And yet, not concerned enough to make the quality of life any better where people want to have children. Its like the greed is getting in the way of their ability to be more greedy in the future.
I keep hearing stories about falling birth rates, USA, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and on and on.
The articles often pose many questions about why younger generations dont seem to care about having kids, but very few articles actually say the real reasons:
Being able to afford a house or stable long term rent without either option competing for money to buy food or other essentials
Further to this the cost of a child once you can get by with enough money for the above
Climate change & future conditions for their children anxiety
The first one is the main reason we could afford to have kids.
We were able to buy our first house because of three things. First the housing market crash in 2008-9. My wife's car was totaled by a rich bitch in a Mercedes. Our rented duplex was robbed and we had renters insurance. The combination of insurance payments and cheaper prices allowed us to purchase our first home.
My house payment hasn't changed since 2009. It made up 36% of our take-home income then. Today it makes up less than 11%. I pay less per month than it costs to rent a 1 bedroom apartment in my area.
The older I get the more I see that landlords are a parasite on society. They extract huge amounts of wealth from the suffering of others.
I bought an old home in ~2016, I'm 100% conditionally with the VA so was looking at fitting expenses to my budget. After recently upping my payment to pay it off for my 50th bday (36 now) its only $600/mo. $632 or something right now cause insurance sucks at the moment.
Ive watched as people have gone from happy for me, to jokingly jealous, to jealous, to cranky jealous, to "I'm going to off you and steal your identity." 🤣
This market sucks and we HAVE to get institutional investors out of housing. We HAVE to start building. In order to do that, we HAVE to stop this cultural bullshit of housing being the prime investment/retirement vehicle for Americans.
Honestly I don't think that's the biggest factor. I think a lot more people would be willing to go through the process of having kids, if they felt financially stable enough to properly care for them afterwards.
im not sure I would call the last point anxiety. As existential threats go its not like nuclear war. Which might or might not happen based on our actions. Its something that is definately happening and extreme good action by us might mitigate it but we by and large have been taking worse actions or at best our beneficial vs non beneficial actions cancel each other out. Heck even without climate change pollution alone has the same ending.
Lol. How much does it cost to have a child in the hospital in the USA again? Oh, $18,865 you say? Huh. What if they need an ambulance to get there? Oh, $500 to $3000 depending on distance you say? And you say also that US Bureau of Labor and Statistics is letting us know that in four short years our grocery prices have risen 22.04% and are expected to rise another 5.11% per year indefinitely? Meanwhile corporate profits increase every single year and minimum wage has been stagnant for decades?
Someone should get them quick!!! I think I figured out why no one wants to have babies anymore!
I would like to also comment on how obscenely expensive daycare is and how fucked up it is we have to put children in school 40 hours a week just so we can keep working more than half our lives away but I feel like anyone reading this gets the idea. They will be begging your ass to have babies in the next 100 to 200 years if we make it that long and I'll bet you all those obscene expenses will be an even greater cost to income ratio then, too. I mean if birthrates are a problem you have to ask yourself are they just fucking stupid or just fucking greedy?
While the cost of children, lack of support and stagnant wages are definately a factor, birth rates have declined even in countries where income inequality is lower and support for parents is higher.
The capitalist class only cares about birthrate for productivity. Don't blame us for not caring about reduced productivity when most of us get a tiny fraction of the benefits of productivity. Also, what happened to all the shrieking about overpopulation? It's all just fearmongering to drive people to act in ways to benefit the capitalist class. I'm tired, leave me alone.
We're in the process of creating a labor force that threatens to put the majority of people already existing out of work such that we need to figure out how to restructure society in a post-labor era.
Hope? Things could improve, or at least hope that the next generation will be able to improve things. At the very least I see movement to try to do something about housing and college expenses. Maybe they’ll succeed. Renewable energy and electrification seem to be coming, regardless of active resistance. Too slow and too late, but maybe they’ll succeed. We’re in the middle of a wave of enthusiasm about high speed rail. Maybe they’ll succeed
I can't understand why anyone would expect most people to want to have kids. I can hardly afford to take care of myself, things look like they're only likely to get worse, and all indicators are that if I did have kids, they would be facing an even worse future when they hit adulthood. Why would I do that to them?
I am also a parent who dearly loves my daughter (it's her 14th birthday tomorrow!) but I don't want anyone to have kids who isn't willing to take the time and the effort and spend the money.
The decision is much too big to let anyone pressure you one way or another. It's totally okay for you to want what you want, and it's okay for that to change throughout your life.
Same, but they only want grandchildren as facebook sex trophies. No interest in babysitting or being supportive in any other meaningful way.
They were able to raise children on a single salary without leaning on family for childcare, so why can't we? Surely nothing has changed over the last 30-40 years.
If young Americans had financial stability, better mental health, hope for the future, etc. I'm sure that birth rate would go back up.
It's not like people don't enjoy fucking anymore. It's just that they're more careful than ever not to reproduce, because they can't afford parenthood.
Every now and then I see a parent having a tender moment with their child and I smile. I then reflect on whether my vasectomy/shirk of parenthood was the right choice.
I always come to the conclusion that it was. Perhaps when I'm older I will feel differently but I just can't imagine that in my life for a long time.
I heard on NPR that every day, like 30,000 30 something's come into parenthood. Just imagine that number not getting a job, but having a single baby each.
As a species we have the tools, technology, education, knowledge, cognition, and intelligence to override an animal instinct to reproduce willy nilly. We're more than that now. People should know what it means to choose to have children and weigh the benefits vs the costs to their lives.
Have children when you want to and when it makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, then don't do it. Humanity will survive thinning down to many billions fewer humans sitting around consuming resources. A person who never existed in the first place because healthy adults decided to put their time and resources into something else shouldn't be lamented, but a choice respected.
My family has a long history of not having many children. Our family tree is one of marrying in people and then just not growing larger generation to generation. We have plenty of childless couples in the tree and they make the coolest aunts and uncles a kid can have.
Clearly your family has a long history of enough children since you’re here to talk about it.
I feel like the opposite. My grandfather was one of 13, my mom was one of six, I was one of four, but the next generation only has my two. So far the odds of one more generation are not looking good.
Sure, the world is overpopulated but that’s a short term problem. Every estimate has a peak within 50 years, then a drop. It would be better for us all if that drop were a slow decline to something more sustainable rather than steep, chaotic, disruptive, if the slow drop were uniform, rather than much steeper for some
The FAO Food Price Index* (FFPI) stood at 119.1 points in April 2024, up 0.3 points (0.3 percent) from its revised March level, as an increase in the price index for meat and smaller upturns of vegetable oil and cereal indices slightly more than offset decreases in those for sugar and dairy products. Although it registered a second monthly uptick in April following a seven-month long declining trend, the FFPI was down 9.6 points (7.4 percent) from its corresponding value one year ago.
Get all your right wing nutcase friends to have more babies “for the cause”, then get all your left wing nutcase friends to have more babies because “oh noes, Project 2025”. Pretty soon your social security will be funded and you can retire in peace, far from either
Uh yeah, that'll happen when we are financially ruined for life and facing an ever worsening climate disaster because of greedy pieces of shit. If we can't reliably support ourselves, how can we support children?
Just what the fuck are we supposed to do with that???
Wonder how nice it would be not to put 0‐20% of your income into a 401k. Or the money I need to put into a HSA in case I get destroyed in medical bills. Or crippling student debt.
Maybe that money could go into housing or children.
It’s not endless. Birth rate is declining everywhere and standards of living are generally rising, meaning fewer people with incentive to uproot their lives for another place they’ll be treated as criminals. That flow could easily stop and any interruption switches us instantly from growth to serious shrinkage