7 ms·

Another false trope pushed by everyone... "Women are marrying later and having less kids because of career concerns, lack of maternity leave and child benefits

Another false trope pushed by everyone... "Women are marrying later and having less kids because of career concerns, lack of maternity leave and child benefits." The countries with the best maternity leave and child benefits have the oldest marriage and lowest birth rates. And japan, where most women give up their jobs once married to start families and where the government pays women to have children have one of the lowest birth rates in the world. So it's not career/jobs, it's not maternity leave, it's not child benefits. Could it be societal? Media? Education?

ForHackernews 8y ago
Maybe people don't want to bring children into a world that will be worse off in many ways than the one they grew up in? That hypothesis would correspond with the observation that it's the most educated, most long-term-focused people in (currently) stable societies that are delaying or avoiding children.
- pmorici 8y ago
  "Maybe people don't want to bring children into a world that will be worse off in many ways than the one they grew up in?" Objective measurements show that the world better off than it was and still improving. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    That's assuming those trends will continue unabated. There's plenty of reason to believe they will not[0] [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william-vollmann-carbon-ideologies/568309/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william...
  - tomjen3 8y ago
    For the world in general, yes. For the US middle-class? Medical expenses and college tuition are both exploding, so they are finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet. Yes cars are safer, cellphones so much better and so on, but it just doesn't add up to enough. Plus all it takes is one wrong move by Putin or Kimmy and all that progress goes up in a mushroom cloud.
  - kup0 8y ago
    Yes, but do the people referenced in your quote know or care about objective measurements or do they just feel that things are worse? The sentiment exists regardless of the truth.
Bombthecat 8y ago
I think media. In Brazil there was a soap opera where the main actors got ( often pregnant) pregnancy rates increased heavily during that time.
buckminster 8y ago
It's contraception. The solution is for the government to randomly introduce placebos into the contraceptive supply. Or just accept that, given the choice, people don't want kids that much.
- stonecraftwolf 8y ago
  This. This thread is killing me. This might be the only comment so far to even consider women as having agency. When you give women control over their own bodies and equal enough rights to support autonomy — so, treat them like people, basically - it turns out they don’t want to have so many kids, because growing and birthing humans is incredibly taxing and traumatic. The trauma, in particular, is weirdly something that people don’t talk to young women about, and that often remains hidden from view. Reach a certain age (as a woman) and get alone in a room with other women of a certain age and the stories are absolutely harrowing. Of the women I’ve known personally who have given birth, all but one had PTSD from the experience. I am, frankly, dreading the replies to this comment, as the thread already tilts heavily towards the sort of dehumanizing abstraction of women’s rights that often precedes more explicitly misogynist arguments cloaked in utilitarianism, so I will just say that if you consider coercing women into traumatizing and often debilitating situations to be an acceptable “cost” of a hypothetical economically optimal birth rate, I do not consider you to be capable of engaging in good faith and will not respond. I would also suggest that concerns about “birth rate” or other abstracted metrics are often a screen for concerns — from men — about access to sex. I mean, in the context of intensifying climate change, a decreasing birth rate is not really our biggest problem as a species. It might actually be an asset.
  - adventured 8y ago
    There were the famous studies from a few years ago in Israel and Germany that sparked a small cultural spat in the West about regretting motherhood and having a child being a source of immense unhappiness.[1][2] It's of course obvious why they generated so much outrage, centuries of propaganda about motherhood being bliss and the highest calling for women. To quote from the WaPo article below (some people may not be able to read it): "it turns out that having a child can have a pretty strong negative impact on a person's happiness, according to a new study published in the journal Demography. In fact, on average, the effect of a new baby on a person's life in the first year is devastatingly bad — worse than divorce, worse than unemployment and worse even than the death of a partner." "Researchers Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä followed 2,016 Germans who were childless at the time the study began until at least two years after the birth of their first child. Respondents were asked to rate their happiness from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied) in response to the question, "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?"" "On average, new parenthood led to a 1.4 unit drop in happiness. That's considered very severe. To put things in perspective, previous studies have quantified the impact of other major life events on the same happiness scale in this way: divorce, the equivalent of a 0.6 "happiness unit" drop; unemployment, a one-unit drop; and the death of a partner a one-unit drop." [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-israeli-study-regretting-motherhood-debate-rages-in-germany/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-israeli-study-regretting... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/08/11/the-most-depressing-statistic-imaginable-about-being-a-new-parent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/0...
hhjinks 8y ago
> So it's not career/jobs Where did this conclusion come from? It does not follow from your comment. If it's the thing about Japan, that's more convincing as an argument that it IS career prospects that is the culprit. So while it's true that lowering birth rates has a societal cause, the ever increasing expectation of women to build a career is a major contributing factor.
fastball 8y ago
It doesn't matter if Japanese women quit their jobs to raise a family once they're married if they're not getting married[0] 0: https://www.dw.com/en/why-fewer-japanese-are-seeking-marriage/a-19349576 https://www.dw.com/en/why-fewer-japanese-are-seeking-marriag...
ksec 8y ago
>So it's not career/jobs, it's not maternity leave, it's not child benefits. Could it be societal? Media? Education? Or Could it be so simple we can no longer afford to marry and have a Child even if both of us have a job.

ForHackernews 8y ago

Maybe people don't want to bring children into a world that will be worse off in many ways than the one they grew up in? That hypothesis would correspond with the observation that it's the most educated, most long-term-focused people in (currently) stable societies that are delaying or avoiding children.

pmorici 8y ago
"Maybe people don't want to bring children into a world that will be worse off in many ways than the one they grew up in?" Objective measurements show that the world better off than it was and still improving. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  That's assuming those trends will continue unabated. There's plenty of reason to believe they will not[0] [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william-vollmann-carbon-ideologies/568309/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william...
- tomjen3 8y ago
  For the world in general, yes. For the US middle-class? Medical expenses and college tuition are both exploding, so they are finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet. Yes cars are safer, cellphones so much better and so on, but it just doesn't add up to enough. Plus all it takes is one wrong move by Putin or Kimmy and all that progress goes up in a mushroom cloud.
- kup0 8y ago
  Yes, but do the people referenced in your quote know or care about objective measurements or do they just feel that things are worse? The sentiment exists regardless of the truth.

Bombthecat 8y ago

I think media. In Brazil there was a soap opera where the main actors got ( often pregnant) pregnancy rates increased heavily during that time.

buckminster 8y ago

It's contraception. The solution is for the government to randomly introduce placebos into the contraceptive supply. Or just accept that, given the choice, people don't want kids that much.

stonecraftwolf 8y ago
This. This thread is killing me. This might be the only comment so far to even consider women as having agency. When you give women control over their own bodies and equal enough rights to support autonomy — so, treat them like people, basically - it turns out they don’t want to have so many kids, because growing and birthing humans is incredibly taxing and traumatic. The trauma, in particular, is weirdly something that people don’t talk to young women about, and that often remains hidden from view. Reach a certain age (as a woman) and get alone in a room with other women of a certain age and the stories are absolutely harrowing. Of the women I’ve known personally who have given birth, all but one had PTSD from the experience. I am, frankly, dreading the replies to this comment, as the thread already tilts heavily towards the sort of dehumanizing abstraction of women’s rights that often precedes more explicitly misogynist arguments cloaked in utilitarianism, so I will just say that if you consider coercing women into traumatizing and often debilitating situations to be an acceptable “cost” of a hypothetical economically optimal birth rate, I do not consider you to be capable of engaging in good faith and will not respond. I would also suggest that concerns about “birth rate” or other abstracted metrics are often a screen for concerns — from men — about access to sex. I mean, in the context of intensifying climate change, a decreasing birth rate is not really our biggest problem as a species. It might actually be an asset.
- adventured 8y ago
  There were the famous studies from a few years ago in Israel and Germany that sparked a small cultural spat in the West about regretting motherhood and having a child being a source of immense unhappiness.[1][2] It's of course obvious why they generated so much outrage, centuries of propaganda about motherhood being bliss and the highest calling for women. To quote from the WaPo article below (some people may not be able to read it): "it turns out that having a child can have a pretty strong negative impact on a person's happiness, according to a new study published in the journal Demography. In fact, on average, the effect of a new baby on a person's life in the first year is devastatingly bad — worse than divorce, worse than unemployment and worse even than the death of a partner." "Researchers Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä followed 2,016 Germans who were childless at the time the study began until at least two years after the birth of their first child. Respondents were asked to rate their happiness from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied) in response to the question, "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?"" "On average, new parenthood led to a 1.4 unit drop in happiness. That's considered very severe. To put things in perspective, previous studies have quantified the impact of other major life events on the same happiness scale in this way: divorce, the equivalent of a 0.6 "happiness unit" drop; unemployment, a one-unit drop; and the death of a partner a one-unit drop." [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-israeli-study-regretting-motherhood-debate-rages-in-germany/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-israeli-study-regretting... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/08/11/the-most-depressing-statistic-imaginable-about-being-a-new-parent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/0...

hhjinks 8y ago

> So it's not career/jobs Where did this conclusion come from? It does not follow from your comment. If it's the thing about Japan, that's more convincing as an argument that it IS career prospects that is the culprit. So while it's true that lowering birth rates has a societal cause, the ever increasing expectation of women to build a career is a major contributing factor.

fastball 8y ago

It doesn't matter if Japanese women quit their jobs to raise a family once they're married if they're not getting married[0] 0: https://www.dw.com/en/why-fewer-japanese-are-seeking-marriage/a-19349576 https://www.dw.com/en/why-fewer-japanese-are-seeking-marriag...

ksec 8y ago

>So it's not career/jobs, it's not maternity leave, it's not child benefits. Could it be societal? Media? Education? Or Could it be so simple we can no longer afford to marry and have a Child even if both of us have a job.