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> Many couples either decide they don't want to bring a child in such uncertain conditions -- like me and my wife -- or they risk it and end up providing very s

> Many couples either decide they don't want to bring a child in such uncertain conditions -- like me and my wife -- or they risk it and end up providing very subpar support for their kids. What I'm saying is that "subpar" is not an absolute measure. Its meaning is constantly being revised according to what other people are doing. Is life in Eastern Europe today, in 2018, worse than it was 100 years ago (well, not exactly 100 years ago, since that was around WWI, but you get the idea)? And yet the birth rates are way lower. So clearly our conception about whether having children is viable is being scrambled by something in the modern environment. My hunch is that it's constant exposure to media and, with it, the constant sense that we are doing poorly (because the media primarily portrays fantasy lifestyles).

OctoberThoughts 8y ago
Our concept of whether having children is viable also carries a lot more weight, since contraception is now available and effective. You can think it's a terrible idea, but when the only way to prevent it is abstinence...
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  > Our concept of whether having children is viable also carries a lot more weight I'm in total agreement. The plummeting birth rates speak to that. I'm taking a biological viewpoint. If a biologist were examining human natural history, the single most peculiar feature would be how birth rates became disconnected from material wealth in the last 100 years.
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    It is very much connected. Many people don't have the necessary stability to raise kids, so they don't. And no small amount of rich people don't want kids because they don't want to dedicate that much attention to something else but themselves -- egotism is not illegal after all. But I think this second example amounts to much smaller contribution to the birth rate decline.
pdimitar 8y ago
Your questions are valid but I cannot agree with their premise. Yeah, life in Eastern Europe is very definitely much better compared to, say, 1900, but it's not that simple; back then they didn't have 10 bills to pay a month nor did they have to do grocery shopping. People lived on the farm and produced food and whatever they didn't have, they bartered their extra goods for it. Pretty simple and overall easy life (although working on the farm can be quite exhausting and consume 16+ hours a day sometimes). All balanced out with bad healthcare for example: chances were much higher you could die of a disease that's trivial to cure today. I mean, it's apples to oranges. Many things are objectively better... and many others are objectively worse. There's nothing scrambling our concept about whether we should have children. As several people in this discussion pointed out, having children was linked to benefits down the line back in the past, and nowadays they are mostly only a cost center. And finally, whether we compare 2018 with 1900 or not, life in many places of the world is hard and many people don't want to raise a child in very uncertain conditions. You don't care if 1900 was worse; you only suffer because you cannot buy your kid a toy -- or even their favourite food. Comparing to the past in such a situation is quite pointless.

OctoberThoughts 8y ago

Our concept of whether having children is viable also carries a lot more weight, since contraception is now available and effective. You can think it's a terrible idea, but when the only way to prevent it is abstinence...

toasterlovin 8y ago
> Our concept of whether having children is viable also carries a lot more weight I'm in total agreement. The plummeting birth rates speak to that. I'm taking a biological viewpoint. If a biologist were examining human natural history, the single most peculiar feature would be how birth rates became disconnected from material wealth in the last 100 years.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  It is very much connected. Many people don't have the necessary stability to raise kids, so they don't. And no small amount of rich people don't want kids because they don't want to dedicate that much attention to something else but themselves -- egotism is not illegal after all. But I think this second example amounts to much smaller contribution to the birth rate decline.

pdimitar 8y ago

Your questions are valid but I cannot agree with their premise. Yeah, life in Eastern Europe is very definitely much better compared to, say, 1900, but it's not that simple; back then they didn't have 10 bills to pay a month nor did they have to do grocery shopping. People lived on the farm and produced food and whatever they didn't have, they bartered their extra goods for it. Pretty simple and overall easy life (although working on the farm can be quite exhausting and consume 16+ hours a day sometimes). All balanced out with bad healthcare for example: chances were much higher you could die of a disease that's trivial to cure today. I mean, it's apples to oranges. Many things are objectively better... and many others are objectively worse. There's nothing scrambling our concept about whether we should have children. As several people in this discussion pointed out, having children was linked to benefits down the line back in the past, and nowadays they are mostly only a cost center. And finally, whether we compare 2018 with 1900 or not, life in many places of the world is hard and many people don't want to raise a child in very uncertain conditions. You don't care if 1900 was worse; you only suffer because you cannot buy your kid a toy -- or even their favourite food. Comparing to the past in such a situation is quite pointless.