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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

#941

Post by senordevnyc »

somenameforme wrote: post #891
montroser wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you hire a nanny for $6k/mo... What problem have you solved? You're still paying the six grand, and you had better hope the nanny is good, because that is your kids' whole world now for a chunk of their existence.

It depends on the area, but a nanny is typically nowhere near $6k/month. If desired you can also generally arrange something with other parents in your area to do a cost share with the side benefit of also getting a bit more socialization for your kids. There's endless differences with nanny vs daycare. A big one is that most studies show children do best when raised by a small handful of consistent figures. In dayca…

A good nanny for four kids is definitely more than $6k / month in lots of parts of America, you're ignoring the downsides of nannies (like when they get sick, or need time off, etc), you're ignoring a lot of the upsides of daycare (like socialization), and the research does not support your claim that kids do better being raised by a nanny than daycare.

It's totally fine that you've chosen a nanny over daycare. I did for my first, and I think we'll go with a nanny for my second, but you're presenting a wildly misleading perspective here.

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

#942

Post by senordevnyc »

try_the_bass wrote: post #871
dh2022 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sel…

But that "someone else" doesn't exist yet...it seems nonsensical to gauge whether you're keeping resources from a non-entity.

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

#943

Post by wolvoleo »

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 don't understand why people care so much. Humanity is not going to go extinct for 1000 years at this rate (which won't continue) and any decline is good for the planet and environment. We can't keep growing as humanity, especially when so many countries are coming up to modern standards. We just don't have the resources for it and a lot of today's problems are a result of that growth. It's really healthy for the human population to shrink a bit.

It'll cause some temporary financial issues like less working people to pay for pensioners but that's only while the largest boom passes. Not a big deal.

I myself am in my 50s and never had kids, never wanted to either. I'm polyamorous and bi, I'm just having too much fun having no ties. I've lived in 5 countries. So I'm not really bound to one in particular anymore.

A lot of the birth rate people seem really right-wing with their replacement theory and that's the real underlying reason. They also say they care about the future of society, but at the same time are climate change deniers which will have a far greater negative impact on all of us (including their kids!) than population decline.

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

#944

Post by wolvoleo »

socalgal2 wrote: post #668
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…

My take is that modern culture just doesn't want kids. It doesn't matter how cheap you make having a family, for many it's just not remotely the same culture as it was 50-70 years ago. Then, for most, it was, at 20-ish, find a partner ASAP and have a family. That was "the culture". Today it's "have a great career, travel, party, netflix, game, ... and maybe someday think about kids" There's other stats like in the US…

Yes some countries like India are still like that. Parents from the smaller villages literally pick a partner for their kids if they don't find one.

I think that's really unfair, people deserve to enjoy their lives. If they actually enjoy it that's fine but nobody should be pressured into having kids.

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

#945

Post by senordevnyc »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #670
alpha_squared wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with this, but I want to add another thing that I feel is easily overlooked in both the groups you listed and your post: having men who'd make women comfortable having kids. The alpha-bro intimidation, casual assault/misogyny, disregard for mothers' careers, and lack of community don't exactly scream "great time to have a baby" (I'm not even going to touch the current topic dominating the news). Whi…

> 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…

I agree that male culture in the US has a lot of room to grow (so does female culture, for that matter).

But that doesn't explain why many countries that rank higher in terms of egalitarianism have even lower birth rates than the US.

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

#946

Post by JPKab »

tuna74 wrote: post #720
JPKab wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 giv…

Interesting that you only seem to think that mothers should take care of their kids.

I was raised by a single father, but thanks for derailing the conversation with your assumption that I'm a sexist because I didn't account for the edge case in parenting.

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

#947

Post by Herring »

46493168 wrote: post #866
g9yuayon wrote: post #837

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…

>In practice, Japan seems to be fine 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 w…

+ The far right is rising there too.

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

#948

Post by redhed »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #875
jvandreae wrote: post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I understand the majority of the story, and through some personal experience really feel for women who have a controlling and abusive man. I find the story a bit strange though. It begins describing how boys inherit the idea of some beautiful woman that they are owed instead of it being something that requires constant work and effort. I agree/understand this part. But then it describes him trying to limit public access, how he has no document showing ownership, etc and this is where I get lost. To me that is what marriage is, giving up freedom for a partnership. To turn my husband self into a park, I feel like it is completely understandable my wife wants some space that is "public" and other that is "private". The key is healthy boundaries, ones set by compromise and understanding through honest communication. That's what separates healthy and abusive relationships, not the boundaries in the first place.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the story and if I am let me know, I just feel like it describes the ideal situation as one's partner entirety is open to the "public", and where setting boundaries itself is abusive, which I feel like is not really how most people feel nor what they want in a relationship.

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

#949

Post by Night_Thastus »

slaw wrote: post #843
tuna74 wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People in their 20's will see peak world population in their lifetime. It will be fascinating to see how society changes over the decades that follow that." I am 45. I have fairly big* chance of making the global population curve actually drop! *OK, not really, but you get the point I hope....

All projections show world population growth until at least 2100, thanks to Africa birth rate above 4.

No, they don't. That's the UN prediction, because they assume that somehow, magically, all countries below replacement will simultaneously, near-instantly increase in fertility rate by huge amounts over the next couple of years. Look at the graphs, they're nonsensical.

If you look at the actual trends of those rates, peak population is ~2050, maybe sooner.

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

#950

Post by loeg »

supertrope wrote: post #160
mekdoonggi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, I genuinely question why I continue to participate in a society that tolerates traffic deaths and firearm violence like the US. If there's a large chunk of people who won't lift a finger to keep kids from being shot at school, there's a large chunk of people who value my child's life at zero.

One of the ways the Netherlands made streets safer for dismounted people was by framing it as stopping killing kids with your cars. Yes this is "think of the children" logic but since kids are generally healthy the top causes of kid death in the US are gunfire and cars.

FWIW "gunfire" as a killer of children (under 18) is mostly inter-gang violence, not school shootings or anything else. Cars dominate. Guns are mostly a risk factor you have some control over as a parent (don't have guns at home, don't raise your kids into gangs), whereas car culture really isn't.
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