Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The global fertility rate is falling

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 881 posts

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#541

Post by ido »

watwut wrote: post #527
vladvasiliu wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should definitely have friends, with or without kids. But from I see around me, I get the impression that having friends is difficult. Even more so when people have to juggle kids and a career. There's a certain isolation that seems to set in. I'm sure a lot of people don't have the kids with the purpose of not being alone in old age. But I also get that there's some kind of "soft expectation", for lack o…

> because raising said family more or less led to a falling out with old friends ... Where I live I don't see many "intergenerational friendships". I think that both of these are massively consequence of our own culture, not something that must be. It is combination of long hours at work, the super high expectations on child raising that for many people excludes socialization with kids present and animosity of childl…

I don't know which culture is this "our culture" you refer to but at least for me (in Germany) I've actually had more friends since having kids (parents of kids +/- similarly aged to mine) even tho I've also lost touch with some childless friends as well.

On the balance I'm sure I'm more social now (corona notwithstanding) than I was 5 years ago.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#542

Post by csomar »

AlexandrB wrote: post #226
mchusma wrote: post #205

I hope Humanity grows many orders of magnitude larger and expands across the galaxy. The universe will be a more interesting place. Some people here are saying this is good for the environment. Having 20% fewer people won't do that. Clean energy and other technology will. You can easily fit 100B humans on earth, with more of the earth dedicated to nature preserves. (Maybe a trillion people https://youtu.be/8lJJ_QqIVn…

> Macau has over 21,000 people per square km. There are 510M sq km of landmass on earth. This means on 1% of the landmass you could fit 100B people. Yes, because the earth's carrying capacity is about square footage and not the resources necessary to keep those people alive, healthy, and happy for 80+ years. How many square km of farmland do you think is necessary to feed Macau?

The sea is full of resources. No wonder coastal cities eats lots of fish.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#543

Post by manquer »

saithound wrote: post #500
kamaal wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>This means there are 100 million girls less today in these countries alone Actual numbers are way off the real numbers. In my kids school you can see a very noticeably difference in the count of boys and girls in any standard and section. It's noticeable to a point, if you walk in to a classroom you can see at least visually boys outnumber girls by a good enough difference. I also refuse to believe this due to infa…

Your proposed (not illegal, not unethical) explanation does not work out mathematically. Even in the extreme scenario where all families stopped would stop having kids after the birth of a daughter, the expected number of male children would equal the expected number of female children. And even if say 52 percent of babies born are boys, you won't ever get a male excess of the discussed magnitude (1100 men for every…

you don’t understand babies are killed (rares Nowadays) and selective abortions (million a year ) if it is not boy.

while the national average is 1100 , there are already states where it is 1250 or more , they already import brides from other states because finding a match is harder . sex detection although illegal still happens , and abortions follow

The numbers are real for both countries and are well verified over last few decades the problem is also well reported .

Sadly it found to be actually correlated with higher income and material income , states with higher per capita income have more sex selective abortions

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#544

Post by zeepzeep »

lqet wrote: post #521
zeepzeep wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences It especially has life-long consequences for the children! I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. IMO it's selfish to make kids just to feel fulfilled and not be lonely.

> I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. I have posted the following a few years ago: > My ancestors thought it was okay to have kids during times in which many scholars where certain the apocalypse was due in the next 25 years, during periods in which the plague killed more than half of the population, during the 30 y…

> assuming that you can look into the future.

That's why I said "even the current world isn't".

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#545

Post by zeepzeep »

ddorian43 wrote: post #526
zeepzeep wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences It especially has life-long consequences for the children! I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. IMO it's selfish to make kids just to feel fulfilled and not be lonely.

So we should end civilization ?

Yes

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#546

Post by asiachick »

globular-toast wrote: post #376
gregfjohnson wrote: post #357

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

A lot of those people alone in care homes have children. They just don't care. You can never know what the future holds so make reasonable plans but above all just enjoy your life and make yourself useful while you can. You have a therapist so you're not really selling the whole child lifestyle to me.

Only tangentially related but, speaking of taking care of people in their old age, my mother is taking care of my step father and she's clearly not happy about it.

She's only got one life to live and she's stuck staying at home with him until he dies or at least that's seems to be how she feels.

Maybe to be put it another way she can't get herself to check him into an old folks home and effectively leave him so she can enjoy the last few years of her own life while she's still able to. She's healthy enough she could travel and do things that she want's but feels she has to stay put until he passes. That could be tomorrow or 5 years from now. 8 years ago they said he had 3 years to live.

That doesn't mean she doesn't love him but she does feel somewhat trapped.

I suppose my sister and I could help her and volunteer to watch over him for a week or two at a time though neither of us have jobs that would let us do that. But also, she married this man after we were both adults so while we like him as a person we feel no obligation like we might if he was our father or even the step father that raised us. Instead to us he's basically our mom's boyfriend.

It does make me think what I would do if I was him. Would I be self aware enough to check myself into an old folks home to let my wife or kids not have to take care of me? I believe I'd personally feel horrible by restricting the life of my loved ones. I'm sure I'd also feel horrible if they all abandoned me. I don't know which is worse. My currently healthy self wants to believe I'd value their freedom over my needs but my, future "old and needs constant care" self will probably feel different.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#547

Post by lazyjones »

ddorian43 wrote: post #526
zeepzeep wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences It especially has life-long consequences for the children! I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. IMO it's selfish to make kids just to feel fulfilled and not be lonely.

So we should end civilization ?

No, we can just let the nihilistic and self-centered people go extinct. It's good for the gene pool.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#548

Post by donjohn »

lqet wrote: post #521
zeepzeep wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences It especially has life-long consequences for the children! I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. IMO it's selfish to make kids just to feel fulfilled and not be lonely.

> I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. I have posted the following a few years ago: > My ancestors thought it was okay to have kids during times in which many scholars where certain the apocalypse was due in the next 25 years, during periods in which the plague killed more than half of the population, during the 30 y…

> My ancestors thought it was okay to have kids during [bad times].

The desire to make Descendants in hard times is a natural reaction. In more peaceful times you have more time to think about it logicality.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#549

Post by kamaal »

manquer wrote: post #543
saithound wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your proposed (not illegal, not unethical) explanation does not work out mathematically. Even in the extreme scenario where all families stopped would stop having kids after the birth of a daughter, the expected number of male children would equal the expected number of female children. And even if say 52 percent of babies born are boys, you won't ever get a male excess of the discussed magnitude (1100 men for every…

you don’t understand babies are killed (rares Nowadays) and selective abortions (million a year ) if it is not boy. while the national average is 1100 , there are already states where it is 1250 or more , they already import brides from other states because finding a match is harder . sex detection although illegal still happens , and abortions follow The numbers are real for both countries and are well verified over…

>>Sadly it found to be actually correlated with higher income and material income , states with higher per capita income have more sex selective abortions

The more your income is perceived to be, the more dowry you have to pay. Plus you feel the need for a male heir to inherit all that money. That explains it.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#550

Post by lazyjones »

creato wrote: post #345

It is disturbing that people take for granted that this is an economic problem. This thread is full of people lamenting the fact that we could support X times as many people as we do now if we all just sacrifice Y. When I look around the world today, I think the biggest resource that is lacking is economic opportunity. Huge swathes of people are desperate, angry, and depressed, I think because there is no opportunity…

We're going to be a multi-planetary species. All we need is people willing to take risks instead of peons trying to live a cosy, uneventful and "sustainable" life in their government-allocated single-room apartments. And having children really isn't a huge risk even for the most incompetent.
Post reply on HN