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The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

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

#871
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Nah, I think that it is just selfish, and that it’s the least weird thing in the world to expect people to c…

Keep living in your bubble my friend. It is not selfish to see the sacrifices required to raise children (and I will not enumerate them here, this thread is full of them if you want to educate yourself), see that all you get from society is "thoughts and prayers" (at least in WA state where I live) and take a hard pass on having children.

I... What?

This is literally the definition of selfish? You see what you must give up for the sake of someone else (children), see the lack of support you will receive, and decide that you don't want to make that exchange.

That's literally a selfish decision, because you are deciding you want to keep that energy and those resources for yourself.

It's not inherently bad to make that decision, but it absolutely is selfish.

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

#872

[flagged]

Do you really believe that "women/DEI" folks have ever had more political power than white males? Seems weird to me to put blame on them instead of the wealthy and ruling class.

>Do you really believe that "women/DEI" folks have ever had more political power than white males? Seems weird to me to put blame on them instead of the wealthy and ruling class.

YES!!!

Let me bring your knowledge up to speed.

The Australian group Collective Shout went after Steam because of games "exploring kids". Steam didn't do anything.

CS went after Visa and Master Card and because of CS political influence, Visa and Master Card went after Steam: You either comply or you can no longer use the only payment system used worldwide. CS has done the same in the past, they have massive political influence and the group is composed of 100% feminists only who hate men in any way and form, check their X account.

The same week that happened, the UK pushed age verification, everything went to shit from there which brings us to the mess things are right now, all in the name of "protect the kids", all started by one group with enough power.

All it took was a feminist group with political influence to create a domino effect that isn't stopping any time soon. Services are rushing to comply causing personal information of millions of people to be for sale on the dark web :)

But hey, you don't have to believe on me. I gave you the names and order of how things happened. Feel free to cross-check them.

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

#873

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…

As you say, a lot of the reasons people give are flippant and superficial. The most common claim I've seen is that everything is too expensive, but this is untrue. For some time, we have been richer than we've ever been in history, on the whole, and yet we witness decline. And all of the money-oriented incentives gov'ts have deployed have also petty much failed. The problem is composed of multiple factors. However, I…

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

#874
I have yet to see anyone, my family included, that actually seemed to enjoy parenting. I know for a fact my father was ready to run to the middle east shortly after I was born, my brother was a total accident and not terribly wanted either. As a result we’ve never been close my parents and I…why would I want to be a parent after that? I have no desire to live a life a child would require either.

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

#875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having men who'd make women comfortable having kids This is maybe the most underrated comment in this whole lively thread. Completely agree on all fronts. Men are a huge, huge problem in this equation: in the US, anyway, many of them simply refuse to catch up to simple human values about respect, mutuality, and emotional intelligence. At root it's about entitlement. Scores of women, seeing this very, very clearly s…

Female/leftist projection at its finest. There is no single group more entitled than the AWFL.

There's a book about male domestic violence perpetrators which you really ought to read. It's called "Why Does He Do That?". Author is Bancroft. The vast majority of men in the US are not abusers. But he describes a degree of entitlement to women -- their bodies and minds -- that, in my decades of clinical experience with families and couples, applies to most men in our culture. It's a little parable:

> Once upon a time, there was a boy who grew up with a happy dream. He was told when he was very young—as soon as he was old enough to understand anything, really—that a beautiful piece of land out on the edge of town was in trust for him. When he was grown up, it would be his very own and was sure to bring him great contentment. His family and other relatives often described the land to him in terms that made it sound like a fairy world, paradise on earth. They did not tell him precisely when it would be his but implied that it would be when he was around age sixteen or twenty.

> In his mid-teens, the boy began to visit the property and take walks on it, dreaming of owning it. Two or three years later, he felt the time had come to take it on. However, by then he had noticed some disturbing things: From time to time, he would observe people hiking or picnicking on his acres, and when he told them not to come there without his permission, they refused to leave and insisted that the land was public! When he questioned his relatives about this, they reassured him that there was no claim to the land but his.

> In his late adolescence and early twenties, he became increasingly frustrated about the failure of the townspeople to respect his ownership. He first tried to manage the problem through compromise. He set aside a small section of the property as a public picnic area and even spent his own money to put up some tables. On the remainder of the land he put up “No Trespassing” signs and expected people to stay off. But, to his amazement, town residents showed no signs of gratitude for his concession; instead they continued to help themselves to the enjoyment of the full area. The boy finally could tolerate the intrusions on his birthright no longer.

> He began screaming and swearing at people who trespassed and in this way succeeded in driving many of them away. The few who were not cowed by him became targets of his physical assaults. And when even his aggression did not completely clear the area, he bought a gun and began firing at people just to frighten them, not actually to shoot them. The townspeople came to the conclusion that the young man was insane.

> One particularly courageous local resident decided to spend a day searching through the town real estate records and was able to establish what a number of people had suspected all along: The property was indeed public. The claim made by the boy’s family on his behalf was the product of legend and misconception, without any basis in the documentary record. When the boy was confronted with this evidence, his ire only grew.

> He was convinced that the townspeople had conspired to alter the records and that they were out to deprive him of his most cherished dream. For several years after, his behavior remained erratic; at times it seemed that he had accepted having been misled during his childhood, but then he would erupt again in efforts to regain control of the land through lawsuits, creating booby traps on the land to injure visitors and employing any other strategy he could think of. His relatives encouraged him to maintain his belligerence, telling him, “Don’t let them take away what is yours.”

> Years went by before he was able to accept the fact that his dream would never be realized and that he would have to learn to share the land. Over that period he went through a painful, though ultimately freeing, process of gradually accepting how badly misled he had been and how destructive his behavior had been as a result.

I'm praying for you, internet friend!

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

#876
post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just hard now. Before I had kids I had a network of friends and had a great social life. Now it's just me and my wife. If I want more friends I'll have to have more kids I guess? I have 4 now. One (my first) is severely autistic. Financially the cost? I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare. 2k a month in healthcare expenses. Then community wise. Every time I've gone to take them to the movies, or to a restaurant o…

"don't get me started on dog/cat people who..." listen dude, you chose to have kids. You and your partner made the conscious decision to produce life, maybe instead of complaining about it, just live it and stop vilifying people who made different choices than you did. You talk about your children as if they're a burden and that's sad.

>who equate their struggles to mine...

Perhaps they don't like the fact that someone is equating pet struggles to human struggles.

Doesn't sound like they are talking about them being a burden, just how their life has changed and how they can't do all the things that those without kids do.

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

#877
post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People still have insane fertility rates in complete - objectively shitholes - like Bangladesh, etc." Here is the fertility rate in Bangladesh: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/bgd/ban...

I stand corrected, it doesn't have "insane fertility rate". That's still a high fertility rate for a country with stats like this: https://www.globalhungerindex.org/bangladesh.html > 25.1% of children under five are stunted, 10.7% of children under five are wasted And the country had even higher fertility rates when it had higher frequency of famines, and much higher rates of hunger and malnourishment. The point i wa…

i think those stats show the opposite. They had higher fertility rate when things were worse, but women mostly didnt have a choice. Now they're better but still bad, and women do have a choice - so they are choosing not to, judging by the collapsed birth rate.

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

#878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My wife and I's friends have basically vanished from our lives, they have zero initiative or interest in coming over to see the kids or help in any way I completely believe that’s been your experience, but want to highlight that his is a difficult asymmetry in these friendships. I in no way mean to imply that the below is the experience your friends had with you, just that the challenges are not one-way. In my own…

Speaking from the other side, but having been on your side for most of my 20s and 30s and felt exactly how you do, they probably do feel you detached from them. Their lives fundamentally changed to the extent that as you say, any gathering necessarily must be on terms that allow them to parent. And the level of last-minute cancellations and apologies increase. And on top of that, they’re just not prioritising reachin…

I think it's a fair response, and I can appreciate the truth in one's own life that leads you to write it. But this situation is a complex dynamic, no two situations are precisely the same either factually or subjectively. The same couple with a new child may stay close to one, drift away from another for totally different reasons that may not have one thing to do with intention or effort.

At any rate, I'm never too proud to reach out to old friends even if the time between attempts increases. Relationships may change again!

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

#879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is surely part of the story historically, but not recently. Women’s labor force participation rate peaked in the late 90s in the US, while total fertility rate is down ~20% since then. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002

There could be a rubber band effect, where it takes time to get a feel for things like paying for childcare. The reaction is going to come from those who are observing what's happening to the "early adopters".

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

#880
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…

I’m a father of 4 and I’m overloaded with community, have you tried finding a good church? That’s where people have found community for thousands of years.

if they didnt come with the religion and discrimination i might be interested. alas.
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