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Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

phys.org

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Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

#21

Post by Frannyies »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #2

It's hard to tell if these studies show that people want fewer children, or if people want fewer children as they age (ie their ideal number declines). It would be also really interesting to see if this is a form of goal post shifting where people who do not have children (for example procrastinate) move the goal post to tell themselves they succeeded at what they _actually_ wanted. That would take longitudinal studi…

You put it like it's not normal to not wanting kids.

I'm pretty sure a lot like and love their kids but I'm quite fine with not having to shift my life around kids.

We area much fuller planet than before. Everything is full.

We also have plenty of other things to occupy our time than kids and we can have sex without kids and stigma.

Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

#22

Post by ffhhttt »

themacguffinman wrote: post #15
fastneutron wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re in a developed nation, and unless you expect the earth to go through an irreversible Venus syndrome in the next century, I don’t see how this argument is anything more than a fig leaf for more fundamental social ailments. What would you say to someone in 700 AD, for whom the next 1000 years were more likely to be objectively worse in terms of quality of life than the next 1000, even accounting for what clim…

> What would you say to someone in 700 AD, for whom the next 1000 years were more likely to be objectively worse in terms of quality of life than the next 1000 Not OP, but I would probably say something like "don't have kids, it's morally irresponsible to bring children into a world where they will have to deal with conditions likely worse and far more barbaric than climate change which causes immense suffering in th…

They didn’t burn that many witches back in those days, it was more of a renaissance* and reformation thing.

*Romans really liked executing/punishing people for witchcraft too compared with medieval Christians

Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

#23

Post by ffhhttt »

wturner wrote: post #7
shric wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is buying a house a prerequisite? Renting is perfectly reasonable. Billions of people happily have kids never being able to afford to buy a house.

That was a round about way of saying people can’t afford kids so they don’t consider it a life choice

Expecting to bring up your children in better (or at least same) conditions as you experienced as a child seems reasonable.

Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

#24

Post by ffhhttt »

agensaequivocum wrote: post #16

Normalize stay-at-home moms. This will raise the birthrate and drive up wages. For now us faithful Catholics, as well as Mormons and Muslims, will keep civilization going.

This seems to be a big issue. e.g. it seems Israel has permanently shifted to the right because of the excessive growth of the (societally/economically) useless ultra-orthodox population.

While other people have to spend their lives working they can spend their reading their boom and having dozens of children because of government subsidies.

Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

#25

Post by ffhhttt »

BearfootCoder wrote: post #18
barrysteve wrote: post #9

There was a significant dip in birthrates during the 1920s. Twenty years later something terrible happened to a lot of sons. It is plausible to me, some people lose the will to have kids, when it is most disadvantageous to have children. Something is off, we can all sense it.

There was a significant drop in birthrates in the 1920s because millions of the men who would have fathered those children were dead.

Not so much in the US or in Finland (which effectively didn’t take part in WW1 at all)

Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

#28

Post by darkclouds »

Dont have kids, cant afford kids, I didnt like growing up poor to uneducated parents and uneducated people around me.

UK is way too crowded anyway, so I'll let the immigrants crossing the channel take the place of my kids.

Hopefully they'll be able to destroy that anglo-saxon rape and pillage philosophy out of the native population, of which I'm one.

Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

#29

Post by maerF0x0 »

Frannyies wrote: post #21
maerF0x0 wrote: post #2

It's hard to tell if these studies show that people want fewer children, or if people want fewer children as they age (ie their ideal number declines). It would be also really interesting to see if this is a form of goal post shifting where people who do not have children (for example procrastinate) move the goal post to tell themselves they succeeded at what they _actually_ wanted. That would take longitudinal studi…

You put it like it's not normal to not wanting kids. I'm pretty sure a lot like and love their kids but I'm quite fine with not having to shift my life around kids. We area much fuller planet than before. Everything is full. We also have plenty of other things to occupy our time than kids and we can have sex without kids and stigma.

afaik Its not normal in the statistics sense of the word, most people are falling in a tightly centered distribution. But I'm not going to debate here that it's a moral choice, or that you're somehow wrong by being one or more SDs out of center. (It might be, but this isnt the forum for it). Anyone who does not want to have children of their own are well within their rights. I'd encourage anyone who doesnt have kids to still find someway to contribute their time/interactions to the next generations though, I've found it really changes the mindset of people to invest in someone else with no expectation of return.

Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children

#30

Post by Shawnj2 »

agensaequivocum wrote: post #16

Normalize stay-at-home moms. This will raise the birthrate and drive up wages. For now us faithful Catholics, as well as Mormons and Muslims, will keep civilization going.

We should just normalize stay at home spouses, no need for it to specifically be moms. Also we need to bump wages enough for that to make sense for most people.
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