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To Breed or Not to Breed?

nytimes.com

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Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#21

Post by jah242 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling. The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunit…

'you want to be more selfish with your time and money' - from my perspective having children is up with the most selfish things an individual can do - you are spending a huge amount of time and resources replicating yourself (to as greater degree as possible with current technology) and then usually trying to give that replication as much advantage over other people's as possible.

From my experience parents are often great for their children but the trade off is they often become worse members of society, switching to focusing time and resources on their family (to give their genetic material an advantage) rather than any wider potentially more utilitarian outlets or considerations.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#22

Post by peoplefromibiza »

0xbadc0de5 wrote: post #15

Isn't it strange that the people who claim they don't want to have children for fear of economic hardship or climate change never take the time to criticize their parents for not doing the same?

why strange?

Children are allowed to have very different ideas than their parents, one doesn't have to criticize what has been done and is irreversible, to think and act differently.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#23

Post by mgamache »

The strong anti-natalism doesn't surprise me. There's a lot of millennials and younger on HN. I wonder how much of that is just a cover for their pessimism about being as economically successful as their parents? There are structural disadvantages facing the youth today and not having children is a way of avoiding a rigged game. There's also the guilt about raising children at a lower socioeconomic status than they had. Just a thought...

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#25

Post by peoplefromibiza »

tharne wrote: post #17
xyzzy4747 wrote: post #4

Only very rich and very poor people in this world can afford to have kids.

When people cite money as a reason for not having children, they just usually just don't want children, but don't want to admit it. The fact is there has never been a better time in human history to raise children. People talk about climate change, but back in the 50's it wasn't any better -- we were in the midst of a nuclear standoff that could have gone apocalyptic at any second. Before that, there was a world war,…

> but back in the 50's

there were many more poor, having lots of kids.

OP didn't say that only rich people can afford to have kids, but that only rich and very poor people can.

Now that people are not as poor as in prior centuries, they can afford to not have kids to survive when they get older.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#26

Post by goodpoint »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling. The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunit…

Any ethical behavior can be arbitrarily labeled "virtue signalling" by those who don't like it.

For example:

- not having kids in a world facing climate collapse

- reducing one's energy usage or pollution

- donating money to some charity

It's a label that can be applied to any behavior.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#27

Post by jjj123 »

Zababa wrote: post #12
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling. The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunit…

I feel like this may be mostly signaling, because the logical conclusion from the argument that more people means more climate change would be to either have your existence reduce climate change (which most people don't do), or to remove yourself from the equation. Or maybe the argument is about the relative impact, and not having kids allows you to take the plane and still feel good about your actions because your t…

I don’t think we should hold people to “the logical conclusion” of all of their beliefs. We are not robots. We are capable of believing something without willing to go to the ends of the earth to be consistent with that belief.

For example, I believe it’s good to go to protests for causes I care about. However, I don’t go to even a fraction of the protests near me. Does this mean I don’t actually believe protests are a good thing?

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#28

Post by Auracle »

polalavik wrote: post #19

A whole article about people grappling with whether to make little copies of themselves when there are tons of kids that need adopted. The whole idea of having a kid just seems like a weird selfish ego trip. I know there’s underlying primal instincts at play - years of evolution driving you to breed, but we have the brains to take a step back and say is this the best choice I can make if I’d like to love and raise a…

I wanted a baby like my wife, and my wife wanted a baby like me. We both like each other so that makes sense. We ended up needing to do IVF. If that hadn’t panned out I don’t think we would have adopted, though I’ve always thought fostering would be rewarding.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#29

Post by piyh »

polalavik wrote: post #19

A whole article about people grappling with whether to make little copies of themselves when there are tons of kids that need adopted. The whole idea of having a kid just seems like a weird selfish ego trip. I know there’s underlying primal instincts at play - years of evolution driving you to breed, but we have the brains to take a step back and say is this the best choice I can make if I’d like to love and raise a…

I find that argument flawed since it's the ultimate form of "think of the children". It implies successful parenting is a zero sum game, and that by having a child you're taking love away from another.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#30

Post by bwestergard »

tharne wrote: post #9

These types of movements never really go anywhere, in large part because their proponents remove themselves from the genepool. It's the same reason that people having been saying for generations that religion is going to disappear, but it never actually does. Non-religious cultures tend to have below-replacement rate births while religious ones have higher birthrates. The main thing that not having children does is e…

At what rate do the children of Traditionalist Catholics remain Traditionalist? At what rate do the children of haredi Jewish parents remain haredi? What about grandchildren?

I'd be curious to see some of the demography here. My intuition is that in the U.S., these subgroups are growing their share of religiously identified persons (e.g. a larger fraction of Catholics are traditionalists today than in 1970) but they are not growing as a share of the general population.

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