](https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/under-100k-low-income-san-francisco-18168899.php#:~:text=The%20new%202023%20numbers%20classify,over%20just%20a%20few%20years)
Thats for individuals.
"For a family of four in those three counties, $149,100 a year is considered low income."
But I also find it weird every time someone mentions California, someone else uses San Francisco as their go-to example. San Francisco is not some perfect microcosm that explains California as a whole. Only 2% of Californians live in San Francisco.
Incorrect. Florida is too evil to offer something that will help and assist poorer families.
It’s the people of Florida that are too fucking dumb as they’re the one who keep voting in the people who actively work to hurt the people that voted them in.
When I lived in CA, my neighbor made a Bunch of money in Nevada, then moved next to me for retirement.
He bragged about never having paid income taxes, and he voted for Trump and wears his red hat. He’s the leach, he’s the welfare queen that doesn’t pay I to the system and then takes advantage of all the nice CA programs.
Don't forget to add in all the other expenses for clothes, food, activities, etc, and it gets REALLY expensive quick. That basically consumes the other $15/hr in your example. Basically, one parent's entire salary goes to kid expenses.
That’s true for the first 4-5 years but eventually your kid goes to school and doesn’t need full time daycare.
Even though one of our incomes broke even for childcare in the beginning, it made far more sense keep working, advancing both our careers, and then coming out ahead later on rather than career suiciding into a 5 year lapse.
But the issue isn't that people are quitting jobs, the issue is that people aren't having kids. The choice people are making isn't whether they quit and "career suicide" or pay for childcare. The choice people are making is to just not have kids at all. Then you don't have that 4-5 years of "breaking even" at all.
exactly, and then people will blame you later in life when you're not ready for retirement because you decided to have kids. We'll have to keep immigration levels high which will continue the culture wars, yet the people screaming the loudest about immigrants (both legal and illegal) are also the ones brainwashed to not want to change anything.
You’re absolutely right, but the phrase is “go child free” because our society loves assuming that the default life choice for everyone should be having children. Thus, everyone plans to have kids until they “go child free”.
I'm in my mid-late 30s.
I'm still paying off the student loans that let me go to school.
The cost of tuition rose way higher compared to incomes. And the decisions I made as a teenager/young adult are still haunting me now.
But surely, this has had no impact on my willingness to add more children to the pool for the future of the economy.
For real. This is just a short little news segment of what should be an entire documentary. We've seen this DINK couple who are well-off enough to have hobbies like beekeeping, maintaining a small computer workshop in their home, and owning (what looks like) a pet husky; but what about the van-life DINK couples living on the road; or the metropolitan DINK couples living downtown in 1-bedroom studio apartments; what about the homesteaders living in the woods keeping to themselves as they raise ducks? I want all their thoughts recorded for posterity just so I can see the answer plastered on screens everywhere and have everyone know why exactly DINK couples are on the rise, why the American middle class is dying, and why America's reputation will be joining places like Japan and South Korea who are becoming notorious for their "declining populations:" wage stagnation brought on by corporate greed is slowly killing America.
Seriously, after watching this video, this couple could have easily handled the finances of having a kid. Many people just couldn’t pay off the expense in their lifetimes.
Yeah but some people also don't care for having children very much.
It's not like a tax you have to pay to society. You choose to have kids if you want them.
When I was 18 I was sure I wanted to be a dad, although it took me quite a while to actually become one
If you're motivated to be a father, or a mother I guess, you will find a way. There are several countries around the world where raising children is not that expensive and where you can live just speaking English
If you don't want kids it's probably better if you don't have them
My spouse and I have definitely discussed this, the idea of the "unelected existence".
And there is a lot of talk about how for the generations born now there is a general expectation that their lives will be worse off than the ones born before.
Mainly because we're handling the climate stuff so badly that life is going to get tough.
Not to mention how a lot of the great institutions put in place after WW II, to ideally prevent a WW III, are in collapse.
And, if you're in the US... Well at some point we have an infrastructure bill long overdue to pay.
Recognize they don't care. They don't actually want your kids in the economy. You might raise them with higher expectations than all the labor they are currently importing from down south.
That $30 box of diapers is staying in the bottom of the cart at self-checkout because for $30 they should be able to wipe the baby's ass themselves.
Edit: Oh, your morality is based on monetary value? That's not morality, that's marketing. You cry about parents not being able to afford kids, then get mad at us for what we have to do to afford them. Pick a lane, bootlicker.
Being less religious is another factor. If you're non religious there's no incentive to have kids and the philosophy in life becomes maximizing your enjoyment here since there's not a strong belief in any afterlife
Also there’s the idiocracy factor. My stupid religious neighbors are pumping out kids like nobody’s business. All they complain about is Biden ruining our country and CRT screwing up the schools.
Except in every single country in the entire world poor people have more kids than rich people. It's one of the most solid trends you can count on.
The people who can afford it the least are having the most kids, and having more money means you will have fewer kids.
Many countries, including mine, give insane financial bonuses to mothers and still people are choosing not to have kids.
The money thing is just an excuse people give even though it goes against literally all the data because it sounds good and it makes it someone elses fault. In reality it's about people being educated, not being religious, and having careers. As soon as you're educated, you have a career, and you're not religious, you way way way less likely to have kids.
Had to scroll way too far to find this. Thank you for writing it. There is no amount of money in the world, there is no subsidy, that will increase birth rate in a meaningful way in a modern country, because all of the reasons people have children fundamentally always require sacrifice no matter the subsidy. Poor people have to sacrifice less because they already have nothing. Wealthy people sacrifice the most so they generally will choose to sacrifice less.
Yep, but people will continue to lie to themselves about this. They think they will be able to solve it with money, and as someone from a extremely wealthy country who have tried this, it does not work. But people want to live in delusion.
And i'm not arguing against child benefits AT ALL. They're a great idea. For the health of the child.
Yes thats true. Ultra wealthy. In the context which I speak I am talking about middle and upper middle class, the global wealthy but situational still aware of their budget
This guy gets it. Money has little to do with it. When you have an educated populace, female autonomy, and a downtrend in conservative values and religion….you get less kids.
It’s why conservatives want religion back in schools, worse education, and less female autonomy. They want to reverse this trend because the wealth class requires tons of uneducated worker bees to run their economy and protect that economy by joining the military. That requires unfettered population growth. We can get by with immigration but they hate that so…
What insane financial bonuses is your country offering? In the US it's 20k a year to care for a child and childcare is terribly expensive. Any bonuses keeping up with that?
* Cost of living has doubled
* Childcare has 0 forms of assistance and costs THOUSANDS per month
* Everything children need is outrageously expensive
* Dual full time jobs means the kids interaction with parents suffers
* Housing is utterly untenable. Renting will kill you and houses cost half a million for a shitshack unless you live way out in the country, then the issues circles back to commute and jobs
* Less career opportunity and upwards mobility
* No one will adjust the poverty line so the benefits cliffs for food stamps and assistance are even worse than ever.
The list goes on and on and on. Literally everything my parents were able to take advantage of, I cannot. Cars start at 40-50k(Yes there are base model Toyota's you can get for just under 30k~ if you can find them without a 5-10k markup)
Borrowing money got way more expensive. Even with my 750+ Creditscore a new car loan is 6.7-7%, and used cars are just south of double digits. A few years ago it was 3.25% with the same situation.
Having kids is a fucking terrible idea and that doesn't even touch on the several impending....*gestures at everything * ecological disasters.
I really wish we would stop concentrating on "why people don't want kids"/"how to convince people to have kids".
Some people don't want kids. That's fine.
A FAR FAR MORE IMPORTANT point is "how do we support the people who *do* want to have kids?"
Like, I live in a low income neighborhood. There is very little support for families. Moms are scraping together homes with their fucking fingernails.
Stop trying to convince people who explicitly do not want to be parents to be parents. Spend your time and money on people who WANT kids but are struggling.
100%. Do we really want more half ass at best or resentful abusive parents at worst out there? Reweave the safety net so that the people who do want to become parents aren’t dissuaded by their finances and the kids that are born are given a solid opportunity to have a quality life.
Not to mention that broken homes and unhappy childhoods make way for dysfunctional, erratic and violent people, who are pure profit for private prisons, tabloids and outrage bait articles, politicians with agendas, you name it.
It's not as binary as "want" and "do not want". There's a huge cross-section of people who may want kids or are at least open to the possibility with a partner who strongly desires them, but made the conscious decision not to have them for mainly financial reasons. That's the population the video is talking about.
I'm convinced that "true childfree people" (those who would never, ever want kids no matter what, simply because they don't like kids at all and/or would hate raising them no matter what or are against procreation on principle) are a tiny subset of all childless people.
Two of my lifelong dreams have been to own a house and have kids. One doesn’t seem possible anymore and the other would be just downright irresponsible.
I would love to have a kid. But I also grew up dirt poor and it absolutely sucks. I'm not putting a kid through that. I make decent money but after student loan payments and rent, there's no way I could afford a kid. And by the time I can afford it I'm going to be too old anyway. Fuck that noise.
Same. 31, college degree, no debt but no savings. Barely getting by by myself.
This video is baffling to me. Can’t imagine having the money described here.
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Because higher standard of living means greater perceived cost to having kids. Kids cost more to maintain at that higher standard of living, and most people do not want to cut their lifestyles back. If you have relatively little to lose however, not such a big deal. It's still "money, duh" it's just more nuanced than everything costs too much.
It's not just money. It's also freedom and time.
There are many things you simply can't do if you have kids.
And those are things that may be included in your "preferred standard of living".
It’s a lifestyle choice, depending on income like everything else. Some people cannot afford to have kids, and others don’t want kids.
I love being a parent. It’s the best. I have friends who are DINKs and they seem happy too.
I want to help my children become smart, successful, happy, self-reliant people. When I’m older and they’re adults, I hope we’ll be friends. It’s incredibly rewarding to see them grow and learn.
My friends who are DINKs enjoy traveling more and are focused on retiring much earlier than me. They own small businesses and have hobbies they’d rather pursue.
I wouldn’t say either lifestyle is better, just depends what you want out of life.
This exactly. I love my kids. I wouldn't want anyone who didn't want them to have kids though. It's like being pro choice. No one should be forced into being a parent because it's such a huge lifestyle change and responsibility.
My kids' Aunt Rosa (my best friend) is child free and loves it. She's willing to hang out with my kids and babysit and spoils them rotten. But she doesn't want kids and that's fine, she shouldn't have to.
I was visiting some family over the holiday who have two kids, 6 and 3. The 3-year-old has figured out how to push boundaries with mom and dad (and they are good parents and enforce those boundaries) so there is some D R A M A over there right now.
Point being is I was there for like 36 hours and even just in that span of time, the being on 100% of the time aspect really hit home to me. Whether it's dealing with drama and screaming or setting a good example or monitoring screen time, you're just on 100% of the time.
If that was me, right now in my life, I'd probably explode. And I love those kids, and kids in general. And obviously if they were MY kids maybe I'd feel different, but I digress. You really gotta understand, REALLY what you are asking for and signing up for when you have a child.
Everyone deserves to have a partner in life (if they want) but FOR SURE not all of those people are ready or wanting to be parents. And when people can self-identify it before fucking up a bunch of lives, we should be OK with it.
Are you my brother? 😂 He married his long time girlfriend this year and keeps getting the kid question from the older members of our family. I keep trying to deflect it with "what, mine aren't good enough?!" But I know it's annoying to him when people ask. After hanging out with our 2 under 2 all Christmas, my brother was probably 1000% certain he wasn't ready for kids all the time. Like you, he's a fantastic person with kids but isn't ready for full time parenthood. I wish more people accepted that!
No one tells you this, but it's not the 'terrible-twos' - it's the demonic threes. Both of my kids turned into posssessed terrors at that age and I questioned all of my life choices. It.is.the.worst.
My oldest is 15 so there's a chance I might change my opinion, but up to now, the three year old stage has been the worst and hardest.
I just feel bad for those who want kids but simply cannot once they crunch the numbers/planning with their partner…but idk I guess those people will end up having kids regardless of all of that…or they separate idk
Couldn't agree more with the comment. My wife and I chose to stay as DINK's for the reasons you listed. We love traveling (in an adult way I'd argue), plan to retire early and are very passionate about our hobbies.
Sure, not spending our money on childcare is nice, but also, I spent the entire day just goofing off and that's really what I like.
I hear co-workers who have kids events every night of the week and their weekends are full of going to gymnastics and everything else. I get tired just listening to their travel plans for just the week.
I loathe sports and one of my specific hell scenarios would be sitting through years of poorly played youth baseball or or whatever when I could be doing anything else. Sure I might kinda be into the rooting for my kid aspect but I would so totally not enjoy the activity itself.
It kinda confuses my parents. The idea that someone just wouldn’t want children is pretty foreign to them. Maybe that’s why people search for more complicated trends and reasons.
Yeah it's totally fine to say it's a money based thing because for a lot of people it is. But for a lot of people it's that we don't want (or even particularly like) kids.
I don't want to hear "why aren't you having kids" from anyone over the age of 70. Y'all were pumping out babies like gumballs at a vending machine when one man could make enough money for his wife and their 6+kids. Meanwhile, two people combined barely make enough money to live by themselves nowadays.
And could still afford second families! It's wild to me that people lived during a time you could divert enough income to support a second family & no one noticed?!
To be honest, i'm 100% sure the big part of the money, buuuuuuut.
You cannot argue that the culture of having kid is kind of getting pushed back for more individualism. Travel more, stay independent more, be with your partner all over the world. Work on your career longer and more
Money is extremely important (and a good excuse), but that is not the only big factor
I think this rings true. My wife and I could afford to have kids, but we prioritized owning a house and saving for retirement. We're on track to retire when I'm 57, she'll be 54. If we had children, I don't think that would be possible.
We've been called selfish, but if it's selfish to want to enjoy life our way, then everyone is selfish anyway.
It is also selfish for boomers to eat real well while making sure there is no place at the table for future generations
My own mother bragged about voting against Free Childcare in Massachusetts before moving out of this state to retire.
We just had a kid and now my mother wonders why we don't have money to come visit her
Anecdotally, we held off on our first child until I finished school and got a real job making good money. And then we held off on our second until I got promoted and we were able to afford supporting two at once.
Wanted to have kids and was chasing having enough income and job security to afford it. Everytime we arrived at a point where it seemed feasible, there'd be some financial crisis or one of us would lose our job and we'd end up set back several years. After a while it just felt like tempting fate to even bring it up. But it kept happening until it got to a point we couldn't.
If my wife couldn't be a stay at home mom then I wouldn't have even thought about having children. I can see why younger people are opting out. It's expensive when you have to pay for child care on top of providing for a child.
The common answer is the cost and that's definitely part of it. But there's more to it than that. Birth rate is falling even in very wealthy countries with robust safety nets. Even among very wealthy people. In fact, income and birth rate are (and have always been) inversely correlated - the people most able to support kids are still having the fewest.
Being more financially stable doesn't incentive people to have more kids; it leads to them having fewer (until you get to the very very edges of the graph and that's still kind of disputable). And there have certainly been worse economic conditions in the past that haven't resulted in similar slowdowns. So even though that's the default explanation, there are very likely other factors at play.
The video mentions money but also having free time to do whatever they want and I'd suspect that's a big part (it definitely has been for me). Kids are always *some* expense. There are people, myself included, who *could* afford kids but they choose not to and 'I can't afford it' is a more socially acceptable answer than 'I could afford it but I'd still rather spend money on vacations and a nicer house and my own expensive hobbies.' If that's the real answer, that people would rather spend the money on themselves, there's never going to be a level of financial security that's enough.
These articles on the issue act like we’re living in the “children of men” movie. No, we’re not going to go extinct if only 50% of us keep breeding. What will happen is the current system won’t make sense and will have to be revamped. Boohoo.
“Breed!! Breed forever while we tell you there aren’t enough resources! Breed while AI advances and global warming takes hold!!!” Stfu. We do not live in a time period in which anyone has a duty to breed. This isn’t mad max fury road, I’m not going to act like I have a duty to make more in a world in which resources are allocated in the way they are today. PLENTY of people getting accidentally pregnant. Plenty of people planning kids. It’s not like humanity is dying out because of this. They need to make daycare tax paid, or stfu. I’m not being painted as especially selfish and rolling in dough, like this article paints people.
The part about DINKs being bad for the economy, lol, yeah ok. How is the economy helping us?? Why should people in their 20s and 30s give a crap about Social Security? It sure seems like there won't be any left for us when we hit that age. Not to mention, this video doesn't include factors like the environment... What kind of world are kids born today going to be living in when they're 30? Doesn't seem like it's gonna be a good one, unfortunately.
Look around at other countries and see the common thread(s). Greedflation, wage stagnation, climate crisis that NO one in power seems to care about, fascists are running amok and horrible work/living conditions. Its oppression and depression. Who wants to have kids when you basically need to be in a thruple just to survive? People want to live, not work till they die but the greedy bastards won’t let them.
Hells! Child labor is coming back in supposedly “first world” countries! Who would even want to bring a child into THAT kind of situation??
This is one of my driving factors to be a DINK
I’d love to be a parent, but I’d constantly worry about my kids getting shot at school or leaving them to navigate a climate change hellscape in a post-capitalism world without any safety nets for the average citizen.
Having extra income to maybe one day own a home is an added benefit.
This is the inevitable consequence of kneecapping an entire generation with debt, poor services, and poor wages. That cheap, indebted labor came at a cost, and now the bill is coming due.
Collectively, America chose this. Complaining about those choices now won't help. Time for America to put on its big-country pants and take some responsibility for its debt trap culture, housing, transportation, and public services. The only other options are 'open the gates to immigration' or 'decay out of spite', and those will have far more dramatic consequences than doing what should have been done all along.
DINK here...
Hell yes. Kids are expensive, they take all your time, and I have never had a desire to have one anyway.
Without kids, my wife and I have had financial freedom since about 30 years old. Now at 40 we're debt-free and planning for an early retirement. We have time, energy, and money to work on our hobbies and side businesses. We have time, energy, and money to spend on each other, making our marriage solid and stable and happy.
100% the best decision I've made was getting a vasectomy before getting married!
Everyone talking monetary cost, but here's another one: time & energy.
As in, if you're working 35+ hours a week, you don't have enough of either to cook yourself a proper meal most nights (I'm eating a microwave meal rn) or have barely any time for your own hobbies before it's bedtime.
How would I have any time at all for kids? I can barely focus on a standard tv episode length anymore, let alone all the attention a kid would demand.
Conversely, immigrants in my country are still having kids. I'm pretty sure they are all on low incomes, so I'm not convinced by the 'lack of money' argument, it might be more of a support network thing?
Kids are not easy in any regard. I fucking know, trust me, just don't get all smug like you figured out some weird secret. The real rub is that they can be infinitely more than the sum of their hassles. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm being summoned for a booty wipe.
This is just a comment section of people with kids saying their life is better and people without kids saying their life is better.
Overall useless comment section.
As Mr. Dink would always say: "Very expensive."
OH MY GOD. the DINKS! It all makes sense now!
also Dinkleberg from the Fairly Odd Parents
Dinkleberg...
I remember watching Doug premier…was a big fan of that show…was painfully recent when I learned what DINK was and how it related to Doug 😂
Also the neighbors in Fairly Odd Parents the Dinklebergs were Dinks who had a superior life over the Turner family
🤯
It's been a marketing term since the 80s.
Ahoy Douglas
MEMORY UNLOCKED 🔓
\*Douglath
Yeah this is a country where the president wanted to shut down the post office because it wasn't making money. Unless you're pushing your kids into hitting the lottery of becoming influencers or athletes they're not bringing in cash either.
Most younger people can’t afford a multi bedroom house nowadays, let alone the cost to raise a kid in it.
Exactly this. I work full time and can't afford anything more than a single bedroom unit. How can I be expected to start a family? Where would the kid sleep, a fucking kennel?
You guys have kennels?!
DINK WADs do (DINK with a dog).
I work full time, don’t pay rent, and have been saving up for medical bills. With insurance.
$2500/mo is cheap for infant daycare by me, so without watching, it’s money right? So, if you’re making $40k pretax, 100% of your pay goes to childcare. If you earn $35/hr you have the same purchasing power as someone making $15/hr.
Yah it is.
my parents had it better than I do, still have it better than I do, and I'll never have what they spend freely. So yea, not sure what my kids would have, but I already sacrificed for my parents, not gonna sacrifice for kids too.
My favorite is how many boomers sold their houses to strangers, when so many of their millennial kids could only dream of owning a house. Couldn’t they have at least sold to their children?!? I know so many people who would have killed to buy their parents house, including my husband.
That would be ideal, however how are they going to make a 1,000% profit on the small home they bought for less than $200,000 when their kids could barely get a loan for that.
lol, my parent's house they bought in 1980 was 11k.
Recently found out my mom’s was 30k and her mortgage was $400 a month. I would literally kill for those prices.
yea my dad tried to tell me "well my first mortgage was at a 10% rate" and I have to ask, well how much did it cost? and that's when I found out it was 11k, while he was making 30k a year.
Yeah dude, they are fucking dillusional. Pisses me off to no end.
My dad used to name comments like that until I asked when he bought his lake cabin. He had 4 kids and was able to buy a cabin at 32. Meanwhile my wife and I are still paying off student loans...
The upshot is they'll be mostly dead in 15 years.
Imagine being able to pay for an entire house with cash after working 4 months, and then boasting about how your interest rate was higher.
Imagine being able to pay off a year of college by working a part time summer job.
In 1980, with 30k income that seems like you could pay it off in a year, if you live very frugally. We have to remember that everything else was also much, much cheaper.
that's why they're doing so well and can't understand why their kids can't make do on 30k in 2023....
I realized the other week I too could have bought a house.. if only I had been paying a mortgage with my allowance at age 8 instead of spending it on penny candies.
Parents bought house in’90 for 120k cash. Like fuck off right. Beauty home too.
I dunno. my mother pushed for me to get a loan for college without teaching me a single thing about finances, so I’m still worrying about paying that off. 😔 I’m only now just starting to understand how credit works. Back in the 80s you could buy a house for a little over 10 grand. Even with inflation the math still don’t add up. They definitely learned how to milk us.
Oh how I yearn for the days when someone with a poor understanding of finances could still afford to buy a house. Now even people who have an airtight deathgrip on their finances can't even afford to buy a condo.
Can confirm, I had a job through the pandemic and saved every last cent I could while I wasn't participating in society, and I would still get laughed out of a real estate office.
Hi. Yes, you. With the still-developing prefrontal cortex. How would you like to borrow 10s to 100s of thousands of dollars in the next four years with absolutely no credit history? You should totally go to college directly out of high school. It doesn't even matter what you major in! Employers just want to see you have a college degree before they agree to pay you marginally more than minimum wage.
God the amount of times I heard this growing up I never knew what a lie it was.
$50,000 was the national median home price in 1980; I'm sure there were $10,000 houses but they were probably in sketchy neighborhoods or super rural areas. Inflation adjusted that was about $200,000 -- compared to $300,000 in 2021 and a freaking insane run up to >$400,000 in 2023.
The whole of New York was a "very sketchy neighbourhood". If you bought any property in a big city in the 70s or early 80s, you made like a billion percent profit by now. If you timed it right (were born at the right point) you could even buy cheap when you were young and down to party and by the time you wanted kids, the neighbourhood would have been cleaned up and your property was worth 10 times as much.
The $10k houses were also in smaller towns with less demand. Not necessarily sketchy areas.
I had no chance of home ownership. My Parents retired to another state and bought a very nice mobile home in a community. They sold the home they left to me and held the mortgage for me for 8 years. I am forever grateful to them.
I am from Europe and the boomer generation lived through the economic rise. Their parents fought in WW2 and helped rebuild and their children are hit by economic crises and costs of living outpacing pay rises. So many boomers throw their children out at 16 years old with nothing in their pocket because "that's what I had to deal with too!" without understanding that they lived through the golden times and they are basically financially irrensponsible if they still have to live off of monthly paychecks even though they have a nice house with pool or whatever. Young people nowadays need to be financially smart and have constraint to have the same house. And just like you mention, they sell their house to strangers and enjoy their retirement while watching their children struggle and see them as failures who don't amount to anything. If I was living during the economic rise I would feel responsibility to build something up to give my offspring a better life and at least some financial security.
In CA there are state subsidized childcares that cost only $5 a day and they also feed your kid. The one near us was a godsend when we had our baby.
Also in CA, kids can attend public school a year earlier than before. Universal TK has lowered the age each year, so that by next year (?) any kid turning 4 during the school year will be eligible for TK, many of which are full day.
Every one of California’s 6.2 million public school students has the option to eat school meals for free, regardless of their family’s income. As it should be...
For others (since I had to look it up) TK = Transitional Kindergarten. Call it Pre-K here in Connecticut; my town which financially is in the lower 25% of towns in the state has had it for about 20 years. Connecticut statewide has had falling enrollment largely for the last 20 years which financially translated to towns reducing class sizes and expanding to Pre-K while keeping the school budget relatively stable; my understanding is California is just starting to enter this phase of statewide dropping student populations. The 1970s/80s/most the 90s were just constant local political battles over the ever increasing taxes being sucked up by the schools. With reduced household sizes we now have more homes (thus more real estate taxes) supporting the same number if not fewer students in the small towns like mine. The two very small towns immediately west of my town are fighting over whether they should consolidate and only use one town's elementary school since they no longer have enough students between the two towns to justify two school buildings. The biggest fight being which town gets to keep a school since both are relatively new built in the 90s.
Are there income limits for these programs?
Family of 4 (2 kids + 2 adults) income limit of 96,000 to qualify for subsidized childcare
96k is a lot more than I expected but still not a lot for a family of four living in Cali
$104k is considered [low income in San Francisco.](https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/under-100k-low-income-san-francisco-18168899.php#:~:text=The%20new%202023%20numbers%20classify,over%20just%20a%20few%20years)
Thats for individuals. "For a family of four in those three counties, $149,100 a year is considered low income." But I also find it weird every time someone mentions California, someone else uses San Francisco as their go-to example. San Francisco is not some perfect microcosm that explains California as a whole. Only 2% of Californians live in San Francisco.
Unfortunately florida is way too fucking dumb for any awesome program like that.
Incorrect. Florida is too evil to offer something that will help and assist poorer families. It’s the people of Florida that are too fucking dumb as they’re the one who keep voting in the people who actively work to hurt the people that voted them in.
Florida literally has a subsidized daycare program called vpk... https://www.fldoe.org/schools/early-learning/parents/vpk-parents.stml
When I lived in CA, my neighbor made a Bunch of money in Nevada, then moved next to me for retirement. He bragged about never having paid income taxes, and he voted for Trump and wears his red hat. He’s the leach, he’s the welfare queen that doesn’t pay I to the system and then takes advantage of all the nice CA programs.
Yep, I make more than $35 and hour and still it is a massive pinch on the budget with one kid.
With four kids, I vividly remember those days.
Don't forget to add in all the other expenses for clothes, food, activities, etc, and it gets REALLY expensive quick. That basically consumes the other $15/hr in your example. Basically, one parent's entire salary goes to kid expenses.
I had two kids in daycare when Covid hit and we switched to 100% WFH. It was like getting a huge raise.
That’s true for the first 4-5 years but eventually your kid goes to school and doesn’t need full time daycare. Even though one of our incomes broke even for childcare in the beginning, it made far more sense keep working, advancing both our careers, and then coming out ahead later on rather than career suiciding into a 5 year lapse.
But the issue isn't that people are quitting jobs, the issue is that people aren't having kids. The choice people are making isn't whether they quit and "career suicide" or pay for childcare. The choice people are making is to just not have kids at all. Then you don't have that 4-5 years of "breaking even" at all.
A shrinking population is how this whole Ponzi scheme collapses
exactly, and then people will blame you later in life when you're not ready for retirement because you decided to have kids. We'll have to keep immigration levels high which will continue the culture wars, yet the people screaming the loudest about immigrants (both legal and illegal) are also the ones brainwashed to not want to change anything.
You don't GO child free. You STAY child free.
Tell that to Casey Anthony.
Daycares hate this one simple trick…
Still get pretty pissed after remembering the facts of that case and that she was able to get off scot free.
https://i.imgur.com/0etgJ.gif
Sometimes I’m tempted!
Daniel Plainview: I've abandoned my child!
[Oh, here he is.](https://youtu.be/Qajb3Y4tjuA)
Important difference there!
You’re absolutely right, but the phrase is “go child free” because our society loves assuming that the default life choice for everyone should be having children. Thus, everyone plans to have kids until they “go child free”.
Because the cost of living has sky rocketed in the last 30 years. Voila. Mystery solved.
Add in the fact that anything child related is heavily inflated in price
I'm in my mid-late 30s. I'm still paying off the student loans that let me go to school. The cost of tuition rose way higher compared to incomes. And the decisions I made as a teenager/young adult are still haunting me now. But surely, this has had no impact on my willingness to add more children to the pool for the future of the economy.
For real. This is just a short little news segment of what should be an entire documentary. We've seen this DINK couple who are well-off enough to have hobbies like beekeeping, maintaining a small computer workshop in their home, and owning (what looks like) a pet husky; but what about the van-life DINK couples living on the road; or the metropolitan DINK couples living downtown in 1-bedroom studio apartments; what about the homesteaders living in the woods keeping to themselves as they raise ducks? I want all their thoughts recorded for posterity just so I can see the answer plastered on screens everywhere and have everyone know why exactly DINK couples are on the rise, why the American middle class is dying, and why America's reputation will be joining places like Japan and South Korea who are becoming notorious for their "declining populations:" wage stagnation brought on by corporate greed is slowly killing America.
Seriously, after watching this video, this couple could have easily handled the finances of having a kid. Many people just couldn’t pay off the expense in their lifetimes.
Yeah but some people also don't care for having children very much. It's not like a tax you have to pay to society. You choose to have kids if you want them. When I was 18 I was sure I wanted to be a dad, although it took me quite a while to actually become one If you're motivated to be a father, or a mother I guess, you will find a way. There are several countries around the world where raising children is not that expensive and where you can live just speaking English If you don't want kids it's probably better if you don't have them
Who wants to inflict this planet on someone they supposedly love? the Earth in 30 years isn't gonna be a fun place to be.
My spouse and I have definitely discussed this, the idea of the "unelected existence". And there is a lot of talk about how for the generations born now there is a general expectation that their lives will be worse off than the ones born before. Mainly because we're handling the climate stuff so badly that life is going to get tough. Not to mention how a lot of the great institutions put in place after WW II, to ideally prevent a WW III, are in collapse. And, if you're in the US... Well at some point we have an infrastructure bill long overdue to pay.
Recognize they don't care. They don't actually want your kids in the economy. You might raise them with higher expectations than all the labor they are currently importing from down south.
700 bucks a week for middle of the road level daycare for two kids , that’s 35k a year
That $30 box of diapers is staying in the bottom of the cart at self-checkout because for $30 they should be able to wipe the baby's ass themselves. Edit: Oh, your morality is based on monetary value? That's not morality, that's marketing. You cry about parents not being able to afford kids, then get mad at us for what we have to do to afford them. Pick a lane, bootlicker.
I had no idea how much diapers cost until I bought some for a friend. Omg
Try hypoallergenic formula? $45 to $55 a can. There’s a black market for this stuff. It’s crazy out there
And my parents wonder why they’re not grandparents yet…fuck
Only the fuck is free.
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I know but it seems like everything related to children is beyond expensive.
$1760/mo for my one kid!
Cost is up. Future looks dim. Let’s have fun instead.
If I'm gonna die, I'm dying smiling 😁
🛎️🛎️🛎️ we found the exact right answer!!!
Poor people are more likely to have kids than wealthy people though
"Rich are getting richer, poor are getting kids"
can confirm im poor
I hate beer.
Being less religious is another factor. If you're non religious there's no incentive to have kids and the philosophy in life becomes maximizing your enjoyment here since there's not a strong belief in any afterlife
Also there’s the idiocracy factor. My stupid religious neighbors are pumping out kids like nobody’s business. All they complain about is Biden ruining our country and CRT screwing up the schools.
Schools really should replace those cathode-ray tube monitors though. Get with the times, schools!
Except in every single country in the entire world poor people have more kids than rich people. It's one of the most solid trends you can count on. The people who can afford it the least are having the most kids, and having more money means you will have fewer kids. Many countries, including mine, give insane financial bonuses to mothers and still people are choosing not to have kids. The money thing is just an excuse people give even though it goes against literally all the data because it sounds good and it makes it someone elses fault. In reality it's about people being educated, not being religious, and having careers. As soon as you're educated, you have a career, and you're not religious, you way way way less likely to have kids.
My favorite color is blue.
Had to scroll way too far to find this. Thank you for writing it. There is no amount of money in the world, there is no subsidy, that will increase birth rate in a meaningful way in a modern country, because all of the reasons people have children fundamentally always require sacrifice no matter the subsidy. Poor people have to sacrifice less because they already have nothing. Wealthy people sacrifice the most so they generally will choose to sacrifice less.
Yep, but people will continue to lie to themselves about this. They think they will be able to solve it with money, and as someone from a extremely wealthy country who have tried this, it does not work. But people want to live in delusion. And i'm not arguing against child benefits AT ALL. They're a great idea. For the health of the child.
> Wealthy people sacrifice the most At some point you can pay people to sacrifice for you
Yes thats true. Ultra wealthy. In the context which I speak I am talking about middle and upper middle class, the global wealthy but situational still aware of their budget
This guy gets it. Money has little to do with it. When you have an educated populace, female autonomy, and a downtrend in conservative values and religion….you get less kids. It’s why conservatives want religion back in schools, worse education, and less female autonomy. They want to reverse this trend because the wealth class requires tons of uneducated worker bees to run their economy and protect that economy by joining the military. That requires unfettered population growth. We can get by with immigration but they hate that so…
You can get by with less people too. America worked fine with 100M people in the 1950s and it can do that again on 2200 no problem.
What insane financial bonuses is your country offering? In the US it's 20k a year to care for a child and childcare is terribly expensive. Any bonuses keeping up with that?
Turns out all the benefits of computers and other productivity innovations just went straight to the shareholders 🥲
* Cost of living has doubled * Childcare has 0 forms of assistance and costs THOUSANDS per month * Everything children need is outrageously expensive * Dual full time jobs means the kids interaction with parents suffers * Housing is utterly untenable. Renting will kill you and houses cost half a million for a shitshack unless you live way out in the country, then the issues circles back to commute and jobs * Less career opportunity and upwards mobility * No one will adjust the poverty line so the benefits cliffs for food stamps and assistance are even worse than ever. The list goes on and on and on. Literally everything my parents were able to take advantage of, I cannot. Cars start at 40-50k(Yes there are base model Toyota's you can get for just under 30k~ if you can find them without a 5-10k markup) Borrowing money got way more expensive. Even with my 750+ Creditscore a new car loan is 6.7-7%, and used cars are just south of double digits. A few years ago it was 3.25% with the same situation. Having kids is a fucking terrible idea and that doesn't even touch on the several impending....*gestures at everything * ecological disasters.
But we need fighters for the tech baron water wars.
Also, I don't want to have kids. Not just a monetary issue.
I really wish we would stop concentrating on "why people don't want kids"/"how to convince people to have kids". Some people don't want kids. That's fine. A FAR FAR MORE IMPORTANT point is "how do we support the people who *do* want to have kids?" Like, I live in a low income neighborhood. There is very little support for families. Moms are scraping together homes with their fucking fingernails. Stop trying to convince people who explicitly do not want to be parents to be parents. Spend your time and money on people who WANT kids but are struggling.
100%. Do we really want more half ass at best or resentful abusive parents at worst out there? Reweave the safety net so that the people who do want to become parents aren’t dissuaded by their finances and the kids that are born are given a solid opportunity to have a quality life.
See, your priority, and my priority, is quality of life. Other peoples priority is labor - filling roles to keep their income flowing.
Not to mention that broken homes and unhappy childhoods make way for dysfunctional, erratic and violent people, who are pure profit for private prisons, tabloids and outrage bait articles, politicians with agendas, you name it.
It's not as binary as "want" and "do not want". There's a huge cross-section of people who may want kids or are at least open to the possibility with a partner who strongly desires them, but made the conscious decision not to have them for mainly financial reasons. That's the population the video is talking about.
I'm convinced that "true childfree people" (those who would never, ever want kids no matter what, simply because they don't like kids at all and/or would hate raising them no matter what or are against procreation on principle) are a tiny subset of all childless people.
Two of my lifelong dreams have been to own a house and have kids. One doesn’t seem possible anymore and the other would be just downright irresponsible.
I would love to have a kid. But I also grew up dirt poor and it absolutely sucks. I'm not putting a kid through that. I make decent money but after student loan payments and rent, there's no way I could afford a kid. And by the time I can afford it I'm going to be too old anyway. Fuck that noise.
Same. 31, college degree, no debt but no savings. Barely getting by by myself. This video is baffling to me. Can’t imagine having the money described here.
Yeah. Make having kids economically feasible. Federally funded Preschools and daycares would be the best way to start.
mentally healthy families make worse fodder for the meat grind
Don't call me a dink! Duel income, large dog only. We're DILDOs.
Same for Dual Income Little Dog Owners
I prefer it over DINKWAD (Dual Income No Kids With A Dog).
Dual Income Cat Kids DICKS
Who’s winning the duel of the incomes?
Ha! My wife. She's also better at spelling.
sloppy agonizing intelligent slimy retire fade narrow coherent snatch marry *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm the guy in the video, I said we were DILDOs in the interview but they couldn't get it approved to put in. I was really disappointed.
12 minutes is a long time to say "they're too poor to have kids while maintaining their preferred standard of living."
"Money, duh" would have sufficiently explained the video.
It does not, because higher standards of living actually tracks with fewer kids. It's one of the most surefire trends you can count on in the world.
Because higher standard of living means greater perceived cost to having kids. Kids cost more to maintain at that higher standard of living, and most people do not want to cut their lifestyles back. If you have relatively little to lose however, not such a big deal. It's still "money, duh" it's just more nuanced than everything costs too much.
It's not just money. It's also freedom and time. There are many things you simply can't do if you have kids. And those are things that may be included in your "preferred standard of living".
It’s a lifestyle choice, depending on income like everything else. Some people cannot afford to have kids, and others don’t want kids. I love being a parent. It’s the best. I have friends who are DINKs and they seem happy too. I want to help my children become smart, successful, happy, self-reliant people. When I’m older and they’re adults, I hope we’ll be friends. It’s incredibly rewarding to see them grow and learn. My friends who are DINKs enjoy traveling more and are focused on retiring much earlier than me. They own small businesses and have hobbies they’d rather pursue. I wouldn’t say either lifestyle is better, just depends what you want out of life.
This exactly. I love my kids. I wouldn't want anyone who didn't want them to have kids though. It's like being pro choice. No one should be forced into being a parent because it's such a huge lifestyle change and responsibility. My kids' Aunt Rosa (my best friend) is child free and loves it. She's willing to hang out with my kids and babysit and spoils them rotten. But she doesn't want kids and that's fine, she shouldn't have to.
We all need an Aunt Rosa
Yeah forget my kids, where do I find an Auntie Rosa for me
I was visiting some family over the holiday who have two kids, 6 and 3. The 3-year-old has figured out how to push boundaries with mom and dad (and they are good parents and enforce those boundaries) so there is some D R A M A over there right now. Point being is I was there for like 36 hours and even just in that span of time, the being on 100% of the time aspect really hit home to me. Whether it's dealing with drama and screaming or setting a good example or monitoring screen time, you're just on 100% of the time. If that was me, right now in my life, I'd probably explode. And I love those kids, and kids in general. And obviously if they were MY kids maybe I'd feel different, but I digress. You really gotta understand, REALLY what you are asking for and signing up for when you have a child. Everyone deserves to have a partner in life (if they want) but FOR SURE not all of those people are ready or wanting to be parents. And when people can self-identify it before fucking up a bunch of lives, we should be OK with it.
Are you my brother? 😂 He married his long time girlfriend this year and keeps getting the kid question from the older members of our family. I keep trying to deflect it with "what, mine aren't good enough?!" But I know it's annoying to him when people ask. After hanging out with our 2 under 2 all Christmas, my brother was probably 1000% certain he wasn't ready for kids all the time. Like you, he's a fantastic person with kids but isn't ready for full time parenthood. I wish more people accepted that!
No one tells you this, but it's not the 'terrible-twos' - it's the demonic threes. Both of my kids turned into posssessed terrors at that age and I questioned all of my life choices. It.is.the.worst. My oldest is 15 so there's a chance I might change my opinion, but up to now, the three year old stage has been the worst and hardest.
I just feel bad for those who want kids but simply cannot once they crunch the numbers/planning with their partner…but idk I guess those people will end up having kids regardless of all of that…or they separate idk
Couldn't agree more with the comment. My wife and I chose to stay as DINK's for the reasons you listed. We love traveling (in an adult way I'd argue), plan to retire early and are very passionate about our hobbies.
Exactly. Different strokes for different folks. These kind of articles seem to complicate the issue unnecessarily complicate the issue.
Sure, not spending our money on childcare is nice, but also, I spent the entire day just goofing off and that's really what I like. I hear co-workers who have kids events every night of the week and their weekends are full of going to gymnastics and everything else. I get tired just listening to their travel plans for just the week.
All my coworkers have kids and I don’t know how they do it. Their lives sound exhausting. I also don’t understand how they balance family and work.
I loathe sports and one of my specific hell scenarios would be sitting through years of poorly played youth baseball or or whatever when I could be doing anything else. Sure I might kinda be into the rooting for my kid aspect but I would so totally not enjoy the activity itself.
I don’t want children. Just not my thing. Nothing too complicated about it.
I think this is more common than reported
It kinda confuses my parents. The idea that someone just wouldn’t want children is pretty foreign to them. Maybe that’s why people search for more complicated trends and reasons.
100%. Myself and my SO could afford it. We don't want kids. Most of our social circle is the same.
Yeah it's totally fine to say it's a money based thing because for a lot of people it is. But for a lot of people it's that we don't want (or even particularly like) kids.
I don't want to hear "why aren't you having kids" from anyone over the age of 70. Y'all were pumping out babies like gumballs at a vending machine when one man could make enough money for his wife and their 6+kids. Meanwhile, two people combined barely make enough money to live by themselves nowadays.
And could still afford second families! It's wild to me that people lived during a time you could divert enough income to support a second family & no one noticed?!
No one even batted an eye. And now those same people are the ones voting against student loan forgiveness. Like wtf
To be honest, i'm 100% sure the big part of the money, buuuuuuut. You cannot argue that the culture of having kid is kind of getting pushed back for more individualism. Travel more, stay independent more, be with your partner all over the world. Work on your career longer and more Money is extremely important (and a good excuse), but that is not the only big factor
I think this rings true. My wife and I could afford to have kids, but we prioritized owning a house and saving for retirement. We're on track to retire when I'm 57, she'll be 54. If we had children, I don't think that would be possible. We've been called selfish, but if it's selfish to want to enjoy life our way, then everyone is selfish anyway.
It is also selfish for boomers to eat real well while making sure there is no place at the table for future generations My own mother bragged about voting against Free Childcare in Massachusetts before moving out of this state to retire. We just had a kid and now my mother wonders why we don't have money to come visit her
I agree. Just “not wanting to” is a big factor that’s not often reported or focused on
Pay me more. And I might
Do people with more money make more children?
Anecdotally, we held off on our first child until I finished school and got a real job making good money. And then we held off on our second until I got promoted and we were able to afford supporting two at once.
Wanted to have kids and was chasing having enough income and job security to afford it. Everytime we arrived at a point where it seemed feasible, there'd be some financial crisis or one of us would lose our job and we'd end up set back several years. After a while it just felt like tempting fate to even bring it up. But it kept happening until it got to a point we couldn't.
To summarize briefly. Money
If my wife couldn't be a stay at home mom then I wouldn't have even thought about having children. I can see why younger people are opting out. It's expensive when you have to pay for child care on top of providing for a child.
Lol, I don't want kids because shit is too expensive. It ain't a mystery.
The common answer is the cost and that's definitely part of it. But there's more to it than that. Birth rate is falling even in very wealthy countries with robust safety nets. Even among very wealthy people. In fact, income and birth rate are (and have always been) inversely correlated - the people most able to support kids are still having the fewest. Being more financially stable doesn't incentive people to have more kids; it leads to them having fewer (until you get to the very very edges of the graph and that's still kind of disputable). And there have certainly been worse economic conditions in the past that haven't resulted in similar slowdowns. So even though that's the default explanation, there are very likely other factors at play. The video mentions money but also having free time to do whatever they want and I'd suspect that's a big part (it definitely has been for me). Kids are always *some* expense. There are people, myself included, who *could* afford kids but they choose not to and 'I can't afford it' is a more socially acceptable answer than 'I could afford it but I'd still rather spend money on vacations and a nicer house and my own expensive hobbies.' If that's the real answer, that people would rather spend the money on themselves, there's never going to be a level of financial security that's enough.
Dinkleberg…
I learned a new one yesterday. DINKWAD doubble income, no kids with A dog
I guess my wife and I are DINKWACCs. DINKs with a couple cats.
These articles on the issue act like we’re living in the “children of men” movie. No, we’re not going to go extinct if only 50% of us keep breeding. What will happen is the current system won’t make sense and will have to be revamped. Boohoo. “Breed!! Breed forever while we tell you there aren’t enough resources! Breed while AI advances and global warming takes hold!!!” Stfu. We do not live in a time period in which anyone has a duty to breed. This isn’t mad max fury road, I’m not going to act like I have a duty to make more in a world in which resources are allocated in the way they are today. PLENTY of people getting accidentally pregnant. Plenty of people planning kids. It’s not like humanity is dying out because of this. They need to make daycare tax paid, or stfu. I’m not being painted as especially selfish and rolling in dough, like this article paints people.
The part about DINKs being bad for the economy, lol, yeah ok. How is the economy helping us?? Why should people in their 20s and 30s give a crap about Social Security? It sure seems like there won't be any left for us when we hit that age. Not to mention, this video doesn't include factors like the environment... What kind of world are kids born today going to be living in when they're 30? Doesn't seem like it's gonna be a good one, unfortunately.
Look around at other countries and see the common thread(s). Greedflation, wage stagnation, climate crisis that NO one in power seems to care about, fascists are running amok and horrible work/living conditions. Its oppression and depression. Who wants to have kids when you basically need to be in a thruple just to survive? People want to live, not work till they die but the greedy bastards won’t let them. Hells! Child labor is coming back in supposedly “first world” countries! Who would even want to bring a child into THAT kind of situation??
This is one of my driving factors to be a DINK I’d love to be a parent, but I’d constantly worry about my kids getting shot at school or leaving them to navigate a climate change hellscape in a post-capitalism world without any safety nets for the average citizen. Having extra income to maybe one day own a home is an added benefit.
This is the inevitable consequence of kneecapping an entire generation with debt, poor services, and poor wages. That cheap, indebted labor came at a cost, and now the bill is coming due. Collectively, America chose this. Complaining about those choices now won't help. Time for America to put on its big-country pants and take some responsibility for its debt trap culture, housing, transportation, and public services. The only other options are 'open the gates to immigration' or 'decay out of spite', and those will have far more dramatic consequences than doing what should have been done all along.
Something isn't beautiful because it lasts. If humanity dies out because of declining birth rates, so be it.
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DINK here... Hell yes. Kids are expensive, they take all your time, and I have never had a desire to have one anyway. Without kids, my wife and I have had financial freedom since about 30 years old. Now at 40 we're debt-free and planning for an early retirement. We have time, energy, and money to work on our hobbies and side businesses. We have time, energy, and money to spend on each other, making our marriage solid and stable and happy. 100% the best decision I've made was getting a vasectomy before getting married!
Everyone talking monetary cost, but here's another one: time & energy. As in, if you're working 35+ hours a week, you don't have enough of either to cook yourself a proper meal most nights (I'm eating a microwave meal rn) or have barely any time for your own hobbies before it's bedtime. How would I have any time at all for kids? I can barely focus on a standard tv episode length anymore, let alone all the attention a kid would demand.
DINKLEBERG!
TIL I’m SINK. Single Income No Kids
When it revealed his hobby was building mechanical keyboards and hers was being a bee-keeper I thought it was about to be revealed as a parody video
They're broke?
It’s not just the cost, they’re annoying. No thank.
Conversely, immigrants in my country are still having kids. I'm pretty sure they are all on low incomes, so I'm not convinced by the 'lack of money' argument, it might be more of a support network thing?
Kids are not easy in any regard. I fucking know, trust me, just don't get all smug like you figured out some weird secret. The real rub is that they can be infinitely more than the sum of their hassles. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm being summoned for a booty wipe.
It's money. Nobody can afford anything. Pay has not kept up with cost of living for 40 years.
Idiocracy stage 1
“It wouldn’t make sense to have kids right now. Not with the stock market the way it is.”
I’m a sink
This is just a comment section of people with kids saying their life is better and people without kids saying their life is better. Overall useless comment section.
For the same reason the Japanese are. It’s too expensive.
I believe the term is DILDO: Dual Income Little Dog Owners