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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#821

Post by trumpdong »

saintvlad wrote: post #431
submain wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that enough though? Women change their entire bodies, sacrifice years of their lives, and go through considerable stress to have a baby. And at the end, the benefits of that ordeal are not clear. Society would need to offer something to offset all those costs.

> Women change their entire bodies, sacrifice years of their lives, and go through considerable stress to have a baby. "Humans extinct, women most affected" Pretty amusing how it's always framed as some terrible burden on women to justify more gibs. As if they aren't also the beneficiaries of society thriving and men never make any sacrifices for society. Or that, well, women also "benefit" from reproducing in the Da…

pregnancy is literally a burden on women (and a few trans people)

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#822

Post by trumpdong »

ezst wrote: post #716
pjc50 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spent decades fighting teen pregnancy for this?

Yes I wonder why. Teen pregnancy sounds so amazing and inconsequential for individuals and societies alike that teens should just be inoculated as a rite of passage or something...

compared to the alternative, it definitely is. The problems with it are mostly artificial ones our society created. If you were God and redesigned human society from scratch, why wouldn't you have them procreate in their most healthy, fertile, and horny years?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#823

Post by trumpdong »

em-bee wrote: post #307
nemomarx wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did people want to have them in the past, and what shifts do you think could undo industrialization enough to return to that? The economic value of kids and the relative surety that kids will provide for you in your old age are I think very hard to reclaim now, and that was a pretty strong motivator for most of history. You could end all retirement funds and pension systems and so on, maybe?

how about making your pension depend on the number of kids? take an average pension now: X=100%, take half of it as a base, and then add a quarter or one fifth per child. so a childless person gets half the current pension, 1 child gives you 75% or 70%, 2 children 100% or 90%, 3 children 125% or 110%, etc...

We don't have pensions any more

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#824

Post by chrismorgan »

koolba wrote: post #814
chrismorgan wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I’m reading you correctly, you seem to think that two kids takes twice as much effort as one kid? People broadly agree that cost and effort both grow sublinearly. Especially effort, though it is of course much harder to quantify. But personally I suspect that even four kids (serially) may not cross the twice-as-much-effort threshold. Aging affects the amounts and types of effort required, too. Four kids in paralle…

Effort is definitely sub linear. And costs even more so. Cooking for four kids clearly has more raw ingredients, but you also have more opportunity to buy them in bulk. The active cook time itself does not increase much either. Hand me down clothing and books are all shared. The kids also help watch, teach, and entertain each other. I feel sorry for children that grow up without siblings. But even more so for parents…

> Cooking for four kids clearly has more raw ingredients, but you also have more opportunity to buy them in bulk.

Ah, now that was a challenge when I moved out of home. In theory I knew I was buying for 1 instead of 10, but it still took me a while to adapt. I had pretty much never seen food go stale or bad before!

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#825

Post by trumpdong »

pixl97 wrote: post #334
SoftTalker wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet I bet there are thousands of young people in Seattle having kids. These limits are all about what kind of life you want for yourself, and not about what is possible.

I mean, living in a garbage dump is possible, millions of of people do it around the world. The problem as a country you are doing to disappear demographically if you're choices are near suffering versus having kids.

It's possible, but if you do it in a developed country they'd take you to jail. Just like the law imposed a minimum wage, it also imposed a mandatory minimum standard of living.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#826

Post by bregma »

onetimeusename wrote: post #390
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…

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…

Birth control was illegal in the USA until the late 1960s (other than condoms, which is what sailors used with prostitutes). It takes a while for changes to propagate through society.

Also, consumer credit was illegal until the same time period, and only legalized for people with vaginas in the mid-1970s. That alone might have made all the difference with marriage and fertility (which after all are only mildly related).

Imagine how your choices would expand if unlike your mother, you did not need to become Mrs. John Doe to be able to move out of your father's house.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#827

Post by trumpdong »

swat535 wrote: post #135
mekdoonggi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it hedonism if a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing and caring for others, mentoring, caring for themselves and their community? That's like, the complete opposite of the hedonistic young couple not using protection and accidentally getting pregnant.

[flagged]

Using your own logic, didn't you just equate LSD and Ibuprofen to cancer?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#828

Post by trumpdong »

matchbok3 wrote: post #587
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the "bring them into this world" thing is overdone, but a big part of me feels it to my core. I haven't seen a firefly in a couple years. If I had a child today, describing this bug to a child would be almost mythical. How many things that we've taken for granted will a child born today never get to experience? Not shallow things like iPods, but genuine miracles of nature we're wiping out at an accelerating pa…

A pawn of consumerism? Please, please, I beg you. Detail a single communist civilization that thrived. Give me a break. The world is actually great, you are just focused on the negatives. Ever think that a child born today would be the one to help solve these problems you are so worried about? What a sad, resigned way to think about the world.

Why do you think every society is either consumerist or communist?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#829

Post by trumpdong »

SubmarineClub wrote: post #221
Arodex wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could make the point this is less about industrialization causing a change in behavior, and more chemical pollution destroying fertility. Of which we have plenty of concrete evidence.

Except evidence does not show that there are many more people trying and failing for kids as in past decades, so much as more people are delaying partnering up and having kids till later and later, along with many opting to be childless. And most fertility issues people do encounter can primarily be explained by attempting to have children decades later than is biologically optimal.

Chemical pollution could do that. We see it in other animals. Endocrine disruptors and stuff.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#830

Post by trumpdong »

vladms wrote: post #422
dividefuel wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How people feel about having kids doesn't seem to be a uniform thing. The majority of parents certainly seem to love their children, but I do see a lot of mixed opinions about whether they love being parents . In my peer group, it's been about 50/50 between people who seem to really enjoy parenthood and others who are struggling. There are many reasons for struggling, like how they or their spouse handle the stress a…

In my childless group of friends the ratio of happy to unhappy seems similar. What if it is not about the children but about the people? Each has its preferences, and damn I have seen a lot that have no clue what they like and continue doing things that makes them unhappy. Maybe we should have like with "open university day", "open raise a child day". Some might like it more than imagine, some might hate it more than…

I've heard of some schools doing this fake baby thing where you have to carry a sack of potatoes everywhere you go for a week.
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