The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline • Hacker News Board

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#311

Post by pengaru » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:51 PM UTC

b0rtb0rt wrote: post #107

jdlyga wrote: post #68

Once you have a kid, it's obvious why even besides the costs involved. There's not much sense of community, particularly in the white middle class. People are very individualistic and distrusting of others. There's a good reason for some of this, but to have a community you need to be a community member. And that means letting people in, trusting others and being trustworthy, and being out for the group instead of ju…

this really depends on where you live. i’m in an extremely safe family oriented suburb, there’s lot of community, kids have freedom to go outside, good friends with lots of neighbors and parents, my social life is busier than it was when i didn’t have kids.

> kids have freedom to go outside, good friends with lots of neighbors and parents, my social life is busier than it was when i didn’t have kids

Don't have kids myself, but this aspect seems incredibly obvious just reflecting on my childhood in suburbs of Chicago through the 80s-90s.

But the causes for what's keeping the kids indoors now instead of literally running the neighborhood are manifold. In the 80s there were far fewer indoor forms of entertainment to occupy the kids without driving mom batshit insane and making a mess of the place. Now the kids have tablets and gaming consoles, the outdoors is such a scary place when it's not full of gangs of children who know all the backyards better than the parents ostensibly owning them.

It's all rather depressing and the longer I live the more convinced I am that not adding my own kids to this state of affairs was the right move.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#312

Post by JPKab » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:51 PM UTC

eptcyka wrote: post #235

Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

Free childcare makes it so much easier. Can’t imagine leaving 80% of my salary at the daycare, but some in the UK do that.

My wife worked in several daycares in her early 20s, including an extremely expensive "Bright Horizons" location in a very affluent area. Even premium daycares provide inferior care to infants and young toddlers versus parental/family care. The economics of a business being in charge of your child demand this. Something that shocked her was at this super expensive daycare she worked at, the infants were basically given the bare minimum of attention while the older children consumed all of the time from the staff. The focus was on parental retention, so her job was to focus on changing the diapers of the infants to prevent diaper rash, and this took precedence over actually holding them and interacting with them. At no point is it remotely similar to how homo sapien mothers parent their OWN infants.

Daycare is to parenting as processed food is to nutrition. They are modern developments that prioritize economics over quality.

A study done in Canada (a "natural experiment", where a lottery determined eligibility for free daycare and allocated it at random) allowed researchers to track children who were enrolled in daycare versus children who were parented by their mothers, found that (adjusted for income) the infants who lost out on the lottery and were raised by their mothers in early childhood were healthier and better adjusted adults years later.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#313

Post by vel0city » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #243

fooker wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This logic would fly a couple of years ago. Since then, we have seen indiscriminate violence against people and families following the rules. And a bizzare hate campaign against H1B. And court judgements explicitly enabling masked government agents to target someone solely on the basis of skin color.

> Since then, we have seen indiscriminate violence against people and families following the rules. I'm not aware of any such thing, especially anything "indiscriminate". For sure there are causalities when protests go from speech to violence or directly interfere with the ability of law enforcement to enforce the law. But your framing makes it sound like roving bands of beat down squads. > And a bizzare hate campaig…

> I'm not aware of any such thing, especially anything "indiscriminate"

Ok, let me make you aware of it and then you'll be unable to continue to use this excuse.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26871634-19-ts-of-02...

> Detention without lawful authority is not just a technical defect, it is a constitutional injury that unfairly falls on the heads of those who have done nothing wrong to justify it. The individuals affected are people. The overwhelming majority of the hundreds seen by this Court have been found to be lawfully present as of now in the country.

Quit burying your head in the sand of what is happening around you. I urge you to actually read the reality in the court records of what is actually happening.

> That does not end the Court’s concerns, however. Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made, and orders that should have appeared on this list were omitted. This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#314

Post by lukeschlather » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

> No amount of baby cash

There is an amount of baby cash that would work. But we're talking enough cash to hire a competent housekeeper/nanny until the child is old enough to take care of themself.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#315

Post by scottious » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

cco wrote: post #251

Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

That doesn't seem to be supported by the data, the "nicer" and richer a country becomes, birth rates drop. And basically the opposite is true for countries with a high birth rate. How do you square those facts with your view here?

However, he specifically said "will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones."

But this doesn't necessarily mean being richer. For example, many people are afraid of what unchecked climate change is going to mean for kids born today. No amount of individual or country wealth is going to fix that issue.

I have kids myself, but man... I really really worry about this. I do personally know people cite climate change as one factor in having no kids (or fewer kids). Some people even think that having kids will make it worse. They're not wrong...

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#316

Post by Gagarin1917 » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

pawelduda wrote: post #303

JPKab wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Only if the mothers in aggregate truly believe that their children will have good lives, then will they have them." Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher? Nobody had to meet this bar you set before. Let's just be honest here. There were three recent developments, all of which were, by themselves, good things…

> Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher? One of reasons is because more hands were needed to deal with the difficulty

That’s looking at history through a modern lens.

The reality is, women were not able to control when they got pregnant for almost all of human history. It was just part of life and sex.

They weren’t having children as some kind of decades long plan for the benefit of the group… they just had sex and nature did the rest.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#317

Post by esseph » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #264

Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

"Only if the mothers in aggregate truly believe that their children will have good lives, then will they have them." Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher? Nobody had to meet this bar you set before. Let's just be honest here. There were three recent developments, all of which were, by themselves, good things…

> Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher?

Easy.

In the West at least, having more kids is no longer advantageous. In the past this could reduce the need for labor.

Now there isn't a "farm labor" problem to solve.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#318

Post by bombcar » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

showerst wrote: post #285

bombcar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Childcare can be nice to have but it can also be a full-time job just getting the kids there if you have more than a few. We certainly take advantage of things like free preschool; but if we look at it objectively (and ignore benefits to the child) it consumes more time than if we didn't use it - getting him ready, walking him to school, picking him up, etc. Since it's free, we look at "time spent" and it's something…

Minus the commute you had to do most of that anyway though, right? We get my four year old ready and walk her to school (city free pre-k a few blocks away, plus paid aftercare). It takes about an hour to get breakfasted, dressed, and ready which we would be doing anyway. Counting the walk both ways it's about 30 minutes of extra time for 8 hours of childcare. Unless your commute is just huge I can't see that math bei…

You got 8 hours out of it, we get maybe three - because of how it works out.

Add in infants and toddlers, and the fact that many places seem to do childcare for a very particular age range, and it can get hectic.

Workable, of course, anything is, but hectic. It can be understandable why people look at it from the outside and say "wow, that's a lot of kids, too many for me."

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#319

Post by anthonypasq » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #236

brightball wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've watched most of my life as narratives have been pushed in popular culture, TV, music, magazines, online articles, etc that go out of their way to convince people not to have children. Just some examples of trends I've observed personally. - Scare media about the cost of having children - Scare media about the environmental impact of having children, even calling it irresponsible for the planet - Scare media abou…

> there is nothing in this world that brings people more joy than their families and their children. Nothing. Counterpoint: Yes, you're giving the standard apologetic we all hear from parents. However, plain and simple, objectively it's typically the most stressful thing you will do in your entire life. It's so bad the US Surgeon General had to put out an entire advisory paper about it[1]: > 41% of parents say that m…

yeah and? i thought it was generally agreed that the best things worth doing in life are hard? a life of comfort and hedonism isnt fulfilling. We've known this for thousands of year.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#320

Post by cosmic_cheese » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

I think an underrated aspect is how much a couple is expected to willingly sacrifice to have kids. Financial mobility, career prospects/growth, hobbies, leisure, and retirement preparation are just a few of the things that have to take a back seat for both the mother and the father on top of all the things that impact both individually (especially the mother). At minimum, kids are like a boat anchor on all of those things. Naturally, for many people this can make starting a family look a lot putting an end to their personal lives until retirement.

Some might say this is selfish, but on the other hand it’s kind of weird to expect anybody to commit to that for the sake of some other party, whether that be society, the government, peers, or parents, particularly when none of them are doing anything of substance to help mitigate those impacts in exchange.

And that’s without even touching the financial security angle. It’s unpleasant to have to struggle and scrape by as an adult, but absolutely terrifying when there’s children involved, and for most couples the likelihood that they’ll need to struggle at some point is much higher if they have children. It’s understandable that people don’t want to risk that if they don’t absolutely have to.