I know that a government’s primary objective is to perpetuate itself and grow, but other than that, what is wrong with a declining population? Especially as young people concentrate in urban centres which remain dynamic. People often quote the need for workforce to maintain the extravagant lifestyles of the retirees, but they will not starve in any case, will they? And if everywhere has Japan’s birthbrate, you get to…
It should be fine, everything I've seen write about it seems to say it's like a cliff or steep descent rather than a gentle decline.
People who are misinformed by watching too much news will call the cops on kids without grownups near by. This is somewhat rare, but it feeds into a real culture of misinformation where parents think this happens enough to fear letting them roam. The feedback loop self reinforces because of lack of education - many people don’t realize the more news they consume the less they know about the statistics on the ground.…
The rarity here cannot be overstated. I enjoy stories like this - in the same way someone who enjoys true crime doesn't actually support murder - and they're heavily overreportd but quite uncommon. If you want to let your kids go out and play it's unlikely you'll have issue. I suspect for many it's just an excuse to plonk their kids in front of the iPad all day.
Screen time is also a symptom of a very different form of misinformation - complete lack of information.
The human body is so much healthier with sufficient exposure time to the outdoor environment. Sitting is long term pain.
If parents knew this more, they would pushback on screen time in the same way they don’t let their kids eat ice cream all day.
> reports that said the app will require a confirmation of identity, such as a driver’s license, your tax records to prove income and a signed form that says you are ready to get married. Not sure why someone would sign up for a dating app that is this invasive
Not sure why the Tokyo Metropolitan Government would need that info to begin with. They're going to have most of that on file already.
Dating is so high stakes nobody will go with the flow because that's what the government wants. Employment is high stakes and already uneven opportunity enough (those that need assistance get the bottom of the barrel). Dating will be much worse than this.
Add to that our increasingly lonely lives and fraying communities mean much less of a support network. Parenting is also exhausting now that “go outside and play, come back for dinner” is impractical (for various reasons good or bad).
> “go outside and play, come back for dinner” why is this impractical? EDIT: I'm getting downvoted but I am seriously not sure. I don't have kids right now but its part of how I intend to raise them when I get them.
If someone lets their kids outside while not under direct supervision, there is a real risk of the government taking their kids away from them.
The drive to procreate is the sex drive, we only recently decided to decouple them in abstraction due to technology.
I'm not sure that's true; it's possible for a woman to desperately want a baby, but still have a low libido and have little interest in sex just for fun.
Often a higher libido will be presented until the ink is dry on the marriage certificate and the first child is born and then suddenly drop off. Many such cases.
The drive to procreate is the sex drive, we only recently decided to decouple them in abstraction due to technology.
I'm not sure that's true; it's possible for a woman to desperately want a baby, but still have a low libido and have little interest in sex just for fun.
Not just possible; I think it's common. Also looking at what women endure for IVF it's clear to me that the need to have a child to nurture is often extremely powerful.
Why would anyone want to have kids today? Most couples in the western world can barely support themselves while getting into home ownership, let alone trying to support multiple kids and put them through college while saving for retirement. The amount of capacity left in life for good child rearing is minimal. Add to that the fact that it's looking increasingly unlikely that there'll be jobs for their children anyway…
People are wealthier and healthier today than almost any other point in history. Better times than now are a blip in the grand scheme of things. We have a huge number of social ills that contribute towards peoples reasons for not wanting children, but wealth and physical health are not among them.
In the old times, raising kids was cheaper and required much less care. From the moment a kid could walk, he would be helping around the farm. The clothes he would have would be one shirt which he'd inherit from his older sibling. The toys would be whatever is around the farm. Most kids would not go to school let alone attain some higher education. Nowadays, its completely different. As parents, you need to invest thousands upon thousands before your kid turns 18 and then hope that he will get somewhere in life and take care of you.
I'm not sure that's true; it's possible for a woman to desperately want a baby, but still have a low libido and have little interest in sex just for fun.
Low libido is evolutionarily informed to also signal that now is not the right time to procreate. In this light, it’s not surprising that hormonal birth control, which tells the body it can’t have a baby now, very often reduces libido.
Even without female birth control pills, it can be the case.
At which point does it make sense for the Japanese government to just start a baby production facility? Pay women to be artificially inseminated for the purpose of human generation. Feasible, yes, ethical and moral, questionable, but ..it might be scalable.
You didn't even need the women. Artificial wombs exist.