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No one wants to have kids anymore

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Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#311

Post by rglullis »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #261
rglullis wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It seems that most of the "childfree" arguments are based on this terrible modern, industrial, low-trust worldview that assumes that parents are solely responsible for their kids. Unless both parents come from a really dysfunctional family, this should never be the case.

>Unless both parents come from a really dysfunctional family, this should never be the case. Why? Many people immigrate away from their families for a variety of reasons other than them being “dysfunctional”. For example, economic opportunities. I know a quite a few couples that moved from places with low economic opportunities to places with better opportunities, and one of the downsides is that they have to navigat…

I'm from Brazil, my wife is from Greece. We are both living in Germany. So I'm well aware of what you are talking about.

Yet:

> one of the downsides is that they have to navigate parenting by themselves.

That's not true. Our families may be away most of the time, but we have a constant rotation of our parents (and my wife's Giagia) coming to stay with us. When our second kid was born, I don't think we were by ourselves for the first six months. Even today, we get someone visiting us at least every other month.

> kids a higher probability of success when they grow up.

This is increasingly becoming something we are asking ourselves. I think our kids would benefit more from being able to grow up close to their families than in a place with a culture and values that we don't really share. For us (and me specially) living in Germany has been more of a "tolerable" than a "desirable" situation. With remote work becoming a reality, I think we can have our cake and eat it too.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#312

Post by cafard »

The people I see in my neighborhood carrying kids in those chest carriers or pushing them in carriages seem cheerful enough. I was cheerful enough back then, though there was a big effect on my time, including sleep time.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#313

Post by ladyattis »

I think there's more going on with respect to the slow decline in population growth. Sure, the wealth a nation has the less it seems people have children but the why isn't always explored, it's just assumed people become more risk adverse or the wealth gap causes people to forego the thought of having a family. I think there's multiple problems at play here. First, you got people being generally more risk adverse which is just a normal thing. Second, the wealth gap is causing more and more folks to delay having a family for their later years. Third, I think some social pressures are just absent from the picture that was once the norm. I know that sounds cruel to pressure someone to have kids (I'm child-free and happy to be that way so I'm not hoping anyone to shame me into having a wife and kids) but I wonder if that even works whether it's positive depictions of young families or the old fashioned nagging of your parents to "settle down."

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#314

Post by welshwelsh »

automatic6131 wrote: post #101
MarkusWandel wrote: post #76

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.

Are people still going to be doing that type of work 20-30 years from now?

I'm assuming that by the time I reach retirement, we will only need 5-10% of today's labor force due to advances in automation

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#315

Post by naasking »

D13Fd wrote: post #307
naasking wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know many families with kids, and only a small percentage seem unhappy, similar to most other life choices. "Seem" is the keyword. People successfully hide suicidal depression from close friends and family, so I'm not sure why you think people can't hide mild unhappiness.

If they "seem" happy, then they are not "consistently mak[ing] it clear how terrible having kids is."

You're talking about two different contexts: they can make happy while with friends and family where there are social expectations, and they can also report how they honestly feel in anonymous or confidential circumstances, like surveys, studies and therapy.

The analogy I made to depression was intentional because it exhibits exactly this pattern: every depressed person consistently reports how terrible it is, and yet they often make a show of appearing happy in public.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#316

Post by KIFulgore »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #33

Kid-having emerges. This (western biased) article is blaming the victim. An entire generation bled dry by student loans for useless degrees, unable to buy homes that their elders view as retirement funds. A thousand and one more entertaining things to do online which don't risk creating 18-year bundles of debt. And absolutely no idea how to break the cycle for your offspring. Pick one thing to fix and spend your life…

This is the crux of the issue. If society places value on more future taxpayers, it needs to create the environment where more people want to create future taxpayers. We would have "probably" been fine having a couple kids, but in the US you're often one job loss and major illness or accident away from permanent debt and/or bankruptcy. So we opted out.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#317

Post by yucky »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #43

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…

   > 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.
"Here's this thing I have no actual direct experience with, let me tell you all about it!"

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#318

Post by notch656a »

pxue wrote: post #295
cykros wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you have a cut off on the lower bound below which you don't offer this advice. 21? 18? 16? 13? Yes, it's possible to put it off long enough thinking you'll find that perfect time, and either it getting to be too late, or perhaps running into the reality that with age comes higher likelihood of birth defects, in many cases. But the flat advice to just do it seems like it's missing a bit of at least a basic foun…

On your last paragraph that's how human raised kids for the first 10k+ years. In small groups of multigenerational settings. Only in the last 100 (maybe even less, say 60) or so years we've started to say fk that, when I retire I want to be on a beach and not taking care of my grandkids.

Before 100 years ago there was precious little nation-state level social security, so families were far more dependent upon other family members. Middle age parents needed to support their parents directly, so there was an obvious quid-pro-quo for the grandparent to take care of the child.

Our forefathers changed this dynamic by making this arrangement somewhat invisible, in that we pay social security tax instead. We still take care of our parents, but not directly, and it's by the gun of the tax man rather than by a family arrangement. There is little incentive for this kind of unspoken bargaining of the past where you may take care of shelter and the grandparents take care of a kid. There's an IRS agent waiting with a gun if you don't pay social security, so any unspoken bargaining power is gone and the working age parent basically gets the squeeze from both sides.

Re: No one wants to have kids anymore

#319

Post by fsflover »

dustedcodes wrote: post #241
jlokier wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people play sport to enjoy the game, not to become champions at it. What about having offspring gives life purpose? Do you just beget children to... help them grow up to beget more children so they can... help their children to beget more children so... That doesn't sound (or vibe) purposeful to me. That description is obviously missing something essential. If life has a purpose (or feeling/vibe of one) there mu…

Life is very basic at its core. The purpose of all life is survival. Offspring is paramount for survival.

When there are too many people on Earth to support a sustainable live for humanity, not having kids is the paramount for survival.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33879397

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