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The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

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Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#181

Post by thefz »

Affric wrote: post #26
remoquete wrote: post #11

I've three kids. It's wonderful, it's exhausting, and it's often terrifying. Being a parent is a painful experience, but so is living life. Would my life be easier and less painful without them? Yes. Would my life be better without them? No, just different. I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. Is i…

Life is what any of us make it. The antinatalist position is fundamentally fatalistic. It’s a total negation of the one redeeming feature of the universe: anything could happen. I respect not having kids. The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense.

> The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense.

The idea that you’re inherently better off having kids is nonsense as well.

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#182

Post by effingwewt »

anotherhue wrote: post #178
effingwewt wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nanny!=daycare. There are many families in the US, in NY, that make less than 10k/year.

I don't quite know what point you're making. There is some state coverage but the income limits are low (50-70 for 1-2 kids) https://ocfs.ny.gov/programs/childcare/ccap/help.php#CCAP-in... Daycare outside of that is incredibly pricey, and if you're as 'blessed' as we were with a multiples pregnancy then the nanny quickly becomes cheaper. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/nyregion/child-care-nyc.h... Which is to say,…

I'm getting at the fact that you pay more for an at-home nanny than many families- who also have kids, make in a year.

You are in a ridiculously privileged state to be able to simply afford that and you act as though it's impossible to get by without it.

Regular daycare costs multiples less than an at-home nanny, just as public school is far cheaper than private+tutors.

So again my point is that these are not necessary expenses but chosen.

And that I know right now people doing skilled and licensed labor-intensive jobs for less than 30/hr.

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#183

Post by remoquete »

thefz wrote: post #179
remoquete wrote: post #11

I've three kids. It's wonderful, it's exhausting, and it's often terrifying. Being a parent is a painful experience, but so is living life. Would my life be easier and less painful without them? Yes. Would my life be better without them? No, just different. I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. Is i…

> I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. That's a false dichotomy, people without kids can bring joy and laughter to "this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit". You don't have to justify yourself for what you have chosen.

I agree with you, but, to be honest, I'm not too worried about logical phallacies in my post because I'm not trying to convince anyone, nor trying to justify myself. Mine was but a metonymy: by having kids, I'm bringing new smiles to the universe. Existing smiles are totally fine, too!

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#184

Post by anotherhue »

effingwewt wrote: post #182
anotherhue wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite know what point you're making. There is some state coverage but the income limits are low (50-70 for 1-2 kids) https://ocfs.ny.gov/programs/childcare/ccap/help.php#CCAP-in... Daycare outside of that is incredibly pricey, and if you're as 'blessed' as we were with a multiples pregnancy then the nanny quickly becomes cheaper. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/nyregion/child-care-nyc.h... Which is to say,…

I'm getting at the fact that you pay more for an at-home nanny than many families- who also have kids, make in a year. You are in a ridiculously privileged state to be able to simply afford that and you act as though it's impossible to get by without it. Regular daycare costs multiples less than an at-home nanny, just as public school is far cheaper than private+tutors. So again my point is that these are not necessa…

> Regular daycare costs multiples less than an at-home nanny

Unless, as I said, you have a multiples pregnancy.

I don't know where you're getting your figures but two infants is going to be $3k at least, and that's assuming you can transport them to the daycare facility and assuming that the hours line up with your work. 2x that for the city.

I really hope I'm wrong but two adults with full time in-office jobs don't have much choice here.

https://winnie.com/resources/guide-to-child-care-costs-in-ne...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskNYC/comments/dbki6j/childcare_co... [note several years old]

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#185

Post by yftsui »

effingwewt wrote: post #177
anotherhue wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nanny here in NY is $30/h. If you work full time (and commute) you'll need about 10 hours a day. 30x10x5x4 is 6000, then add food (formula is insanely expensive), diapers, clothes, basic medical and you're easily up to 7k/m before they've taken their first steps.

Nanny!=daycare. There are many families in the US, in NY, that make less than 10k/year.

Daycare isn't much cheaper either, take Seattle as example it is about 4200 per month, for multiples the 2nd child get a 10-15% off. A nanny will be cheaper once you have more than 1 child.

Also, there is a long waitlist, so it needs really good luck to get an "offer" from the day care when you need it.

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#186

Post by iteratethis »

The article emphasizes socioeconomic conditions as a root cause for the declining birth rate. Whilst those factors do not help, it's not why the birth rate is declining.

It's a universal trend. The exact same issue is happening in countries that are far more family-friendly.

The world used to REQUIRE you to have children. As your personal pension plan. By cultural or religious force. Or because of the lack of education or contraceptives.

Now in most parts of the world, you're not required. It becomes a question of WANT instead of MUST. And when you ask people how many children they want, the answer is typically 0, 1 or 2. Most people still want children, and quite a few prefer 2. But that averages out to 1.5-1.8 in the aggregate. Which is far below replacement level.

People still want children, just not many per household. Why the cut-off at 2? Because 3, 4, 5 does not fundamentally improve upon the joy of having children whilst it adds a lot of challenges. Bigger home, bigger car, many more trips to take them everywhere, cooking is more complex, it's a mess.

Anyway, the point being is that the article is largely wrong. People that do not want any children because of their focus on career will still not want children when policies are more family-friendly. There's plenty of evidence of this not working. It doesn't move the needle.

You should still go for better policies, just don't expect it to fix this problem.

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#187

Post by menschmanfred »

mcphage wrote: post #175
menschmanfred wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have asked my why I think it is selfish. I believe creating new life is playing 'god'. It's easier to never exist than life life. This has nothing to do what you thought

> I believe creating new life is playing 'god'. That's an unusual definition of "playing god", since it includes something that pretty much every life form back to the earliest single-cellular bacteria does.

Those are not self aware and can't think about the implications

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#188

Post by lm28469 »

prmoustache wrote: post #176
lm28469 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would be perfect for long-term sustainability. I guess if you don't care about your country or continent legacy that could work yes

My country and continent's legacies are the exploitation and misery of people from other continents so I am fine with that.

Remove your doomer glasses and be a bit more objective in assessing your countries achievements. Listening to your kind of folk you'd wonder why people risk their lives to migrate here if it was such a hellscape. Some countries are doing what yours did 3 generations ago right now and they don't have a tenth of your inherited guilt, nor a tenth of the media presence

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#189

Post by mcphage »

menschmanfred wrote: post #187
mcphage wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe creating new life is playing 'god'. That's an unusual definition of "playing god", since it includes something that pretty much every life form back to the earliest single-cellular bacteria does.

Those are not self aware and can't think about the implications

> Those are not self aware

I'm not sure I do this most of the time.

> can't think about the implications

I definitely don't do this bit.

Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids

#190

Post by quietbritishjim »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #164
quietbritishjim wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you're saying, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the article. It doesn't suggest that people are having fewer children because they are "antinatalists" or consider having children a "selfish choice". It's right there in the title: they think they just don't have time due to their work/life balance. As I said in another comment, that's more likely to be an economic problem (specifically, ho…

It really isn’t that different. You have to make different work life balance choices when you have kids, increasingly very hard decisions given rising costs (housing, childcare, food, activities, etc…). You also can’t really relax on long weekends anymore unless you are content with large amounts of screen time, it’s not like yesterday when my boomer parents just threw me out of the house and told me to come back aro…

What isn't really that different from what?

The comment I was replying to said that people aren't having kids because they are morally against the concept of (anyone) having kids. The article is about people who perhaps want to have kids but their job pays too little and takes up too much time. Those are about as different as reasons can be.

Another top-level comment included a link that lets you read the whole article (though there's not much substance to it, and the distinction was already clear about by the end of the first paragraph). There isn't much discussion about it because that's discouraged on Hacker News. From the FAQ, under "Are paywalls ok?":

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

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