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No one wants to have kids anymore

torturechambersmalltalk.substack.com

101–110 of 457 posts

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#101

A (relatively weak) inherited instinctual desire to procreate aside, people have kids because it improves their personal outcome. Without modern machinery, the work input of kids will improve the family farm's productivity by more than they consume. With high infant mortality, more kids improves the chances that enough will survive to adulthood. Without modern social safety nets, elders would simply starve or die of…

>The planet's population is getting uncomfortably high, so the birthrate drops. Great.

If the birthrate drops, neither you nor I nor the kids alive today will get a "retirement". It'll become a quaint little thing we once could afford.

Not so bad if all your work is tapping into a laptop. It's bloody murder for anyone that has to stand and lift and DO for a living.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#102
post #52

The only solution is to ban condoms. Will solve so many problems. Btw this article neglects to mention a very important feedback loop: less babies equals less economic growth, which equals less babies because it’s too expensive, which in turn leads to less economic growth and so on. Collapsing birth rates are a serious problem! You won’t notice until the country becomes a depopulated wasteland and then it will be too…

Considering that’s never actually happened it seems you have an unreasonable level of certainty about the outcomes. People who don’t have kids don’t pass down their culture, which seems like an obvious feedback loop to keep things going. On top of this population declines have generally resulted in increased individual prosperity for hopefully obvious reasons.

It is already happening very successfully in fact in some communities.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#103

A word of advice to anyone on the fence about having kids: There’s nothing wrong with choosing not to have kids, but do yourself and consult with actual parents for what it’s really like to have kids. Articles like this one, which are written by someone who apparently has chosen not to have children, are almost universally terrible at representing the true experience of being a parent. Yes, being a parent involves a…

Having a kid is the most fun I’ve ever had. Used to go to raves, done bunch of crazy sexual stuff, as well as most drugs under the sun. There’s nothing close to chasing a toddler in a circle for an hour.

> There’s nothing close to chasing a toddler in a circle for an hour.

amen

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#105
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are not “fungible”. Therefore: - Immigration will alter the societal outcomes of a region, for “better” or “worse”, as the region chooses - Destruction of productive and healthy societies by prolific but unhealthy ones will cause widespread harm. - Failure to reproduce at replacement levels won’t show up as a disaster until many years after it is too late to correct it. Wouldn’t it be better to aim to reduce h…

Human's at scale are fungible. "Destruction of productive and healthy societies by prolific but unhealthy ones". I hesitate to use the word dog whistle, but this is pretty inarguably racist. Unless you'd like to clarify which 'unhealthy' cultures you're referring to. For many value judgements, the lack of social cohesion, level of violent crime, historically high rates of imprisonment etc make the US an 'unhealthy cu…

They are clearly referring to young people that can work vs old people that need care and cannot work

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#106

I think it cliche to believe it's strictly a financial decision. In fact, in the West (afaik) the middle and upper class have a lower birth rates than those below them. Not to get subjective and fuzzy but children are a symbol of hope and promise. Any reasonable adult who is considering children has to ask themselve how to answer when the child asks, "Why? Why did you bring me into *this* world?" Who has a good answe…

Considering that it's the poorer people having more children it seems like the obvious answer is that most children are unplanned or the product of dim people with a figure it out later attitude.

I think that narrative itself is fairly dim.

Consider a much more reasonable alternative - Having children can be seen as a path to traditional success by those who have very limited financial options.

By having a child - they gain a sense of purpose that is just utterly absent in most of our menial jobs. Further - Most people enjoy many aspects of their childhood, and having a child is a chance to pass on that joy and relive it.

Finally - additional children can bring additional revenue and help on the long term. If you know you have no job security, no money for savings, no pension, no 401k, and a low social security payout due to low earnings - children can be a way to have some semblance of retirement, and a safety net in old age.

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Is there some overlap where it's also a consequence on not thinking through your decisions? Sure - probably. But that answer is simplistic.

For every complex question there's an answer that's short, simple, and wrong.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#107

> But deep down I get it. Babies are a huge opportunity cost. Financially speaking, they are like winning the lottery but backwards. You can't even think of having one without cancelling your subscription to a good night's sleep. And if you take into account inflation, economic recession, and the rest of the news cycle's highlight reel, even a one-child family can seem to have one too many mouths to fish Lego pieces…

> I have an incredibly comfortable lifestyle saving for retirement, traveling and buying real estate. The moment I become responsible for another human, that all goes away.

You realize that with the deflation that will hit most developed countries, all your savings will evaporate right ? It's a mathematical certainty given the way the economy works (coupled with fertility rates of Immigration might work, but race is a big deal with a large section of the population esp. when it comes to low-end stuff.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#108
We often quip that companies (particularly publicly listed companies) are incredibly bad at long-term planning. They optimize for the current quarter only (mostly). Dell was a great example of this. It essentially created the Taiwan PC industry that eviscerated it but further outsourcing every part of their production line. A series of short-term decisions that had long-term consequences.

I hate to breka it to you but capitalism is doing the exact same thing to people.

Financial security and independence is bad for capitalism because it needs people to show up to work. It needs people to need those jobs and (even better) live paycheck-to[aycheck. That's the recipe for a compliant workforce. Increasing real wages is bad because it decreases dependence and profits, which is why there has been almost no increase in overall real wages in 40+ years.

Student debt, housing debt and medical debt are by design. Your labor is extracted to very few. Centuries ago, nobles were at the top of that pyramid and we called that serfdom. What we have now is basically the same thing but we've just replaced nobles with the capital-owning class.

People once had children because of high infant mortality (and mortality in general) and to look after them when they got old. Now we need a certain amount of security to provide for those children. And the short-term exploitation of labor has the completely understandable effect of people waiting to have children, not having children at all and/or having less children.

We produce enough such that everyone could live comfortably. We produce enough food such that everyone could be fed. We, as a society, have allowed people to starve and be homeless and instead of sharing the wealth letting it concentrate in the hands of a few hundred individuals.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#109
post #87

Elizabeth Warren's book The Two-Income Trap argued that dual income couples priced out single income families from the best locations. It makes sense that DINKs and childless single people are simply reacting to the same economic incentives and now pricing out dual income families. I think high-rents is a major driver of this decision. The USDA puts the cost of your first kid at $14.4k annually edited . That is prima…

In what universe is a child only 14.4K? Is this the price of a diapers alone? Preschool? Food? This number seems laughably low.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#110

Between the economic impact, and the social/environmental pressure of climate change doomers, anti-natalist are a symptom of our broken society, and it's very disturbing.

'A response to' seems a fairer framing than 'a symptom of'. Further, I think climate change itself is the actual problem not (again) the response to it.
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