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What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

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Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#151

Post by midoridensha »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #130
midoridensha wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which cultures are those? Ancient, tribal cultures, absolutely raised children in a communal way as you say. There's even a saying, "it takes a village to raise a child..." But I'm not aware of any modern cultures that still do that in reality.

Villages and tribes have typically been composed of people who are related to one another. So another way of saying this is that the extended family participates in raising children. Not long ago, children were allowed to roam freely in the neighborhood, walk to and from school, and have some essentially unsupervised time to play and be children. The reason this worked well is because they were known to the neighbors…

>Not long ago, children were allowed to roam freely in the neighborhood, walk to and from school, and have some essentially unsupervised time to play and be children.

Yeah, I see that almost every day where I live. Young kids even take the subway across the city all by themselves. This is normal life in any decent, developed nation.

You've never been outside the United States, have you?

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#152

Post by midoridensha »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #129
midoridensha wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Less babies" is grammatically incorrect. The proper wording is "fewer babies".

People who eat chocolate ice cream, or order Hawaiian pizza, are incorrect. The proper ice cream is pistachio, and the proper pizza is pepperoni New York Style.

I agree; grammar rules should be abandoned. From now on, I'm going to use the word "less" to mean a larger number of something. If you can't understand me, it's your fault.

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#153

Post by awb »

asimovfan wrote: post #146
awb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those assumptions are incorrect. Ever since I can remember as a little kid I wanted to be a Dad. My first big success came after my last child was born. When my first child was born I had just been laid off and was struggling to make ends meet. My highs in business aren’t even close to my highs as a Dad. Everyone’s experiences are different and true to them. I’m not trying to tell you that your experience or ideas of…

I think you turned it into something philosophical about your "highs" but I was talking about the fact about simply how hard it is to look after a child, and how much drudgery and going crazy it involves this is why i also said having massive amounts of money helps make it one treat it like a recreational activity, like having someone to help clean the house, cook etc

I can’t really relate to your philosophy on this, but it is interesting to me. I enjoyed parenting just as much when I was struggling to make ends meet as I did when I had money.

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#154

Post by midoridensha »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #68
scoofy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a test case in what is happening even if it's cliche. Wanted to have kids around my late 20s, but had tons of trouble just dating at that time, much less finding a partner. In my mid-to-late 30s, I had multiple people I was seeing request/give ultimatums on timelines of having kids together after they'd decided they like me, but we'd barely started dating (which I obviously couldn't commit to with someone…

Me and my friend group spanning many countries of people in their 30s-early 40s all have landed on 0, 1 or 2 kids. Median is certainly below replacement rate. I don’t know anyone who has three or more. I don’t think that trend will be coming back. We’ll all become Japan eventually

Japan has a birth rate of 1.3. It's in-line with most other developed nations. The US is at 1.6.

The country you're looking for is South Korea, at around 0.8 last I checked.

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#155

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

midoridensha wrote: post #152
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who eat chocolate ice cream, or order Hawaiian pizza, are incorrect. The proper ice cream is pistachio, and the proper pizza is pepperoni New York Style.

I agree; grammar rules should be abandoned. From now on, I'm going to use the word "less" to mean a larger number of something. If you can't understand me, it's your fault.

https://youtu.be/Ab4WIVqPpjM

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#156

Post by a_e_k »

Razengan wrote: post #123
Razengan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0zNWswcqMg

I wasn't going to post that... but I certainly was thinking of it! (Sadly, that particular video misses Davos later correcting Jon in turn.)

Weird Al, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGWiTvYZR_w

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#157

Post by M95D »

> No one really knows why birth rates are dropping so fast.

Did anyone think to ASK THE PEOPLE why they choose not to have children? Or that would be too difficult for today's journalists and bloggers?

My case:

1) It's very difficult to raise even one child. It would degrade my quality of life a lot.

2) I hate children. I see around me lots of parents who love being parents and I simply can't understand them. This would probably make me a bad parent.

3) [The main reason.] If I had a child I would want him/her to have a better life than mine. EVERY parent wants that. But that's not possible, because my life is great!

Let me focus on 3), because this explains the difference between countries.

When the parent's life sucks (Africa), there's lots of hope and possibility of a better life for the child.

When the parent's life is great (Europe, America, Japan) with very grim predictions about the future without oil, why would anyone have children?

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#158

Post by oerdier »

aziaziazi wrote: post #148
oerdier wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not having kids because I expect the world they would live in by the time they would be adults will be too dystopian. Even more dystopian than it is already. I opine that we humans increasingly shape our living situation such that it causes friction with our nature, our primitive psychology and biology. This friction causes increasing unhappiness. When I first realized this in my early twenties I was able to vast…

> I consider it selfish to the degree of evil to have children (How) Do you communicate this consideration with people that made children recently? I have the same feeling but humans have a strong paternal/maternal instinct (which is great), conversation suffers as a result.

I only communicate this consideration to people I am certain of are able to be open for argumentation, despite them probably not sharing the same belief.

In public the only place I have communicated this consideration is right here. Privately I have communicated this consideration with family and close friends. One of these friends has started actively trying to make babies with his girlfriend after we first started discussing this topic. We have discussed it after he started trying. We have a friendly discussion about it, then move on to another topic. I find conversation does not suffer at all. That is, with the people I have carefully chosen to discuss this with. I can imagine conversation would suffer with most people I would strike up a conversation with in let's say a supermarket.

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#159

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

midoridensha wrote: post #151
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Villages and tribes have typically been composed of people who are related to one another. So another way of saying this is that the extended family participates in raising children. Not long ago, children were allowed to roam freely in the neighborhood, walk to and from school, and have some essentially unsupervised time to play and be children. The reason this worked well is because they were known to the neighbors…

>Not long ago, children were allowed to roam freely in the neighborhood, walk to and from school, and have some essentially unsupervised time to play and be children. Yeah, I see that almost every day where I live. Young kids even take the subway across the city all by themselves. This is normal life in any decent, developed nation. You've never been outside the United States, have you?

> You've never been outside the United States, have you?

Why is this personal to you?

In fact, re-reading my post, I don't see anywhere that I contradict what you claim. I agree with you, my post agrees with you, case closed.

Re: What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

#160

Post by jemmyw »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #127
jemmyw wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have taken to heart the talking points of those opposed to abortion etc. rather than reality. The pro-choice position held by the majority of people is "available, considered and rare". Abortion and sexual health services are also not aligned with population decline. If people can't access those services at all then I posit they might be more likely to never want to try for kids. Just a supposition.

Huh, I must have read the Jaffe Memo wrong then. https://youtu.be/0ImRyPymRAM

Yeah I just read about it on wikipedia and it sounds like you did read it wrong. Doesn't mention homosexuality at all for a start.

> in 1973, Jaffe stated that "the memorandum makes clear that neither I nor the Planned Parenthood Federation of America advocates any of the specific proposals embodied in the table which go beyond voluntary actions of individual couples to space and limit births."

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