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How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

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Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#161

Post by remarkEon »

orochimaaru wrote: post #70
Yhippa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you are but it feels that this is exactly what it's like in America. I am not sure why nobody really cares and I suspect by the time people try to do something about it, it won't be too late, but it's going to take a Herculean effort to fix. Mindset and structural support.

It is. The only difference is that the US (and Canada) are way more welcoming of immigrants than South Korea or Japan. That's basically what's keeping them competitive. I'm also pretty sure that high birth rate from illegal south american immigrants keeps US population going. The legal immigrants have children but at a subsistence level, generally <= 2.

TFR for the United States is 1.84, while South American countries rage from 1.75 (Uruguay) to 2.26 (Bolivia)[1]. It's tricky to find data on how the US TFR breaks out demographically. It would be very interesting, to your point, to see if immigrant TFR just echos the origin country or if there's a debuff applied for living in the United States. Anecdotally, this feels true to me less more Traditional Catholic immigrant families from Mexico or El Salvador but I've no idea if the data backs it up.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility...

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#162

Post by antisthenes »

paulcole wrote: post #62
munk-a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, pretty much this. I'm half of a two person couple well into the upper middle class - we live in a one bedroom condo that costs more than half a million dollars... kids are not a realistic financial decision.

You and I are probably in similar situations (I rent a 1-bedroom apartment in an upscale-ish area) and you probably earn more than me but I live very comfortably. I've personally never had any interest in having kids. Whatever it is that makes kids appealing, I've never had it. But I think I agree with you and I don't understand why I think I agree with you. Kids do seem like a crazy financial decision today. But if…

> Is it that we want to maintain our standard of living more than people did in the past? Plenty of poor people have plenty of kids in 1 bedroom apartments. Do we just demand more comfort today? Are we just more picky? Are kids just not worth what they used to be?

I find it interesting that this is almost the only post in the entire thread that arrives at the need to do a little introspection.

Apparently, the ability to do that is much rarer these days than I thought.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#163

Post by aidenn0 »

paulcole wrote: post #155
aidenn0 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, most of my daughter's friends in early elementary school lived with their parent in a 1BR, studio, or a rented bedroom. One of them had 3 siblings, making 5 people in a 1BR apartment.

I guess maybe parents had fewer expenses when I was a kid (I was born in 1983)? No cable bill, no cell phones, fewer video games, no streaming services?

IIRC, housing, child-care (especially if you include after-school activities), and health-care (If you are un- or under-insured with your job) dominate the increased expenses. Housing is a strange one because a lot of parents will try to move to a better school district, so parents may end up paying more for otherwise similar housing than non-parents.

FWIW, the things you give as examples are rounding-errors in our budget (though only two of our kids have cell phones so far); we don't have cable, pay $22/mo for streaming services, buy used video games, and pay an average of $60/mo for our phone bill. We spend over $300/mo on groceries for comparison.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#164

Post by aidenn0 »

paulcole wrote: post #62
munk-a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, pretty much this. I'm half of a two person couple well into the upper middle class - we live in a one bedroom condo that costs more than half a million dollars... kids are not a realistic financial decision.

You and I are probably in similar situations (I rent a 1-bedroom apartment in an upscale-ish area) and you probably earn more than me but I live very comfortably. I've personally never had any interest in having kids. Whatever it is that makes kids appealing, I've never had it. But I think I agree with you and I don't understand why I think I agree with you. Kids do seem like a crazy financial decision today. But if…

> Are kids just not worth what they used to be?

I think this is a big part of it. As much social pressure as there is to have kids today, it seems reduced from how it was even a single generation ago.

Raising kids is expensive[1], time consuming, and in general a pain-in-the-ass. With reduced social (and even legal) pressure to stay married, and increased expectations of a career for women (without any accompanying reduced expectations for men), it's entirely unsurprising to myself that many opt-out of it.

1: Mandatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/946/

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#165

Post by remarkEon »

kredd wrote: post #116
sho_hn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, the thing is that I cannot entirely shake the feeling that part of this stance is a certain laziness/complacency, essentially a lack of interest in any challenging activities. What I mean is: A lot of the people who come down against child-rearing for lifestyle reasons assign a lot of value to things they'd rather do instead because they provide "great experiences I'd miss out on because I won't have time or mon…

> But doesn't raising kids also provide a big set of exciting experiences you are trading-of against? Maybe for you, but the value proposition isn’t there for me. There’s no indication that the world is willing to fix its global problems (climate change, housing problems and etc.), why would I also subscribe my child to this “fun”? It is weird to write that sentence, as I am generally a fairly optimistic person. But…

>Maybe for you, but the value proposition isn’t there for me. There’s no indication that the world is willing to fix its global problems (climate change, housing problems and etc.), why would I also subscribe my child to this “fun”? It is weird to write that sentence, as I am generally a fairly optimistic person. But “let me sacrifice a ton, for a decent chance of misery of myself and my offspring” doesn’t sound right to me.

Let me offer a different perspective. Whenever I see your sentiment - that you are choosing to not have kids because the world sucks and you don't see us solving anything - my immediate reaction is that you deserve no voice whatsoever in how the rest of us decide to solve those problems. No voting, no representation, nothing. Having kids, in a sense, is a bet that we'll figure things out one way or another. You've made your bet, and are exiting the conversation because you don't have skin in the game (literally).

That might sound harsh, but it's essentially just the inverse of your sentiment justifying not having kids in the first place because of overwhelming pessimism about the future.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#166

Post by munk-a »

jimbokun wrote: post #121
throwawaysleep wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it ever considered such a great joy or just another of life's many tasks?

In old literature, being "barren" was seen as a heart breaking tragedy for women. And countless references to children as a treasure and a blessing.

This may be a bit of a depressing point but, for a long time in western society, a women's role was accepted to purely be a mother and caregiver. When you say "was seen" I think it's important to clarify that it was seen that way from the point of view of society - society certainly impressed this view on women raised within it but I don't think we can disentangle the taught behaviors from natural behaviors.

Some of these beliefs still stretch into the modern day in really toxic ways - my sister-in-law (a tenure track professor) got a lot of flack from tenured professors who had deferred having a family until the window had closed when she had to duck out of a semester for maternity leave.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#167

Post by HDThoreaun »

inasio wrote: post #125
famahar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we one day see a radical new form of raising children. Historically it was truly a village that raised a child. I never understood how my parents raised 5 children. But looking into it more, there was always a community of people that raised me. Community and mutual aid was huge in the small town in Ethiopia where my parents came from. Coming to Canada, that didn't change. Uncles, aunts, older cousins, long ti…

Israel experimented with communally raising children within the Kibbutz system, but as far as I know the results weren't super encouraging and few places still do it

Kibbutz's failed because there's no incentive to do any work, same with every other form of communism that's been tried. Reworking daycare to be a more holistic experience than it currently is is a very different idea.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#168

Post by orochimaaru »

somenameforme wrote: post #148
orochimaaru wrote: post #46

I think all these studies skirt very gingerly around a big problem. Stressful work culture, lack of support for families (includes high real-estate costs, long commute times, lack of sick leave, etc.) and most importantly a path for women (and men - but its mostly women) who drop out of the workforce and want to get back in once the children are older and more independent. Child rearing takes a group of people not ju…

> I see no reason why women would ever want children. What's society providing them that they need to make this sacrifice? What do you think your future holds? If we are entirely realistic, I think in 50-60 years, and perhaps much sooner, we'll almost certainly be dead. On our way out everyone and everything we've ever known will also be dying. Best friends we'd thought would last to the end will fade and disappear l…

That's basically my point. There's probably half of humanity today (the women) who can help with this. And no one is making life easier for them if they decide to go through with it. In fact the men most of the time make it harder.

Why should women help here? Why acquiesce to the needs of a society that doesn't care about their mental, physical and professional needs?

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#169

Post by paulcole »

antisthenes wrote: post #162
paulcole wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and I are probably in similar situations (I rent a 1-bedroom apartment in an upscale-ish area) and you probably earn more than me but I live very comfortably. I've personally never had any interest in having kids. Whatever it is that makes kids appealing, I've never had it. But I think I agree with you and I don't understand why I think I agree with you. Kids do seem like a crazy financial decision today. But if…

> Is it that we want to maintain our standard of living more than people did in the past? Plenty of poor people have plenty of kids in 1 bedroom apartments. Do we just demand more comfort today? Are we just more picky? Are kids just not worth what they used to be? I find it interesting that this is almost the only post in the entire thread that arrives at the need to do a little introspection. Apparently, the ability…

It's not ability it's just willingness. Go to the recent Scrum threads or any discussion of remote work. It's all just these incredibly strongly held opinions that people feel the need to share over and over.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#170

Post by HDThoreaun »

nonethewiser wrote: post #101
itake wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister is in that boat of not making finances work. Her job pays too well for her to leave the work force. As a man, I’m looking for an independent woman with a good income, because I don’t want to get gutted in a divorce. I’d love to be a SAHD, but it’s difficult for me to find single women with comparable income.

> My sister is in that boat of not making finances work. Her job pays too well for her to leave the work force. But her finances arent the problem here. Its how high expenses are. Her job could pay 150k/yr or 20k/yr but the situation is the same when she quits. Its good that she at least makes enough money that it justifies working if she wants to.

I make a bit over 100k after taxes and spend 30k a year. I've saved enough to quit, but the golden handcuffs feeling is real. I'd just be giving up so much money.
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