My parents asked when I planned on having kids, and I answered something along the lines of "I love my unborn children FAR too much to consider bringing them into this hell-hole."
...that was maybe 5 years ago? They haven't TOUCHED that topic since, lol.
I said the same thing to my parents and they said "Well if you enjoy life, so will your children!" They were really stumped when I told them I wouldn't exactly say I "enjoy" life.
Man now I want these clowns to ban jacking off so I can make that joke. No wait...
That's weird because the world is in better shape than it was when I grew up. You have drills for what to do in active shooter situations. I had drills for what to do in case of a nuclear war. I don't think it's as much to do with how bad the world is vs how bad the economy is for young people... and I"m not even sure if it's statistically worse. Certainly housing is worse. Are there any other metrics that are really worse? (This is an honest question, I"m not looking for a generational fight. None of us have any control over when we were born.) Wealth inequality has gotten worse, but it was pretty bad before too.
I guess what I"m really arguing is that I think there is too much negativity and pessimism in our society especially amongst the young. Some things do suck. But finding someone who you love and then deciding to start a family with them and creating a small pocket of a better world seems 100% worth it to me.
Economy is a huge one. If minimum wage kept pace with cost of living, it'd be something like $30 per hour today. That's one of the hardest points to drive to older folks, cuz they see shit like pushes for $15 and think it's ridiculous cuz theirs was only $5 and think we're asking for three times more than what they earned; and simultaneously that the difference is only a factor of three. The cost of everything has left our earning potential in the dust, so we're having to cut things like health insurance just to keep a roof over our head. Boomers had it WAY easy financially, but so many of them feel like they have a super human work ethic cuz they paid for college by working a summer... that shit doesn't work anymore.
Climate is another hard hitter. We're actively watching a mass extinction event kick off, and we know what needs to happen to fix it, but the people with the power to do anything about it don't give a fuck, so the rest of us get to just watch helplessly as our planet dies. This situation is going to be worse and worse for every incoming generation, so shouldering our potential kids with that burden would be one of the cruelest things we're capable of.
Then there's culture. You'd think we'd have at least made some progress here, but no. The Nazis are back, white supremacism is rampant, and christofascism is a rapidly growing cancer that our political and justice systems don't seem able or willing to address. All it takes is a meme on Facebook for WAY too many parents to abandon their children's safety by denying them vaccines. Women are being denied healthcare and imprisoned for things like a miscarriage.
...and that's today. Everything I mentioned is in a nose dive, so how much worse is it going to be in 5? 10? 50 years?
Who in their right mind would look at the dumpster fire we live in and think "Yup! This is a suitable environment to raise a kid!"? I know a lot of people just want their 'bundle of joy' but that's completely ignoring the kid's perspective - damning them to all ^that is selfish to a borderline evil extent.
We're fucked, but our kids are WAY more fucked.
Your comment does a pretty good job of illustrating the main reasons: further wealth inequality, difficult housing market, and a crazier society that's becoming more accepting of school shootings/shootings in general...not to mention climate change, more wars, and batshit politics becoming the norm globally. How bout that response to covid? If anything had ever disgusted me about this country it's how brazenly people were willing to risk other people's lives because they couldn't be bothered to even attempt to be safe or consider others safety. As if i didn't have enough reasons not to have kids before... it seems almost cruel to bring them into today's world.
For sure, turning a blind eye to all that and escaping into a relationship and starting a family sounds great. You need a good job to do that...or you and your partner may both need good jobs to do that. Who watches the kids then? How much time will you actually get to spend with them? Are you going to saddle your parents or in-laws with the responsibility of raising them? Day care? What point is there in having children if you're spending most of your time away from them? Disregard all that of course, if you're rich ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I just don't think I'm ready to spend all of my waking hours endlessly trying to produce enough income to maintain all the expenses that come with a family, while still putting aside money for the kids to go to college and a retirement fund to boot.
It would be nice to have a family, i just don't think it's practical anymore. I don't believe it's the simple choice you make it out to be (at least that's how i interpreted the last sentence of your comment)
You wanna compare how many children died from nuclear war vs how many children died from school shootings in your lifetime?
I used to scoff at people being pessimistic that society is getting worse. But all the material security and safety is mitigated as climate change is getting worse and scientists are not optimistic about the prospects. And the phenomenon is inducing loss of biodiversity and food and migration which causes social tensions. I agree that the current society is much better off than the previous generations but I'm afraid we can't say the same about the future ones.
I never see it brought up but. We were told not to constantly! Unless you were rich you weren't supposed to have kids and now they are shocked people listened to them. It's been said for at least 100 years
I had the same experience and always wondered whether I lived in a weird bubble. Maybe there's a couple of weird bubbles out there. But no one I know in my generation or the adjacent generations has ever been told or pressured into having kids. Hardly anyone had parents who took it for granted they'd have grandchildren. It was more like school first, career first, stability first, happiness first, self fulfillment first, and then maaaaybe you can think about whether you want a kid in your life but we don't recommend. All the sex ed throughout school was focused on how to avoid pregnancy and STIs and how to pleasure oneself and your partner (which I don't want otherwise, just pointing it out).
You may need to listen better. In all of that was the implied, “so you’ll be able to provide a good home for your family”. In all of that was the expectation that getting married and having kids were a normal part of life, but work much better when you establish yourself first
"Because I was bought up to be a moral person who put the wellbeing of others before myself - why would I inflict a world that defines a person by their job on anyone?"
I am entirely convinced that this movement was started by rich oligarchy to get the poors to 'breed' themselves out of existence.
People will be fucking and having kids regardless. The people who never really wanted kids anyway just fall back on this as an excuse rather than being honest with themselves or are too lame to just say no rather than feeling like they need to justify it. I'll admit, it's a convenient excuse that gives yourself a nice big virtue signalling pat on the back though.
It’s more to do with the collapse of civilization. I have kids, but if I knew then, what I know now, I wouldn’t have had them.
Consume less doomer content mate lol.
Cheating with Kurzgesagt but there's plenty to back it all up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348 - Human Pop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw - Climate Change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrIRuqr_Ozg - Nuclear War
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide check https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_620_original_image/public/2022-06/IPCC_AR6_WGI_TS-CO21950-2100.gif?itok=saFYe6xs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions check https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/1850-_Annual_emissions_of_carbon_dioxide%2C_by_country.svg/800px-1850-_Annual_emissions_of_carbon_dioxide%2C_by_country.svg.png
Most of this is just CO2 as well. Not even Methane which we're getting on top of now too. Turns out renewable energy + batteries is OP.
That fails the logic test. The rich oligarchy may look down on the rest of us, exploit us, disrespect us, but they also need us and they know it. There’s a much better argument for them needing an ever growing class of the down trodden, uneducated, gullible consumers
People are waaaaaaaay less needed than you think mate.
Almost every manufacturing job can be done with automation. Most other jobs comes from service industry, healthcare, education... The population stablizing on it's own is already great, but to maintain a functional advancing civilization doesn't require the 10.4 billion people our population is expected to stop at in 2100.
Regardless, it's less about getting people to not have kids so there's less poors. It's more about a cruel joke where the rich have tricked the poor into thinking they can't have kids then they self defeat themselves. Meanwhile they get to keep having them and it's the laughingrichpeople.jpg . The poor are always going to outnumber them just from a numbers game. It's more about how funny they'd think it that the people who benefit the most from a civilization, the smartest of the lower class, aren't having children causing them to 'breed themselves out of existence.'
Nightmare* 😋
Also work perfectly with France's curent president.
