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This doesn't fully explain why humans don't want to have a lot of kids. Have you ever been around kids? They're really a pain in the ass, especially if they'r

• bantunes 8y ago
  > Have you ever been around kids? They're really a pain in the ass, especially if they're boys. Suck it up. What, do you want having kids to be as seamless as an Uber Eats order? It's not. It's hard work. I'm sure your parents gave up on a lot to have you, too. That's part of being an adult.
  • IC4RUS 8y ago
    They're not saying they want it to be easy, they're saying they don't want to do it and don't have to (which ties into the rest of what they're saying) I think you're missing the point of the comment.
  • magduf 8y ago
    >That's part of being an adult. As countless adults these days have proven, no, it's not. You can just opt out of the whole thing.
    • martin1b 8y ago
      Which is why we have the problem at hand.
      • auiya 8y ago
        > problem at hand Is it a problem? I would submit it is a solution.
        • magduf 8y ago
          It's a problem if you don't want your economy to collapse because of too many elderly people who can't work and not enough young people to keep things going for them all.
    • jdbernard 8y ago
      Yep. And if everyone does...
  • GrinningFool 8y ago
    > Suck it up. What, do you want having kids to be as seamless as an Uber Eats order? It's not. It's hard work. I'm sure your parents gave up on a lot to have you, too. That's part of being an adult. Seems wiser to remain childless than to have and raise kids that you never wanted. How would that work out for the kid, otherwise? Or are we going on the assumption that once the kid is born, OP will no longer see it as a burden?
    • stephenhuey 8y ago
      There's something to be said for that. My kids do require a lot of attention and work and I sometimes I feel very tired out and short on time to get things done before crawling into bed for enough sleep to be productive at the office the next day. However, even though I really enjoy creative technology work at my job, on average my relationships with my kids give me greater satisfaction than any projects I work on. Maybe not everyone would feel the same way after having kids, but for a lot of us parents I think it's a natural thing that occurs within us that's very helpful for motivating one to give love and care towards a child amidst myriad other demands. I've heard many other parents confirm that they feel something they had never felt before, and that definitely pushes us through the tough times when parenting and provides a lot of enjoyment that might have been difficult to imagine beforehand.
      • magduf 8y ago
        I have a good friend whose mother tells her that she (my friend) ruined her life, and that she never really wanted kids or to get married to the man she married when she got pregnant.
        • masonic 8y ago
          In the TV series "Doc Martin", the main character comes from such parents.
  • handzbagz 8y ago
    That's precisely why I don't want them. I don't feel it's worth the time and effort.
    • simplecomplex 8y ago
      Who do you plan on taking care of you when you get older? You’re going to pay nurses, and maybe live in a retirement home?
      • est31 8y ago
        Alzheimers patients need 24/7 care. This isn't something that small families with 3-4 siblings can do by reasonable means next to having a job, raising the next generation, and living in the neighbouring town or even further than that. In the old days, poor people just died young because of exhaustion and rich people well they have the means for proper care per definition.
        • simplecomplex 8y ago
          In the event of Alzheimer’s, who do you think makes the decisions? Communicates with the nurses? Checks on them? Family. Not sure what your point about poor people is...
        • magduf 8y ago
          It's looking like Alzheimer's will be a solved problem before too long, with all the current research on it.
          • est31 8y ago
            There is indeed a lot of research on Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. But I'm a bit more sceptical than you. We still don't know exactly what's happening in Alzheimer patients. We might even split up the disease into multiple sub-diseases as it happened with cancer. However, you are right, a lot of stuff can happen before people who are young today (20s and younger) get old.
  • mzybert 8y ago
    Why on earth would I "suck it up" when I can just never make any children?
  • babyloneleven 8y ago
    > Suck it up. Why?
  • arwhatever 8y ago
    > Suck it up. Why don't you suck up me not having any?
• polskibus 8y ago
  I hear this argument quite often : "Smart people aren't having so many kids now because they don't have to." Depends on what you're counting on in the future. If you want to be taken care of when you're older, and almost no one has children, then your future is bleak no matter how much you earn now. Inflation will eat most of your savings that you'd want to spend on care. Of course there's immigration or you can move but you're going to be lonely nevertheless. It may sound controversial but it's a bit like not getting vaccinated and counting on herd immunity. Who would be writing all those HN comments now if our parents hadn't had children?
  • swolchok 8y ago
    > Inflation will eat most of your savings What? This is why investment advice for retirement generally revolves around allocation into stocks and bonds while leaving only an emergency fund plus regular expenses in more liquid assets like savings accounts. Inflation will only eat your savings if you fail to invest. If you want to talk about risk, well, inflation is why a total failure to accept risk is extremely risky!
    • sevensor 8y ago
      And you expect your investments to continue to increase in value with a shrinking population?
    • watwut 8y ago
      I think that he is talking about average person and you have rich classes in mind. Most people dont have money to invest in bonds.
      • InitialLastName 8y ago
        "Most people" down into the middle classes (at least in the US) have money invested in the market already, through either an employer-related pension or a 401K-type plan.
    • polskibus 8y ago
• telesilla 8y ago
  >little boys are just too destructive and disobedient Don't blame the boys - I've known equally pain-in-the-ass families of girls, and wonderful boys. It's the parents.
  • magduf 8y ago
    Boys are inherently more destructive and violent than girls; it's a biological fact, and is the whole reason prison inmates are over 90% male.
    • telesilla 8y ago
      And those of you who aren't in prison, probably had better parenting right? (and some luck). Anyway, I don't mean to hijack this thread but if the parent is saying he doesn't want kids because they are unruly, he might look to the parenting of said kids. Kids can—and should!—be bringing joy and lightness and laughter and learning. It's a tragedy that the modern person avoids have children because of economic concerns and perceived issues of losing independence.
      • magduf 8y ago
        Just about everyone I know who has little boys has major problems with them: they all seem to have autistic traits, and severe behavior problems. I don't know what the problem is, but it makes me not want to be involved with boys in a parenting situation.
        • jdbernard 8y ago
          > if the parent is saying he doesn't want kids because they are unruly, he might look to the parenting of said kids. To me your experiences only emphasize this point. Large portions of our society have decided that masculinity is inherently toxic. We've also, generally speaking, de-emphasized the role of discipline in parenting (I'm not talking about spanking). Our school system has long been stacked against young boys. I think that, as a society, we've forgotten how to parent children, especially boys.
• dragonwriter 8y ago
  > This doesn't fully explain why humans don't want to have a lot of kids Humans in (actual or perceived) stable social and economic environments with strong extrafamilial support systems adopt low-number, high-investment K-strategy, humans in (actual or perceived) unstable social and economic environments with weak extrafamilial support systems adopt high-number, low-investment r-strategy. > kids are very costly in today's society, Kids aren't (generally) nearly as costly for the people having lots of them in our society as they are for those having fewer, as a direct result of different child-bearing approaches. > The answer to me is simple: we need to outsource child-rearing to the State, as shown in the novel "Brave New World" where children were made in factories and then raised by trained professionals. In the short term, immigration works. If the whole world is ever developed to the point where K-strategy dominates to the point where maintaining population is a real concern, then, after the giant global celebration we should have for that accomplishment, setting economic incentives so that people with means to raise multiple children at the level society as a whole considered appropriate investment levels also have a rational incentive to do so isn't particularly hard. It's a problem we haven't solved today because we aren't anywhere close to having it, not because it's even a little difficult or requires some kind of drastic reform like you describe.
  • iguy 8y ago
    The phenomenon Spandrell describes is a concern largely independent of whether the total population is increasing or decreasing. Every advanced country has built a system for vacuuming up the most talented individuals from the countryside, and giving them important jobs in rat-race cities, where (for various reasons) they will have fewer kids. To counter this, you'd have to draw from somewhere else equally talented newcomers, and maybe a few countries can.