291–300 of 1001 posts
You're baffled people aren't having kids? What bubble do you live in? People straight up can't afford housing much less children. The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now. Edit: the replies - y'all are out of touch. Visit an average family in the Midwest with a household income of < $100k/yr that doesn't own a home yet.
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Increasingly people feel pressure or obligation to go to college and spend their 20s getting established in a career. By the time they feel ready to have kids it's more likely they'll have trouble.
I don’t think they are mistaken though? Housing and childcare are multiples more expensive than a generation ago, makes sense people need to feel established.
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That table doesn't break things down by age. Just own it dude. You pulled the "49% of people aged 30-34" thing from this chart https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx or some variation of it and you misunderstood it.
Sorry, I just updated my links to include the citation for the age breakdown, which is in fact the link you linked to. Note the title of the chart you linked to (tab7.xlsx): " Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder" (emphasis added). This is percentage of householders who own the home that they are the householder of. EDIT: Also, while I'm at it, here's "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: 1994 to Present"…
It is not. It's a ratio of homeowners in an age group to the number of renter households in that age group, which is kinda a useless statistic.
To explain why it's a bad metric take this real (but simplified) example. My roommate and I share a "household". Lets pretend that besides my roommate and I there is only one other person aged 30-34 in the US and they own a home.
The Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder chart would say 50%. 1 owner household / 2 total occupied households.
Now if you read that chart and take it to mean that there is only 1 homeowner and 1 renter, you would be misunderstanding what the statistics mean. There are more renters than homeowners in our example but the metric doesn't reflect that because it isn't meant to.
You're baffled people aren't having kids? What bubble do you live in? People straight up can't afford housing much less children. The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now. Edit: the replies - y'all are out of touch. Visit an average family in the Midwest with a household income of < $100k/yr that doesn't own a home yet.
Among people making enough money presumably to afford having kids why no kids?
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HN has a blindness for the vast land area of America that isn't The Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, Boston, and a handful of other insanely expensive locations. Home ownership has probably plummeted in those markets (I don't have the data) but it leads to certain types of comments being passed around as fact. The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless…
Texan here. Your ad hominem attack is BS. Our house prices, North of Dallas and deep in the suburbs - far from the bay areas and Seattles, have doubled. That includes my home. People in our profession usually have to live by big cities, like Dallas. But the homes are ridiculously priced and it's insane. My juniors have no hope of owning a home that is big enough to raise a family without years of saving. And they're…
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I just don't have any interest in kids. They're expensive and they require a ton of sacrifice. I'd rather travel, golf, do hobbies and generally enjoy my life. The only people that seem to want me to have babies are my parents so they can have grand kids... too which I've told them "Thank you for having me, but that's not a valid reason for me to sacrifice my life". I don't really care about the preservation of the h…
Whenever I encounter this attitude I like to remind that person that they should have no voice, whatsoever, in what happens in government and politics anymore. I don't want people who are self-selecting themselves out of the future having any say in what happens for my children. It's fine that you don't want kids, enjoy the golf course I guess. But in general I will discount your opinions to zero on anything else of…
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I just don't have any interest in kids. They're expensive and they require a ton of sacrifice. I'd rather travel, golf, do hobbies and generally enjoy my life. The only people that seem to want me to have babies are my parents so they can have grand kids... too which I've told them "Thank you for having me, but that's not a valid reason for me to sacrifice my life". I don't really care about the preservation of the h…
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They didn't ask to be born, did they? Why should that accident of existence saddle them with obligations to birth others? This is such a shallow "yet you participate in society" argument.
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You’re benefiting from other people’s sacrifice. Your end of life care is entirely dependent on other people having and raising functional children. And these are all pretty weak reasons — people with kids do all of the things you’ve mentioned.
So what he should have kids who are going to take care of him when he's old? Sure, that's a great reason to have children.
It’s a normal and perfectly healthy reason to have children if you also love and cherish them. I would bet the number of parents having children for the sole and totally disinterested benefit of the children is approximately zero. The OP not caring about humanity tells me they’re profoundly selfish and therefore probably not capable of the love and cherish part though.
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You’re benefiting from other people’s sacrifice. Your end of life care is entirely dependent on other people having and raising functional children. And these are all pretty weak reasons — people with kids do all of the things you’ve mentioned.
So what he should have kids who are going to take care of him when he's old? Sure, that's a great reason to have children.