861–870 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not that being a parent is harder - it's actually easier (excluding the post-WWII American boom years which were a fluke). Why would it be easier today? You used to just open your door and go let your kids run around and hope they're back before dinner. Absolutely nothing like today's ultracompetitive, ultra-regimented world.
Kids aren't dying in childbirth, for one.
I truly believe psychology is at the root of this. People start families when the optimism they feel about the future outweighs the pessimism. Even if this evaluation is done subconsciously. At some point, in first-world society - averaging across different societies and social support systems, and considering the numbers in aggregate - we flipped. Pessimism about the future outweighs optimism. Downstream of that fli…
Hard to believe that people who suffered the atrocities of the first half of the 20th Century were tremendously optimistic about the future, yet birthrates were MUCH higher across the world.
There used to be an underlying theme of "humanity will figure it out, even if we make mistakes".
Perhaps we can try and take care of each other, and many other things will show signs of improving? There needs to be more access to things like healthcare, childcare, education, entertainment, leisure, arts, recreation, and so much more. There needs to be more love in our societies and the numbers that indicate well-being will follow. After all, what is the point of all of this? To get a promotion?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Meanwhile, the curb is full of extra large SUVs idling with kids just waiting inside the cars Anecdotally, when my work schedule was wonky for a while I would do the same with my kids. Those few extra minutes hanging out with them in the morning were something I valued a lot. We got to talk and relax a little bit after the rush of getting ready in the morning. They had all day to spend with their classmates so a fe…
I am friends with a lot of other parents already. I do go out of my way to make friends. I already organize bike trips to the museum and stuff like that. I'm a very social person. What I'm saying is that there are a lot of forces keeping people solitary and anti-social. This is just one of them. I know for a fact that some of these families waiting in their SUVs live a short walk from the school. Yet still they choos…
Yes, I'm sure there's absolutely nothing you're doing to engender the general atmosphere of distrust...
Honest question: why are we so afraid of population decline? For people on the left, it means less consumption, less environment impact, less carbon footprint, and in general fewer damn evil people who are destroying the mother earth. For the right, everyone is responsible for their own destiny including their retirement life so they worry about their retirement spending solely on their own anyway. In practice, Japan…
Japan seems to be fine? Japan, which created its own lost generation [0]? Japan, which has a word for "death by overwork" [1]? Japan, which has 9 million abandoned homes in ghost towns [2], the highest public debt in the developed world [3], and healthcare system under strain because old people are being left there for no other reason than there's no one to care for them? [4]
In what way is Japan doing fine?
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi
[2]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/15/in-japans-ageing-co...
[3]https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/123015/3-eco...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am friends with a lot of other parents already. I do go out of my way to make friends. I already organize bike trips to the museum and stuff like that. I'm a very social person. What I'm saying is that there are a lot of forces keeping people solitary and anti-social. This is just one of them. I know for a fact that some of these families waiting in their SUVs live a short walk from the school. Yet still they choos…
> I don't want him going close to the cars because they've LITERALLY been pumping out pollution for 10-15 minutes (those early spots are very coveted). I have to tell my son to hold his breath when we bike on the empty sidewalk past these idling cars. social-interaction problems aside, why are the cars idling? seems like the school/city would have an ordinance prohibiting that
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Many of our child-free friends are going to go through a lot of loneliness when they're old I've seen this "kids are insurance against loneliness" logic repeated often, but I don't believe this bares out in reality. I personally know plenty of child-free older couples who remain quite happy and social. I also know plenty of parents whose kids don't speak to them anymore or whose children have lives on the other sid…
You can absolutely think it as long as it stops there. There is a reason. At that point in the game, your needs and wants are supposed to be subordinate to those of the kids' long term survival. I could maybe understand this sentiment, oh 50 years ago, when you maybe could plausibly claim you had no idea that child rearing is not exactly easy, but unless a person is almost completely detached from society, it is near…
If that's the attitude it renders virtually every discussion about the topic moot and the people in question better stop trying to give life advice to anyone else.
My wife and I don't want kids and we've heard our fair share of (unsolicited) opinions on the topic from people who clearly weren't always happy. I've only ever known one woman I worked with, who was a brilliant scientist, tell me straight up she regrets having children and wished she could have focused on her research.
If that's not something you can honestly say without being berated then clearly the 'propaganda' still works mostly in one direction.
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…
How do you explain the fact that poor countries have higher fertility? And within countries, poorer groups and regions have higher fertility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones. It's funny to me that of all the crazy crackpot theories on fertility Twitter, you picked the craziest and crackpotiest. I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic…
Their life are pretty stable - consistently bad, you can say. They know what their kid have is more or less same as what they did - not improving, but not getting worse either Can you say the the same in a city where housing is getting less and less affordable,?