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No Sex Please We’re Chinese

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Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#31
I wonder if quite a big part of the problem is that the one child policy normalised single child families for an entire generation.

I know for certain that my wife and I both want to have another child because we both grew up with siblings and can see the lifelong benefits. Children are pretty hard work though, and there's been a lot of moments when we've thought "do I really want to go through all this again".

Take away the normalisation of multi child families and I bet a lot of people would just stick with one.

Which is of course a fairly hard problem to solve - if you aren't having 2.2 children per couple then your population is shrinking.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#32

I doubt it. Having children is not first and foremost a consequence of having sex, it's an active choice that you make plans for. When you have to work long hours, have no financial support for childcare, having aging parents to take care of, then there's just no room for having kids. I live in arguably one of the best countries for raising kids, with 18 months parental leave, free preschool, higher education, retire…

> and it's STILL super hard to raise a child

It's super hard because you want your child to have a better life than you, and from the get go.

Parents nowadays want the trajectory of their child to be transposed upwards from the get go, and then be an up& to the right chart for their whole life.

This was never the case in human history, people never really put much thought into reproduction, matter of fact people never really put much thought into anything.

Very little time to wonder and price odds when you gotta go out and hunt to keep yourself alive.

People aren't having children because they think too much about outcomes for themselves, for their potential children and so forth.

Nature wanted reproduction to be impulsive, the whole planning for is humans shooting themselves in the foot.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#33

I doubt it. Having children is not first and foremost a consequence of having sex, it's an active choice that you make plans for. When you have to work long hours, have no financial support for childcare, having aging parents to take care of, then there's just no room for having kids. I live in arguably one of the best countries for raising kids, with 18 months parental leave, free preschool, higher education, retire…

Where I live in the US southeast, non-professionals tend to get married at around 20-24 years old, then tend start having kids within a year or two of getting married. Income doesn't really factor at all.

At least on the more conservative side, perhaps one reason this works economically is the culture of the wife staying home, and the husband working. Although the overall income is much lower, this makes the dollar cost of each additional child small - kids don't eat that much, and there are no child care costs. By having kids young, both your parents are still healthy and active.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#34

China’s demographic crisis, according to a researcher, has a very simple explanation: Chinese work too much, and are just too tired to make love.

Chinese government abolished one-child policy and also the following two-child policy. Actually, at the moment they have the opposite problem: the population is aging and the new generations do not even have enough children to guarantee their generational change.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#35

I doubt it. Having children is not first and foremost a consequence of having sex, it's an active choice that you make plans for. When you have to work long hours, have no financial support for childcare, having aging parents to take care of, then there's just no room for having kids. I live in arguably one of the best countries for raising kids, with 18 months parental leave, free preschool, higher education, retire…

You’d be surprised the number of upper-middle class professionals I know who had a kid “by mistake” despite their being reliable ways to plan kids. It obviously clashes with the biological drive and risk taking.

Most of them were ambivalent about having a kid (or more kids) so the unexpected pregnancy was taken in stride but I was surprised how many were unplanned.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#36

I live in europe, and I'm used to standard 40h workweek (and usually not an hour more than that)... but I've also worked (in my younger years) some crazy hours, especially with college lectures+work1+work2. I don't think the "i'm too tired to have sex" is the problem... I know it's anecdotal, but during that time, the bigger problem was trying to find someone to have sex with (actually going out there and meeting new…

If you cannot be with your child for 13+ hours a day, 6 days a week, wouldn't that be a disincentive to having children?

And working all those extra 996 unpaid hours would really grate on my nerves. Especially if the government's official position is not enforced by the government. I'd do the "laying down" version of repopulating the country - i.e. not doing it.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#37

I doubt it. Having children is not first and foremost a consequence of having sex, it's an active choice that you make plans for. When you have to work long hours, have no financial support for childcare, having aging parents to take care of, then there's just no room for having kids. I live in arguably one of the best countries for raising kids, with 18 months parental leave, free preschool, higher education, retire…

Where I live in the US southeast, non-professionals tend to get married at around 20-24 years old, then tend start having kids within a year or two of getting married. Income doesn't really factor at all. At least on the more conservative side, perhaps one reason this works economically is the culture of the wife staying home, and the husband working. Although the overall income is much lower, this makes the dollar c…

As someone with a kid whose spouse took extra time off work, it’s still a ton of work.

I’d argue with a stay at home parent full-time until they are teens it’s still a massive undertaking. One well worth it (in my opinion), but if your life goal is money and career advancement kids don’t help in that regard.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#38
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump supporter? People have been migrating and integrating since the dawn of humanity… civilization still survives fine and in fact thrives and evolves as new cultures develop. It’s your tribal fear mongering that is the primary cause of concern to me. Countries, ethnicities and national boundaries shift with the times, ease of migration and economic trends. The world has 7.9 billion people in it, so the fate of the…

[flagged]

Your posts have been wild, but the last statement here is the biggest stretch of all.

There's a difference between actively eliminating a group of people, and that same group of people choosing not to have kids due to the requirements of "success" in their own culture.

Even though I don't agree with you in the slightest, I somewhat sympathize with you simply because I think you truly believe your perception is a reflection of reality as the saying goes. When it feels like the world is against you or apathetic towards you, that's a terrible thing.

Let me preface my point with this. I'm not white, but I am 'Western' culturally speaking. Unlike you seem to be able to do, I can acknowledge the flaw of western culture and still appreciate the positives like scientific and technological progress.

Ultimately, this is the truth of the matter. For centuries, Western European cultures have actively sought conquest of new frontiers with wealth and power being the two primary motivators. This set the stage for our modern trade network, technology, and capacity for migration.

The decision makers did not ask or care about the endgame of this activity, though. As wealth grew for the western world, it also grew for its average citizen, and like a drug, we have grown addicted to wealth.

White populations are in decline because they were one of the first groups to largely achieve the manifestation of the idea that "Anyone can be (financially) successful"

In the modern world, if your job doesn't pay you well enough, the only ways to maintain this success are to not have kids, have less kids or have kids later. You maintain this success culturally by making sure the few kids you do have know to follow the same line of reasoning.

Surely you aren't going to suggest that native non whites are forcefully suppressing white births? Or that immigrants are doing the same?

If you removed the immigrant or brown factor, you'd have the same situation as Japan with an aging population and no one to replace it.

The culture that led you to your current state, is also the culture that will be your undoing. I don't know what the solution is, but it's very clear that when financial success is the primary goal of individuals and infinite growth is the primary goal of governments and other institutions, population decline follows. Growth can always be greater, but the amount of time in a day grows ever shorter, and limits of human physical and mental stamina has a hard ceiling.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#39
post #31

I wonder if quite a big part of the problem is that the one child policy normalised single child families for an entire generation. I know for certain that my wife and I both want to have another child because we both grew up with siblings and can see the lifelong benefits. Children are pretty hard work though, and there's been a lot of moments when we've thought "do I really want to go through all this again". Take…

>Which is of course a fairly hard problem to solve - if you aren't having 2.2 children per couple then your population is shrinking.

You can increase throughput with parallelization or speedups of single threaded performance.

But procreation age is trending upwards, too so I guess this is rather theoretical.

Re: No Sex Please We’re Chinese

#40
post #31

I wonder if quite a big part of the problem is that the one child policy normalised single child families for an entire generation. I know for certain that my wife and I both want to have another child because we both grew up with siblings and can see the lifelong benefits. Children are pretty hard work though, and there's been a lot of moments when we've thought "do I really want to go through all this again". Take…

Yes, with the "One-Child" policy in effect for 36 years (1979–2015), an entire generation grew up with no siblings. With this being mandated, families just didn't plan for 2+ children. Maybe they bought a smaller house, or other lifestyle choices. Now you cannot just flip a switch and expect all of these families have multiple children.
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