India's surprise baby bust • Hacker News Board

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#631

Post by matchbok3 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:59 AM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #233

SoftTalker wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people think they need to do this but it's really not true. You don't need to have life all figured out before you have kids. And in terms of avoiding complications and having energy, 18-25 years old is probably the best time.

> You don't need to have life all figured out before you have kids. Sure, you just need to do away with international trips, going out, losing your group of friends, losing your chances for higher education and career progression and all of the associated prestige.

It is hard to explain to 20 year olds that bragging about their trip to Europe means nothing when you are 45.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#632

Post by submain » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:59 AM UTC

evo wrote: post #393

submain wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It comes down to the opportunity cost for women to have babies. On pre-industrialized societies, women have barely a choice. On industrialized ones they do. And it turns out that, when given the choice, they choose not to have babies.

Would it make sense to frame this as a Baumol's Cost Disease problem? E.g., the labor of child rearing has been historically offset by the inherent emotional surplus of the task, but the march of productivity in other sectors gradually increases that imputed loss until we reach a breaking point.

I think that's a fair take. We could also frame it as society in the past has carried a lot of the burden of raising kids.

Tribes and communities helped raise kids. That's no longer true in an individualistic and institutionalized society.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#633

Post by TurdF3rguson » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:59 AM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #388

m_fayer wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a different pet explanation from the other replies here, and I honestly don't get why it's not talked about more. Basically, our economic reality and expectations have come into conflict with biology and human lifespan. If you want a secured dignified life and basic prerequisites to starting a family, every year that takes a little longer. And these days, almost everyone wants that dignified middle class life…

This is really the message of Abundance . If you want people to have kids, you need to make sure they are economically secure by the time they are of childbearing age... which means before they are 30. To do that, you cannot have supply constrained zero-sum shortage anywhere in society. It means that the cost of an apartment needs to be at-or-below the cost to build that apartment so people can just save up and buy o…

Except that 100k years of not being economically secure at childbearing age and having kids anyway... disagrees with you.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#634

Post by matchbok3 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 3:02 AM UTC

drdaeman wrote: post #421

voiceofchoice wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first time ever people can finally choose not to have kids. Is it really any surprise people would opt out? Go spend a day with kids and you'll see why people would rather not deal with the mess. Especially women who actually end up doing the majority of the work. Add to that the extinction level pressures like climate change and the absolute lack of any benefit whatsoever in being a parent, who is crazy enou…

The way I understand it, the modern sentiment is to have children meaningfully, raising them being a project parents actively invest into. Contraception brought choice, choice brought up consideration and planning. This all opened the can of "what are we doing" and "why do we do it" and "how do we do it right", that tended to be ignored in previous eras (where having or not having children was not exactly a real choi…

As a dad of (soon) 3, I would say that social media/etc have raised the expectations of parenting. Keep in mind that the kids aren't the only ones growing up and learning - the parents are too. And hopefully learning from their parents too.

"Being ready" to have a child is an impossibility so you have to embrace the unknown and be ok with mistakes. Kids are resilient, and many millions have had to do with less.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#635

Post by jandrewrogers » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 3:03 AM UTC

thanhhaimai wrote: post #401

onetimeusename wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised to find that just as recently as 1970 the median age of first marriage for men was ~23 and ~21 for women.[1] The average age at first child birth for women in 1970 was ~22.[2] There was a change that took place in the late 70s it looks like, probably acquiring education, that started to pretty dramatically raise the age of first marriage and first childbirth. So for me this was realizing that there wa…

In 1970, a single minimum wage income can raise a family and save up for extra. In 2026, a single minimum wage income can barely survive by themselves with no saving in most part of the US.

The 1970s had a whole different level of poverty than we have in 2026. As in, the normal poverty of the 1970s largely doesn't even exist today in the US. The poor today would have been middle class back then, ignoring differences in technology. The standard of living is not comparable.

A single minimum wage was definitely a poverty wage in the 1970s even at the 1970s standard of living. I have no idea where you would get the idea you could raise a family on that.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#636

Post by nemomarx » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 3:04 AM UTC

rr808 wrote: post #624

I know its not an acceptable view in 2026, but if women had to leave school at 16 and thus couldn't have a professional career I'd think many more women would have multiple children, like 5+ would be normal.

At that point, you might as well formalize requiring them to have children or punishing them for not? Preventing them from working isn't any kinder.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#637

Post by matchbok3 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 3:04 AM UTC

belval wrote: post #324

everdrive wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the hellscape that is Japan. The Japanese are currently fleeing to South Sudan and Darfur in hopes of a better life.

The 42.7M tourists that went there in 2025 just enjoyed seeing the incredible decay of a dying country, a morbid fascination or sorts. /s (obviously)

Tourism != real life.

Or are you joking? I hope so, because it takes a certain kind of stupid to not understand the very very bad things that a shrinking population would cause.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#638

Post by Qem » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 3:04 AM UTC

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #212

i_idiot wrote: post #8

What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.

We only have one modern example of demographic crash to study... Japan. Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population. So far, it looks to be a way for slow extinction of a culture.

> Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population.

And this was in a developed country well resourced to take the hit.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#639

Post by TurdF3rguson » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 3:05 AM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #189

trgn wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i put off children because it takes longer to establish a foothold. not because i loved to travel or eat out necessarily, or felt i needed to prioritize hedonistic activities over building a family. but, during that time of getting my degree, figuring out my career, get some savings, etc.. those were the things to fill up time with. i'd trade it all for having kids younger though. it's just that they would have come…

Everyone claims it's the cost, but poor people used to have kids constantly. When I lived in Baltimore the guy on my block grew up there. They had 12 kids in a ~1100 sq foot row home with two bedrooms and 1 (or no?) bathroom. You can find similar stories everywhere.

Were they Catholic? Contraception was a sin back then.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#640

Post by sethammons » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 3:05 AM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #592

sethammons wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is NOT human extinction. Just the collapse of global modernity. Why would the last group of N people not subsistence farm? "Guess we wont try to live like people have for the last x million years, here is a good place to lay down and die."

>Why would the last group of N people not subsistence farm? Why would they be able to reinvent that, when none of their ancestors for how many generations did so? Is that something a person can do well, do you think, with no prior experience or expertise? What if they get it wrong, they'll starve? We could ask why they could reinvent all the technologies that people from prior eras of agriculture could manage? Will t…

People live in the alaskan bush. QED