Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#81

Post by rich_sasha » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

I'd also note that plummeting birthrates are also happening in countries that are known for great social welfare, lots of government support for new mothers, and a more egalitarian society overall, like Finland. A lot of people simply don't want kids. Kids take a huge amount of time and investment for about 2 decades of one's life, and that can have a large, significant negative impact on quality of life, especially…

It's true, and fair enough.

It is also true that societies are brutally darwinian. The ones that prevail are the ones that can produce the most offspring, and bring it to economic maturity.

This is the story behind the enormous success of China and India, per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor. They are still nuclear superpowers with lunar missions. It doesn't matter if they are illiberal, there are more of them.

It feels like for all its faults, the global West has values worth preserving for the future, and that involves, well, going through with it and making babies.

But then I suppose, the burden of childcare should be better socialized. It used to rely more on grandparents, who would live nearby and be a good 10-20 years younger than nowadays.

But then again, you're saying, where that is in place people still don't want to have children. So maybe that doesn't work either.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#82

Post by net_up_down » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

orangepurple wrote: post #20

zpeti wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a surface level explanation but there must be deeper reasons why people aren’t having children. Maybe our lives are so comfortable we just don’t want the inconvenience of children. Maybe we’re so obsessed with momentary hedonism that doing something extremely hard for 18 years doesn’t seem worth it. Maybe there are so many generational traumas built up over thousands of years that now that we have som…

I suspect many more are blisfully unaware of what will happen to them when they inevitably end up in a nursing home. I'm not sure what you mean by generational traumas but if you mean what I think you mean they can be overcome. My grandparents vehemently hated certain specific ethnicities till the end because their brothers and sisters and parents were executed ("disappeared") by their soldiers and secret police. My…

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Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#83

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

edandersen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now do the TFR numbers for the "native" populations and you'll notice something quite interesting - that Japan is actually doing quite well.

The birth rate for indigenous Canadians is 1.5x the rate of Canadians overall, significantly above TFR.

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Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#84

Post by xyzzy4747 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 3:00 PM UTC

teg4n_ wrote: post #48

orangepurple wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect many more are blisfully unaware of what will happen to them when they inevitably end up in a nursing home. I'm not sure what you mean by generational traumas but if you mean what I think you mean they can be overcome. My grandparents vehemently hated certain specific ethnicities till the end because their brothers and sisters and parents were executed ("disappeared") by their soldiers and secret police. My…

I don’t think having children is protection against ending up in a nursing home.

It depends which culture you live in. In the American ultra-individualistic culture, you may be right.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#85

Post by throwaway03635 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

salmonfamine wrote: post #51

There is no highly-developed country with replacement-level fertility. And, in fact, the only places left with fertility rates that are above replacement (and not rapidly dropping) are sub-saharan African countries with a median income below 5k USD. On the other end of the spectrum, you don't see fertility rates tick up again until you get to the 500k USD and above bracket. My personal hunch is that this is a form of…

> One typical response is that we should simply subsidize those childcare programs. Fair enough, but the countries that have taken this idea the farthest -- the Nordics -- have still not achieved replacement-level fertility.

Childcare is built around taking care of the kids only when their parents are at work. When they parents comes home from work, they have to find time to take care of the household chores (dinner, cleaning) in addition to taking care of the child's needs. Today's societies put a lot of pressure on parents that were not there before. Nobody want's their child to be a loser, so they have to follow up on homework and after school activities. The pressure is much higher than 20-30 years ago, and many opt out.

Childcare programs in the Nordic are a necessary first step, but they only cover working hours. We either need to reduce social pressures that forces parents to push their children to be "perfect", or just face the fact that we need to pay for organizing the after school activities (no more volunteer work at the soccer clubs or driving kids to swimming practice). This will make sure that the parents can focus on spending quality time with their kids and still have time for a personal life.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#86

Post by throwaway22032 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

salmonfamine wrote: post #51

There is no highly-developed country with replacement-level fertility. And, in fact, the only places left with fertility rates that are above replacement (and not rapidly dropping) are sub-saharan African countries with a median income below 5k USD. On the other end of the spectrum, you don't see fertility rates tick up again until you get to the 500k USD and above bracket. My personal hunch is that this is a form of…

The idea that men and women should operate independently from each other i.e. not be mutually reliant is the root of the market failure.

We should unapologetically be celebrating long term monogamous heterosexual relationships where the duties are shared.

The other stuff (hook ups, childless, LGBT, etc) is all fine and dandy as long as it's consensual, but it's a distraction - and it's taking up far too much of the societal conversation given its' relevance.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#87

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #63

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

I'd also note that plummeting birthrates are also happening in countries that are known for great social welfare, lots of government support for new mothers, and a more egalitarian society overall, like Finland. A lot of people simply don't want kids. Kids take a huge amount of time and investment for about 2 decades of one's life, and that can have a large, significant negative impact on quality of life, especially…

I had kids relatively late in life (42) and it's been amazing. I love being a dad, far more than I thought I would. It wasn't really about wanting kids or not wanting kids, it felt more like...puberty in that for most of human history you don't really get to choose to do it or not, it happens pretty naturally. I guess that's unfashionable to say. Perhaps some would say it's irresponsible. But the opening montage in I…

This is good except for two things: (1) women lose their fertility at "a certain age" and if they put off childbearing for too long they might lose the opportunity and (2) if you have children late your life will overlap less with them. For that matter there is the issue of chasing a toddler around when you are 50 and less energetic than when you are 30.

It's probably not so good to have children when you are very young and not so good to have them when you are old, there is some optimum in between but unfortunately many people who put this off find the choice is made for them.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#88

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #73

automatic6131 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange that other people will pay the burden of raising children that support your retirement. You might think that your earning and savings supports your retirement, but no. It will be the next generation of workers that actualize it. Money is just unit of account, it by itself does not give you a retirement. Only working age, working people. We've found ourselves in a very strange moral hazard. You spend your…

Seems like old age social safety nets are a net negative.

You'll feel different when you are old.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#89

Post by ChatGTP » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 3:05 PM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #46

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

I'd also note that plummeting birthrates are also happening in countries that are known for great social welfare, lots of government support for new mothers, and a more egalitarian society overall, like Finland. A lot of people simply don't want kids. Kids take a huge amount of time and investment for about 2 decades of one's life, and that can have a large, significant negative impact on quality of life, especially…

I agree, it's not surprising given birth control and economic pressures to join the workforce, but it is new and distinctly modern, and writing it off as "some people just don't want kids" isn't a satisfactory explanation. Something is deeply wrong in a society if it has all of the social safety net tools, like Finland does, to ease the burdens of childbearing and people still choose to not do it. It's a society in a…

The future looks bleak for humans. It might not be in fact but it looks that way. Climate change and “AI” disruption or worse…it takes a special individual to want to bring a person into these situations.

People do, I did, but it’s not easy.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#90

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 3:05 PM UTC

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #64

logicchains wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Perhaps in modern society, whatever you do, people only want 1-1.5 kids? This clearly isn't true because the Amish and Ultra-orthodox Jews still want/have 7-8 kids, and they live in modern society. I'm not sure about the Ultra-orthodox, but the Amish are certainly capable of sustaining their standards of living even if the rest of America dies out, so humanity wouldn't go extinct, it'd just become 100% Amish (and wh…

Amish do need to expand to new land though. They're priced out of the Lancaster homeland. But they don't want expensive urban real estate, so it's ok. Down side: They're apparently involved in deforestation of remote parts of the Amazon for that reason. Up side: They're bringing life to some remote parts of the US you wouldn't think of.

In upstate NY they seem to be creating new "colonies", I used to see them with their horse carriages in the area around the old Seneca Army Depot, now I am seeing them around Marathon (which really is about 26 miles from Ithaca.)